I am delighted to have come across two wordpress plugins that let you download free stock photos, provided willingly by people for this kind of use.
Filklore Posts
When I set up this blog, I wanted to put in a simple check on people commenting, to prevent spam. It worked for a while, but different plugins have broken over the years.
I have been in Lockdown since two weeks before Lockdown formally started. This is because I had a very bad cold. I thought it was a cold, but from the information available, how could I be sure. I cancelled several things I’d arranged, including a couple of gaming sessions and a day out. Some friends laughed about “Chris is going into Lockdown”. And then we all did.
I’ve kept a personal blog for a long time, although I haven’t been posting to it much recently. That’s my bad.
The problem is Social Media sites like Facebook, and how they seem to have become the universal way to connect with friends. I’ve been through the same cycle myself several times; where I post about stuff I want to keep on my blog – almost like a diary, I guess – while trivial stuff I post to Facebook, along with occasional links on Facebook to something I have written here. But because the Facebook posts get far more reaction from people than my posts here – even the Facebook posts pointing back to here – I get sucked in and gradually start posting everything over there.
So the little bottle labelled Alnwick Gin turns out, on closer inspection, to be a gin, lime and ginger liqueur.
I knew that when I purchased it, but as that was September 2018, I had forgotten.
So, I was moving some bits of tech around on Sunday, tidying up leads and replugging network cables in preparation for – some time soon – the passing of control for DNS and everything from my old router to my new Mesh Network controllers.
Only one thing didn’t go as planned, I accidentally pulled out the power lead going into my NAS.
This has been a disastrous year for me in the garden; the worst I have had since I took up gardening.
A mixture of illness and bad weather meant that I essentially abandoned the garden for most of the year, and by the time I felt like doing something, it was completely out of control. The gravel that my veg troughs stand on was ankle deep in weeds, which also crossed the patio, the troughs themselves were full of weeds. I got depressed just looking at it, which meant I didn’t really have a plan to fix it.
My pair of ancient sofas came with a stool – actually more a large padded bench, big enough for at least 2 backsides.
It usually lives in the middle of the room as a footrest and place to put a tray of tea things. Then it gets moved to the side as a convenient seat if I have bags of people round for gaming.
On Monday, I had a dog door fitted. Katie seems not to have experienced one before, and wouldn’t go near it. Then I found that if I wedged it open, she would happily go through. I figured that I’d let her get used to an exit being there, and later teach her how to open it herself.
Over the last three days, she has been running in and out of the open door, but still ignoring it when closed.
I crate Katie at night. Unlike some, I don’t think it is particularly cruel. She seems happy enough when put to bed, and doesn’t seem at all anxious when I let her out in the morning. She can be destructive when left alone and as she was already 5 when she came to me, I don’t think that will change much. So I crate her – I don’t trust the lounge would be recognisable in the morning otherwise.
But there is another side of this.
I’m a bit disappointing in myself. I’d previously been using my Oculus Go almost every day, but that was before Katie arrived. Then I buy this expensive new toy, the Quest, and it has been out of the box about 4 times in 3 months.
I’m a bit of a worrier. So whenever I used to foster a dog, knowing that chocolate is toxic to dogs, I more or less didn’t buy chocolate for the entire time of the foster.
I know that this is over the top, but worrying about dropping a chocolate having the dog gobble it up, or otherwise letting the dog consume it, it was easier to simply not have it around.