Monthly Recap: July 2024

Posted • in life

Tagged: personal now site updates

What’s going on Internet? And just like that, it’s August. I still don’t think I’ve recovered from WeblogPoMo in May or parental leave is taking up too much of my mental capacity to leave anything in the tank for writting blog posts. But oh well. I’m pretty happy with the Rebuilding The Web, give it a read and let me know what you think?

Blogging

Another light month for me, but that’s okay.

  • Tobey: In the midst of The Death Of Slim Shady hype, the video for the second single, Tobey, dropped and I was digging it. The album’s been out for almost four weeks now and I need to write down my thoughts.
  • Rebuilding The Web: I’d been sitting on this one for too long and finally got it out of my head and onto the web.

Reading

Three books this month, the weather has been wet so haven’t been out in the garden or walking the dogs as much. I also picked up a few extra one off podcasts that took up listening time.

  • Raising a Screen Smart Kid by Julianna Miner: As our kids get older I think about how to navigate them being connected a lot. I want to make sure that they both have a healthy relationship with technology and don’t feel like they have to hide anything from me or their mum. This book was a good listen and covered topics like when is a good time for a child to get their first “smart” phone, social media and it’s relationship to loneliness, strategies for finding support online, learning and development with technology and being able to identify and avoid inappropriate content online. Lots to navigate, lots to think about. Who knows what the internet landscape will look like in ten years…
  • Smash! by Ian Winwood: A story about Green Day, The Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX and the punk explosion of the 90s. Amazing stories from some great bands of the early 90s.
  • God Save The Queens by Kathy Landoli: You’ve read the stories of male hip hop legends? But what about the ladies? Another fantastic read full of stories from the early days of hip hop from a different perspective.

Music

I didn’t pick up any new records this month. I did pre-order two copies of The Death Of Slim Shady though. One original and one alternative cover. They won’t ship until October so won’t add them to the Recordshelf until I have them in my hands.

I should spend some time hunting down some of my wish list, always a fun activity, especially for records that haven’t had any re-issues.

Bookmarks

Gaming

I recently upgrade the CPU in my gaming rig and that got my hyped to play Cyberpunk 2077. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to play this one. This is my favourite type of game. When I’ve finished with this I want to go back and finish the recent Jedi Star Wars games that I didn’t get too far into.

However, this past week has been Warcraft heavy. I finally played a bit of Mists of Pandaria Remix, but with less than twenty days left in the event, I’m not sure if I’ll get much done in it. I have however been playing a bunch of the exapansion pre-event. Levelling and gearing up alts that I’ll most likely not be playing when The War Within drops. They’ll be happily geared and look good however.

I’ll be out of the country with the family at the end of the month during the expansion launch so I will miss out on launch day fun and levelling up with everyone else. Shouldn’t be a problem as the raids don’t open until a month after launch, plenty of time to catch up and get raid ready.

Anyway, I’ll head back to Cyberpunk and finish that up before that happens.

Website

Another month that I haven’t updated to 11ty 3.0.0 but now that the beta is available I’ll try and get that done during August.

I updated the Feeds page with a new JSON feed for my posts to better control my EchoFeed.

I had another go at creating individual pages for each book on the Bookshelf after seeing Cory do it successfully. When I sat down to do it, it only took ten minutes to get going.

The Movie Database is a fantastic resource so I updated my TV and Movie data to link to it rather than Trakt.

Over on the Links page I added a new personal site and two new directories as well as some handy navigation links to help you get to the section you want to check out.

JCProbably and Lou Plummer kicked off a new blog directory project, Blogroll Club which I submitted fLaMEd Fury to, go check it out.

Around the web

Friend of the site, Sara Joy kicked off July with a post titled Everybody’s Free (To Write Websites), a fantastic play on 1997’s run away hit Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). What started with a simple text parody turned into an audio adventure with Keenan providing a voice over and wrapped up with Robb contributing some visuals. The end result? A small web masterpiece. Check it out below.

Over at the 32 Bit Cafe we’re hosting our 5th Code Jam, Back To School. It’s running from August 4 - 17 so you have plenty of time to join in the fun.

The 32-Bit Cafe is taking a field trip together this August to help school others in topics we’re interested in! Build a webpage about a complicated concept you love explaining. Create a whole microsite about a topic you wish more people would ask you about or a topic you’re learning yourself. Your submission can be just a tiny part of a larger subject or all-encompassing. The scope is up to you! If you’re unsure of any ideas, you can always dedicate a page to your favorite subject in school, college, or university.

Submissions can be a microsite or a simple blog post. If this sounds like you, come join us on the forums.

I’ll try get these out earlier in future. Catch you on the flip side 🤙

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