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Quickly posting
Fremantle
· blogging ·
iOS Shortcuts for WordPress Bloggers, by Kris, 2 January 2025:
You may have noticed I’m posting a lot more lately. It’s partly because I’m not working, plus a bit of conscious effort… plus a couple effort-saving shortcuts I’ve set up.
In the past, I used to share images to Instagram and then had an IFTTT applet run to post those images to WordPress as blog posts. I wanted to flip that model and instead first post to my own site, and THEN have the option of sharing to Instagram or other social networks. The solution I’ve landed on is to use an iOS Shortcut as a Share Sheet action. That means I take a photo, click the Share button, and then click the Post with Pic shortcut.
It's a small thing perhaps, but I do think that making it quick to create a post is an important part of any blogging set-up — and can help with the feeling that blogging is "too hard" or that it's just quicker to use social media. (There was another post I saw recently about why it's good to host your own stuff, but weirdly I can't find it again now.)
Three walking paths in Fremantle
Fremantle
· Fremantle · trails · walking · OSM ·
I've noticed, thanks to Waymarked Trails, three new walking trails around Fishing Boat Harbour (new to OSM, that is). My first thought was that these are joining up the Americas Cup plaques that are spotted around the place, but I'm not really sure.
I think I'd better go for a walk.
Nineteen trail markers
Fremantle
· OSM · Fremantle · walking ·
So I went for a walk, and found nineteen pink crayfish trail markers.
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First up, I stopped at Bill Campbell's bookshop, and bought a copy of A Place of Consequence. He was telling me about when they replaced the floor in that building, twenty years ago, and the fact that there's no cellar there.
My search for the walking trail started at the shipwrecks galleries, where I found a Maritime Heritage Marker:
But then, not far away was the first pink crayfish (or orange lobster, I guess, if we're to follow the tourism guidelines).
After that I had to walk down towards Bathers Beach, but there were no markers to be found at all, and no indication of where to walk. I had to carry on, and around in front of the Fisherman's Coop and over the road before I found a second marker. Then it started to seem that this trail might actually exist (and that I was even following it in the right direction, if the direction of the pink antennae was anything to go by).
The third plaque was in much better condition, because it's mounted vertically on some wooden steps. It pointed to the right along the boardwalk, but the map said that there was meant to be a loop up around Bon Scott's statue. There was no sign of that though. This was the first plaque with a visible QR code, but it resolved to http://11631286 which didn't seem quite right.
Another one, this time in good condition and with a functioning QR code. It goes to https://www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/marine/MAC_M_Fremantle_Boat_Harbour_Walking_Map.pdf (here's a local copy in case that disappears).
After the boardwalk, Little Creatures had a bunch of closely-spaced ones, and then on the other side of the road was the actual main sign board that explained the whole thing.
After that sign things were easy, although oddly one of the markers further along is marked "start/finish" and points across the road. There doesn't seem to be any on the other side of the road, so I guess it was just put in the wrong place. The last marker I could find was back where I started at the maritime museum (I walked past it to start with.
So all up, I think it's definitely a trail, although some fixes are needed in the OSM relation. The map says 12 minutes, but I took 45 (being a dawldling nerd with a camera).
No database of photos
Fremantle
I seem to be giving up (for now) on the idea of a database of photos that I've taken. A while ago it occurred to me that it's silly to keep all photos together just by virtue of the fact that I was the one to click them. Far more useful to sort and store them by usage and proximity to other data.
So I'm experimenting with a document-centric approach, where a wiki page serves as what in other systems might be a tag or album or category. Photos (and other files) can be embedded into that page, and gain their metadata from the page and their place within it. It's looser approach, more like a scrapbook or commonplace book, and I will probably also add at least some per-file metadata (e.g. time and coordinates) at some point. Most of what I want in a record-per-photo system I seem to now be getting from a combination of a calendar view and some manually created lines on a map.
Buffalo archive room sorting
Fremantle
· Buffalo Club · Fremantle ·
This evening we pulled all of the non-cupboard stuff out of the archive room at the Buffalo Club, and somewhat sorted it. At least, it's organised by size and fragility, and is ready for the next step. It's nice to get a bit of a handle on what's there and what needs to be done.
I'm taking an old frame home to refurbish and see if it can have new glass. Looks pretty solid, in the timber.