Archive — page 4


Get a library card

I — probably along with the majority of people in the UK — haven't set foot in a library in years. I have a vague recollection of borrowing a library book when the son was a baby, so it's probably been the best part of 20 years ...

That said, I've always thought that public libraries should exist and be paid for out of the public purse. Whether or not I personally find them useful, they serve a public good. There was a definite push from the successive coalition and Tory governments of the '10s to reduce public services and sell-off public properties, including libraries, and it's a relief to me that those plans don't seem to have come to fruition.

My absence from the library isn't because I don't read; it's that I read eBooks almost exclusively — although I understand the appeal of a physical book, they're just too ... well, big. I commute a lot (although less than before Covid) and being able to pick up my book on a phone, tablet or e-reader "there and then" is just so much more convenient than having to carry an actual book around with me.

Imagine my delight when I found that, at long last, UK libraries are (for the most part) now able to lend eBooks!

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Riley on watch

Riley on watch, staring suspiciously at a ... bottle of bubble bath?

Cat sitting on edge of a bath looking suspiciously at something our of image

Constant vigilance is her watchword?


Blackpool tower (fake news)

News alerts last night that Blackpool tower was on fire ...

First we have the breathless news

Blackpool Tower on fire with six fire engines tacking the blaze at the top of the famous landmark

and then an hour later the slightly anticlimactic follow up

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New site part 5 - post categories

Part of a series about setting up the new 11ty version of this site

One of the most common problems encountered when moving from WordPress to 11ty — apparently — is tagging posts, not least because 11ty already has the concept of tags.

There are some solutions out there but they all seemed fairly complicated, so I've written my own. I've added the concept of categories for posts, which are generated at build time.

We have to make an edit in the config file to add a new collection called categories:

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