<!–[CDATA[ n

If you use blink and need to remove a known_host due to a fingerprint change it’s a bit hidden. When you launch blink you’ll see the bare bones shell with the prompt what you need to do is treat it like an actual Unix system. There is a .ssh/known_hosts file. You won’t have vi or any other editor available as far as I can tell, but you can remove the file and create a new connection to your reused host.

blink> rm -rf ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Download the Shortcut

I’ve been keeping up on my DayOne habit fairly well, but there are some days where staring at that blank page just makes every thought drop out of my head. Initially, I had a lot of success with a simple change, just writing about the previous day. I found that with a little time for reflection I had a more nuanced look at what happened, what was important, and what I thought about it. Lately though I’ve avoided writing some days because I’m not sure what to lay down.

I ran across a shorcut from Brian Renshaw that templated his daily journal. I wanted that, but with more variety.

1. I started by searching DuckDuckGo for Journal Prompts and blindly copying the first 4 pages of results.
2. Next I used sheety.co to turn that list of promts into a poor mans API.
3. I built a shortcut, following Brian’s start and reading documentation as I overthought the process.
4. Finally, I had to figure out how to share the results, thanks to the iOS 13 beta.

Prompt Sources:

• https://psychcentral.com/blog/30-journaling-prompts-for-self-reflection-and-self-discovery/
• https://diaryofajournalplanner.com/journal-prompts/
• https://www.tomslatin.com/80-journal-writing-prompts/
• https://www.creative-writing-now.com/journal-prompts.html

I’ve been foolhardy and have been running the iOS 13 beta on all my devices since beta 2. I haven’t hit anything past a few weird layout issues until today. While working on a blog post about a shortcut I built I went to share my work … and there was no share icon.

I looked around, long pressing everywhere and trying every button I could find. I even got desperate and looked around in the Apple Settings screens. Nothing.

After lots of duckduckgoing I found the answer. You need to download a shortcut from the gallery, then go to Settings -> Shortcuts and select “Allow Untrusted Shortcuts”. The option will not exist until you download a shortcut.

Once you allow untrusted shortcuts the share sheet will return to the Shortcut builder. 🙄

<!–[CDATA[ n

“Dad, I really need .50 cents to get a news paper.”

“Well, you’ll need to get change from the ice cream store to buy a newspaper.”

Dad leafs through his wallet and finds a five. He hands it to Wyatt showing him the note written of the face of the bill in sharpie.

“See what is written on the front? To Aspen from the tooth fairy.”

“Dad … How did you get this?”

“Well I don’t know, they gave it to me at the store.”

“Dad, that raises even more questions, how did this make it to circulation?”

<!–[CDATA[ n

How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen

Why I grabbed it: Don’t remember | Genre: Essay Collection | Recommended: Nope

I have no idea why I put this collection of essays on my reading list but it was ok. There were a handful of stories that were phoned in, ‘Lost in the Mail’ comes to mind and I guess I forgot the others. I found the first three compelling though. ‘My Fathers Brain’, which can be found online, pulled me in and just made me sympathize with the author and his mother. ‘Imperial Bedroom’ is now dated as hell but in the face of the Mueller report there is a stark contrast. I was surprised how well it held up on the face of today’s privacy landscape. ‘Why Bother?’ starts and and holds a whining, lamenting, and grumpy survey of the novels place in the modern world of media. Even though it rambles there were spots that made me perk up, touching on diversity, cross pollination of ideas, and the common threads that make us readers. It was more interesting than unfocused. If you have time I’d pick at the first three essays, but the whole book might not be worth your time.

<!–[CDATA[ n

Educated by Tara Westover

Why I grabbed it: Obama | Genre: Autobiography | Recommended: Yes

Educated came up on the best books of 2018. I think after I saw it on Obama’s list I added it to good reads and placed a hold at the library. Fast forward 6 months and it shows up in my kindle. Initially, I was a little soured on the ‘rags to riches’ summary but I started in right away as it was a decent sized book and I only had 3 weeks to finish it. The first chapter hooked me. Although there are many stories of a kind, medical accidents, ranting religious father, crazy dangerous work, and abusive family members, I found myself drawn in. At times, it’s a bit like watching a slow motion car accident. I found about halfway through, the perspective of Tara changed. She went from being a somewhat objective viewer of her past to being the main character. The situations were closer to home and she had less objective perspective on what was happening. For the last third of the book I had a knot in my stomach. I’m not sure I enjoyed the story, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the point. The memoir itself was striking and is firmly lodged in my mind. The writing though. The writing is excellent. Tara is clear, descriptive, wistful, and engaging. It’s worth the time to read it.

Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper

Why I grabbed it: Library | Genre: YA Fantasy | Recommended: Yes

I got all 5 books as a set from the scholastic book order form in elementary school. I remember because my mom never let me do that. Somehow though, despite getting through the Narnia books, Tolkien, and countless others, I never finished this series. I adored ‘The Dark is Rising’ as a kid and when I came across these books at the library, decided it was time to find out. I started over from the beginning and found to my surprise that ‘Over Sea, Under Stone’ was my favorite in the series. The Drew children were more interesting that Will by far. The long and the short is, the series was good, it’s young adult fantasy, and it’s not dystopian. The ending is strong and I look forward to reading these with my little ones.

We Don’t Do That Here - Aja Hammerly:

It turns out talking about diversity, inclusion, and even just basic civil behavior can be controversial in technical spaces. I don’t think it should be, but I don’t get to make the rules. When I’m able I’d much rather spend the time to educate someone about diversity and inclusion issues and see if I can change how they see the world a bit. But I don’t always have the time and energy to do that. And sometimes, even if I did have the time, the person involved doesn’t want to be educated. n

This is when I pull out “we don’t do that here.” It is a conversation ender. If you are the newcomer and someone who has been around a long time says “we don’t do that here”, it is hard to argue. This sentence doesn’t push my morality on anyone. If they want to do whatever it is elsewhere, I’m not telling them not to. n

I like this approach to setting culture. Particularly if you have no other tool available or your wits aren’t about you.

And, just in case you think you can blow off the universe the way you did when you were in your twenties and she whispered, “Pay attention,” or when you were in your early thirties and she whispered, “Slow down,” I assure you that she’s much more dogged in midlife. When I tried to ignore her, she made herself very clear: “There are consequences for squandering your gifts. There are penalties for leaving big pieces of your life unlived. You’re halfway to dead. Get a move on.”

The Midlife Unraveling | Brené Brown

This entire piece wrapped me up and carried me along with it. I’m 39 now and I’m feeling the strain of getting through life. I can already tell that leaning into it and trying to tough it out will break me. Brené has a wonderful voice and the thought of relaxing into life resonates with me.

My Ink & Volt Planner has me start each week with a reflection. On a good Monday I can find the time to do it in the morning. Today I managed to get there before the end of day, which is still pretty good.

“If you want to be more productive, you need to become master of your minutes.” — Crystal Pain

Plot out your perfect morning and make it happen one day this week.

Can you master this perfect routine? Practice makes perfect.

• Wake up early, before the kids, ideally 6am.
• I went to bed before 10.
• I have a glass of water, then coffee.
• I meditate for 20 minutes.
• I can read or write for 30 minutes.
• I have time to make my oldest’s lunch and empty the dishwasher.
• One of the kids wakes up and I have time to hang out with them a bit before the other wakes up.

I was shocked to realize how simple and attainable this was, I hadn’t realized I had been looking for a little space and quiet for myself in the mornings.

================================================================== https://keybase.io/mattfinlayson ——————————————————————–

I hereby claim:

• I am an admin of https://www.partiallypeaceful.com
• I am mattfinlayson (https://keybase.io/mattfinlayson) on keybase.
• I have a public key with fingerprint 7BE1 BC3D F693 8233 6164 D983 3F11 5CCE F135 125C

To do so, I am signing this object:

