Update creating-content.md

[pconrad-fb]

Edit markup section to talk about navigation menu

[mayamcdougall]

Hi there. 👋🏻

Sorry for the delay, I've had a bit of a long weekend. 😉

Thank you very much for your contribution. This reads much better than it did before!

Our Docs have been in a very rough state for a long time now, so if you find more sections you think you can clean up, feel free to submit them. 😁

I'm gonna make a few quick changes after I merge this, so I just wanted to explain them first.

• I think "special function" would read better than "special meaning" in the new text (I realize that's just something you kept from the original, and not your own wording. I just think it would sound better. 😜)
• I'm going to remove the Title example. While I like having the extra example in this text block, Title actually isn't "special". The behavior of hiding pages with no title is part of the Default Theme, and not a Pico function itself, so other themes don't necessarily (and typically haven't) included this behavior.
• I'm going to swap the order of pages_order_by_meta: Order and pages_order_by: meta. It probably reads better the way it is, but in the config template they're in the opposite order.
  • (And actually they're not. 🤦🏻‍♀️ @PhrozenByte Shouldn't those be swapped? Since pages_order_by_meta is dependent on the setting of pages_order_by... shouldn't they be reversed in the template?)

Anyway, great job with this. A little formatting (and editing) can go a long way. 😁

Thanks again! ❤️

[pconrad-fb]

Thanks for the comment. Actually, what prompted me to do this change was that it was hard to figure out that if you don't provide a Title for a page, it doesn't appear in the nav. Is there a default nav behavior in Pico itself? Is there a convention across themes? Is there a piece of advice about nav that I could add to the docs that would help people generally?

[mayamcdougall]

Ah, I see. 🤔

Sorry, I didn't mean to stomp on your intent there. 😅

There isn't really a "standard" for behavior across themes (perhaps there should be, but that's another discussion, 😂). Pico's approach to themes tends to be more open ended.

Theming Pico can be incredibly powerful, since there aren't really any limitations to how you can write your template... but as a side effect of this, there's not much in the way of "standardization" between one theme and the next.

It's been a paper cut that we need to work on, but all of Pico's themes (besides the Default) are third-party contributions, and not part of the actual Pico Project.

The Default Theme serves as a template for the "intended" approach to theme development, but at the moment it's more of a "suggestion" and a learning resource than a strict guideline. Many of the themes in our gallery (especially anything more "novel" looking ones) deviate quite a bit from Pico's "regular" functionality, which has been a pain point for new users lately. 😓

At some point, I'd like to make some additional themes that do things the "proper" way, that way we've got more "supported" and standardized options for new users.

---

Back to the point though (😅). We've been on the lookout for paper cuts like this lately, and I absolutely agree this should be mentioned somewhere in the Docs (or at least handled in some manner).

Maybe I should bring back your Title line, but with a mention of the Default Theme. 🤔

@PhrozenByte what are your thoughts on this?

Strictly speaking, there's nothing special about the Title header. The Default Theme just excludes them from the navigation so that you're not left with empty <a> tags on the page.

So, alternatively, we could change the Theme's behavior to avoid this confusion? It wouldn't be hard to fall back on page id if there's no title ({{ page.title ? page.title : page.id }}). But that also adds extra complexity to the Theme when the goal is to keep it simple.

Not sure what the best solution for this is...

---

Btw, @pconrad-fb, the code in question starts at Line #46 of the Default Theme's index.twig.

If you'd like/need it to behave differently in the meantime, you can always go into your theme folder and change this section to something like:

{% for page in pages(depthOffset=-1) if not page.hidden %}
     <li{% if page.id == current_page.id %} class="active"{% endif %}>
          <a href="{{ page.url }}">{{ page.title ? page.title : page.id }}</a>
     </li>
{% endfor %}

And that will fall back to using the page's ID when there's no title, like I mentioned above.

---

Anyway, hopefully this was informative, and not just a rambling mess. 😅

Sorry again about stepping on your original purpose for this PR 😒

If you find any other paper cuts like this, please don't hesitate to open a New Issue about them!

There's only a couple of us, and we're really ingrained with Pico, so it's hard for us to recognize what the stumbling blocks are for new/newer users.

We'll possibly make a new issue about this problem too if we can't decide on a solution right away.

Thanks again! ❤️

Hopefully we'll figure this out soon (idk at the moment when @PhrozenByte will be available to discuss this, but hopefully soon so that we don't leave you hanging. 😅).

And in the meantime, don't be afraid to open a New Issue about literally anything. It's not just for bugs, we use our Issue Tracker(s) as a catch-all for any support issues. I'm always happy to help where I can. 😉

[pconrad-fb]

Yes, I saw that Twig code :)

I feel like there's an audience out there* that wants to be able to set up a site really quickly, understand the behaviors, and doesn't necessarily want to learn about templating. Templates are hard for a lot of people to understand. I think a lot of people want to know how to get set up, add content, apply a theme, deal with static assets like images, set up nav, preview, publish, etc. With navigation in particular, it's great to be able to include or exclude files. Having the template check for Title is an easy way to do this—frontmatter isn't too hard for most people, I'd hope.

So I feel like if I were a boss of Pico CMS, I'd write a theme creation cheatsheet that says "Hey, this thing in the default theme does this functionality, so if you do it the same way your users will already know—and if you do it differently you should tell them." And then I'd write a quick start guide to the topics listed in the previous paragraph that says "For most themes, here's how you do these things... YMMV, check the README for your theme of choice."

I guess what I'm saying is don't be afraid to be opinionated!

* There's also a more technical audience that wants to do everything including templating, URL rewriting, all of it! But I think the less technical audience is important too.

[pconrad-fb]

I actually have a comment and a question about Pico generally.

• Comment:

  Okay, here’s the catch: There’s no catch. That’s it!

  That's an unbelievable promise. So the fact that it turns out to be true is amazing!

• Question:

  ?sub (not accessible, see below)

  I was never able to figure out where "below" it explains that. What does it mean? Why is sub not accessible, and is sub a reserved word or does it just mean any subpage?

[mayamcdougall]

I just wrote an explanation, but it was horrible. One moment, I think I just better start over. P=

[mayamcdougall]

That's an unbelievable promise. So the fact that it turns out to be true is amazing!

Lol. 😉

What does it mean?

That whole section is just trying to explain how subfolders work. That might be a little poorly worded, but I think it literally just means "see the next line", which in return awkwardly also states "See above". 😓

What it's saying is that if you have a sub folder (named "sub" in the example), when you navigate to yourwebsite.com/sub you'll see the subfolder's index.md. Whereas if you had a file named sub, Pico would have loaded sub.md.

So if it were a directory tree (which it probably should be):

|
|- sub.md <-- Not this content. It will effectively be ignored.
|- sub (folder)
    | - index.md <-- This content gets loaded.
|

Okay... wow... hope that makes sense. That was way harder to put in words than it should be. No wonder that section is hard to understand.

Got a bigger reply incoming, stay tuned. 😜

[mayamcdougall]

If you had a page named about.md, but you decided you wanted an about subfolder, because you had a few other pages to include under yoursite.com/about/, you'd move about.md to about/index.md and then make your other pages in there.

If the about folder exists in this example, about.md becomes inaccessible as Pico looks in the folder for it instead (as that folder's index.md file).

Not sure if this is better, but calling it sub was not making for a good explanation. 🤔

[pconrad-fb]

So, let me see if I get this:

• If site.com/blah/index.md and site.com/blah.md both exist, and we navigate to http://site.com/blah/, Pico looks for site.com/blah/index.md and ignores site.com/blah.md
• If the site.com/blah/ directory exists but doesn't contain index.md, http://site.com/blah/ gives a 404 I'm assuming, regardless of the existence of blah.md.
• If either If site.com/blah/index.md or site.com/blah.md exists (but not both) then http://site.com/blah/ acts as expected, serving up the one that exists.
• This behavior propagates through the tree, so http://site.com/blah/foo will look for either site.com/blah/foo/index.md or site.com/blah/foo.md with the same rules.

