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No, I Don't Have New Year's Resolutions.

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 11:19 on 10 January 2016

JLF asked me late last year (just now cleaning out my personal inbox), "Do you have any new year's resolutions?"

In a word, "No."

In a long-winded, likely disorganized post, no, I don't have new year's resolutions.

I used to make new year's resolutions. "This year is going to be different!" I'd say, "This year I am going to be exactly the person I want to be!" I'd say. "This year, I'm doing to do these 20 things differently!" I'd say.

I was delusional. My resolutions lasted as long as other people's resolutions, which is to say, maybe a week? Two weeks? Three if I REALLY wanted to do a particular thing I had resolved to do.

I'd do this year after year. Same behaviour. Same failure.

About 8 years ago or so, I came across my stash of previous years' new year's resolutions, along with the Ben-Lisa-Kris-Kitt lists of yearly predictions, and realized my list was the same every year. What is the point of having the same resolutions year after year, starting on some arbitrary date? What is the point of saying, I SHALL CHANGE, then never do it?

So, I stopped making new year's resolutions.

And resolutions in general.

Over the subsequent few years, I've shifted away from resolutions to goals. Things I want to accomplish. Things I want to do, to experience, to change.

I've shifted away from GIANT CHANGES to incremental changes. I don't need to (and, in reality, usually can't) make huge changes to improve my life. Small ones, however, made consistently, can be HUGE over time.

I've shifted away from starting at some date in the future to starting now. Harry's "... when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible" doesn't work just for epic declarations of love, it works for every change you want to make.

I've shifted away from relying on will-power to developing habits. Will power goes only so far, habits will carry you forever on inertia alone.

So, I no, I have no new year's resolutions. Instead, I have a lifetime of change.

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Shrooooooooms!

Daily Photo Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 10:10 on 10 January 2016

While trimming the mandarin tree yesterday, I discovered this mass under the tree, close to the fence.

It is huge. I wish I could find my macro lens to take a close up of this crazy mushroom mass.

It has a light dusting of white mold spores on it, which makes me likely to remove it, since, well, I'm eating 10 of these mandarins a day. If I start hallucinating (how can you tell, with all that I write here?), check these mushrooms and mold first.

#daily-photo

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Drupal 7 redirect to last published node of a specific node type

Snippet Instead of being asleep at 22:28 on 9 January 2016, kitt created this:

Okay, you have a number of node of a particular content type, say, a Daily Photo, and you want a link, say, a menu link, that will always take you to the latest published node of that content type, but do it with a redirect, instead of a view with the latest node. The former says, when you go to this URL, redirect to the correct URL; while the latter says, when you go to this URL, display the content from that other URL here. Sometimes the latter is better, I prefer the former for my daily photos.

So, here's how you'd create that redirect in Drupal 7. You can put this into a page, or create a new module and add this to it, or use an existing module (say, a features module or something).

<?php
 
    $query = new EntityFieldQuery();
    $query
    ->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
    // of course, this would change to your node type
    ->propertyCondition('type', 'dailyphoto')
    // only published ones
    ->propertyCondition('status', 1)
    // 'posted' can also be 'created' if you prefer
    ->propertyOrderBy('posted', 'DESC');
 
    $result = $query->execute();
    if (isset($result['node'])) {
      // yup, ugly.  Works.
      $nids = array_keys($result['node']);
      drupal_goto('node/' . $nids[0]);
    } else {
      // well shit, go home
      drupal_goto('/');
    }
 
?>

#drupal7

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Mandarins!

Blog Instead of being asleep at 19:25 on 9 January 2016, kitt created this:

Andy asked me to trim the mandarin tree that has branches that are overhanging the hive. I've been trying to pick the mandarins off the tree, eating them so that they don't go to waste, hoping that I could eat enough that the branches would lift and stop touching the hive. Turns out, eating five a day wasn't enough to lift the branches. Nor was 7. Nor was 10.

So, despite eating 10 mandarins a day, I had to give up, and cut back the branches. I don't mind pruning a tree if it needs it. I do mind deliberately making a lopsided tree because I'm accommodating some arbitrary, artificial, movable blocker.

In this case, the hive with its 60 pounds of honey isn't exactly "movable," so I trimmed the branches so that none were touching or hanging over the hive.

And ended up with 16 cups of mandarin oranges.