Month: January 2019

End of that experiment: I don’t like excerpts on the home page

Lynn

I edited my theme for this site and tried out showing only excerpts on the home page, tag and category pages, and other archive pages. (Actually, I think I got rid of the date archive pages with a plug-in.*)

I did all of this to prepare for an eventual shift from WordPress to some other platform, preferably one that is based on generating static HTML files that I can upload to my host. I’d like to be able to go 100% static if I so choose once the conversion is done, because I like making pages by hand and updating links.

Unfortunately, as I’ve said in a previous post, I don’t have time for this now.

It was a surprise to realize that I don’t like the excerpts instead of the full posts—especially because I’m happy with the excerpts-only view on a few other sites I have. I think it has to do with the way this theme is set up and the way the excerpts use up so much space on a page. (See the screenshot.)

On my other sites, the excerpts occupy a reasonable portion of screen real estate. Here, one short excerpt pretty much takes up the entire screen on my desktop.

What I really want is custom pages with links or text that I link out to my archived content (in place of the tag and category pages), and an archive list of posts by date the way I have now.

Since I can’t have that without too much work or changing themes, I’m just going to go back to full posts.

Easy! :)

*I put the date archive pages back when I realized the links on my calendar widget don’t work without them. I don’t know what that’ll mean for my shift to a static site someday, or if I’m even still planning one. I’ll leave that decision for later.

Good news for the pre-order averse from Barnes & Noble Press

Lynn

From the latest Barnes & Noble Press email I received:

eBook Pre-Order no longer requires a placeholder interior file, so you’ll never have to worry that readers will receive anything less than your finished project once it’s ready for release.

This is good news. One reason I’ve personally avoided pre-orders has been the need to provide an interior file. I haven’t felt that the risk of a distributor sending out a file not meant for distribution is offset by the benefits of having a pre-order available. But I also haven’t wanted to tie up a ready-to-publish book in a pre-order, so I haven’t used pre-orders at all.

Smashwords has allowed an asset-less pre-order for a while (as of 2015, in fact), but I just haven’t felt it was worth putting up a pre-order in only one venue. Now here’s another.

This might be the year I finally do some experimenting with pre-orders.

Site updates

Lynn

I’ve deleted tags and renamed categories many times over the years. I realize it’s not great for search engines that I do that, but I don’t really care. This is my site and I do what I want. :)

That said, I’m always looking for ways to make my tags or categories more meaningful and I have yet to figure out the best way to interlink the 1,300+ posts on this site. Most are rambling, some are meant to be helpful, and the rest are just posts about my day of writing.

The thing is, I’m still considering a move to static HTML for this blog, and if that happens, I don’t want four bazillion gillion tag pages to deal with. I’d mostly like the tag and archive pages to be a list of links with the post title and one short line of text under it, but that’s going to mean some coding in the WP theme. Those pages will have to be generated with a template of some kind because I’m sure not doing that by hand for 1,300+ links.

All that to say there could be changes coming to the site. You’ll know they’re here when you see them.

I’ve already started with a bit of it by adding a plugin that lists all the posts on the site by year. They’re in reverse order, pretty much just like my reading logs. That’s pretty nifty and I like it. I guarantee I’ll keep that even if I go static with the site. :)

 

That didn’t last

Lynn

I made plans before I finished my last book not to start the next in that series until I’d written the book that I already have in progress. I’m attempting to keep my enthusiasm for my projects high by managing them better. It’s easy to lose enthusiasm when I write a few thousand words and then move to something else for months at a time before I get back to it.

The last book I finished? I wrote about that delay. I also wrote about how much more of a chore writing is when I have delays like that because I get bored and lose interest in what I started and have difficulties getting that interest back.

To be technical about it, writing that last book took me from March 2017 to November 2018. That’s more than a year, and that’s a long time to try to keep up interest in writing one story.