Is that correct? If so, there's a neat trick I'll be you can do:

1. Create site.com/path/to/something.md and put a draft or "coming soon" at something/index.md
2. Once you're ready to flip the switch, remove the something directory

Furthermore, what if the behavior were reversed so that something.md took precedence over something/index.md? If that were the case, you could use something.md as a shield while developing a ton of content in the something/ folder, then flip the switch on that whole bunch of content by removing one file!

I'm assuming, of course, that the presence of something.md actually prevents people from navigating to files in the something/ directory rather than just slightly hiding them; if I'm wrong then my idea is not so great. Except for maybe slightly hiding them while you're FTPing them up, or something.

[mayamcdougall]

Hmm, maybe I wrote it best here. This is an excerpt from a Documentation rewrite I started a long time ago (more info coming in that other comment I promised).

---

All About URLs

What if you want to organize your content int subfolders, within the content folder? Pico makes it easy to do just that. If you were to create a file at content/subfolder/page.md, you'd be able to access it at http://example.com/subfolder/page (or http://example.com/?subfolder/page if you don't have url-rewriting enabled).

But Pico lets you take it a step further. What if you wanted a page at http://example.com/subfolder/? To do this, you'd simply create your page at content/subfolder/index.md and Pico will offer it as the landing page for that folder.

One thing to keep in mind though is if you create a folder, you won't be able to access a page with the same name as that folder. For example, if you have a content/news/ folder, Pico will direct visitors there instead of to content/news.md.

Still having trouble wrapping your head around these URLs? Here's a table with some more examples:

Physical Location	URL
content/index.md	/
content/subfolder.md	/subfolder (not accessible, see below)
content/subfolder/index.md	/subfolder/ (overrides the file above)
content/subfolder/page.md	/subfolder/page
content/a/very/long/url.md	/a/very/long/url

[mayamcdougall]

Edit: Just realizing I didn't start this comment by confirming "Yeah, you've got it mostly right." 😅

And afaik (without testing it), if there's a folder, Pico defaults to the folder. It doesn't care if there's a sub.md, it'll just 404.

So I mean... I think you could do your first "trick", but the tangent not so much. There's no "precedence" on it, it just defaults to the folder.

[mayamcdougall]

On to my original reply:

You know, it's funny, because this division of users you describe kind of parallels the difference between how I view Pico's users and how @PhrozenByte does. 😂

I try to view things from the perspective you describe of the less-technical user. I'm not a PHP developer, so I don't do any work on Pico's Core. I started as just a Pico user writing a theme, but I've become more involved with Pico over time. 😉

I pretty much try to handle things involving Theming, Pico's website, and general user support related issues here on GitHub.

@PhrozenByte is the main developer of PicoCMS. Pico in its modern incarnation is kind of his baby. 😉

He tends to see things through the more technical lens. That being said though, we both agree that the new user experience in Pico leaves a lot to be desired.

With your issue of untitled pages being hidden, I think that it would probably be better to "fix" this in the Theme itself, as it feels more like an unintended behavior. There's already a meta header, hidden, that can be used to hide pages in this manner. The lack of a title issue seems more like it may have just been an oversight, and not thinking about how a new user might stumble with it.

After all, from a birds-eye view, it makes sense that you wouldn't want to print an empty navigation item to the page... until you stop and test what happens when someone doesn't include the meta headers in their markdown. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 😂

As far as someone being the "boss" of PicoCMS, @PhrozenByte more-or-less fills that role (there's no "official" hierarchy, but being the main developer behind it kind of puts you in that role by default 😉).

So, mostly I'm just looking for his thoughts on the matter, then I'll make whatever changes to fix this.

But yes, we'd like to have an improved focus on newer/non-technical users going forward.

As a volunteer project though, it often falls to the wayside next to our actual daily lives. 😔

Feedback like yours works absolutely great to keep us engaged though! Whenever there's more attention here on GitHub, I know that I at least feel more steam toward working on things. (And by contrast, there's been very little activity for the last few weeks and so in turn I've been a bit distant, cough. 😅)

---

As far as being a little more "opinionated" about our themes, we absolutely agree. Unfortunately, most of them were contributed long ago, and if we started pruning the ones with inadequate readme's... well, there'd be less remaining than I'd like to admit.

We've had an ongoing discussion about it on #45.

In some recent changes, I've added support for tagging the themes in our gallery, with the main two ideas floating around being "Ready-to-go" and/or "Code Free". We've gone back and forth a bit about what qualifies as "Ready-to-go", and it sounds like a big component of that will be having an adequate readme.

"Code Free" on the other hand was intended to describe a theme where everything you need is already exposed to the user. For example, having customization options exposed via meta headers or config options, but never expecting that the user will have to modify the Twig template. Essentially the opposite of a "barebones" template. This would be an all-inclusive theme targeted at the type of user you've described, who just wants an easy, streamlined experience. 😉

"Code Free" might not get implemented exactly as I've described, because we're worried there's a bit of overlap with the standard we want for "Ready-to-go". We're still kind of debating on that one, but I think a tag directed at those more streamlined users would be a good idea.

There might also be "Featured" or "Official" tags in the future if and when we (I 😅) create some new-user-friendly themes.

Feel free to participate in the discussion if you'd like. At the moment it's waiting on me to reevaluate our themes and decide on which ones meet the cut for "Ready-to-go", which ones (likely) need some readme improvements before they'd count, and which ones are just not user-friendly enough for it.

---

One final thing. There's been an idea we've had for revamping the Docs (#6) that's been floating around since 2016(!) waiting to be finished. Due to numerous real-life issues, it got shelved back then, but I'd like to pick it up again. (No need to read through that PR, just linking it for reference).

(Edit: This is what I gave you an excerpt of above. 😉)

The idea was to make a User Guide, that would act as a streamlined introduction to Pico, without having to read through the heavier Docs until you were ready for them (also, we had planned to revamp the main Docs to match, with a more bite-sized approach). (Hopefully I'm remembering all this right).

If you feel ambitious (totally 100% optional here), you can give it a read here. This isn't a permalink, as it being available depends on me not switching my GitHub pages branch back. It's not going anywhere right now, but the link might not work in the future is all.

It was written for Pico 1.x, so take most things with a grain of salt. I mean, it's probably still 90% accurate, but there have been a few changes since then, lol.

I'd love your feedback on how this style of documentation works, and whether it's worth reviving it.

Again though, just "if you're interested". I'd love to hear your feedback.

And wow, I just keep going and going, don't I? 😅

I'm normally an essay writer, but I think I'm setting a new record here... 🤦🏻‍♀️

Hope this brings you up to speed on all the things. We'd love to have the engagement if you're enjoying Pico and you want to help it grow. ❤️

[mayamcdougall]

🤯 (Brain exploding emoji)

It comes full circle.

Another excerpt from my ancient rewrite:

The only “required” item on the list above is “Title”, because Pico’s Default Theme uses the page Title in order to link to it.

Yep. How about that. 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

[pconrad-fb]

Ah, yeah, I get it. You could use folder/index to hide big changes coming on folder.md, but not the other way around. Your explanation in the rewrite makes total sense.

I'm enjoying Pico. I'm kind of a lightweight markup nerd, especially Markdown, so I've been exploring related tools for fun. My website is Hugo right now, which... is Hugo... Anyway, I've been playing with Pico and Typemill and Jekyll and MkDocs and AsciidocFX and Remark and Sphinx and PieCrust and all kinds of other stuff. And of course I've got a big affinity for Typora and Pandoc 😄.

Here's a somewhat blunt site that captures a good way to organize docs:
https://documentation.divio.com/introduction/

The Pico docs have a lot of information, but could also use a journey that shows the user how to go from Installed to knowing the basics. Could also use a few how-tos... although since it's built on Twig and kind of a GitHub Wiki structure, I know there's already info online, so there's always that question of how much to re-document.

