📷 March Photo Challenge #13. Connection. Monitor Cables. Columbia, SC.
My iPhone case is starting to fall apart, so I’m going to go case-less for a little while and see if I can get used to it. (Or more precisely, see if I can get over the feeling that I’m going to shatter the glass.)
One nice side effect of the Micro.Blog March Photoblogging Challenge… I’m taking more pictures… not just for the challenge. I’d gotten out of the rhythm of shooting for fun and posting a photo every day has sparked that habit again.
📷 March Photo Challenge #12. Shiny. “Holographic” fish stickers from Sticker Mule. Columbia, SC.
Easy Category Pages in Navigation on Micro.Blog
Customize your navigation with filtered categories
When I first moved my blogging over to Micro.Blog, I struggled with the perceived rigidity of the navigation. It took me a little time to refine it, but I eventually figured it out. I’ve had a couple of people ask about my solution, so I figured I’d share a quick summary of how I set it up my navigation.
It shouldn’t matter what theme you are using, but for my site, I use the Pure plug in, which is a good foundation to build from. By default, the template presents a home page that includes all of your posts. Instead, I wanted to have different links in my navigation for my longer “blog” posts and my shorter “tweet-like” status posts.
It’s actually pretty easy to do, but it takes a few steps.
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Create the categories you want. I created two categories: Quick Updates and Long Posts. You can create as many categories or group them differently, but this worked for me.
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Set up filters. Filters will automatically apply categories based on different parameters. Click the “Edit Filters” button beneath the list of categories. I set up two filters. One that sorted untitled posts into my “Quick Thoughts” category and a second that grouped together all of my long posts with titles. This way, my posts are automatically grouped into one of the two categories. In the screenshot below, I used the “Post Length” setting.
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Determine the URL for each category. Each category in Micro.Blog has a URL, typically formatted as
http://DOMAIN-NAME/categories/CATEGORY-NAME.Find the URLs for each of the categories you want in the navigation. -
Create a new page. Name the page and then paste the category URL into the content box. Make sure “Include this page in your blog navigation” is checked. Repeat for all of your categories. You’ll then have a navigation item for each of your categories.
This technique works really well when paired with the Custom Home Page plug in. You can see the result in the navigation on my site. I know that I could do this by building a custom template. At some point, maybe I will. But right now, I’d like to keep it as simple as I can, and this works really well for me.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
📷 March Photo Challenge #11. Gimcrack. My home office knick knack shelf needs dusting. (I had to look up “Gimcrack,” so hopefully I got it right.) Columbia, SC.
Adventures in algorithms: My daughter shared a link to a prom dress she liked. I clicked on it. Now, Instagram is serving me prom dress content.
📷 March Photo Challenge #10. Ritual. I love that my favorite local coffee shop gives me a teapot and mug when I order hot tea. Gets me in the right frame of mind for writing. Loveland Coffee. Irmo, SC.
📷 March Photo Challenge #9: Together. Our son’s lacrosse practice means we get to walk together. Crooked Creek Park. Chapin, SC.
📷 March Photo Challenge #8. Walk. Lunchtime stroll at the SC Statehouse. Columbia, SC.
📷 March Photo Challenge #7: Whole. Rings closed. Crooked Creek Park. Chapin, SC.
📷 March Photo Challenge #6: Engineering. Backup generators. Columbia, SC.
It’s rare to see a thoughtful discussion of the U.S. National Debt. This interactive story from the New York Times dives into what it would take to balance the budget, and why it’s easier said than done.
📷 March Photo Challenge #5: Tile. The entrance to the new independent bookstore, All Good Books, in Five Points. Columbia, SC.
📷 March Photo Challenge #4: Zip. The accessory pockets on my 10-year-old custom Timbuk2 messenger bag. Columbia, SC.
Just learned that, by default, Micro.Blog only includes JPGs in the photos page. So if I want to add illustrations to my blog posts that I don’t want mixed in with my photo gallery, I can just save those as PNG. Clever solution.
Volkswagen’s Scout revival will build new electric SUVs and pickups in a new $2 billion factory in Columbia, South Carolina. I’m looking forward to this, and not just because they picked Columbia as their home.
📷 March Photo Challenge #3: Solitude. Just me in the office this afternoon. Columbia, SC.
📷 March Photo Challenge #2: Weather. Raindrops on a sunroof. Crooked Creek Park. Chapin, SC.
Enjoyed the Mandalorian Season 3 premiere.
📷 March Photo Challenge #1: Secure. Main Street, Columbia, SC.
I’m looking forward to the Micro.Blog March Photo Challenge. I’m going to try to integrate shots from my lunchtime walks during the week and backyard hikes on the weekend.
Our local bus system has a park and ride service that I really wished worked for me, but the timing just doesn’t work out.
Reflecting on my first two months of being healthier
Solid progress
One of my goals for this year is being healthier. Eating better. Moving more. The hope was that by breaking some bad habits I developed during COVID, I could lose some weight and feel better. I wanted to post occasional updates to keep myself accountable.
Two months in, things are going great. I feel significantly better — that’s the “metric” I care about most — and I’ve dropped a significant amount of weight. I’m not doing any trendy diet or counting calories. I’ve adapted some principles from intuitive eating.1 I’m making smarter decisions about food and listening to my body. One example, I’ve pretty much stopped drinking beverages with calories. At Starbucks, I get a black coffee or hot tea. Unsweetened tea instead of sweet tea.2 I’m not drinking sodas. I’ve generally avoided alcoholic drinks, but had a glass of bourbon at our Valentine’s Dinner. My energy level feels more consistent through the day without the sugary sodas and extra caffeine. And I’m sleeping better. Wins all around.
Exercise wise, I’m just focused on movement.3 I’m walking regularly. My wife and I have started taking long walks on the weekends, exploring the trails that are literally in our backyard. I’m trying to walk at lunch and walk to meetings around campus. I’m not running on a treadmill — or running at all. I might get to that point, but that’s down the road.
I do want to address the tech side of this. I purchased a Withings Body+ scale, and it syncs my weight to my Apple Health account. I use Happy Scale to track weight because it does a nice job of showing averages instead of just focusing on the lowest weigh in. I’m tracking activity and workouts with Apple Watch. I tend to be a data person, and I like having all these metrics. I just need to make sure I’m not fixated on the metrics. Again, the main goal is feeling better and developing healthy habits.
Two months in, I feel like I’m heading in the right direction. I’m making long-term lifestyle changes, and I know this is just a start. I plan to check back in here every month or so with an update.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. And he’s trying to be healthier.
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Clearly, I’ve not bought in to intuitive eating 100%. I’m still trying to lose weight and I still weigh myself regularly. If you want to learn more about intuitive eating, I recommend Rachael Hartley’s blog. ↩︎
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I’m in South Carolina, y’all. Around here, sweet tea is the default. ↩︎
Six years ago today, I drove to Atlanta to attend a one-day seminar with Edward Tufte. In many ways, that class started my grad school journey because so much of what he presented ran counter to my marketing-based assumptions about how design worked.