Finished reading: A Dead Djinn in Cairo: A Tor.Com Original by P. Djèlí Clark 📚Turns out this was more of a short story than a full novel. Fun fantasy, set in a 19th century Cairo with magic.
grep, BBEdit and Obsidian to the rescue
I want to share some grep pride and also write things down for when I need it next time.
I have a new gig where I’m teaching online project management courses for another company. They give me the slides and a delivery guide, but I’m on my own for figuring out what I want to say. I’ve already delivered 3 classes and thus have figured out what I want, which includes displaying the slides in my notes.
I’m working on a new course which has 214 slides. I wanted to save some typing by setting up the structure in advance.
First step, Excel. I typed “Slide 1” and “Slide 2” in adjacent cells and then let Excel do the rest of the numbering out to “Slide 214.”
Thence to BBEdit. I did a couple of greps but the best one saved the Slide number pattern and then pasted it back in with the Obsidian markdown link pattern to transclude an image.
Here’s the match:
Slide ([0-9]+)
And here’s the replacement instruction:
Slide \1\n\!\[\[Slide\1MCAF.jpeg\]\]\n
Abracadabra!
The last step was going to Powerpoint and using their export goodness to get a resized JPEG for each slide, luckily this functionality is built into Powerpoint. I copied the resulting 214 correctly named JPEG files into the directory I use for Obsidian attachments, then pasted the text from BBEdit into my note, and voila, 214 placeholders in Obsidian including the correct slide image. I feel brilliant.
I can’t also show you the cute little slide pictures in Obsidian because the content is proprietary.
Currently reading: Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig 📚
Currently reading: Waterlog: A Swimmers Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin 📚
Currently reading: A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark 📚
My step-son is visiting from the Netherlands! Happy days in our home.
Finished reading: Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor 📚Third in a trilogy. It’s fun fantasy fiction set in Nigeria, I’ve enjoyed this series.
What are you doing with your eggs? Good advice from my favorite blog, On The Mend
Finished reading: Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane 📚A beautiful book. I want to read every book mentioned (such as The Peregrine and Waterlog) as well as everything Macfarlane ever writes.
Woke up to a power outage #adayinthelife
It’s such a gloomy grey day here, it’s hard to find a good photo topic! I’m still looking.
Finished reading: In the Early Times by Tad Friend 📚 a good read but ultimately so sad. The way being born an American WASP can pollute your being. I have some of it in my background.
Currently reading: Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor 📚
Currently reading: In the Early Times by Tad Friend 📚
Caturday
I’ve started running again. Sort of. I’m doing the walk/run thing. If my heart rate gets to high, I get a migraine. Started out with walk 4 mins, run 30 seconds. Now it’s walk 2 mins, run 45 seconds. And I kinda love it. I feel like I can go miles and miles at this pace. 🏃♀️
Currently reading: The First World War by John Keegan 📚
Finished reading: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg 📚There’s some useful information in here. But so much comes across as dated, and lazy, especially when reading Robert Macfarlane at the same time.
Currently reading: Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane 📚
Finished reading: The High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚A beautiful book. It was an enjoyable way to get to know the author. I hiked in the Sierra Nevada as a 20-something and the book brought back good memories.
Who knew that the US Library of Congress has 2,000 flutes in its collection?
How Lizzo came to play a president’s crystal flute on a D.C. stage
Currently reading: The Promise by Damon Galgut 📚
Finished reading: Adam Bede (Broadview Editions) by George Eliot 📚A surprisingly modern novel. So much about class and unfairness and gender and choices and the lack thereof. I loved it.
Finished reading: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen 📚Tales of good people behaving badly. But they behaved so badly that it was hard to maintain interest in and empathy for them.
Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
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