I like essays and I like writers :) I'm not averse to contributing more to the docs, but I don't want to promise anything. I've got a lot of things in flight, so I would rather promise nothing and do something than promise something and do nothing :)

[pconrad-fb]

I feel it's incumbent on me to repeat: Pico is awesome. I missed a couple things in your response, but here I'll address them:

• Should the default behavior for a page be "Hidden" or not? I guess it depends on whether the Nav expresses hierarchy. I'm not against showing all pages (at least down to a certain level) by default. In that case, I like the idea of a hidden meta, and maybe display the title as ??? if there's no title.
• That said, maybe the docs could have guidance (or there could be a site configuration) about how deep the nav goes. The ever-present problem with a content set! Too flat, your left nav gets very scrolly; too deep, your left nav gets too wide. If you've got 6 levels of folders or 50 top-level pages, it might make sense to break it up!

[mayamcdougall]

I've got a lot of things in flight, so I would rather promise nothing and do something than promise something and do nothing :)

I absolutely hear that. I'm very much in the same boat.

I haven't experimented much with other Markdown CMS's. At best, I've looked at the websites for a few and thought about how at face value they seem to offer a lot more. Kind of reinforcing the need to make Pico more user friendly...

I'll give that link a read later because it looks kind of interesting with its bluntness. 😂

Personally, I think I've got a pretty good grasp on how to write something that's readable... Whenever I reread something of mine (like that old rewrite), I'm shocked by how good it reads.

I'm usually in disbelief that I wrote it. 😳

It just takes a while to get there.

I didn't write most of the current Docs. They're wordy, overcomplex, and way too information-dense. As you saw with my excerpt above about the subfolders, sometimes simplifying the language used can make a big impact on readability and conveying an idea.

But rewriting it all is... an endeavor to be sure, and as you said, it's better to promise nothing and deliver something than have an open PR from 2017 you never came back to. 😉

although since it's built on Twig...there's always that question of how much to re-document.

Yeah, but I find myself always directing people to the Twig Docs as a resource for theming... really need to have that be a crucial introductory step! Do we even have a link to the Twig Docs? *Searches a little*. We have one. In an awkward place. Aaaaaand it's broken. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yep. That's a thing. 😩

Edit: Oh, never mind, there's at least one more. But it's still broken since they share a url.

Should the default behavior for a page be "Hidden" or not?... I like the idea of a hidden meta

Pages are all displayed by default. I mean, that's the intention anyway, missing titles not withstanding. 😅

And the hidden meta header is a thing in the Default Theme... though as I'm searching through the Docs for "hidden" with ctrl+f, it's not actually looking like that's explained anywhere.

That said, maybe the docs could have guidance (or there could be a site configuration) about how deep the nav goes.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking about here (or if you're asking anything by the end of it 😉), but there is an in-depth page somewhere about Pico's pages() function. I know it's linked from somewhere, but it's probably not as apparent as it could be.

So, there is information on customizing the depth of your navigation, but it falls more into the "theming" territory. It's really intended that a theme will dictate how deep the navigation should go and/or if there should be a limit.

It's another one of those things that's clunky to learn, but technically very powerful.

I feel it's incumbent on me to repeat: Pico is awesome.

No worries. Even through your concerns, I got the impression you've been having a good time with it! 😉

[pconrad-fb]

Yes, a very good time.

And for the record, I like the idea of leaving a lot of the functionality to the theme. Otherwise, a theme is just decoration!

Pico offers a lot, to be sure. Being able to drop MD files in a folder and have them just turn into a website is amazing.

Competing tools:

• MDwiki is great, but it works by building a static HTML site. The good: static HTML means you don't have to run PHP. The bad: it's an additional step. Also, MDwiki is focused on documentation specifically. They have themes, too, but I don't know if the themes are all docs themes or if there are cool personal themes too.
• Hugo and Jekyll - where Pico is a Vespa, Hugo and Jekyll are trucks. That's great if you're building a more complicated site, but there's a lot more to learn just to get things going.
• GitHub pages and the like - I think you can just drop MD files in and have them turn into a website, and I think you can use a custom URL. I don't know what the disadvantage is, especially since you can edit the MD directly in the Git host.
• Piecrust - builds a static site of HTML from MD. The out-of-the-box theming is a little basic, and the commands take some getting used to.
• Typemill - a website you edit in the website itself, that stores its pages in MD! You could probably use Typemill as an online editor and serve the pages from Pico, I don't know. But you should check Typemill out.

Out of all the ones I've tried, these are my favorites, the ones that seem to work pretty well.

[mayamcdougall]

And for the record, I like the idea of leaving a lot of the functionality to the theme. Otherwise, a theme is just decoration!

I mean yeah, in reality they're not just Themes even though we call them that, they're entire website templates!
(But that'd be a mouthful, and also scarier sounding).

It's funny how shockingly little Pico really does. It's mostly just the glue that holds the technologies together.

Being able to drop MD files in a folder and have them just turn into a website is amazing.

If you haven't yet, you should try it with a file syncing solution too.

If you think it's magic now, try having your content folder synced automatically to your server via your favorite syncing software. Then you can literally drop files in a folder to make pages appear online. 😉

(There's also an official PicoCMS for Nextcloud app, though I don't know as much about it).

[pconrad-fb]

Wait, can I sync a web hosting space with like DropBox or something? Is that what you mean? Hm... I'll have to go look.

[mayamcdougall]

I thought about saying something about web hosting, but I thought it might come off as too condescending. I actually had it written, but deleted it. 😒

You mentioned FTP, so I thought you might be using a shared web host, but I didn't want to assume that. 😅

I was mainly talking about this from the perspective that you were running your own server or VPS (Virtual Private Server, like a shared web host, except you're in charge of the OS not them).

If you were managing your own server, you'd have quite a few options like Syncthing and Nextcloud, which can basically let you run your own DropBox. And once you're doing that, it only takes a little effort to make your content folder one of the things it keeps in sync. 😉

That being said, you could probably get Nextcloud running on a shared web host as long as you didn't upload big files to it (they don't like that, trust me 😂), since it's just a PHP-based webapp... but that's an awful big project to take on just to replace FTP.

[pconrad-fb]

Yes, I'm on a shared host, but they do offer Nextcloud. So that's cool... of course, if you want a publishing/review process then a Git instance might make more sense (my host also offers Git, which is nice).

So many options...

[mayamcdougall]

If you're into Linux at all, or you find yourself getting into it at some point, you can get your own VPS from most places for $5/month USD, which is on-par or cheaper than most web hosting services.

You've got to do the dirty work to set up your services (like your web server application), and to keep it secure, but it can be really worthwhile if you like to do this kind of stuff. 😉

Oh, if they offer a one-click Nextcloud, that could be neat. It's like a self-hosted DropBox / Contacts / Calendar solution if you didn't know.

I've used Nextcloud in the past, and I had my content folder synced using it. So, whenever I saved a change, the Nextcloud client would automatically sync it over to my server. Paired with Pico, it really was like magic! 😁

These days I use Git, but I liked my Nextcloud setup much better for its almost real-time syncing. I just don't really have a use for it anymore besides that.

Instead I have a Docker Container that pulls website updates from my GitHub account when it starts. A little clunkier, but as you said, you can keep track of things better and you have versioning with Git. If they offer some way to automatically pull files from Git, Private repos on GitHub are free these days (and way more convenient than rolling your own Git setup), so that might be a good solution too.

[mayamcdougall]

Also, it's probably information overload at this point, but I also run multiple sites off of the same Pico install using some clever symlinking. 😂

They each have their own content and assets folders, but they all symlink to and share the rest of the install.

(There's also technically a minor edit to Pico's index.php involved so that it runs from whichever folder it was called from instead of just assuming it should run in its "real" location.)

So, I can't really recommend running Pico that way, but it's a fun fact about how versatile Pico is. =3

[pconrad-fb]

Ha ha nice!