That said, my plans to avoid doing that again aren’t working out—which is a total bummer. :-|

I got an awesome idea this morning for the direction I want to go in the series I finished that last book for. At the same time, I’ve had no ideas for the series and book I’m currently supposed to be writing. I haven’t had much interest at all in finishing this book—the same one I was flying through just months ago while still trying to finish the other book.

I wrote down the idea for the series and my thoughts about it, or some of them anyway, and I went ahead and started the document for the next book in that series. I haven’t gone so far as to write words for that book yet, but it is calling to me something fierce. The idea for the opening scene is right there in my brain and it wouldn’t take any effort at all to just let myself explore it a little.

It doesn’t pay to ignore the muse, but I’m trying.

It’s a conundrum. Miss out on harnessing the enthusiasm I have for the one series to struggle with the other book instead? Or write what I want while the little bit of enthusiasm I still have for the other book continues to wane?

The only right choice seems to be to let go and allow myself to work on two books at a time again. Or to make myself. Call it what you will.

But hey, it worked for the last book.

Sort of.

I finally finished it, at any rate, and I enjoyed doing it, and I broke through to a 6,000 word day. I didn’t push myself to do it, either. It just happened.

All that Pocket reading added up to a lot of reading

Lynn
Screenshot of notification telling me how much reading I did in Pocket
Third year in a row I’ve gotten this little notice about the Five Percent Club from Pocket. Time to change. I don’t want a fourth. :D

There was a time when I thought Pocket was the second best option for all the articles I was used to clipping into Evernote to read later. I do not think that anymore.

I’ve found that over the last three years I’ve read more of the stuff I’ve saved in Pocket and it is easier to keep up with too. Most of the things I read, I discard after the fact. What I don’t discard, I archive in Pocket. My archive in Pocket is very small.

Overall, Pocket has been the best thing to come out of my switch from Evernote to OneNote. Pocket has become my first choice for reading saved articles.

OneNote isn’t optimized for reading, and I never have been able to use it the same way I used Evernote. But that’s okay.

Pocket is compatible with every device I have, still–even the oldest–beating out both OneNote and Evernote. (Joplin has a very nice interface for reading articles, but I haven’t installed the web clipper extension and I’m not sure I want to). Pocket has been the perfect tool for collecting reading material to read in my spare time.

And that brings me to my 2019 goal to read fewer articles in Pocket.

:D Yes, it’s weird. But I’ve gotten this little notice three years running now, and I don’t want to get it again. Let me explain.

1. I read too many random articles I find on the web.

2. I’m wasting a lot of good reading time doing it.

3. I’m cluttering my brain with repetitive information I don’t need, and what happens when you repeat things? You remember them, they become habits, and you get stuck in a rut. No joke.

For example, I might send ten articles about, oh, I don’t know, procrastination to Pocket, and then read them all, even knowing the chance of me discovering or realizing anything new from them is infinitesimal.

It all comes down to this: I am wasting good brain power going over the same things time and again, when I should be reserving that time for deeper, longer, more meaningful learning on topics I haven’t already studied to death.

So that’s my number one reading goal for 2019.

Easing away from OneNote to Joplin for notes

Lynn

I went from Evernote to OneNote and now I’m considering a move to Joplin. I’m taking the move slowly, but the more I use Joplin, the more I like it.

1. I’m testing it out still and getting a feel for the program.
2. I need to know it’s reliable.
3. I’m syncing between my laptop, phone, and a tablet, and haven’t come across any issues yet, but that definitely needs thorough testing before I commit.

Joplin has the ability to sync notes from device to device in several ways, and notes are written, edited, and stored in Markdown. It’s more like Evernote than OneNote in how it’s organized. There are notebooks, tags, and notes instead of notebooks, sections, and pages. But that’s not a problem to deal with. Notebooks can be nested, so sub-notebooks feel like sections to me.

The layout is a little busy when all the sidebars are open, but it’s really well proportioned on my desktop and the sidebars can be toggled on and off and you can even choose to show only the editor window or the note window. I didn’t get a screenshot of that layout, but it’s an option.

