New moon is the beginning of the cycle, so that means planning for the next four weeks. There are a few areas that I need to get started on, so this is the perfect time to ruminate on them.

First is a need to get back to making things for 1000s of cats as opposed to the last couple of months. I was in admin mode since July. It feels like a lot of the business side of the band has a system now. There was a lot of figuring out how to do things due to rogue waves. I need to make things, whether it is free digital downloads, podcasts, ringtones, or whatever.

The second thing that is going to start is the website. It is currently using static HTML files with some JSON files for the shows. We need to switch the site to Drupal for a few reasons. One being that I would like to communicate with our mailing list. I've looked into all the services, and our list is approaching the size where we'd have to pay a monthly fee to send out emails.

Another reason for going with a CMS is that we can edit and add to the site at rehearsals, commuting, and shows. Do band stuff while in band mode. Use all that waiting-around time purposely. Also, I can set things up so that everyone can update content. Currently, only I can, and it isn't fair. No one wants to ask someone else if things can get updated.

Yet another reason to do this is getting everything into one spot. We have so much info spread out over tons of apps, folders, and files. We need a spot that is where everything is and is accessible and editable by everyone. Fun to plan but feel the need to convince myself this is a good move.

I have a morning shortcut I run that runs a bunch of other micro shortcuts. An example would be one that selects a random verb for me to focus on today in Japanese.

Since I just moved over from Things 3 to Reminders, I needed to update a lot of shortcuts to add Reminders for today in from the the shortcuts. It took me a second to figure it out. Hopefully this will help someone else in the future with this too.

Reminder for Today (right now)

1. Add the "Add New Reminder" action to your Shortcut.
2. Add your text to the "Reminder" box.
3. Select where the reminder will go or leave it as Inbox.
4. Click on "No Alert" and set it to Alert.
5. Leave it set to "At Time".
6. Right click on the last box (2:00) and choose Current Date.

Other Idea

Play with the Adjust Date action to have the Reminder set to some time later.

There were some missing description fields on a site I was working on. I filled them in because that is what one does when you find an empty description field or alt tag. This, of course, made me worried about all the other sites we maintain. So I started in on checking them.

Since the sites I am working on are with Drupal, I needed to figure out the quickest yet easiest way to get a spreadsheet of nodes with missing descriptions. Views popped into my mind right away because Views can make a table. You can quickly set up a view with the fields you need to check on.

Here is my hacky way of getting the info out of Drupal and into a spreadsheet. I was able to get all the information I needed from five sites in under ten minutes with this though.

1. Make a view and name it something you can remember (ex: junk).
2. Make a block in your view and set it to table under format.
3. Add the fields you need to check on. Mine are Title, Description, and Link to Content.
4. Set Link to Content to output the URL as text and to use absolute link.
5. In the preview, you will now have a table of all your content. Copy that table and paste it into your spreadsheet app.
6. Delete the view if you are done with it.

There are probably other ways but this gets the job done for me.

This site uses the Drupal CMS (content management system) which has a vast amount of modules you can use to have your site do so many things. My thing lately is choosing one module and test/ruminate on it while working on other things.

So instead of just testing content migration using CSV files, I am daydreaming about as many ways to integrate that into this site (and others). Having a source of truth csv file is good way to work on content. It has made my band's website less of a nightmare to update and maintain.

The next module I did a little deep dive into was the Rate module. It lets you have things like five stars or a thumbs up feature. The Rate module is going to be fun for the albums i listen to. I want some sort of marker for albums I should revisit in the future.

The thing to ruminate on with the Rate module is when to use each feature. Do you go with stars or thumbs? If I add a star rating system to albums, am I really going to listen to a two star album in the future?

It's fun to ponder but it is also a little easier to ponder and test the modules one by one.

I was doing some testing of a module called Feeds yesterday. I am migrating a ton of old blog posts to this blog. It is a perfect test for migrating data via .csv file with the module. The last time I tried it out with a large set of albums, the module choked on importing the tags. This time around, it imported about 90 plus albums I listened to with the tags in one import. That ruled. I tried it out again with a bunch of old blog posts, and it imported them all as well. That ruled even more.

Past is a Slight Pain

Setting up the .csv file to import old data isn't the most fun task. It is a lot better than doing things one by one, though. Since all my old info is in .txt and .md files, I am sure there is a way to get it into a .csv. I am actually having good luck doing that lately with various tools. This is a do this in chunks while listening to a long podcast or audiobook task. Lots of tidying.