Yeah, I like Linux but I don't really care about a VPS because I don't do anything fancy on my website anyway. I can see maybe installing NextCloud and running a Pico blog off the side of my Hugo site. I'm kind of into static these days, though, so I could see moving over to Jekyll and using their built-in blog thing. Why not Hugo's blog, you ask? Because I couldn't get it working easily enough, so I have a basic site in place for now and I'm not messing with it too much.

I do like the idea of instant publishing. If I were getting a non-technical writer set up with a website, I'd be tempted by either Typemill (which is very sweet) or Pico + Nextcloud + Typora—which is to say a fully WYSIWYG, instant publishing experience.

Or GitLab Pages, which has the disadvantage that Git is hard for some people and the advantage that if you can get up to speed on Git, you get Jekyll for free and a lot of the hard stuff is taken care of. And of course the option to edit right on the host, or work offline and the push when you are ready.

What with so many other options, from Insta to Medium to whatever else, Twitch and so on, do people do websites anymore?

[pconrad-fb]

Freelancer! Found it!

[mayamcdougall]

Freelancer! Found it!

lol. Let me know if you have any issues with it.

Happy New Year!

Oof, yeah, same to you. This last month has been a little unproductive. Got pretty sick after the holidays (it probably wasn't you-know-what, but it still hit us both really hard). Meanwhile I've got asthma, so between being sick and the cold weather, I'm apparently taking my damn time to get back to 100%.

(...So to make up for it apparently, have a long ramble-y rant-filled reply. 😅)

And once in a while, if I wake up my Mac connected to multiple monitors, it will fiendishly hide some of them so that only a thin sliver of one side is showing

IT THAT DOES THOUGH! 😂

Lol, it's usually not really a big deal for me though, since my GNOME 3 days trained me to find whatever window I need by going into the Overview (Mission Control on the Mac). I spot the window I need flying in from far away and go "Oh, that's where you ended up!".

A bigger annoyance for me is that sometimes my second monitor doesn't like to work. No idea if it's a hardware issue or a macOS one. They both connect via Thunderbolt 2 - DVI adapters. If I switch them around, it's always the same port that has issues, not the monitor itself.

But, in true Apple fashion, I have absolutely no solution for this. Best I've come up with is to put it back to sleep and come back later to try again (and yes, it will just magically start working again). Contrary to what you'd think, a reboot does not help, as most of the time it also refuses to work immediately after a reboot. 😖

So yeah, I get the frustrations. And I wouldn't trust iTunes with my music either. 😂

If you want something else to fuel the anti-Apple fire though, try this on: I'm an Apple Music subscriber. Overall, it's okay, but at one point I found myself listening to Pandora more. I'd used Pandora for years, so I had some old stations to fall back on and they were really hitting the spot. So, I thought I'd drop my Apple Music subscription for a few months and sub to Pandora instead.

A couple days before the subscription runs out, I get an email warning me that my Music Library and other data would be deleted if I didn't resubscribe. I don't mean from my phone either (like I'd obviously lose access to it), I mean from my account. This email was fairly casual, not a dramatic warning or anything. You could easily miss it by skimming over the main text. I'd already made my decision, and I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was just a poor choice of words in their email.

Nope. When I eventually resubscribed, I indeed found that my Library was empty and any music I had discovered and collected, etc, was just gone without a trace. 🤦🏻‍♀️

And to add insult to injury, my radio stations on Apple Music still remembered my previous listening habits. Apple deleted my data, but not the data they had "on me". Because I'm sure that saved them a couple kilobytes of disk space. 😑

Mac is beautiful but irritating sometimes. Windows is clunky and full of bloatware sometimes. Linux doesn't always have exactly the tool ya want, but when it does, it will do exactly what it says it will do.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. 😉

GIMP is the same on all of 'em

I used to love GIMP, but the project really stagnated over time. It's great for simple things though. The day I lost my faith in it though was the day I launched a long since forgotten about copy of Photoshop 7 I had in an old wine bottle taking up disk space. I had used GIMP for years, and suddenly this decade old, *cough* unlicensed *cough* version of Photoshop was running circles around it in terms of performance. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I think that was probably the day I traded my Open Source Philosophy hat for an Open Source Pragmatism hat.

When I switched to Mac, I used current Photoshop for quite a while. I tend to only need an image editor in bursts though, with it going almost unused some months, and almost un-closed during others. These days I use Pixelmator Pro, and it was worth every penny. It's $40 regular price, often goes on sale for $20 (which was what I paid).

It's not a complete Photoshop replacement (since Photoshop is kind of a bloated mess these days), but it's SO much better than giving Adobe that $10 a month subscription fee. I couldn't recommend it more, and wish it was cross-platform. It's built on a lot of Cocoa libraries though, so that'll never happen. That does mean it's a beautiful, first-class Mac app though. 😉

I just can't get used to how Mac thinks about resizing windows...

As far as window resizing goes, on Ubuntu, you should be able to find some Gnome Extensions that give you the extra snapping options. On Mac, there's a free app called "Rectangle" that'll offer the same kind of corner snapping.

Still, I think I said before (but I can't find it now) that Apple should really take some cues from GNOME and spend a little time modernizing their window manager. Everything feels like a tacked-on afterthought (probably because, it all was, as they kept copying Linux features like workspaces). Some things just behave quirky and unexpectedly. Fullscreen mode is decent when away from my desk in "laptop mode" (where I can swipe side-to-side between workspaces using the trackpad), but leaves a lot to be desired when at a desk. Some kind of hybrid view where I could arrange a workspace of windows without being fullscreen could be really powerful... but instead it just feels claustrophobic and restricting.

Heck, I think Windows 11 added a similar side-by-side snapping mode without forcing the user into fullscreen, and although it's a blatant copy of macOS/iPadOS, it kind of looks like they did it better (I haven't used it much yet personally though).

Also, Apple finally added a way to make the Menu Bar not hidden in fullscreen mode... But they designed it for the new, notched MacBooks, which have the extra screen height for it. So, it's there in fullscreen apps, great! ... but it's also there in other fullscreen content, like when watching videos or (presumably) playing games. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Did not one person at Apple test that experience on a 16:9 display? Or even on a new Mac, are they just not bothered by a persistent Menu Bar at the top of a full screen video? 😖

Anyway... Ima shut up now... 😒

Starting to think I need a tech-rant blog instead of a game dev one... 😅

[pconrad-fb]

Freelancer! Found it!

lol. Let me know if you have any issues with it.

Aye aye! But it'll be a while. I'm short on time these days. But my guess is it'll be easy and fine. Now I just have to come up with the images!

Sorry you've been sick, glad you're feeling better. It sounds like you've got someone to help, or at least to be sick with you, which is a plus.

I dunno if I ever told you my Mac music library story, but I will never, ever, ever trust Apple with my music ever again.

I use image editing software All. The. Time. but it's just for simple work on comics, so I don't need fancy features. GIMP is fine, Photoshop is lovely, could probably get by with Krita.

Apple used to have a slogan "Think different," and I can't help wondering if that was a company directive. Like "Hmm, Bill Gates lets people snap windows to a half screen, let's not let people do that easily! Hmm, Bill Gates lets people have their music and listen to it unmolested, let's build a walled garden with unconstrained nukes! Hmm, most computers when you wake them up you can find that one window that you do 80% of your work in, let's think different and hide it!"

My game dev thoughts: I still want to design my chat bot game. It's a game where you talk to someone and learn facts sequentially to go through a story. First idea was a ghost of a young woman, and you help her remember how she died... but I think there could be more interesting stories than that. I've built the framework, and it's easy to construct the chat if I have the map, but I haven't had time to work on a theme, a plot, a map, etc. But that's something I'm keen on doing someday. I should open-source my framework. It's very simple JavaScript and JSON. But if I open-source it I'll need to take a little time to write docs, so... on the stack it goes!

