First Past the Post
whatnotFirst post
This post is doing the job of appearing as the first post on this new blog.
I have another blog, on another blogging platform, but on there I need to be 'in character' to post. My fault. I am always creating these things which need a deliberate and dedicated bit of mental space for a writing persona, and then sometimes I just can't summon it.
I wanted to have a less hectic blog to post on when I am feeling less 'performative'. Somewhere just to post quiet observations and personal diary type things. I've chosen to do that here on the Scribbles platform.
I've struggled with the blog name. Even now, I am uncertain about Blogbear, although in a lot of ways it's quite pleasing.
I look at it and see that Blogbear is just Bear blog (another blogging platform) the other way round, albeit one word rather than two. But my humour is such that I think that's it's also quite ironic fun that Blogbear is not written using Bear blog.
It's a play on the word bugbear of course, used self-deprecatingly, as in 'a source of annoyance'. A little joke.
But, more obviously, it's called Blogbear because this is a blog and I'm called Bear.
I'm full of such creativity.
I don't intend to reveal much more about myself than that. I'm a little bit sensitive to how seemingly innocently divulged information about people can be weaponised in these information-hoovering times, and particularly after a real life stalking incident happened to me personally some years back, when I was less careful.
Custom themes
Having been an early adopter of the Scribbles platform, I follow Vincent's Scribbles Updates to keep an eye on the new features he has developed and enabled, and I was pleased to see that support for custom themes was announced.
I've always liked the simple approach to how a Scribbles blog looks, but found just a few things lacking for me. Some of those have been addressed. Being able to choose the colours of your background, and the basic sizing options, is cool. I think the only further thing I would want out of the tweaking possibilities is a way to change the font used.
I just think the font is a really individual choice which goes a long way in personalising the appearance. Although having said that, the standard font in this reduced size is actually fine now.
And, again personally, I think the blog article title is too big compared to the post text size, so I wish I could change that easily.
But I was not as pleased when I looked at the actual custom theme instructions page. I was hoping for a section in the settings where I could just choose options from a dropdown list, like with the colours or text sizing, but a read of the announcement and explanation post caused my eyes to glaze over.
https://scribbles.page/docs/custom-themes#quick-start
Nope. Not a clue.
I get that for someone who speaks computer, and has been bought up with computer, that this is maybe child's play, but for me, faced with the words 'a simple Ruby script' and a massive list of variables, my brain switched off and refused to compute any of it from that point on.
That may be my ADHD reluctance to actually work on taking in and trying to address what the procedure actually is, and it may be 'simple' for some. But yeah. Nah. Not today anyway. Brain not engaging, so brain not playing.
I'd be happy to see what people have done with it, and even happier if anyone who does do something with it posts an article or two about how they've done it, with examples too.
Warning
I'm not going to paint myself into a corner with what I post here. It may be really boring stuff, and I may only be talking to myself. However it will be real, and it will be unfiltered, so if you are sensitive to a bit of swearing, you may wish to adjust your sets now.
I don't do it much, but there are times when only the emphasis of a good, strong, fuck off will do.
