I knew one of my New Year goals was going to be to get rid of some of the clutter I’ve accumulated over the years. As fate would have it, a Kindle deal popped up a few days ago and shined light upon the path that I should take. I managed to snag The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up for cheap.

It was like the gods themselves were speaking to me.

Marie Kondō developed her KonMari method of tidying after years of attempting to achieve perfection. She teaches you how to clean your home once and never let it fall back into disarray. Yeah, I wasn’t completely convinced either. And, to be honest, I’m still working with her method to see how it turns out. Like most self-help books, I think a part of you must be willing and ready to take on a change in your life for it to truly work.

Because it’s going to take me a bit to make it through Stage 1 (there are only two stages), I can’t comment on how life-changing this book really is. I can simply review the book at this point. In the future, I’d like to do a part 2 of this review on the method and how things worked out.

The entire book could’ve been one well-written and succinct blog post. But, you can’t sell a few million copies of a blog post. Plus, a book helps reiterate the same principles over and over, drilling them into your mind.

I read through The Life-Changing Magic in one night. It’s a short read, coming in at little more than 200 pages. If you’re serious about wanting to declutter your home, the reading commitment is minimal.

I spent much of the time while reading thinking that the author sounded like someone who needed professional help. Many excerpts were a retelling of her desires, even from childhood, to be neat and tidy. I’m talking to the point of being obsessive about it. I wondered if her methods would translate over to those of us who didn’t spend our childhoods compulsively organizing and cleaning everything. Then again, maybe that’s the perfect type of person to teach the rest of us lazy slobs how to get our house in order.

Much of the advice is geared specifically toward women. I have no doubt that is Kondō’s primary audience, so it makes sense to lean that direction. However, it would’ve been nice to acknowledge that some men might be reading the book and offer practical advice specific to the them. This wasn’t enough to detract from the book’s message, but it was noticeable enough to be a minor annoyance.

With 200 pages, I thought that the book would dive into more practical advice. Things like the clothing-storage methods make sense, and I’m ready to start trying those. The book needed far more of these practical tips to be worth the page count. I’ve heard that Spark Joy, the illustrated sister book, offers more of what I was looking for.

The message that hit home with me is the one of ridding your life of things that you find no joy in. This is a feeling I’ve been having for some time now. I have possessions that do not bring me joy. Why do I have them? Kondō was able to articulate those feelings for me and provide a plan of action for confronting and dealing with them.

As a book, it needed a few more revisions and to be fleshed out with more practical advice. As for the content, the message, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be living a peaceful and clutter-free life six months from now.

Some readers will find Kondō to be batshit crazy (she does talk to inanimate objects) and, in true KonMari fashion, discard this book because it does not spark joy. Others, well, we’re probably crazy enough to give her advice a try.

I’m withholding my star rating for this book until I can decide how life-changing this book truly is by putting Kondō’s methods into practice.

Artemis, by Andy Weir, follows a foul-mouthed, 20-something Saudi woman named Jazz. The story takes place in the only city on the moon, from which the book is named. She grew up without a mother, spent her childhood around welders and other laborers, and lives in the dregs of the city. After a falling out with her father, she got a job as a porter, using it to smuggle contraband into the city.

When one of her wealthy clients (the sort of folks who can afford to have things shipped to the moon) asks her to take on a new job, she turns him down. But, when she hears how much money she’ll be making, 1,000,000 slugs (the currency on Artemis), she accepts without blinking. This leads to a series of events that will forever change the most charming little city on the moon.

Weir knows something about humans that some people may find hard to stomach. By the time humanity has created the first 2,000-person city on the moon, we won’t be living in a utopia where everyone lives by today’s politically-correct standards. Just because we’ve advanced technologically doesn’t mean that we’ve changed our ways. On Artemis, each race still has their own little sections where they stick together. The wealthy have lavish property that could house hundreds while the little people live in the bowels of the city, many in units dubbed “coffins.” Oh, and the mob launders money through one of the largest businesses on the moon.

Jazz’s ultimate goal in life is to make more money so that she can live like a queen, at least relative to her current situation. Pretty much on par for what most poor folk aspire to. And, she’s willing to break a rule or two or ten to get there.

I made the mistake of reading a few other reviews of Artemis. It seems that people either love it or hate it. But, many of the people hate it because they don’t believe a woman and her gay, ex-friend can behave in the way that these characters behave. I find these reviewers to be narrow-minded people at best. If you try to group everyone in boxes, you’ll be sorely disappointed when you get smacked upside the head with the truth—humans are vastly different. The only boxes that we fit in are our own. People come in all shapes and forms. And, sometimes, these characters from their own, unique boxes make their way into novels.