The stack is getting tall. I've been ignoring so many important tasks in favor of just... art things. So, that's fine I suppose! In fact, my partner and I have been collaborating on art in an interesting way. We each take a turn on the same piece, without much of an idea where it's going, and then we have to make something out of whatever the other person has done. It's very challenging, and it's pushing me out of my rut. Most of the art I've done on my own has used basically a set of 3 or 4 materials, and with this project I've deviated into acrylic paint, markers, cutting my own rubber stamp, and a bunch of other media.

I'm glad that (it sounds like) you're feeling better!

Update: This article about macOS felt super validating!

[mayamcdougall]

lol at the article. I could probably make a few counterpoints to it, but 99% of it feels valid. Now that Apple's done their chip transition, I really hope they refocus on macOS. Calling Big Sur "macOS 11" for just a visual refresh (a rather polarizing one at that), was just kind of a slap in the face. I've only had a MacBook since 2017 or so, but I don't think they've added a single new feature that wasn't just keeping parallel and compatible with iOS. "We added this to the iPhone, so let's add it to the Mac." Okay, that's great and all... but if the Mac is its own platform, can it get it's own attention?

If I could run GNOME as my DE on top of macOS, but keep compatibility with everything else, I would. 😉

---

I wonder if you could port your chatbot to Godot and build a game interface around it. 🤔
(Well, even if you didn't, this idea would still work for a web app)

I'm thinking something akin to "Uplink*", where your game interface is just a mock desktop OS or App. Or if you went with a mobile game, it could be a mock messaging app. Make it feel a little meta, and make the player feel like it could actually be happening. Maybe it's got several "Apps" they can switch between, taking notes about what they've learned and such (or, have key pieces of information they've learned auto-populate in a list, to streamline it). Just some thoughts.

* Uplink is super old, and I've never even played that much of it, but for whatever reason it was the first thing to come to mind for a "mock OS" type of game. ...hmm... that formatting... where have I seen that before? ...mockOS... 🤔😂

The stack is getting tall. I've been ignoring so many important tasks in favor of just... art things

Yeah... let me know when you find a solution to that ever-growing stack. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I try to do better than I used to with finishing things I set out to do... but the list just never seems to shrink.

The art challenge sounds cute. I'm afraid I'm not as artistic as I'd like to be. I do plenty of digital stuff that could be considered art, but traditional mediums like drawing, painting, etc, have never been anything I'm good at. 😕

I've always wanted to do some collaboration projects with my girlfriend, but our hobbies don't overlap much (our interests do, just not the things we each like to create).

Anyway, got to run for now. I've been meaning to write a more personal message, for the last few comments, buuuuut I keep getting distracted by the OS-bashing fun. 😂

I also may have stumbled across your YouTube video about your book a while back, and I had some ideas to share on it. =3

("Constructive Criticism" is such a horrible phrase, so I'll go with "Creative Ideas". It's positive stuff, not negative. 😉)

[pconrad-fb]

You wrote so much there, and here I am about to write something super short and go to bed. Early meeting tomorrow. I will say, though, that so far Gnome on my Framework is mostly excellent, with the occasional oddity (because Linux). Today for a little while the touchpad didn't do anything. Once in a while Firefox decides it doesn't want to copy/paste anymore. But mostly excellent. And (sigh) my work Mac is fine too. And strangely I haven't used Windows in weeks and weeks, which was part of what I was hoping to accomplish with my setup on the Framework. Nope, not Wine either!

I'm not porting anything to anything right now. It's all I can do to keep up with work work, side work, and all the other things I've set for myself to do. Trying to slow down the side work so I can work on my comics! But I keep doing little watercolor paintings of this one apple I have.

Ah well, shuteye time. More tomorrow.

[pconrad-fb]

I ate the apple.

[pconrad-fb]

So are you going to do a tech blog?

[mayamcdougall]

Sorry for the radio silence. I've just been... busy.

That's what I'm calling it anyway. I feel like there's been just as much avoiding work as actually doing it.

Add in seasonal depression and my productivity's been at a definite low. 😓

I am hoping to do that tech blog idea, I just don't know when it'll be. I've just been waiting for my plate to clear a little. What I really need though is a metaphorical cat to come along and just shove everything off it. 😂

---

I said I wanted to get a little more "personal", so I guess now works. Overall, I find myself very creatively stifled. I'm good, but not great, at a wide range of tech related things. I can do a little bit of everything, but (possibly due to adhd) no one thing holds my interest enough to do just that at a professional level.

In real life, I'm a bit of a hermit. I'm an unemployed "housewife". I take care of the house and try to do tech/creative things in my spare time. I don't really meet people. I don't really have any "friends". I'm not including old coworkers or acquaintances on Facebook, who I don't actually talk to in any meaningful capacity. I mean, when it comes to real life people, I have my girlfriend and that's about it.

I don't really have any "people" or "networking". I just kind of exist in a void most of the time. So, if I do something creative or something technically proficient, I don't really have an audience for it. There's no feedback loop there.

For the most part, all I can do is draw unhealthy comparisons to the accomplishments of others on the internet. And there's always someone on the internet who does a thing better than you. So I find it really difficult to get motivated on new projects.

I like helping people. One reason I provide Pico tech support here is because it's one of the few things I do have. I'm not the most knowledgeable. I find it kind of laughable that I'm often the main person answering questions on here and I don't know a scrap of PHP. Talk about imposter syndrome. 😅

But what keeps me doing it is that, despite not being the best, and despite the imposter syndrome... I'm still the one who can help them. It's something I can do. It's a difference that I can make. And often, I'm the only one who can. If someone's going to provide help... it's me. And that feeling of being the person who can make a difference keeps me motivated.

---

I'd love to help more people... I just don't have any people. 🤷🏻‍♀️

And most of the time, people don't want someone mediocre to solve their problems, they want the best of the best (even if, let's be real, they don't want to pay for the best of the best, they still somehow expect the result).

You could call that a confidence issue, but while that's certainly there, it's not the real problem. I don't want to have to "sell" myself to people (in the sense of "my brand", not as in "selling out"). I don't want to pretend I punch above my weight. I spent all my younger years trying to prove myself to people who just didn't care, and I'm done with that.

When people find out you can do tech stuff, they respond in one of two ways. Either with total indifference or with unrealistic expectations. I tried to offer IT support to people for a long time (simple consumer things like virus removal and hardware repair, unfulfilling stuff I could do in my sleep). It was always a thankless job though, and although a lot of people were great... a few bad apples, expecting miracles for free, turned me off to the whole thing.

I wasn't interested in the work, I didn't like charging people enough to be worth my time, and I just burnt out on ever wanting to deal with tech problems again. On top of that, coming out *cough* kind of put a final nail in that coffin. If I had a tough time proving myself before... yeah, I've certainly got no interest in playing that game now.

Let alone the fact that I live in rural Maine and the people around here aren't what I'd call very "accepting".

Feels like it's the elephant in the room at this point, but there is a flag in the background of my profile pic. Up until now, I've just been going under the assumption that if you had a problem with it, you'd have noticed it by now, and this conversation thread would have ended real quick. 😓

So that's been a fun thing that's been in the back of my mind too.

---

Anyway, this is a ramble-y mess. I think I had a focus at the start, but that went out the window. I didn't even get to touch on the notion of "just wanting to be valued for what I can do, what I know, instead of how many boxes I can lift, etc".

I don't have a crazy high goal, but it seems unobtainable just the same. I just want to be self-sufficient, and be able to support myself while doing things I love. At the moment, that feels like I need to make more content and build an audience for myself (unrelated, but maybe a tech blog could help there 🤷🏻‍♀️).

But I also often find myself stuck in a creativity vs value loop where the things I want to pursue don't have a clear path toward the goal of self-sustainability. I fight myself over whether I should work on (usually bigger) projects that feel interesting and fulfilling, or try to come up with some simpler content I could monetize. Of which I only have a single, unimpressive app at the moment, which probably isn't even going to make enough to cover the developer license needed to publish it.

I mostly just try not to think about it all... it's just a nagging thought that persists though.

---

Sorry for the essay. That's a general dump of where I'm at, lol. Maybe I'll use part of it as an opening for that blog when I get to it.

