/blog

My journalling streak has hit 122 days, that's a third of a year. I've never been able to keep going that long in the past in any format. Morning pages certainly didn't last that long. I think it's because of how easy it is to do – just tap and type, no need to ensure I have a working pen or deal with a more cumbersome notebook.

Tap and type.

Something seems to have clicked in the past few days and I am entering more on a daily basis, I have finally reached the point where the journal acts like morning pages. Maybe it's because my daily routine has changed – I'm not going straight to the writing project so the journal becomes the first outlet.

Writing with a pen is different to typing on a little slab of glass but I find my process with the latter starting to better approximate the former. Words flow more easily now, the path from thought to page seems more open.

I don't place any real expectations on journalling, it's just a place where I talk to myself, leave messages, notes or reminders for future me. Whatever comes out goes down, there's no real intent for it to be therapeutic or meaningful and, maybe, because of that it is actually starting to become both.

Last night was truly humbling.

My wife and I took a late drive across the Dales as we had previously found an interesting route that we had wanted to explore in the dark. At one point on this route is a large lay-by so, as it was a clear night, I stopped the car, turned off the headlights, and we got out to look at the stars.

O.M.G!

Much of the Yorkshire Dales National Park is classified as a "dark sky" region and you can instantly see why when you look up. I've been to some quite dark places but this was beyond anything I've ever seen.

The sky's beauty was breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and all the other usual adjectives. You just felt so incredibly small standing there under the massive dome of the heavens. The number of stars visible to the naked eye was extraordinary and we immediately planned to return during the next regular meteor shower.

Alan linked to a post on WPTavern discussing comments, how many sites are disabling them, and that the tools needed to view and manage them need to be better.

As I commented, I have both scrapped comments completely and offloaded them to an external location (Medium) due to the aggravations associated with moderation so understand where some are coming from. Things improved considerably over time, spam detection became more effective, and I re-opened them on the WordPress blog for a few years before switching platforms.

Comments are part of the blogging ethos. It's not necessarily about owning the conversation but having it in context. With that in mind, comments were always going to be a feature of (b)log-In – the functionality may not be the most advanced but it works well enough. Having native comments alongside webmentions creates choice and opportunity, and I like that.

However, inspired by the conversation, and with no anti-spam capabilities, I decided to design a simple comment moderation process. Moderation is enabled by a yes/no option on the admin page and, if enabled, comments are flagged and only visible to the admin.

An additional inline control allows comments to be approved with a single click, in keeping with the whole inline ethos of the system:

Simple but effective.