Jazz is crass, rude, and makes childish sex jokes. If that’s not your cup of tea, so be it. But, step outside of your bubble sometime.

Not every book needs to cater to far Left, holier-than-thou political correctness.

I shouldn’t need to qualify that statement, but I say it as a self-proclaimed liberal. If the characters hurt your sensitivities, grow the fuck up. Otherwise, go back to reading YA romances where everyone lives happily ever after and the characters have about as many dimensions as a sheet of paper.

Frankly, I’m tempted to add a star to my own rating because the book pissed off a bunch of pansies who believe that women should only speak and act like a princess. I won’t. But, I’m still tempted.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent for a bit there.

If you go into this book looking for something akin to Asimov or Philip K. Dick, you won’t find it. Looking for an earth-shattering, mind-altering analysis of what it means to be human? Nope. Not here either.

But, if a heist-like adventure on the moon that follows a woman who may as well have grown up with sailors is your thing, it’s worth a read.

I’ve never read Weir’s The Martian, but I watched the movie. It’s what led me to pick up this novel. I was looking for something different and wasn’t initially in the right frame of mind for this story. Still, something was lacking. The work didn’t move me in any way. I wasn’t particularly invested in any of the characters. At times, the humor was smart and snuck up on you, but most of it was too on the nose.

Part of me just kept reading to see what kind of craziness was coming next for Jazz. Not every book need be some life-changing affair. Some works can be purely lowbrow entertainment.

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

After reading Marie Kondō’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I was a bit motivated to begin my journey into a tidier and more peaceful life. At first, I made a plan to simply throw out a bag of stuff each day to get myself started. However, I quickly realized that I didn’t feel like I was making any sort of progress. Even Kondō is against incremental tidying.

I was hesitant to do a big project. I have a lot going on both personally and professionally. However, this need to tidy things has spilled its way over into all other aspects of my life, creating mental clutter.

I started binge-watching her show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondō, on Netflix. This was a nice compliment to the book. It allowed me to see firsthand people who had much more clutter than me (I honestly don’t have a lot of material possessions in comparison to many, but I suppose it’s all relative). I got to see things from more of a male perspective through the men in the show. And, Kondō’s presence on the screen has an oddly calming effect. She allows the people to apply her methods. She’s never bossy or makes anyone feel bad about the things that they like.

With renewed vigor for this looming project, I started anew. The first lesson is clothes. And, I was happy it was clothes. That’s an easy category for me. I have few qualms about tossing clothes, and it was an easy start because I didn’t have that many to work through.

Yesterday, I literally touched every item of clothing I own, including things like linens and towels.

For the most part, this was more about throwing out things that needed to be thrown out. Socks with holes. T-shirts that I hadn’t worn in a year or two. Pajamas that I’ve never worn but felt guilty about throwing away because they were gifts. A lot of things were trashed because they’d outlived their usefulness. However, I was able to give away things that still had plenty of life left in them.

The hardest part of this process for me was when I came upon an old, long-sleeved, orange shirt I used to wear. It was thicker than a normal T-shirt and made for good loungewear. I can’t remember how many times, particularly in college, where I’d come home after a long day and slip it on and all my problems would seem less significant. When I put that shirt on, it meant I was serious about doing some relaxing. The shirt had served its purpose in my life though. It was the first article of clothing that I truly felt like thanking for the gift of comfort over the years. I wanted to keep it. However, I didn’t see it being particularly useful for my life going forward.

I had a few similar items of clothing. But, I’m not one to be overly sentimental about clothes. Some bring back some good memories, but I’m mostly fine letting go.

The biggest surprise I had was how many pairs of socks I’d accumulated. I don’t know the exact number, but I’d guess it was around 60-70 pairs. Most of them were worn out and not something I’d worn in a year or two. They were just stuffed into a drawer. Seeing them all at once was a bit shocking. I’m by no means a hoarder when it comes to clothes, but that was a lot of frickin’ socks. I’m now down to about 20 pairs, most of which I got for Christmas.

I feel good about the process. Last night, I had a bit of a headache from all of the work. Today, I’ve felt much lighter.

Oh, and if you’re wondering after viewing the photo above, I don’t have a chest of drawers. Mine was stolen at some point several years ago, and I’ve never gotten a new one. Now, I’m not sure that I actually need one. :)

The next step is books. This will be a tougher category for me. But, I know there’s a number sitting on the shelves that I’ll never look at again and can go to a better home.

