busybee fluffy rambles

After having eaten a bunch of wet food last night and having had three doses of antibiotics, Fiona’s getting back to her usual cuddly/climby self. She isn’t sneezing anymore, and while she’s still a bit congested she snuggled up with me in bed this morning, and right now she’s being super snuggly and affectionate. She’s also purring super loudly, which she hasn’t done in a while.

I still haven’t heard from the vet about her bloodwork or x-rays but I feel like there’s a lot less to worry about now.

I finally got a bunch of stuff working on the new Sockpuppet website, including the music browser. Now people will have the ability to actually find something in my vast sea of content!

I still need to finish tagging a bunch of stuff to make it useful but having the functionality in place gives me motivation to do so.

I’ve also improved the “buy box” and added way more streaming providers to the sources (which of course requires more content to be filled out, too), and there’s a bunch of other functionality like being able to browse lyrics and song notes and such from album pages.

The really neat thing is that most of this stuff, even the dynamic stuff, is done using pure CSS! There’s a little bit of Javascript for a couple of things but I have some ideas about how I can remove that stuff, and it’s not like the javascript is particularly heavyweight anyway.

At some point I should release the templates as Publ samples, so that others can use this as a basis for building their own music sites too. Or something. I’m doing a lot of stuff that’s really taking advantage of Publ functionality under the hood.

Anyway, for those who follow me via a feed reader but haven’t added that site yet, it’s definitely ready to be added at this point, and I’ll be posting most of my music-related blogging over there from now on.

Over the past few days I’ve been pushing myself to finally get a usable new music site and it’s finally at the point where I’m ready to have the tires kicked. There’s a bunch of stuff that needs to still be done on it but that can come later. For now it at least has vague parity with my Bandcamp page, and my wrists need a rest.

I watch a lot of Living Big in a Tiny House, and I have very mixed feelings about it. But there’s definitely a bunch of trends I’ve noticed with it (and also with other tiny house channels on YouTube).

• “We aren’t actually living in it yet”
• “My things were controlling me”
• Moved in just one month ago, “loving it forever”
• “We just got married”
• Outdoor bathroom
• “We found a great parking space”
• “Our family had this land available”
• “It’s a lot bigger than you’d think!”
• Slide-out bed
• Closet bed (especially for children)
• Ultra-dense bunking for their five children
• Kids saying: “We used to have our own separate rooms but now we get to play together a lot more”
• Have to completely reconfigure your room every time you want to do something different
• No kitchen space
• “My smoke detector keeps going off” (or, alternately, no smoke detectors at all)
• Super narrow, steep, tall stairs
• Lack of accessibility in general
• “It’s a bit tricky to do [thing that will become harder as they get older] but it’s not a problem”
• “I don’t even miss having stuff”
• Composting toilet (or no toilet)
• Instruction sign on the wall for visitors to use the toilet
• “Do you like this [composting/incinerating] toilet?” Heavy sigh followed by, “Yeah it’s pretty great once you get used to it”
• “You totally get used to the smell”
• Have to climb a ladder to get into bed
• Changing bed sheets is also… interesting
• “Close yourself off, retreat from the world”
• Owner makes their living as an influencer
• Owner got the inspiration from whatever YouTuber is interviewing them
• Owner intends to start their own tiny house channel for an income source
• “Everything I could possibly need I have right here”
• Added storage by putting things on some sort of complicated hoisting system that totally would never fail
• Owner lifestyle that’s one step removed from tradwifery
• Peak Instagram decor (fake ivy vines everywhere, “Live Laugh Love”-type signs, no actual artwork anywhere)
• General Wiccan vibes
• Weird religious overtones to the story (got inspiration from God, prayed for a spouse, “all my prayers were answered”)
• And of course the kids are homeschooled
• Spare chairs as wall decor
• Random appropriation of native culture
• “I don’t need a TV with this amazing view!”
• Is this actually being filmed in an Ikea model home showroom?
• “This is really private” (usually in respect to the, again, outdoor bathroom)
• Super water- and energy-efficient tiny house next to a gigantic swimming pool
• Tiny house in the back yard of a gigantic house that the owners actually live in
• Tiny house situated on a 5-acre lot otherwise used only for a fucking lawn
• “I’m saving [tiny amount of money] on rent!”
• Ignoring long-term maintenance costs especially for off-grid systems (batteries, septic, etc.)