2026-03-28 09:46:00
On Thursday, I shared a poem I wrote recently (this one) with my coworker. He's an older person, working in another department, security, and always jokes about how this is his last job. He plans to quit when he turns 70 so he can stay home and work on his art full time. He's an incredible artist. We both are always reading in any downtime we have, and have gotten into the habit of sharing books with each other. Most of the things I share are poetry, and he always asks, "So Saaaaam... have you written anything lately?" in a languorous drawl that is his own. I always say, "no, not lately", but then realize that is not true, and I have written a lot, just not anything I'd want to share. I've written a lot of crap, but its good crap that I enjoy writing, and that feels good to write. I probably will share it someday, probably here on this blog (in fact, I've already started to).
Anyway, this poem I shared with him happens to be one that I don't think is crap, and I've been sitting on it for a couple years now, unsure of where to go next. I knew it needed more work, but I'd been looking at it and reading it so much that I just didn't know what to do differently. I got it back from him this morning, all marked up in red ink the way I remember my peers and teachers doing in years past. I forgot how much I missed that, reading what other people thought of my work. I read it through with some of his changes and omissions this morning, and was reminded that sharing is the only way to grow.
Over the years, I've become so accustomed to this idea propagated by Instagram culture, that everything you share has to be perfect, and able to grip your audience, as soon as you decide to share it. This idea that once you make one thing, that is your "brand identity", and everything that precedes it must be in line with it, fit your grid. The social media giants have turned art and creativity into a business, and gradually turned us into creators, not artists, writers, sculptors, or musicians. That one overarching word that takes the art out of our craft: creator. I've thought so much about this, that I stopped sharing anything. I don't want to make content. I want to make art.
I'm tired of being a creator.
I have always been an artist.
I have always been a photographer.
I have always been a musician.
I have always been a voracious reader.
I don't have a brand identity because I am not a brand. I am a human who is also all of those things above and so much more.
The weekend is coming up and I plan on looking over the poem in the morning, with a hot cup of coffee. I'll probably type it up on my typewriter, and play around with the words. Something I haven't done in a while, and I love, is typing it up, cutting out each line, and arranging them in different orders on the table. It really helps me organize my words in different ways, and gets me out of my head (that moment when you are just staring at the paper and going crosseyed trying to figure out what you can do to make the poem stronger - a poem is never finished).
I have two rolls of black and white film I'd like to develop too. I don't remember what is on them, its been a few months, but I know they are at least only from 2025. I have another roll of very old black and white film that I got for only a couple dollars. Its a roll of Kodak Plus-X safety film, in a metal canister with a yellow screw top. It could be from the 50s or 60s, and is probably blank. It has only 20 exposures total. I'm going to put it in a camera and shoot it all tomorrow as well, and develop that too. I'm so curious what will happen. Is it actually blank, or is there someone else's photos on it? Will I end up with their images from decades past double exposed over my own? Maybe it won't even come out. I don't know, but this is the kind of experiment I live for.
I also want to spend a lot of time reading, hopefully out in one of my favorite parks. One of my favorite weekend routines costs only $10. I walk to Lombardy Market, buy a turkey sandwich, a bag of chips, and a drink, and then walk to the park I refer to as triangle park, and sit on a bench in the shade and eat, and just be outside. I always bring things to read, usually headphones and my iPod, but more often than not, I just sit there after I've eaten and just be. Its a nice way to give yourself an hour of time spent doing nothing outside, around other people, most of whom are also doing nothing.
2026-03-28 08:49:00
Heya! So, let's say you wanna get rid of the upvote button on your blog for whatever reason? How would one go about doing that? Well, there's actually a couple different options, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Here we go:
1. make_discoverable
This is the only way to completely get rid of the upvote button. If you set the make_discoverable attribute on your post to false, it will no longer be possible to upvote your post. This does have one potentially unwanted side-effect though: your posts will no longer show up on discover, not even on the most recent tab. If you're fine with that though, this is the most obvious choice. If you want to make all your posts undiscoverable, you can add this to your post template in bears settings.
2. CSS
You can hide the upvote button using this css snippet:
.upvote-button { display: none; }
This has the advantage of being pretty easy to do, and is also available in the free tier of bear (unlike our next method). Downside is, people can still theoretically upvote your post, and quite easily at that, provided they have some basic devtools skills. It should keep most people from trying though - the couple upvotes you might receive from particularly dedicated readers won't exactly give you much staying power on trending. Still, something to look out for.
3. JS
You can add this snippet to the footer of your website:
<script>document.querySelector(".upvote-button").remove()</script>
Since only premium bearblog accounts can use JavaScript on their blog, this method may not be available to you. However, it does have the advantage of being a lot more annoying to override. Bearblog uses js for upvoting, so users wouldn't be able to turn it off entirely. It is possible to manually override the page html in Chrome and remove the js snippet in order to still be able to upvote, but the vast majority of people don't know that this is even possible, or how they can do it. Overall, if you still wanna appear on most recent but just don't want any upvotes, this is probably the most effective method. Still not 100% upvote-proof, but oh well. Does it's job well enough, i think.