I remember when Eragon by Christopher Paolini blew up. I was in college. I remember friends and family telling me I must read this book. They told me it was written by a teenager. They said it was better fantasy than even seasoned authors were writing.

They were wrong.

At 15, most of us were not writing 500+ pages of epic fantasy. I applaud Paolini for his skills at that age. He was well beyond his years. The problem was that Eragon needed an editor who was vicious. A good editor who could look a kid in the eye and tell him what was wrong. Or, good beta readers. If you’re going to jump into the big kids’ pool, you can’t be wearing your floaties when you do.

Eragon is best marketed as a young adult novel. It’s not Tolkien or Martin.

Most readers will love the book if they devoured it at a younger age and it either introduced them to the joy of reading or the world of fantasy. Adults who are a bit more well read will see its many flaws. If I had read it 15 years ago, I may be singing a different tune.

I picked up the book back in college. I’d always intended to read it. But, it got lost in the steady stream of books through the college years. Like most books in my collection, it survived many shelves at the various places I’ve lived. It was packed and re-packed as I moved. And, I finally made a decision to read it as I dusted it off during my tidying journey.

Eragon is standard fantasy. It follows a teen boy named Eragon and his dragon named Saphira. An old man teaches him the ways of becoming a dragon rider, the secrets of a gifted few thought to have died out long ago. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking. It’s like Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings with a dragon. It’s your classic hero’s journey that crosses vast swathes of land over many months, all culminating in an epic battle in the end.

There’s nothing new under the sun. Yes, I know. I’m okay with rehashing plots from existing fantasy works. What matters is the story. Plot is what happens to the characters. Story is how the characters react and grow because of or in spite of the plot. Aside from Murtagh, one of the secondary characters, no one grows. He was the only character that I was invested in.

The pacing made reading a bit more of a chore than it should’ve been. As is often the case with young writers, Paolini relied too much on describing irrelevant details instead of focusing on the narrative. A good editor would have used her red pen to slash 100-150 pages worth of words from this book. I can read a well-written novel of equal length by a great author, such as Brandon Sanderson, in half the time it took me to sloth through this work.

It was not without its high points. The magic system was well thought out. There were real, physical consequences, which I love far more than magic being available just because. And, the author hit all of the notes he needed to make for a somewhat decent work of high fantasy.

Paolini’s first work proves that he has the chops, the skill necessary to write good fiction. While I haven’t experienced anything more recent of his, I can only hope that he has improved since this first outing.

I just so happened to be in the mood for elves, dwarves, and dragons. That played to Paolini’s advantage. I could forgive a lot of issues for a bit of an adventure, a few days of escapism. So, I’m feeling generous with my rating today.

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

There’s been a lot of backlash against Marie Kondō and her KonMari method of tidying in the last week or so as the crowd of folks making their way through the program get to Lesson #2: Books.

And, rightfully so. Many of us take our book collections seriously.

I’m an avid believer that we should fill our lives with as many books as possible. I’ve seen homes with stacks and stacks of books coming from the floor because the owner ran out of shelf space. I love it. I’m amazed by it. My mind doesn’t immediately think clutter if it’s books.

I admit that when I was reading the The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I felt different about books than Kondō did. I wasn’t sure how I’d make it through the process. I failed in my attempt to discard books in 2018. Was this going to be the stopping point in my journey for 2019?

The one point where I vehemently disagree with Kondō is her position that most books will only get read when you first purchase them. While I can see that being true for many, it’s simply not the case for me. I’ll often look through my unread books on a rainy weekend afternoon and start reading something that’s been awaiting its moment to be read. The perfect time to read a book is whenever you pluck it from the shelf and open the first pages. I just read Eragon because I found it during this tidying process.

For some people, many of their books may more appropriately fit into Lesson #5: Sentimental Items. Jumping from what’s typically an easy category like clothes to something near and dear to your heart, like your book collection, can be a daunting process. If parting ways with books will be a huge struggle for you, I’d almost recommend doing it as the last part of the tidying process and skipping ahead to Lesson #3: Papers.

After spending a year with my Kindle, I don’t foresee buying many new physical copies of books unless they are special. This has lightened the load on me.

Still, I struggled with this process. A good 80% of the books I touched sparked some sort of joy within me. I couldn’t just let them go. However, the question I had to ask myself was whether a particular book was something I could see as part of my life going forward.

