Monthly Recap: January 2025

Posted • in life

Tagged: personal now site updates

Monthly Recap: January 2025

What’s going on, Internet? The first month of 2025 is over, and time continues to fly by like there is no tomorrow.

I started the new year by painting the fence and staining the deck, which has been needed for a long time. This happened quickly after building a new barbecue shed in the backyard in December. The backyard is looking pretty nice now and ready for those six days of the year when the weather allows us to actually enjoy prolonged amounts of time outside 🫠

After only two weeks, we quickly got back to work and day care. However, we did begin some settling visits to the local kindergarten for Mr Three. He will turn four soon and spend the next year in daycare and kindergarten before heading off to primary school next year. We’ll have to get used to the shorter hours at kindergarten (similar to school hours), a bit of juggling with work hours and it should be manageable. I can’t image how parents with less flexibility in their work schedule handle this, after school care/programs are expensive. The idea behind this is that he can start making friends with kids he’ll end up at school with.

The best part of this time of the year is the number of public holidays. We can take advantage of a decent amount of long weekends to get away for the weekend. On Wellington Anniversary, we packed the car with kid and dog in tow and headed over to the Wairarapa and spent some time there. We stayed in Martinborough when we went there. We went to Lake Ferry for a family friend’s birthday and spent some kid free time in Greytown shopping.

Parents will relate that weekends become an exercise in keeping the kids entertained and busy, so we headed to the zoo on the final weekend of the month to wander around. Mr. Three is getting good at remembering where animals are. At the moment, our favourites are otters, penguins, and meerkats. The Kiwis are out of the zoo right now. They’re in a breeding program elsewhere. 🙌

We didn’t leave the house the next day, despite our best efforts. It was crazy. Having a three year old and a one year old in the house makes for a very difficult day for parents. Who can relate to that? On days like these, the kids’ bedtime cannot come quickly enough.

That’s life, but what’s been happening on the website?

Blogging

Reading

I’m happy that I finished four books this month. Four books a month are a decent amount of reading while still giving me enough time to listen to podcasts and music.

Music

I haven’t been buying new vinyl recently, but I have been listening to a lot of music. Again this month, lots of New Zealand music. I’m really enjoying it, especially after listening to two podcasts, [The History of New Zealand Drum & Bass] and [Aotearoa Hip Hop: The Music, People, History], and going back and listening to local classics and discovering music that I missed out on.

Gaming

Until raiding begins again in Season 2, I’m still enjoying a break from Warcraft. While I had intentions of playing Cyberpunk over my break from work, I never got around to it. However, I did play a bit of Need for Speed Heat, which I am having a great time with. I am looking forward to advancing through the game and making my Evo X a beast.

Other than that, I played a bit of Pokémon Fire Red on the Miyoo, in what must be the longest play through, ever. Many guides say that if you start with Charmander, you’ll have a hard time early on. I’m totally feeling that right now.

Bookmarks

This month, I found some good posts about the Web. I have not been actively looking for them lately, so I have been quietly pleased when I do come across them in my feed reader, the forums, or Mastodon.

Website

I was able to do a bit of work on the website this month, but not as much as I wanted. I kicked off with a few new links to the Blogroll and Cool Sites.

Over a couple of evenings, I became hyper focused on the 4.0 updates to Eleventy Excellent and jacked the bits that I wanted. An upgrade to Eleventy Image 6.0.0 was included, as well as taking advantage of the new image transformations. I’ll continue to get rid of the old image short code over time.

Working out the new colour system that Lene implemented as part of 4.0 took some time, leading to a slight adjustment in the colours across the site. Expect more.

The removal of the grunge effect image mask over the title text significantly enhanced the readability of the website header. It appears much more attractive with a solid outline around the text, while sitting on the top of the action-packed paint splatter graphic.

Finally, I spent an evening working on the Bookshelf page and improved it. I have more ideas for this and the other “shelf” pages.

Happening around the web

Lots of chatter across the circles I follow about slash pages this month, which is cool because I’ve been thinking about these pages and how to better manage the balance between pages and posts. A decent draft for a post is in the works, and I will publish it in February. Please hold that to me.

Based on recent posts by Robb, I made some changes after jacking some config from Nic Lake. When you visit my Now page, you will find the most recent recap post (what you are reading right now). Same with the new Defaults page. This new page will show my latest list of apps when the yearly update happens. The new 2025 list has recently been published, go check it out.

My friend Xandra has announced her latest project, called Good Internet. Good Internet will be a regular periodical magazine available in print and digital formats. I am excited about this and thinking of ways I can help contribute. There are details and ways to get involved in the thread over on the forums.

Well, that was January. Catch you up, laterz 👋

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