busybee fluffy rambles

Colin has a pretty neat implementation of a javascript-free lightbox gallery, which works by using the :checked attribute on a radio select and making the image a label for it. I think it could also be taken a bit further:

1. Use <img srcset> to serve up alternate renditions for the thumbnails; for example:

   <label for="gallery-2020-2-0">
       <img class="thumbnail"
           src="image-fullres.jpg" srcset="image-fullres.jpg 2048w, image-halfres.jpg 1024w, image-retinathumb 320w, image-smallthumb.jpg 160w"
           alt="Steampunk explorer" />
   </label>
   

2. Use CSS transitions to provide nice opacity and position animations for the items

1 in particular can save a lot of bandwidth, as the browser will only fetch the high-resolution renditions as they become visible. (And providing half-resolution renditions will also help on mobile clients.)

I mentioned my crappy approach to using multiple GitHub accounts on a Slack I’m on, and someone else pointed out there’s a much easier approach: Instead of using wrapper scripts to set up different environments, you can fake it using .ssh/config and .gitconfig rules.

First, set up key rules with .ssh/config:

Host  github-work
  Hostname github.com
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_work
Host github-personal
  Hostname github.com
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_personal

Next, set your origin based on whether the workspace is work or personal; for example, git clone git@github-work:work-org/project.git (and of course you can git remote set-url origin for existing workspaces).

Finally, to handle the different author name and email, git 2.15 and later support conditional includes. If you keep all of your work projects in a separate directory, you can put this into your .gitconfig:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/wfh"]
path = ~/.gitconfig-work

then .gitconfig-work includes your work-specific configuration, e.g.:

[user]
name = Boring Legal Name
email = work-email@example.com

Thanks, Silas!

Oops, I guess I haven’t been posting here as often as I’d like. I guess I’ve mostly been using Discord to keep in touch with folks.

I’m fairly busy at the day job. I’ve already rolled out a few important features for our websites and soon I’ll be ramping up on another project. So far everyone there has been super great and I’m glad I lucked out with this job, even without the societal/financial catastrope that happened shortly after I started.

Isolation hasn’t been great for me. I’ve been having a pretty bad fibro flareup lately, and I still haven’t quite shaken whatever this dang thing I have is. It’s not gotten severe enough to require medical attention but at the same time I’d love to not be missing occasional workdays when I’m feeling especially lousy. It might also just be part of the fibro flare, too. Fortunately the new job has unlimited sick days, because dang I’ve been taking a lot of them this past month.

I’ve had to switch back to decaf because it turns out having even half-caf espresso every day has gotten me sensitized to caffeine again, and I was starting to have panic attacks again. Phooey. I still love my Flair though. I’ve also had a couple of people ask me about selling my custom tampers so I should see about, like, doing that.

So, because I’ve changed insurance plans, I need to change my specialists as well. One of those is my sleep specialist, which I mostly want to get a DME provider set up with my insurance, which requires a screening in order to get DME approval.

Because of COVID-19, appointments are limited, and they can’t see me until June 1, which means if I need to refresh my mask et al I’ll have to go out-of-pocket until then. Not the worst thing in the world (and honestly I found out-of-pocket to be cheaper than the copay on my previous DME anyway), but annoying.

But there’s a bit more that this leads to which is a little wonky… because of COVID-19 they had to ask me the usual appointment pre-screening questions regarding SARS-NCoV-2 symptoms and exposure. But those questions are based on right now, and probably won’t be valid in three months. Like, one of them was “have you traveled in the last 14 days or been exposed to someone known to have the virus in that time?” and regardless of how I answer now that has no bearing on how it’ll be on June 1. Similarly, just because I have no symptoms or fever right now doesn’t mean anything about how I’ll be in June.

If the appointment were within two weeks I’d say this was reasonable, but… it’s two months away. How does that make any sense?

So, I am using way more soap than usual when washing my hands, which has been drying out the skin a lot. To try to counteract that I’ve been using lotion a lot more. But it turns out that this leads to more tactile stimulation on my fingers (basically I constantly feel like I’ve just been soaking in the bathtub for an hour) which in turn leads to a sensory overload/pain flare, and it doesn’t even help with the dry skin anyway, and the dry skin also leads to its own level of sensory issues too. And Fiona’s insistence on sitting on my lap while I work isn’t helping at all. Just before lunch I had a bit of a meltdown because of it.

I guess I need to figure out a better way to periodically clean my hands without leading to other issues.

I could also really use a haircut, because my wild scraggly hair getting in my face is making this worse. Of course all the hair stylists are (rightfully) closed right now. I suppose I could break out my Flowbee but that feels like it’s taking the “mental stress due to isolation” look a bit too far. (Plus I don’t want my hair to be that short right now. I need every femininity cue I can get these days.) Maybe it’s time to finally learn how to use hair clips, but I suspect feeling them bouncing against my face would make me flare too.

Why is my brain like this? Ugh.

Just as a reminder, if you’re bored and want to chat with other bored people about geeky things, I have a small but friendly Discord community. We mostly talk about the sorts of stuff I talk about here, but lots of hobbies are welcome.

I’m trying to keep it cozy and comfortable, so if you need somewhere that’s cozy and comfortable, hopefully this is a reasonable place for you!