There were two things that got me through this process:

1. I wasn’t going to let myself feel bad about anything I wanted to keep, which is in line with the KonMari method.
2. I broke things down into steps and thoughtfully worked through those steps over the course of the week.

Step 1: Discarding

The easiest way to kick-start this process was to get all my books out. Then, I grabbed a tote. I proceeded with the KonMari method of touching each book and awaiting a spark of joy. If it was something that I didn’t like, it went into the tote.

By the time I was done, I had overfilled my tote with things that I wouldn’t ever read again. Things I wouldn’t lend to a neighbor. And, things that I simply didn’t want to keep on my shelves. Recognizing titles that I absolutely didn’t want was crucial first step.

These books are now ready for donation to Goodwill or the public library.

Step 2: Giving

During the initial process, I also started making several stacks of books that I wasn’t sure about. Many of them I enjoyed. I was in this gray area where I couldn’t see myself letting them go but probably wasn’t going to read again.

So, I made two boxes. One for my sister, which was mostly fiction. One for my dad, which was mostly religious and gardening books. My sister has since gone through her box and took about 90% of them. My dad will get his soon.

This made the act of letting go easier. I may one day have these books returned to me as the family rotates books around. And, if I never see them again, that’s okay. I know they’re going to a good home where they’ll be read, which is the most important thing for a book.

Step 3: Sorting

In the photograph above, there’s a little over 100 books. These are titles that I haven’t read yet, have read but want to read again, or just want to display. The top shelf is devoted to reference books that I can quickly grab when needed.

It’s nice having the things I’m most likely to pick up all in one place. This was the biggest benefit of going through this decluttering process with books. I hated going through unpacked boxes attempting to find something. And, yes, it’s been several years since I’ve moved without unpacking some stuff.

The rest of my books are on other shelves or in a box in the closet for the moment. I need to get proper bookshelves at some point in the future.

Final thoughts

While I didn’t do an official count, I kept about half of my books. Probably in the neighborhood of 300. I’m sure there are others with much more massive collections. This was a tough enough job for me.

I feel good about where I’m at. The goal was to tidy my books. To organize them. Keep titles that sparked joy. I’ve accomplished that mission.

It’s hard to avoid the Bird Box craze these days. Ever since Netflix dropped its new movie based on the book by Josh Malerman, memes of a blindfolded Sandra Bullock have taken over my social networking feeds. People (in the real world) are even taking a challenge by getting into their cars and driving blind on public roads.

Thrillers are not my typical fair. I like them in small doses and far between. But, Amazon had a sale. The book was cheap. And, folks seem to love the book. So, I was game. I needed a breather between heavy doses of epic fantasy anyway.

Malerman did not disappoint. I spent part of Saturday night wading through the back yard with my high-beam flashlight as I gathered the remaining cats for bedtime. With each step, I almost felt something move out of the corner of my eye. I’m fairly certain I scanned every inch of the yard for some critter. In my mind, it was one of the local possums searching for food, but I had to be sure. The thing that plagued me was that I never saw a possum. Or anything. That’s what made the book so good. It’s the unknown, the unseen that’s frightening.

Note to self: bring all the cats in for the night before reading thriller/horror books.

The story follows a woman named Malorie as the world experiences an apocalyptic event. Something is causing people to go crazy and commit suicide. All they really know is that it happens when people see something, creating a society of people who board up their homes and only go outside blindfolded. And, Malorie learns that she is pregnant when events first unfold.

The premise for the novel is genius. Not having the ability to see makes every decision more frightening. Simple things like going to the well to draw water or scavenge for canned food become all the more difficult. Will this be the day that I “see something” and kill myself?

The present day plot of the novel follows Malorie and two children, each four years old, as she takes them on a blind boat ride down a river. As they travel into the unknown, to some place that may possibly be their salvation, we get flashbacks of the previous years of her life. We see her grow from a woman who needs help to survive into someone who must face her fears and take charge for the sake of the children.

One of the things that bothered me the most about the book is that the secondary characters were not as fleshed out as they should’ve been. Aside from a few bits and pieces about Tom, the de facto leader of a group Malorie joins, we never learn much about what drives these people outside of survival. And, when you stay with a group for any length of time, you’d think you’d learn more about their backgrounds. Perhaps this is a good thing in some ways because the book was focused on maintaining a mood surrounding the unknown throughout.

The second issue I had was the wrap-up. Without getting into spoilers, I just wanted to add that I wanted a bit more. I liked how the story played out otherwise.