{ “body”: { “key”: { “eldest_kid”: “0101c990b9bb35d4a2c6e9224a39b8f84d639a0c921c57e78948fd02431020b881d60a”, “fingerprint”: “7be1bc3df69382336164d9833f115ccef135125c”, “host”: “keybase.io”, “key_id”: “3f115ccef135125c”, “kid”: “0101c990b9bb35d4a2c6e9224a39b8f84d639a0c921c57e78948fd02431020b881d60a”, “uid”: “3db55b25df16c12e2a59968690780300”, “username”: “mattfinlayson” }, “service”: { “hostname”: “www.partiallypeaceful.com”, “protocol”: “https:” }, “type”: “web_service_binding”, “version”: 1 }, “ctime”: 1547162197, “expire_in”: 157680000, “prev”: “b8ad009232ff7799027d24b4f5fc9987f4b51c018936f2835882e3a539537642”, “seqno”: 30, “tag”: “signature” }

which yields the signature:

—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—– Version: Keybase OpenPGP v2.0.80 Comment: https://keybase.io/crypto

yMI6AnicrVJHaBVBGH4xajCiiQoSFD0sooIxTtkyszY0loMa9RDBKHmZ2Z1NFl/e Pvdt8owFPdhiLEkswUI0D4IoludJEWKJBSGoKEHEWBBssYGg5mSZtdw8OpdhZr7y fx9zfUh2JDfLyPOfXn59rSOr6+rJmshK4/6ydQr37DrFXKesEr82EbNFMoiucm3F VAAE0KIUcMo51myVIUsXFCGVYcqJQ1Rbx5QBiyJoaYYwCFWJYwOkYggQ4IRAWwdM KVQcN14p/ITvxgMpa3ABuYVtR6eYIIx1qKs2JRg7EGqWJRyINYg0SxKrvGTIkMNx lhRFrifv5CH6a7x/4P/z3DW/fWyuaRxptgN1CyKBmEapTnQKDAIwACEwKfw4qxYS Xc2CQOaNsbqkF1c2FCryqda1RNhuGOcPLJVKFSWYH7gsFqtLCCZj1MSKLK9aqiV8 L/AsLyZhVUGQSJqhTCBRIU/w6B/FKHfjtmxWMmqFn3SlnQkl0grc0AJqqgF1BKlR qIg1CdcXUTdEaIZOgFyhj6iVkpwwGwCKMHIcw5C9IcNGKlcdzZEtEsNRuQYtAAnF uoMI1ghBAjMNUw0buoqUMOPquKeYWIoGrFJqJt3KOAtqfKFs6Lyysn8kKzcycEC/ 8MtFcgfl//2Ija9yvhUc2DXvbvGKvT0ln80nr170nm3Lzpz5PmxG1qWLd2jJhK1D K3pvEt3c1rJnzJOx6ZmHR7Ej59NN6pyWkcdObayfeKO4ETXdW/TJnLVgytvT4xa2 g5fXzMW7T1TkbD9090HV5L6e7B1vmr5OedQwvnTf2i+jnjfsn3Y8U5YX6ZyX6R7x YUxx/rmyoys+N89K8Yz/4/bczqebWm50D580v7vhYH5b68d+Xc195b1vCtZfLjgb 6egZMO5dfb25r7F6zdL3YwsuLqs61D74w+7ZRctzmgvbU/2NBY/XzgYTd45+sSXz +lnDotbayVNL825tbh3/tfzhdNiRtvrKl1S0nfhulXVdSHfnljSnfwLqKEcc =fPEf —–END PGP MESSAGE—–

And finally, I am proving ownership of this host by posting or appending to this document.

View my publicly-auditable identity here: https://keybase.io/mattfinlayson

==================================================================

Amit Gawande kindly put together a post on how to enable webmentions for blot.im. As I was following along at home, I found that there were some steps that took me a while to figure out. I’m capturing those here in case anyone else has the same issues.

Create an editable copy of your theme

First, create a new theme based on whichever theme you’re currently using. In my case, this is default. In the dashboard for blot.im go to:

Settings -> Template -> New
Name: partially
Clone the Default theme
Create theme

I find it easier to have the theme source synced to my Blot directory.

Edit partially
Local editing
Switch to local editing

This will create the directory Apps/Blog/Templates/partially in your dropbox folder. Now, you can make any changes you need there.

Add references to your online accounts

Following along with Amit’s post from here. I went on to edit Apps/Blot/Templates/partial/head.html and added the following identifying references. For right now, the important part is github or email as you’ll use one of those to auth against Webmention.io in the next step.