Not to make everything about me though, I did have some feedback for you on your Git video and such. That's gonna have to be in a future comment though. 😳

[pconrad-fb]

No worries about being busy! I've been wrapped up in my own head a bit, too. I've also been a bit of a hermit. I used to be a giant extrovert, and now I'm more of an ambivert or even an introvert. My creative juices ebb and flow. I've been lucky enough to be on a flow for a bit, but I do get into my slumps.

I'm glad you have Pico! I'm ...not worried that you don't know PHP, which half the internet says isn't worth learning. You clearly do have technical chops, and there's nothing wrong with being a little bit good at a lot of things. Comparing yourself to others is always treacherous. There's always someone out there amazing at something you're good at. So don't take those comparisons too seriously, is what I try to do. I'm trying to tackle watercolor painting, and in the midst of every article of helpful advice is a smattering of AMAZING paintings that make it look simple. But I am where I am, and I'm having fun, and that's not bad.

But, yeah, Pico, you certainly helped me, and made it fun at the same time, and taught me a little more CSS than I knew before—while fixing my CMS problems seemingly effortlessly. So, thank you for that, for knowing more than me and for sharing.

So, I dunno, I think there is a bridge between "interesting stuff you don't feel you're the best at" and "boring stuff you can do in your sleep" and I feel like you'll find it :)

But... rural Maine, that I didn't know. I've known people from Maine who are super progressive, and others who aren't. But I've lived in small towns myself in the past, and sometimes these towns are, yeah, not very accepting.

Oh, yeah, elephant in the room: elephant schmelephant. I figured you'd check in whether I'd noticed the flag at some point. :) I'm sorry we still live in a world where you have to wonder about things like that.

Anyhow, I don't know what to tell you, it just sounds like you haven't found the thing that sets your world on fire* for the moment. And it doesn't have to be just one thing. I'm glad there's an internet, where you can at least spend some time "away" from rural Maine. Nothing against rural anywhere, and I have a soft spot for parts of Maine, but I love the hustle and bustle and ideas and new things you get in areas with a lot of people. New York. San Francisco. Tokyo. The Internet.**

So I dunno, I hope you don't feel stuck for too long.

---

*I'm talking about tech/art/content projects, not casting aspersions on whether your relationship is good :)
**I'm kind of not addressing how terrible a lot of the Internet is.

[mayamcdougall]

Oof. I just lost a mostly finished comment due to my browser accidentally navigating away. 😩

Let's see, the highlights were:

• I try not to compare myself to the internet too, it's just hard not to get discouraged.
• I live in my "hometown" atm, but I thankfully grew up in Vermont instead.
• Currently staying here because rent is cheap and we're waiting for the housing market to come back down (*eye twitch*)
• I'm tired and one of the times I was scrolling back over your comment I accidentally misread "San Francisco" and "Tokyo" as "San Fransokyo", the fictional combination of the two from Disney's Big Hero 6. (Yes, that was a "highlight").
• I'm very curious of both city life and of California (never been). I feel like it'd be good to be somewhere with people (both more people and people that I could relate to). I'd probably get overwhelmed by it though. Never been able to approach it due to money reasons. Only been into actual big cities a few times ever in my life.
• Not from my original comment, but I do feel like if I had more people in my life, I'd have more creative opportunity and inspiration.
• Lots of "red hats" in the area around me. Not going to get "political" in a discussion on a public repo that I represent, but I would like it if my existence wasn't a "political issue". 😑
• I've fortunately never run into any issues here on GitHub, so I keep my profile pic as it is to signal those who might need to see a welcoming sign. I have been meaning to draw a new one though, since it's a few years old... but I'm not much of an artist. I drew this one, I'm just not convinced I can do it better yet, lol.

Okay, these bullet points are getting annoying now and less helpful the further I go. I covered what I wanted to with them anyway.

I'm sorry we still live in a world where you have to wonder about things like that. / I'm kind of not addressing how terrible a lot of the Internet is.

Yeah, as if I didn't have enough anxiety before. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I can say that I've been fortunate though, probably due to my "hermit lifestyle". I've never really had to deal with anything too traumatic... yet. But the internet is full of examples of the horrible things people will say and do.

It's always in the back of my mind when I meet someone new. Especially online, where I know I could just be stealth about it if I changed my profile pic. That being said, I'd rather not get to know someone and only find out later on that they have a problem with me. I'd like to think that keeping this avatar acts as a decent filter, separating out people who are supportive, or just oblivious, from those that would have a problem. It'll probably bite me at some point, but so far so good. I've been rather impressed with the polite professionalism that most people bring to GitHub. 😉

it just sounds like you haven't found the thing that sets your world on fire

I still say I think it's my eventual goal of making video games. It involves wearing all the hats! Designer, Programmer, Writer, Artist, Musician (hopefully, someday anyway). I just need like five of me to fill said hats. And some of them are still too big. 😅

Ugh, I really liked that metaphor, but now I think it makes me sound too much like a kid. I don't think I've said, but I'm somehow already in my 30's. I've got this constant feeling that I need to get moving with my life already, but never seem to know the way forward. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'll get there though. One way or another. 😤

I often feel... just kind of lost. I've got this unrealized potential that's kind of pent up and underutilized. I wish I had the right connections with people, you know?

People who could guide me, people I could help, people I could collaborate with, etc. 💁🏻‍♀️

I guess my last comment sounded a bit "doom and gloom", so hopefully this one's a little better at least.

I'm going to bed now, because my brain just added: "It had a greater-than-average ratio of hats." 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Also, I copied and pasted this comment into a text editor after every other line, just in case.

[pconrad-fb]

Well...

I'm tired and one of the times I was scrolling back over your comment I accidentally misread "San Francisco" and "Tokyo" as "San Fransokyo", the fictional combination of the two from Disney's Big Hero 6. (Yes, that was a "highlight").

I'll allow it.

I'm very curious of both city life and of California (never been). I feel like it'd be good to be somewhere with people (both more people and people that I could relate to). I'd probably get overwhelmed by it though. Never been able to approach it due to money reasons. Only been into actual big cities a few times ever in my life.

I can see myself living in a small town, someday, too. There are great things about both. I hope you get to try living in a big city, or even a medium-sized city, soon. Though you're right, it's hard to find the magic combination of big enough, progressive enough, and affordable enough.

Lots of "red hats" in the area around me. Not going to get "political" in a discussion on a public repo that I represent, but I would like it if my existence wasn't a "political issue". expressionless

Was gonna make a Linux joke here, but I couldn't find a way to make it funny. So yeah.

I often feel... just kind of lost. I've got this unrealized potential that's kind of pent up and underutilized. I wish I had the right connections with people, you know?

I think a lot of people are feeling this way right now, and not just because of the pandemic. We're going through a big change, and in the meantime it's left people adrift. The old way that "just worked"—college then office job, or trade school then trade—only worked for some of the people anyway. And now there are more ways that work, but they are untested. I have a friend who started college at age 24 and ended up becoming a doctor. I know a bunch of people who never went to college; one of them is a tech writer like me. I also know people who, whether they went to college or not, are flailing in poverty. It doesn't sound like you're flailing (and you're lucky enough not to be a doctor), so that's something.

I don't want to haul out that old "Do what you love" thing (is it "and you'll never work a day in your life" or "and you'll suck all the joy out of that too"?) but if you're currently not traditionally employed, many hats is probably a good way to go. Not red ones, of course.

[pconrad-fb]

I hate Hugo.

[mayamcdougall]

😂

[mayamcdougall]

You know, if only there were another CMS you had a little experience in already. Perhaps one that you'd already spent time theming to match your existing website. 🤔

Oh well. Can't think of one. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[pconrad-fb]

Yes, TRUE.

But.

I really want to create some static webpages for the bulk of this. Why? I don't know. I just do. I want pages that aren't served by a script.