Anyways, thank you for reading! If you've got any more ideas for upvote prevention that i can add to this post, feel free to send me an email.
2026-03-28 05:53:32
I went ahead and grabbed my prescription today, and took my first dose! I'm so happy, I'm so excited to see where this will lead, and how I'll like it! I was a good creature and went ahead and put reminders in my calendar to remind me when to increase my dosage, and I set alarms to help me remember!
Today is a milestone, and I'm happy to keep forging ahead
2026-03-28 04:40:00
Well well, it's been over a month since my last post. I haven't felt like blogging to be honest, and each day feels like it's just blended into the next - I couldn't even tell you what the date is most of the time.
The good news is we're moving into a new home next week and it's actually pretty nice. The only real downside is that it's significantly smaller than where we are now and the rent is nearly £300 a month more. That's just how it is, the rent on the current house is way under market rate and we knew we'd never find anything this price again.
Prior to finding the new house, we got turned down for two others we applied for. It was really disheartening as you simply get told the landlord didn't choose you and that's that. There aren't enough rental properties to meet demand, so you have to apply as soon as you've viewed something and then your odds are slim anyway.
I mentioned a house we really liked in my last post. Despite having no other applicants for nearly 4 months, the day we put our application in two other people did too. Luckily by the time we got the rejection, nearly 2 weeks later, we'd found the house we actually got.
At the end of February, I was going through a particularly low patch and my anxiety was so bad I felt constantly sick. In desperation, I posted on a couple of local facebook groups, asking if there were any landlords wishing to let direct. I laid out our situation in detail - self-employed, on benefits, pets, tight budget etc. One person replied quickly, but the property wasn't suitable. Then another came in the next day, saying they had a property about to become available that met our requirements.
Two days later, we viewed it and fell in love. The landlord seemed to like us and then we got the amazing news it was also under budget. It's a beautiful 16th century period cottage at the end of a quiet rural lane. It's got a partially converted garage with a workshop for my hubby and a decent-sized garden across the lane. It has everything we need, albeit quite a bit smaller, but it's so warm and characterful - the upstairs is partially in the roof and wonky!
It's got a woodburner stove, which I've always wanted, and even an Aga-style range cooker!
The icing on the cake is that my youngest will keep his taxi to special school and my eldest has pivoted to an accessible sixth form for his A-Levels. I can't tell you how stressed we've been over the boy's schooling arrangements having to change.
I'm going to blog a bit about our move over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime here's a sneak peek of our little country cottage (it's all the cream-rendered part and one bit of the brick-rendered part) :
I also can't resist showing you the gorgeous beams and this wonky window in our master bedroom:
The view from upstairs is so pretty (minus the bins lol)!
Oh, and one other piece of good news. While dealing with all this, I had to do youngest's renewal for Disability Living Allowance, which I submitted early March. To my utter surprise, they made the decision barely a week later and have upped his entitlement to high rate care meaning a very welcome boost to our finances.
More soon!
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2026-03-28 03:57:31
Browsing the discover feed and visiting many peoples Bear blogs has given me so many ideas. Both for my own blog and other things I have been struggling to give form over the past few years.
There’s so much individuality and creativity on display here that truly lets the individual shine through, it’s a joy to browse.
I have come to the realisation I have been trying to mash too many ideas together creating an incoherent mess. Instead, I should try separating things neatly in their own buckets while still being connected to a larger whole. Giving every idea focus and space to breathe.
I myself prefer using specific parts of bigger websites instead of the whole thing for specific things in my own RSS feeds, because some websites simply excel at one thing better than others. I should structure what I want to create how I myself would want to use it.
It also seems kinda fun keeping this project connected to my public life, completely separate from my anonymous Bear blog.
Food for thought.
2026-03-28 01:30:09
RAM prices are, frankly, insultingly high. Like so ridiculously high it's absurd. It's got me thinking: We need better software. Electron, Windows, Chrome, Discord - these are RAM hogs to the highest order. Single webpages require what an entire operating system required in terms of resources less than 15 years ago. Chrome is famously bad at memory management and eats it for lunch. Windows idles at 6gb RAM usage. Even Apple is hitting the upper limit on what currently runs smoothly at 8gb for some of their applications.
In short: we have a software problem more than a RAM problem. Maybe software companies should, like, care more about this? Dependency upon dependency eats away at minimum RAM requirements for software these days, and the entire chain is responsible for using this resource so inefficiently.
Well, here we are: RAM is no longer affordable. If you want to get lots and lots of people to use your software - reduce its RAM requirements now. RAM just became a very finite resource.