Excited For the Future

Getting new information into a .csv file is a breeze. So many apps allow you to append to a .csv file, like Shortcuts, Drafts, etc.

For example, I can Shazam what I am listening to right now and have it append it as text to a .csv file with an Apple Shortcut. Now I can import the list of things I listened to with three clicks in the blog. That is magical.

When you start doing it with a Watch or voice command, then it becomes 2001: Space Odyssey level. You can start doing things like voice dictating ideas into blog posts. Capture all the thoughts from the day into a spreadsheet, edit all the random thoughts together, and set up a blog post. Again...three clicks to post.

Save the .csv file in the right spot, and you can post from a phone. That is wizard level. That is get things done on a train level or while you are killing time at soundcheck level.

Lately, I am all about having a starting point or anchor point. When I am stuck on where to begin tasks, chores, or errands and I can't decide where to begin, there is the starting point. Go there and head out.

In computer mode it is the to-do app where all things flow into. For home mode, I start at the back right corner of the office/living room and work out from there. On drums it is a paradiddle on the snare but lately it is a half-time shuffle.

The goal for me with a fixed starting point is to eliminate the "where to start" and "what to start on" decisions. If I can get moving on things, I'll keep going for hours. Getting going is the slog through the mire for me. 

I wanted to make an "on this day in history" block to see if there are any interesting patterns with my music listening history. It is doable with a View block in Drupal with a little bit of setup. The block shows a list of albums that I listened to on today's date from every year in the past (5/15/2024, 5/15/2023, etc.).

You will be making a block with at least two contextual filters that look at the current month and current day. They will only allow content that match today's month and date. Setting up a block like this is excellent practice for working with contextual filters in Views.

Steps

Setup your View

Make a view with a block set to only show whatever content type you are posting (Page, Article, etc.).

Setup the Fields

Add whatever fields you want to display in your block. Title will work as a bare minimum.

Setup the Contextual Filters

You are going to create two contextual filters which is located in the Advanced area.

1. Select the filter for "Content: Created month" and click apply. Under "When the filter value is NOT available", choose Provide Default Value and set the Type to Current Date. Click apply this display.
2. Select the filter for "Content: Created day" and click apply. Under "When the filter value is NOT available", choose Provide Default Value and set the Type to Current Date. Click apply this display.

You should now have two Contextual filters:

• Content: Created month (Default: Current date)
• Content: Created day (Default: Current date)

Setup the Filter Criteria (optional)

If you are ok having this current year's posts in your block then skip this. If you need to NOT have posts from the current year in your block, you need to set up one more filter.

1. Add a new filter and choose what field you are using as a source for your date. Mine is "Content: Authored on".

• For the operator select "Is less than.
• For the value type select "An offset from the current time such as "+1 day" or "-2 hours -30 minutes"
• For the value, enter "first day of this year"
• For the granularity, select day.

Add the Block to your Site

Now you can place your new block wherever you want and it will show you a list of content from the current day.

This is the first day of the new season on this blog. This new season is me opening up old blogs posts from this day in the past that are stored in text files, adding them to this site retroactively, reviewing them, and learning from them, and staying on nodding terms with past me. 

I went to my folder of past posts from 2011 and the was only one post on 05/15 for all the years. That post happened in 2022. There was only one word...

"tech"

I am not even going to try to sort out that mystery. ( @ _ @ )

I ran across the idea of using moon phases as triggers to get things done. It has really stuck with me. It's one of those plain as the nose on your face level ideas. When you buy a daily planner or use a digital calendar, there is usually a moon phase in there or easy to add. It is cyclical.

Just for fun, I asked an AI to assist me with organizing my to-do system but align it with the moon. It gave me a lot of ideas to play around with in the future. There was one idea that made me point at the screen and say, "That rules!"

It told me to use the moon phase icons on my projects . That is genius. That is taking an icon and using it at full power. I can tell I love the idea because I had to rush to blog about it.

Here is what it suggested:

🌑 New Moon: Planning, starting new projects
🌓 First Quarter: Action, building momentum
🌕 Full Moon: Completion, evaluation
🌗 Last Quarter: Reflection, clearing

It could be a Kanban . It can be done with a .txt file. It can be done in an app. It can be done with paper. The actual moon could be a trigger for project review.

Oh look...today is the new moon, I should review all projects in planning phase.

I am stoked to start implementing this. Project organization is not my most favorite, so anything to make it easier to do, easier to understand, and kind of fun rules.

: If this is an idea from someone somewhere, let me know so I can credit them here.
: Kanban is pronounced kahn-bah. Full stop.