As a thriller, the writing is as solid as it gets. Malerman kept me on edge throughout the entire read. It won’t change your life or have you questioning the nature of man. But, it’s a nice respite from longer works. Most important, it gave me the jitters for a bit.

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

It’s been three months since I made the switch from WordPress to a custom system for my blog. This was one of the toughest and scariest changes I’ve made in the 15+ years I’ve been running this site. What if I break things? What if I’ve wasted all this time for nothing? What if the WP community that I’m very much a part of views this decision as a betrayal of sorts?

I’m happy to report that I’m in a better place now.

For the vast majority of the years I’ve been blogging, I relied on WordPress to always be there and working. It held onto memories from nearly half of my life, like old journals packed into a cardboard box in the back of the closet.

In many ways, I was too reliant on it. WordPress was a drug that I no longer enjoyed but kept using because I depended on it. I believe stepping away has made me a better blogger and a better developer.

More blogging

I’ve written 31 posts since the changeover, more than I’d written in the prior three years altogether. I could’ve certainly been a more prolific blogger on WordPress or any platform. However, I needed that extra push, that rush of excitement with something new, something that got down to the roots of what it is to blog, to force me back into a habit of writing.

Completing National Novel Writing Month in November certainly helped me write more. During that time, I was pushing out nearly 2,000 words every day. More than anything, that challenge helped me focus on the task at hand while tuning out distractions.

Mostly, I wanted to write more. I needed an outlet for my thoughts. And, WordPress wasn’t that for me.

I’ve been writing in a Markdown editor for several years now (currently Atom). Even my first blog posts ever written were in Notepad for Windows and uploaded to a basic HTML site. I’ve never taken to visual editors or even programs like Microsoft Office. Even while typing, I wanted an experience that’s as close to pen and paper as I can get.

Removing WordPress from the equation has been like taking out the middleman. In the past, I’d write a post, copy/paste it into WordPress, edit any metadata, and publish. Now, I write and edit metadata in a single file. Then, I simply upload and the post is available to the world.

The publishing process is less of a chore for me, which has helped me focus more on the writing aspect.

Faster page loads

My Web site is actually pretty fast, much faster than before. I think most pages on the site now get an “A” performance grade from Pingdom. And, that’s on a cheap hosting package.

In the past, it was a constant battle to disable useless stuff that WordPress adds. Emoji images come to mind (especially when nearly all of my users can see these 🤪 symbols natively). And, I know the new Gutenberg editor auto-adds a big stylesheet on the front end. Not to mention, I’d have to disable stuff from plugins. At a certain point, disabling things became tiring.

Everything on the site is now something that I personally chose to add. Any performance issues are generally of my own making.

With a faster Web site, I don’t have to worry quite as much about adding a large image for fun once in a while. It’s not having to compete with too many other resources. If anything’s slowing me down, it’s Google Analytics, which I begrudgingly kept for the time being.

Admittedly, most of the speed issues could’ve been solved while still using WordPress. However, working from a blank slate rather than having to “fix” things within an existing system has made the process much easier.

Growing as a developer

One of the things that makes WordPress so great is the vast wealth of knowledge freely available on the Web. If you need to figure out how to do something, chances are that someone had the same need first and shared the solution.

When you step into the world of building a custom platform for your Web site, it can feel a bit like trekking through the great unknown. What I’ve learned is that it’s not so scary. The WordPress community is vast, but the overall PHP community is much larger. While I have relied on my own skillset to solve new problems, I’ve been able to lean on the untold numbers of those who’ve come before me.

There’s a certain romanticism to taking this journey. I’ve fallen in love with PHP coding once again, after a string of years where our relationship suffered some bumps and bruises. As a developer, it’s important to broaden my skillset beyond simply writing code for WordPress. And, it’s important to bring what I’ve learned back into my plugin and theme work.

What I miss

My favorite WordPress feature is the ability to quickly drag and drop an image into a post. Even while I wrote blog posts in the past in Markdown, I always used the WordPress media feature to add in my images. WordPress has fairly robust media handling.

However, I quickly adapted. Truth be told, Markdown syntax handles 99% of my image needs. It’s the missing WordPress [gallery] shortcode that will likely give me a headache the next time I want to roll out a gallery. I’m not sure how I’ll handle that in the future, but I don’t post a lot of galleries either.

The second feature that held me back for so long was having a native commenting system. I still feel strongly about my reasons for disabling comments. But, some days, it was nice to strike up a discussion with someone over a post that I wrote. I’m having a few withdrawal symptoms, but I still feel like it was the best decision.