What I have at the moment is some pages that were generated by Hugo, which I can update manually, but the version of Hugo that I used when I created the site apparently is disliked by the version I have on this computer, or something. I am not going to spend time figuring it out; all I know is it borked. I cloned my repo, made a tiny change to a page, hit the old hugo server -D to preview, and it didn't like it. And of course I find that Hugo is putting all my static images, not in the static directory, for some reason, but at the root of public_html. Which, fine, whatever, but wow, annoying.

Gonna try Jekyll.

That said, I actually also want to put up an explicitly Pico site, as part of a suite of sites that show how different tools work. I want to show how you can do something in MkDocs + Material, Jekyll, Hugo, Pico, and a handful of other things that I tried with a degree of success.

[mayamcdougall]

Ugh, Jekyll. 👎🏻

Liquid is a pale imitation of Twig. Mind you, I don't actually know which came first, just that Liquid isn't nearly as useful.

The Pico website runs on GitHub Pages, so it uses Jekyll. PhrozenByte and I both hate it (the backend part anyway). When you're used to Twig, you see so many rough edges. Things that you could just do in Twig that you have to create silly workarounds for in Liquid, despite the very similar syntax.

I think I've said, but the Pico site currently uses a proprietary HTML theme that was purchased by one of the former Pico contributors. We've had it on life support for so long now, but when we (probably I) finally move the site to Pico, we'll have to write a new, MIT licensed theme to go with it.

As far as how we'll use Pico with GitHub Pages, PhrozenByte's favorite trick is to wget -r a Pico site to download a static version of it. 😂

Apparently he plans to use GitHub Actions to automate a quick wget off of PHP's internal development server, then commit it to the GH Pages repo branch or something crazy like that. 😱

Someday, maybe he'll implement his goal of adding static site generation to Pico... but in the meantime he always suggests that solution.

Probably not a terribly helpful solution unless you set up a way to automate it, but still technically works.

Once upon a time (a long time ago), I also set up Nginx to cache my Pico pages automatically, and that was neat. I forgot all about that until I was looking up the wget -r thing a minute ago and found an old comment of mine. 😅

You ever feel like you've forgotten at least half the cool stuff you ever did in your life? 🤔

[pconrad-fb]

Oh, hmm. Well the automated way would be something like:

• Run Apache on my local machine
• Edit markdown files until I like my site, using Pico to preview
• Make a script called "build" or something like that, which wgets into a public directory
• FTP!

Maybe. Hm. Interesting idea. I didn't think about that. I'll have to experiment.

And, yes, I do sometimes feel that. I came up with a great idea for a comic (the Cigarette Comic) and figured out how to make it, only to discover I'd already done the "figuring out" part years before and forgotten!

[mayamcdougall]

If you're just running it temporarily, PHP has an internal web server too, that'll just serve the current directory at localhost:port. Wouldn't be that different from running jekyll serve locally, except you wouldn't be waiting on rebuilds every time you save a file.

One potential hiccup I could see though is Pico will probably hardcode all the links to http://localhost:port as your base_url. Of course, I guess you could always find-and-replace that back out as part of your "build" script. Just something I thought of.

Then again, I'm also used to running Pico with a hardcoded base_url (since mine's usually behind a ReverseProxy), so maybe it'll just keep everything relative without that.

I'm tired and about to head to bed, so, I might just be making up concerns. 🤔 🤷🏻‍♀️

😴

[pconrad-fb]

Well, but, isn't there a configuration file I could put base_url in, and I could have a different version online?

[mayamcdougall]

Yes and no... I think. 😒

Yes, there is a base_url variable you can configure, and I was going to suggest you could just change it before "building"...

But then I thought: That'll break the links locally, which means wget -r ...will fail to r. (😂)

So idk. It'd need some testing for sure. 😅

[pconrad-fb]

Maybe there's a sed thing that would work.

[mayamcdougall]

Probably. lol.

I've never really played with sed myself, but people do some crazy stuff with it.

But again, I want to emphasize that I could just be imagining that you'd even have an issue. You'll have to try it and see.

[pconrad-fb]

On another topic, I'm interested to know what feedback you have on my Git dealio. Any showstoppers?

[mayamcdougall]

Yeah, I've been meaning to get back to that topic at some point. Good thing I took notes about what I was thinking at the time. 😜

So, first off, the script of your video is pretty good. I'm assuming it's coming from the book itself. The feedback I have is all on presentation / production stuff. The video is good as it is, and my thoughts here are only meant to be constructive feedback, not criticism. Also, these ideas could just as easily apply to your future projects, not just the video you already did.

In its current form, the presentation feels very college-lecture-y. That's perfectly fine, but it does feel a little old fashioned. Definitely doesn't have a YouTube feel to it, if that's what you were hoping for. The main culprit here is the, somewhat awkward, "staring into the camera" approach. It feels a bit too much like you're talking directly at the viewer rather than to an "audience".

Personally, I think it'd be cool to see you "animate" your comic self for it instead of using all live action video. Not actually animate, but rather, just make a couple of still poses to flip between, with different body language and gestures. Do a cardboard cutout-style thing with some easily reusable poses rather than drawing anything specific to the situation. Change the pose or move your avatar around whenever you'd want to direct the viewer's attention to a new graphic or context. Again, nothing major as far as "animation" goes, just a few different frames per minute so that they're not staring at a static screen for too long.

I think that taking that approach could have other benefits too.

I'm assuming you did this video alongside a PowerPoint Presentation (or open-source alternative). (If not... well, it comes off like you did, so that's not good... 👀). That's part of what gave it the lecture feel. If you used your "cutout" self for the bulk of it instead of live video, it'd give you more freedom to control the flow of the video and not have to rely on just having static slides you advance while talking. Of course, there's more editing involved there too. It was just the idea that you could do more with it, if you wanted.

Next, since you're not live in front of the camera, you wouldn't have to do it all in one take (or, multiple large takes). That means that you can fine tune the delivery of your script, and reread individual lines that come off awkward. You could redo each line individually to aim for the most charismatic read.

Public speaking is hard, and I got the impression that it was probably difficult to get the words out while looking at the camera and doing the presentation. Breaking it down offers you extra flexibility there. Knowing you don't have to get it all perfectly in one go might take some of the pressure off.

Also, if you're not on screen, you could use a better mic, as your lapel mic seems a bit tinny. Or alternatively have a nice big mic just outside of the frame, I've done that, lol.

Sorry if too much of that was "don't be on screen" in a row. 😓

I guess that thought process just snowballed a little as I was writing the notes.

I'm rewatching a little now though, and it is definitely the most distracting thing about the video (sorry!). Not saying that I could do any better, I couldn't. Just trying to pick through it a bit.

It's the combination of the forced "public speaking voice", and probably being too close to the camera. It's very clear that you're reading from your notes, which I think is contributing to the feeling that you're not talking to the audience. I think some people get around this by being further away, with a makeshift teleprompter. When you're further away, your eye-scanning movements are less noticeable to the camera (since you don't have to look quite as far side-to-side).

So, rather than saying "Get gud at public speaking", I thought "cheat by reading lines off camera" sounded like a more useful approach. Plus, it would go better with your graphics heavy slides than standing in front of them with a green screen.

Moving on though. There's a noticeable background "hiss" in your audio, probably from your mic. It's likely not as noticeable on speakers, but I listen to everything with headphones, which makes audio issues much more apparent.

I'm not an audio engineer, so although I know there's things you could do to fix this, I've got no idea what that would look like. 😅

You could always add some low-volume background music to mask it. YouTube itself has a large library of "royalty-free" music (for use on the platform anyway) that you could search through. Just something that fits the mood without being too distracting.

Finally, I was going to suggest adding some chapter markers, but you already have them. I know I remember seeing them before too. It's near the end of my notes, so I'm going to assume that YouTube just decided not to show them when I came back to finish the video after a break. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway, I've said a lot here, but somehow I don't feel like it was really as helpful as my notes sounded. 🤔😒

I don't know much about video editing. I tried a while back and I know I was doing it wrong (I was using a video editor, Lightworks, to try to do compositing effects, since I didn't want to pay Adobe for Creative Suite). It didn't go so well, and was a royal pain, lol.

