In recent years, there have been huge improvements in n-gon’s (non quad polygons). Specifically how well they render and games engines handle non triangular or quad polygons – in reality of course, all polygons are reduced to triangles for rendering. Three vertices being the lowest amount of points that are needed to create two dimensional forms. It seems now that the last place that require quad sub-D models is in deformed meshes, character animations and the like. I rarely aim for pure quad sub-D models anymore but still like to practice making them and find them cathartic to create now and then. ...

I mentioned in a previous post that I had used git and git hooks to upload Hugo blog posts to my server, and that I am now using rsync as a faster more succinct alternative. This has left me with lot of git history in my .git folder, which I really don’t need. I don’t think I am ever going to want to recover a blog post version, ever. So I thought why not just delete all the history and reduce the junk in the site directories. ...

I just read a post online about writing and the need to keep on writing. It strikes me that there is something fulfilling about the idea of the post I like, and find recognisable. I am trying to post more but often find myself doubting the value of writing at all. I need to remind myself that I am writing for no one other than myself. If someone else reads these posts, then all well and good, otherwise it isn’t relevant to me or my writing, I need to just keep writing. ...

The Hugo theme template partial google-news has been deprecated for quite some time. A warning message has been posted on build for just that very reason. After the last update of Hugo v0.111.2+extended the partial appears causes Hugo to fail while building. This is the error thrown on my Mac: ❯ hugo Start building sites … hugo v0.111.2+extended darwin/arm64 BuildDate=unknown ERROR 2023/03/07 23:21:02 render of "page" failed: "/Users/mark/websites/markbtomlinson.com/themes/PaperMod/layouts/_default/baseof.html:5:8": execute of template failed: template: _default/single.html:5:8: executing "_default/single.html" at <partial "head.html" .>: error calling partial: execute of template failed: html/template:partials/head.html:162:18: no such template "_internal/google_news.html" I had been expecting an error, or problem, eventually and as is normal, it happened late at night. It took me a little file search in VSC to find the file in the Hugo theme directory and delete the line causing the issue. ...

I recently decided to try and recycle some old bees wax candles as they had burnt down pretty much to the bottom but still had a good deal of wax left on them. I like bees wax and it seemed a shame to waste it, so I bought some wick and took some little jam jars and made my first candle. I melted the wax in a pot of hot water, but later found it is easier and quicker to melt the wax in a microwave. The secret is to do it in short bursts and not over heat the wax, 30 second bursts at full power worked well for me, and took about 4 minutes. In the pan with water it took a lot longer. ...

Getting un-hooked You Git I have been using Git Hooks to sync local Hugo website files to my remote server. This has worked well, mostly, but I wondered if it was the most efficient way of syncing up. I use Git on the local web structure and so have version control. Using Hooks allows me to upload to a remote location and then have the remote server copy the modified file into the live site directory,. This involves a few steps and some repetition and isn’t completely error free. If the Hooks location gets out of sync, which it did for me a couple of times I had no alternative, at least one that worked, but to recreate the Hook directory and start again. ...

I had wanted to be a little more consistent when it came to posting on here, however this month got away from me, and to at least post something, I am writing this little piece. Before the months comes to an utter end I will slip this one in under the wire. I have been busy though, mostly on learning the *nix CLI and tools, most especially the ins and outs of Find and Grep. I have also been modelling as a form of relaxation and working on some little Blender scripts I have been putting off for some time now. ...

Open, command Mac terminal: Most Mac users will know that the open command in the Terminal will open files in the GUI or open a directory in Finder for example open . will open Finder in the current directory, this is useful, but there are a few more things it can do including opening in a specified application. Here is the usage dump from the tool: Usage: open [-e] [-t] [-f] [-W] [-R] [-n] [-g] [-h] [-s <partial SDK name>][-b <bundle identifier>] [-a <application>] [-u URL] [filenames] [--args arguments] Help: Open opens files from a shell. By default, opens each file using the default application for that file. If the file is in the form of a URL, the file will be opened as a URL. Options: -a Opens with the specified application. -b Opens with the specified application bundle identifier. -e Opens with TextEdit. -t Opens with default text editor. -f Reads input from standard input and opens with TextEdit. -F --fresh Launches the app fresh, that is, without restoring windows. Saved persistent state is lost, excluding Untitled documents. -R, --reveal Selects in the Finder instead of opening. -W, --wait-apps Blocks until the used applications are closed (even if they were already running). --args All remaining arguments are passed in argv to the application's main() function instead of opened. -n, --new Open a new instance of the application even if one is already running. -j, --hide Launches the app hidden. -g, --background Does not bring the application to the foreground. -h, --header Searches header file locations for headers matching the given filenames, and opens them. -s For -h, the SDK to use; if supplied, only SDKs whose names contain the argument value are searched. Otherwise the highest versioned SDK in each platform is used. -u, --url URL Open this URL, even if it matches exactly a filepath -i, --stdin PATH Launches the application with stdin connected to PATH; defaults to /dev/null -o, --stdout PATH Launches the application with /dev/stdout connected to PATH; --stderr PATH Launches the application with /dev/stderr connected to PATH to Examples: View a MD file in Marked 2.app: open -a Marked\ 2 markdown.md ...

This post appeared in my feed: # 7 Reasons why I don’t write Nobody’s going to read it anyway Let’s be honest: nobody likes to shout into the void. Everyone wants their content to be seen, and social validation is the sweet sweet dopamine reward we all crave. … Don’t underestimate how many people actively read personal blogs though! The web dev community is especially fond of RSS, and with the Fediverse gaining more and more popularity, original content on your own domain has a much better reach now than before. ...

Cloud storage, for me at least, is becoming too vulnerable and time consuming to manage. It is also a huge pit for data hording, take Photos for example, so many old and irrelevant images going back years just sitting there on the cloud gathering pixel dust. With that in mind I have decided, that this year I am moving back to local storage and away from the likes of Google and One Drive. I have repurposed my old Mac Mini as a local storage server. The 2012 machine has a very low power foot print using around 10W in idle, better than many dedicated NAS devices I have used. ...