Joplin’s syncing process sounds more complicated to set up than it actually is, and it turns out Markdown is pretty sweet. I like writing blog posts and notes in text only, because the files are simple and small and go anywhere and can be read and edited on every device I have.

Markdown is easy, and that’s pretty sweet too. Apparently some of the text formatting shortcuts in WordPress’s classic visual editor are based on Markdown.

Joplin doesn’t have an entire domain devoted to it yet, don’t know if it will ever have, to be honest, but it doesn’t need it because all the syncing you do for your notes is through your own accounts or cloud setup. I use the default Dropbox, because my notes repository isn’t huge and probably won’t be even if I add in all the notes I have in OneNote. I don’t attach files often, because I prefer to have them stored independently.

Joplin is open source and the associated forum and project seems to have plenty of development going on. There’s also a decent amount of documentation for the program. It looks and works great on my phone and tablet, too.

All in all, I really like it, and I think this might be the open source alternative to OneNote and Evernote I’ve been hoping for.

ETA: I forgot to mention a very important feature of Joplin and that’s that it will export an entire notebook of notes into individual .md text files (Markdown text files). (A text editor like Notetab or Notepad++ can open them just fine, although Windows Notepad doesn’t recognize the line breaks.) There’s also the option to export individual notes as PDFs.

All Joplin needs for me to be even happier is an option to export entire notebooks to PDF for archiving, and an export option to create HTML, .doc(x) or .odt files and I would be very happy indeed.

Update: Not so fast, a Joplin versus OneNote update

I was all set to be a rebel and then I realized I don’t have time

Lynn

I wrote a long post about how I was abandoning WordPress a few days ago, and then I started the process by creating some HTML5 templates for one of my websites (the easiest to convert), but after two days of fiddling, it hit me hard that I don’t really have time for this. I am as much a perfectionist with the websites as I am with the writing and what should take one hour takes ten. Not my favorite confession. But—

1. I plan to finish a book this month. And by gosh I’m doing it.
2. The classic editor plugin isn’t going anywhere for a while, so for me nothing’s changed. If it changes suddenly, well, then, I can start moving on this project again (make no mistake, it’s a project for the future, because I am going to do it eventually)
3. The time will come, but maybe jumping right into it right now when I’m actively looking for things to tear me away from writing (but shouldn’t be!) isn’t what I need to do.
4. It feels like an obsession in the making. It took all day yesterday of doing other things and distracting myself to not think obsessively about it. I feel like I’m borderline this morning. A stray thought here or there could pull me right back in. So I’m going to have to do something this morning that is distracting in itself. Writing fits that bill. And since I need to write to finish that book this month, yep, that’s the one I’m going to aim for, right after I do a little morning reading (there’s a fan fiction story for Psych calling my name).

Replacing blank space at the beginning and end of paragraphs in LibreOffice Writer

Lynn

So I figured out how to replace blank spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs in LibreOffice Writer. In Word, it’s as simple as searching for ^P with spaces before or after the ^P and replacing them with whatever you want to replace them with. Not so with LibreOffice Writer, but also not as impossible as I thought it was either. :-)

You might not remember that a while back I wrote: “Writer can’t find and replace ^P paragraph marks. That matters to me because I sometimes mistakenly put a space as the first letter of a paragraph and a quick search and replace before I do my final spell check takes care of that in Word.“ (Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer?)

This common little task was one of the reasons I was having trouble getting used to using LibreOffice Writer after using Word 2007 for many years.

I found a solution a while back, and I thought I’d point it out in case anyone else needs to know.

The parenthetical comments are there to make it easier to see what actually needs to go into the search box because spaces don’t really show themselves as characters. :-)

Search Replace What it does
^ 
(^space)		 blank Removes blank space at start of paragraph (LibreOffice) (search using regular expression)
 *$
(space*$)OR
\s+$		 blank Removes blank space at end of paragraph (LibreOffice) (search using regular expression)

OR second option removes all whitespace characters including non-breaking spaces

Be sure to select the option to search using regular expression for these searches.