I made the mistake of not learning video editing back when I graduated from high school, because this damn YouTube thing was just going to be a fad... ... ... 👀

Obviously I was 100% correct about that. Good thing I didn't waste my time on it. 😤

Anyway, since I feel guilty for trying to offer any sort of criticism at all, I just want to reiterate that it is a good video! You did well with it. It's pretty clear you're new to it, but that doesn't make it inherently bad. The production values of "amateur" content on YouTube just has us all trained to expect professional level quality all the time.

And, I mean, I've technically still got some cringy Twitch streams archived to YouTube from a few years ago, so I really shouldn't be talking. 😉

[pconrad-fb]

Whew.

What I was worried you were going to say is "You know that's not how Git works, right?"

So, this video was done originally as a presentation for a conference. We were all going to go, then: pandemic, so we all did it virtually instead. This is the second time around, so this is actually better than the one I did the previous year.

Yeah, the reading, the scanning, all that stuff. I did it all in one take, re-doing lines here and there and editing them out. I know it's a little sloppy. I didn't really care at the time.

You say "forced public speaking voice," I say that might be how I really talk!

I watch a lot of videos, from math to motorcycling to watercolor, and I know what you mean though. It's very stiff and so forth. And, yes, it's a PowerPoint. I like PowerPoint because it gives me a lot of easy ways to do things, and also an easy way to get a review (legal and otherwise) from work.

So what you're seeing is a lot of corners being cut.

Ironically, in actual public speaking—that is, in front of a real room—I'm not too bad. I ask questions, I build a rapport, etc.

So, you might thing you've given a lot of rather harsh feedback, but, no, I knew all this. I was just worried about the technical side :D

As for the hiss, I do hear a little "something isn't properly grounded" buzz in there, yeah. I don't know if it's the mic or what. I'll have to look into that.

[pconrad-fb]

And, actually, the book itself came later. It went: Medium articles, presentation, video, book.

The next one, if I get around to it, is about the big 3 lightweight markup languages: AsciiDoc, Markdown, reStructuredText. What you can do with them, strengths and weaknesses, and so forth.

[mayamcdougall]

What I was worried you were going to say is "You know that's not how Git works, right?"

Lol, sorry about that. Nope, it was all presentation stuff. I'm no expert, but afaik, everything you said was accurate and informative.

So, this video was done originally as a presentation for a conference. / And, actually, the book itself came later.

Okay, it makes more sense in that context. Since you uploaded it recently, I assumed it was to promote the book or something. Yeah it comes off fine as a presentation. I wasn't sure if it was all one take or if you used cuts in-between the segments. As I said, unfortunately the YouTube quality bar tends to be a lot higher these days. But you knew that anyway.

Idk, the context makes a difference, you know? Like, if this was your honest attempt at "I'm going to make a YouTube channel", I think a lot of people would roll their eyes and move on before giving it a chance. Which would be too bad, because your script and presentation itself is really good.

You say "forced public speaking voice," I say that might be how I really talk!

It's still reading a script though. I'm not great at speaking, in public, on camera, or sometimes even in general... but I'm even worse at trying to read aloud. 😂

I like PowerPoint because it gives me a lot of easy ways to do things

Nothing against it in the software sense. Just that it sounded like you were "giving a powerpoint presentation", and you were. It would have been awkward if that wasn't what you were trying for. Actually, I think if you did ever try that "cutout animation" I suggested, for something like this you could probably do it right in powerpoint and save on editing trouble. 😂

Just do a live action intro, then skip the green screen during the slides and use the cutout instead.

Ironically, in actual public speaking—that is, in front of a real room—I'm not too bad.

I'd believe it. I've seen confident public speakers, and it seems like if you're good at it, you get a lot from the audience. Energy, feedback, etc. Talking to a camera lens is just kind of awkward.

When I tried doing Twitch streaming (a few years ago now), I found that what I had to do was always pretend there was an audience even when no one was there. Talk out into the aether, and have a conversation with yourself even when there's no one else around. As an aside, I actually quite liked streaming, but it took up far too much time. I keep saying that maybe I'll try it again someday when I have more time and/or I'm more confident in myself.

So what you're seeing is a lot of corners being cut. / So, you might thing you've given a lot of rather harsh feedback, but, no, I knew all this. I was just worried about the technical side :D

Alright, well, it still feels like punching down. Picking on the low-hanging-fruit issues, etc. If it helps frame it at all, I was considering my feedback with the context of "This is a promo video to gain interest in your book, now what would help with that?"

As for the hiss, I do hear a little "something isn't properly grounded" buzz in there, yeah. I don't know if it's the mic or what. I'll have to look into that.

Not sure. Ik I've heard from podcasters (I listen to a lot of Jupiter Broadcasting stuff) about issues with line noise and it being caused by anything from budget equipment to electrical interference. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I listened to a few of my old videos somewhere in all this and I couldn't hear any in my recordings. I use a USB microphone because I've heard that's pretty much the only way to go. Something about how motherboard manufacturers don't put much effort into the internal sound cards, which can cause the analog line-in/mic to pick up a lot of electrical noise from other components. Since a USB mic is a digital input, and any analog bits (the mic itself) are located far away from sources of outside interference. Or something to that effect. No idea how your lapel mic works, I've never used one (😂). Just sharing what I've heard. Even my mic isn't anything special, it's a no-brand off Amazon.

I don't think it'll help with line noise, but you could also set up a "noise gate" in your recording software. (If you ever need to, I mean. I didn't hear any extra background sounds in your video). It prevents picking up sounds below a certain threshold. IIRC though, even though it's good at filtering out unwanted background sounds, I think it was more annoying with line noise because you still have the "hum", but only when speaking, then dead silence in-between.

I could be remembering wrong though. 🤔

I had actually intended to lean more into the background music suggestion here. Then I checked a few other channels for reference and found that plenty of them had clean audio without using background music and decided that maybe it wouldn't fit the "presentation" style video anyway.

Whatever, take it all with a grain heap of salt. It was all just some obvious observations that it sounds like you were well aware of anyway. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Though I am serious about the cutout idea. 😉

I don't have a good example to point at though.

The first thing I thought of was something like Game Theory / Film Theory... but that's A) a photograph cut out and B) much more animated than I had in mind.

After some brainstorming, I thought of an older video, Egoraptor's Sequelitis Mega Man video. It's still a little more animation than I had in mind, but it definitely takes time to pause on long frames instead of being constantly animated. And then I realized that video is over ten years old. And that hurt... a lot. It still holds up pretty well though, and the video itself is a good video essay about game tutorials... very early 2010's though and very nsfw. 😂

So, Idk. Just rambling now I guess. 😅

[mayamcdougall]

I've had this start of a comment floating around in an untitled text document for the last few days. Idk, the subject changed at one point and it wasn't a relevant beginning anymore.

---

Was gonna make a Linux joke here, but I couldn't find a way to make it funny. So yeah.

Nope. I thought about it too, but it's just not there. 👎🏻

Yeah, I feel like I missed out on a lot by not being able to do college. Not in education mind you, but in the networking and building connections (okay, maybe a little in "critical thinking" kind of skills, but I'll happily take the trade off of not having student debt). I could really use a healthy environment of peers to drive me more.

---

It hasn't really fit into any of the replies since then. So it's just going to be here on its own now. 🤷🏻‍♀️😅

Just so I can close that window.

[pconrad-fb]

Hm, yeah, college. I think there's something there about learning to live with other people. I learned some in classes, some by living with people, and some by working "menial" jobs. But there are a lot of people not going to college these days, and it seems hard to justify a hundred thousand dollar price tag. I mean, there are city and state schools that are less expensive, but none of it is cheap.

Video stuff: yeah, I know what you mean. I probably won't do it very often, and my next video will be a slight, incremental improvement over my previous one, nothing more. It's not my main focus, so I don't mind if it's so-so. :D