<link rel=“me” href=“https://twitter.com/savagegus" />
<link rel=“me” href=“https://github.com/mattfinlayson" />
<link rel=“me” href=“mailto:mattfinlayson@matt />
<link rel=“pgpkey” href=“https://keybase.io/mattfinlayson/pgp_keys.asc?fingerprint=7be1bc3df69382336164d9833f115ccef135125c" />

I then took the additional step of going to both Twitter and Github and adding my domain to my profile. I verified the references were showing up on my site and that the links back from my services were also correct using indiewebify.me.

Wiring up Webmention.io to your site

Now that you can Auth against your own site setup an account with Webmention.io. At first, none of this was working for me still though. After a bit of poking around I realized I had never included jQuery and the custom script.js was never running. To fix this I went back to Apps/Blot/Templates/partial/head.html and added the following line, before .

    <script src=“https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js">script>

Making it all look pretty

I also found the the CSS Amit provided was a little bare bones. This is not my forte, but I was able to get things looking close enough to how a wanted with the following changes.

.post-mentions {
  padding-top: 15px;
  margin-top: 10px;
  font-size: 16px;
}
.post-mentions ul {
  list-style:none;
  padding:0;
  margin-left: 0;
}


.mention {
  font-size: 16px;
  margin: 10px 0 20px
}

.mention-author {
  text-transform: lowercase;
}

.mention-social {
  color: #666;
  padding-bottom: 10px;
  border-bottom: 1px #ddd solid
}

.mention-text p {
  margin-top: 10px;
  margin-bottom: 2px
}

img.u-photo {
  padding-right: 10px;
}

.mention-text a {
  text-transform: lowercase;
}

a.time {
  font-size: 13px;
  font-family: “Helvetica Neue”, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  color: #999;
  font-weight: 500;
}

<!–[CDATA[ n

The web comic Order of the Stick has been going since 2003. It chronicles the story of a band of adventurers on a D&D campaign. It’s done in a stick figure style, but much closer to a regular webcomic than XKCD. It has a great sense of humor (although early strips are a bit dated) and genuine character development.

Although OOTS just published strip #1150 it’s still working on the same original plot line that it started with. At this point some of the early sub-plots and side quests are a bit hazy in my mind and I was thinking it would be nice to catch up. I wanted to read it through my RSS reader, starting over from the first comic, with 5 a day. It seemed like a pretty easy script to write, but I googled for a service first.

I found Comic Rocket which for the bill perfectly. It lets you replay an RSS feed in the increment you want. It also works for podcast feeds.

<!–[CDATA[ n

A few years ago I was introduced to the idea of replacing New Year’s resolutions with a theme for the year. Rather than tying your success for the new year to specific goal, you pick an area to focus on instead. It’s easier to feel accomplishment if you have several, changeable ways to reach your goals.

The first year I chose ‘Make more things’. It was fun and exciting, we made beer and sourdough. A major renovation took over the whole top floor of the house. My wife and I had a bake-off to see if I would finish the bedroom before she finished the new baby. (I won, but it was a moot point as no one was going to sleep much for a bit).

The next year the theme was ‘Finish more things’. The irony was not lost on anyone around me. It turns out, a theme without a plan leaves you adrift. After a few iterations, I’ve found that having some idea of how I want my theme to play out helps me get what I need out of it. Being gentle with myself and letting things change lets me stick with it.

For this year my theme is ‘Choose how I spend my time’. As always, it’s a little loose, but it fits with several ideas that have kept resurfacing this fall and winter. I’ll know I’m succeeding in 2019 if I am choosing to:

• Short circuit self-doubt and second thoughts by paying attention to myself, spend 20 minutes a day meditating.
• Look at my phone when I get to work, put my phone down when I walk in the door at night. If the kids are awake my phone doesn’t have to be. I have an Apple Watch, I’ll know if someone needs to get ahold of me.
• Spend time with friends and extended family. Share lunch, play games, write letters, and make phone calls.
• Write more. I started this blog as a challenge and an opportunity. I’ve also been enjoying the micro.blog community very much and will continue to contribute there.
• Run run run. The last two years I’ve run the Foot Traffic Flat half-marathon. This year I’m going to try to run my first marathon.