About Colin Walker

2024-05-19 19:59:23

It's been the perfect weather combination ... for weeds.

I cut the front grass not long ago, pulling the stuff that shouldn't be there but rain followed by some hot, sunny days meant those pesky weeds just seemed to appear from nowhere. I cut that all back again yesterday.

This morning has had me out the back pulling up all sorts of stuff. I'm probably about half way done but it's gotten too hot to be out there comfortably.

Maybe this year will be the one where I actually keep on top of the garden. As I've said before, I'm a reluctant gardener at best. Maybe it's because I don't know much about it and so just see it as a chore.

2024-05-18 05:02:28

Well played Southampton FC — going to Wembley for the Championship playoff final. Absolutely bossed it tonight and thoroughly deserve the chance to get back to the Premier League. 🔴⚪🔴⚽

# I've really struggled creatively over the past couple of months — only to be expected with the overall downturn of mood — especially with music.

I have been unhappy with everything I've started recently after the initial adrenaline rush has passed. An idea might seem okay at the outset but I quickly become disillusioned or bored with it, unable to progress.

As I mentioned on releasing "It's all in your head" it was supposed to be part of an E.P. that never happened. I began work on a second track before mentally imploding. What was there in the test version was okay, not amazing and nowhere near finished but okay.

The expectation was that I would rerecord it, get everything in place and add extra layers in software. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Settings and patches have been changed and forgotten, patterns overwritten, so there's now no way I could go back and start from scratch.

Still, listening back to that test recording (mostly done in one take with just an extra instrument added in software after) I could appreciate what I was going for and, more importantly, what was actually there. I decided to fire up the DAW and see what I could do with it.

It's never going to be perfect but, with a bit of focused effort, I'm happy with where it's going, just a little more needs to be done to smooth some rough edges. I think I'll be releasing it at some point over the next few days — most likely as a free download/pay what you want option but at least it will be out there and I can be proud of what it is instead of mourn what it isn't.

2024-05-15 21:13:12

New up on Bandcamp: It's all in your head — a 124 BPM #acid banger.

Written in March, it was originally supposed to be on a new E.P. (where each track was somehow related to mental health issues) but that never happened so I'm releasing it as a standalone track. At least for now.

"It's all in your head" is the classic example of what NOT to say to someone.

2024-05-14 21:40:16

You may recall me thanking Robert Alexander for finding a typo in my feed. He mentioned that he had been crawling blogs using the <source:blogroll> element, along with those using '/.well-known/recommendations.opml', and has now mapped a fledgling "RSS Blogroll Network" based on sites using these.

He has a blog post RSS blogrolls are a federated social network which goes into a bit more detail.

I will have to think about adding detection to /reader and then how the found blogrolls could be presented or, maybe, I could use it to automatically discover new (to me) blogs or ones that I'm not subscribed to.

As Robert says, the value of any network grows with the number of nodes, so it would be great if this idea became more widespread. Any methods of improving blog discovery should always be encouraged.

2024-05-12 13:46:15

All due respect to The Monkees and 'Sleepy Jean' but the 6 o'clock alarm most definitely rang 😴

# With a drive time of 3 hours each way we can now make a day trip of it to visit my wife's parents. Much better than the 5+ hours each way before they moved.

The M180 was partly closed due to roadworks which meant taking an alternative route. I've never driven over the Humber Bridge before so decided to go that way — one of the diversions suggested by Google Maps.

It's certainly an impressive structure, once the world's longest single span suspension bridge for cars, but it wasn't as big as I was expecting with two lanes in each direction. I'm used to driving over the Dartford bridge with four lanes each way.

On each side of the bridge, lower than the road surface, are walking/cycling paths. The layout had the weird effect of making me feel like I was going to go off the side of the bridge. I don't know if anyone else is affected by it that way. Consequently, I couldn't really enjoy the view as I was concentrating on the road.

2024-05-11 08:07:03

We may have a fair amount of light pollution where we live but the strongest geomagnetic storm in years still gave us a real treat.

I've wanted to see the aurora borealis for as long as I can remember and got a bit emotional.

