… not the writing or blogging I had planned.
I ‘fell back’ as planned, awoke at a reasonable time, and had a variation on huevos rancheros for breakfast (lentils instead of beans). And some pumpkin pudding to lighten the mood.
The batch of four servings I made last night from the roasted inards of our lantern — which got deposited in the trash bin this evening — did not last the day. But I can tell myself that it’s healthful.
Anyway.
Noon writing, as is par for the course, and it was based on a continuation for the NaNoWriMo project, assuming I continue with it. I managed about 1600 words in the 30 minutes of prompts, which isn’t bad, and it fits with ‘where I want to go’ with the project. Air or scare quotes should indicate a level of ironic detachment and uncertainty here.
Anyway, part 2.
I’ve always despised PHP (and still do), as it’s a rather braindead sort of language, full of design flaws and ‘it’s not a bug it’s a feature’ sort of face-palming moments, prone to security errors, and the type of thing that attracts amateur and careless programmers. That having been said, useful pieces of software like WordPress are built upon it (usually tied to another work of questionable design intelligence, MySQL), and I do use those. My first blog comment system was written in PHP; I’m not unfamiliar with it. Then again, I hacked a PHP comment system on top of server-side includes … so don’t look to me for intelligent design!
One of my WordPress sites has been … laggy … recently. The hosting service killed an SQL query that was eating up processor and memory for all involved. I switched back to a default theme and things improved, at least a bit. It’s still laggier than I would like, so today I decided to reacquaint myself with the structure of WordPress themes.
It’s not a horror story, but it’s no romance, either. The short version is that you need a style sheet and an index file, which runs a main loop. The index file will usually outsource its non-flow-control logic to a functions file; segments of the web page, display modalities, and the like get their own pages (such as: header, footer, sidebar … category, tag, and archive views, etc.) … these, however, are options, as the index file could contain everything. The functions file should let you separate logic and presentation, but there’s still an insane mixing of PHP (code) and HTML (presentation/formatting), which isn’t surprising given the type of language PHP was designed as or the problems it was designed to address. Still, having spent the last five years focusing on Python and its frameworks, instead, WordPress themes seem like a clustf*** in comparison to, say, typical Django templates and the like.
Still, I find myself downloading MAMP so I can install it and a local WordPress instance (I could do much of the same through MacPorts or similar, I admit).
Meanwhile I had to cook dinner for myself and am about to prepare a late meal for Ms. S., who arrives home soon from an evening shift. When I finished a couple heads of broccoli I didn’t want to waste the stalks, so I made what was essentially another batch of the broccoli stalk soup I made a month ago (vegetable stock, sauteed broccoli stalks, a bit of seasoning, pureed once simmered half an hour), but with a slightly greater carrot content: about 3/4 cup each of diced onion, chopped carrot, and chopped celery to go with 250g of broccoli. The result is more yellow-orange, almost a light ochre. I highlighted it with balsamic and a splash of vanilla. It’s quite rich, smooth, and hearty. About 4 cups.
I doubt I’ll write it down as a separate recipe, even though it’s more of a broccoli-carrot soup now.
Perhaps we’ll have time for the latest episode of ‘Elementary’ later.
