I am not exempt from the lure of a beautiful cafe drink, in this case, matcha latte.
Who has my admiration today? People of good heart and mind who choose to run for office in this big, crazy country.
I guess with all my certifications, I have a license to do project management. Good thing, because I’m teaching a free workshop for a group of local entrepreneurs later today!
We had our first contra dance in two years this past Monday. It was a feast for the senses, with music, movement, and many people I hadn’t seen in ages. We all had masks on and that felt like the right thing to do when partaking of this super spreader activity.
I had a moment this morning to think and figure out retirement, again, always a popular topic as one heads into the deeper 60s in age. Found this site FIRECalc: A different kind of retirement calculator and found it surprisingly reassuring. #mbnov
Deactivated my Twitter account. Seems like the right time to finally do it.
New data shows long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work
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.