The pictures have been processed slightly to accentuate the colours and structure. I would have loved to have been out in a dark sky area.

# Got to get up early as going to see the in-laws new home but might try to sneak another peak at the aurora tonight. I have a little tripod that might help get better shots with my phone.

2024-05-10 23:57:41

The CSS for the site is, and has always been, a huge, overcomplicated mess. There are some variables set up to aid with colour consistency but so much of it has been individually styled as I've made changes and additions.

Dark mode adds a fair chunk (duplicating some of that overly complex structure) and it would be nice to use the new light-dark() CSS function but, as is the way with new, browser support isn't there yet. I made a version of my CSS using light-dark() to test the impact and managed to remove over 200 lines from the file.

Like Dave Rupert I could wrap things in @supports checks but would need to heavily streamline the CSS before that would be viable.

At some point I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and try to tidy it all up and simplify the site layout. There are a few places where I use grids but things could definitely be improved as there is so much manual spacing to get things aligned.

2024-05-09 22:04:25

On his RSS only theunderground.blog, Chris wrote about how he's "doing the internet" in 2024. Feeling his approach quite boring he wanted to know how others were also "doing the internet".

All I can say is, if his approach is boring then mine in mind-numbing! 😆

Due to everything I've been recently writing about, my "internet" has shrunk considerably. Almost my entire online life is based around my own site and I think that's pretty cool.

When I listed my default apps last year (which needs updating) I wrote that "if I had my way, more of these would be using something I built myself."

That happened.

I'll sometimes spread my wings a little researching specific topics but most of my reading and discovery comes from the recommendations of others, real people, via their RSS feeds which are, of course, pulled in via /reader. I'm not afraid to unsubscribe instead of just leaving feeds there out of some sense of loyalty.

It doesn't stop me from jumping out into a search engine or asking an AI chat bot a question but it creates a controlled flow that I can process at my own pace.

I don't use any third party tools for notes, drafts, 'read later' lists, etc. — that all goes into /notes.

I had all but stopped visiting Bluesky, before uninstalling the app from my phone, having decided to stop cross-posting from the blog. I deliberately wanted to decrease the surface area of "my internet" for the sake of my mental health. I'm liking it that way.

The only algorithms I use to suggest things are YouTube and Spotify but I try to control them as much as possible. I tend to stick to certain types of videos (music creation & tools, World of Warcraft, some tech topics, space related stuff) and tell YouTube not to recommend videos from those channels it decides to throw in where not related to my reasons for being there.

Because my listening habits tend to be fairly consistent Spotify actually does a good job of surfacing things I might want to listen to.

I think this approach is key. By not doomscrolling or just consuming anything thrown at me I am able to maintain a more controlled environment. I'll catch up on the news as a conscious act rather than have it fed to me even when I don't want it — I have enough going on in my own head to worry about/keep me occupied without having to process everything else going on in the world. That's not to say I don't keep abreast of the "big stuff" but I intentionally limit my exposure.

This all might mean I miss things but that's okay — humans aren't designed to operate on a global scale. Reducing the scope of my internet makes everything more manageable but I still struggle with distraction. At least I know I'm trying to do something.

2024-05-09 01:31:20

A couple of weeks ago I decided to uninstall the Bluesky app from my phone. While the number of people I follow (and who follow me) is very small it was something I didn't need nor have the headspace for, especially since disabling Bluesky integration with the blog.

I can still access it via the web should I want to (and have done on occasion) but I'm not sure if the app, or the integration for that matter, will find its way back to my phone.

I'm not sure if it's a comorbidity of the depression or just an acknowledgement of, and openness to, my ADHD traits but I find myself increasingly swinging between distraction and hyperfocus. Not to mention that context switching is becoming more and more difficult.

2024-05-07 16:54:11

Thanks to Robert for pointing out the stupid typo (feed.opml instead of feeds.opml) in the <source:blogroll> element of my feed. That's now been corrected.

The xsl stylesheet appears to have stopped working though (I had that problem before) so I've temporarily removed it until I work out why.

Update: ignore that, it's something to do with the browser on my phone. As you were.