The first thing in the upgrade blurb is “WordPress 7.0 introduces the foundation for AI across the platform…”
Just what I wanted, more useless bloat, but also bloat that plagiarizes, kills the environment and more. Whee.
Anyway, I’ll have a post soon about the other changes, which will probably irritate me in some way, because people hate change and I’m a people.
At least the AI nonsense is opt-in.
Yes, sort of! It’s called the Details block and I never looked at it until just now.
Will I go back and change all the shortcode spoilers? This is not a spoiler: No.
Yes, this blog still works for posting things that are not running or birding related.
The lack of posts (other than for the topics mentioned above) has made me think, which happens occasionally. Why am I not posting much? Is it a general sense of contentment that leaves me so fulfilled that I don’t have any inclination to post about concerns, complaints or conundrums here?
As the kids would say, lol no.
I think it’s a few things:
I think about writing a lot. This is actually a good sign, as it usually means I’m on the verge of getting back into the habit.
And now, typing cat:
Before I installed WordPress on this site, I coded up something in HTML for people to enjoy in the interim.
Here it is:
I believe that’s supposed to be a trademark symbol at the end that didn’t translate properly. But the page loaded superfast.
I remain an internet dork.
I started this blog with my first post on February 4, 2005 and as of this post right here, I now have 6,040 entries. I knew I was getting close to 6,000 but then kind of forgot about it until I saw another blog post talking about blogging (how meta), which made me check the stats here.
This averages to around 287 posts per year, or a little less than once per day, though if you check the posts widget on the sidebar, you’ll see my volume increased quite a bit starting around September 2015, when I began posting 1–2 times per day because I declared anything that popped into my head fair game to record here.
My posting pace started flagging a bit in the last few years for various reasons as life and other things distracted me, but I’m working on getting back into that “post anything” mentality, because some of my best/weirdest writing has come out of that.
I really want to end this with typing cat again, but I will resist.
Or maybe I’ll use a different typing cat instead!
It turns out I am so used to the default block editor in WordPress that the Classic Editor now feels alien and strange.
Going forward, I’ll adopt a compromise position by using the Classic block to emulate that old school feel when I need it.
For example, this paragraph is using the Classic block. I can go completely bonkers™ on formatting here if I want. And sometimes I do want.
And now, typing cat:
For a long time, I resisted using Gutenberg with WordPress. It’s the default block-based editor used for crafting your artisanal posts about kittens and retrocomputing.
Reducing every paragraph to a block that could be shuffled about was not very useful to me, since my site is an old-timey blog that is just lots of text and some photos and drawings. I don’t need sexy layout options and the need to move content around in convenient blocks has only ever happened a few times over many years.
I also disliked that Gutenberg turned paragraphs into monolithic structures, where only basic formatting could be applied. Sure, I could make things bold or italicized. But what if I wanted to make my text red because I had something alarming to say? Gutenberg doesn’t allow that.
So I’m trying the Classic Editor plugin. I’ll see how it feels to be doing WordPress again, pre-2018 style.
What the title says. The text logo is…fine, but it’s not even actual text, it’s an image of text. And it’s a little plain. I feel like I need to go all 2005 retro for this.
Although it does disturb me a bit that 2005 is now retro.
Here is one I whipped up in Canva a few years ago that I did not use, because even I have my limits:
What a weird way to end the month. I’ll explain more later, hopefully because in part I will be posting more. I guess we’ll see!
This does mean I got in an average of one post per day, so there’s that.
Have two cats:
Or at least the website is, now. I’ve changed up the colour scheme again, going with an icy blue theme to reflect our wintry cold. Mostly, I just wanted a change.
For future reference, it looks like this:
Also, if John Gruber was dead, he’d be spinning in his grave because the header font is Aptos. Yes, Aptos! (I was lazy and just grabbed a font that was handy. I may change it later.)
The next experiment in design might be to go with some kind of dark mode style. I wish WordPress had a built-in way to switch between light and dark themes (you have to use a plugin). It seems like an obvious thing to add, vs. whatever AI nonsense they’re planning to shove in.
Along with approximately 1 million other small websites! Here’s the link to the giant mosaic of thumbnails you can pan around and zoom in on:
One million (small web) screenshots
I found this link in one of Andreas’ weekly link dumps here.
It captured the site on August 25, 2025, when I posted about having 30 apps on my iPhone that needed updating and how I refused to update them.
That number is now 38.
I have tried adding various dark mode toggles to the site and all have not looked quite right, which keeps me from sticking with them. If you read this site and find it too bright, it actually looks pretty good in the reader mode of most browsers. Reader mode will work on individual posts, but not from the main page.
I’ll continue to look into better light/dark solutions. And I may tweak the colours (again) for 2026. Maybe I’ll go dark mode.
I’m also playing around with how to display categories and such. The dropdown menus are space efficient but look a bit utilitarian. On the other hand, they almost have a retro charm now. Another thing to ponder.
Here is a cat celebrating the new year.
I like the personal touch of it being signed by Cat.