The third and final thing I miss is the ability to quickly fix a mistake I notice when browsing the site on my phone. Because I’ve yet to build an admin interface, opting to do everything offline, I must be on my computer to make quick changes. It’s a minor annoyance once in a while but not enough to get me to build out an admin interface.

What’s in store for the future

I don’t see myself going back anytime soon. I’m having fun and am enjoying the current platform that I’m building.

If anything, I might continue fleshing out the code so that it can be used by others. I’m not in a hurry to do that, but I suspect I’ll turn the project into a public repository at some point this year. Maybe others can build something cool on top of it (I’d really love to see a Vue.js-based admin interface, for example).

I’ll also continue bringing techniques that I learn along the way into my WordPress plugin and theme projects at Theme Hybrid. I’m excited about one of the plugins that I’m working on and am eager to make it public.

Over the years, I’ve purchased an untold number of calendars, planners, and other things that are supposed to help me better organize my work, school, and life. I’d walk into a bookshop or office supply store, browse their offerings for an hour or so, maybe pick up a new pen, and walk out with this excited feeling about how I was finally going to keep organized. I just knew that this planner that I carefully selected with its inspirational quotes and perfectly-outlined system was going to be the one.

And, it’d work. For a time.

Eventually, I’d learn that the planner didn’t fit some aspect of my life. Some planners would have too many blank pages that I didn’t utilize. Others would not have enough room for things that were important. I was attempting to wedge my life into a system someone else designed instead of designing the system around my needs.

I’ve been through daily, weekly, and monthly-style planners. Outside of one exercise/workout tracker that was near perfect for me, I never completely filled out a planner.

Digital planners aren’t my thing either. I actually love Google Calendar for reminding me TV/movie times that I want to watch. So many digital offerings are great for what they do. But, most are not customizable down to a personal level.

Enter the bullet journal.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen more and more people talking about bullet journaling. I kind of knew how the original BuJo system worked, but I didn’t know what crazy world I was stepping into when I began researching. There’s this whole corner of YouTube and Instagram where people share some of the most elaborate pieces of art that you’ll ever see as they plan out their year. There’s also the other side where people do “ugly,” or what’s often referred to as “guy,” bullet journals.

No matter what you’re into, there’s something for everybody.

The appeal of a bullet journal is that it’s 100% customizable to fit any individual’s needs. And, there’s nothing that you must buy. Sure, you could purchase The Bullet Journal Method to give back to the creator of the system, but reading the book is not necessary. You only need a notebook and pen. I prefer dot-grid notebooks, but any will do.

One of my New Year goals was to attempt this new system. I’m now 18 days into the journey and don’t feel like trashing my notebook yet. So, that’s a start. I feel like this system could finally be what keeps me organized.

Most of my pages are filled with daily task lists, which is where the real work of the bullet journal method happens. I don’t have many appointments, but I do have tasks that I need to keep track of and make sure I’ve completed. I’d share some examples, but all my task pages have private client names listed at the moment.

I’ve doodled on a few pages. It’s actually kind of relaxing to make a doodle here or there. Nothing elaborate. Mostly scribbles.

Different types of “trackers” are what interests me the most. I didn’t want to add too many trackers at the start. I’ll likely add more as I go along and my needs change. A couple of the things I’m tracking right now are:

• Books: (pictured above) I’m listing the dates I read each book and giving it a star rating. I also do this on Goodreads, but I like having the list handy.
• Contact Lenses: I need to remind myself to more regularly switch to a fresh pair of contacts. Having a tracker for this should help make sure I’m not hurting my eyes by over-wearing them.

Overall, I’m enjoying this system thus far. I felt like I’ve been more productive. I’ve also opened up more time for personal projects on the weekends because I’ve been finishing my regular work during the week.

I had an entire tote of papers, notebooks, and folders from college filled to the brim. Not one of those tiny totes. It was the kind that’d break your back attempting to move it. For the life of me, I could not think of a single reason to hold onto my old German-language notebooks. I wasn’t even particularly fond of the mandatory two semesters of a second language at Auburn University. I was even less fond of my calculus class, so it made no sense to still have a folder with notes and old tests.

Over the course of a brutal three hours, I managed to whittle my mountain of papers down to a much smaller stack of things that were important to me. I kept a heart-tugging tale of one of my first serious girlfriends. I kept a story about an Alzheimer’s patient I got to know while working at a nursing home. I held onto these essays and stories because they helped shape who I am and are a good reminder that I should continue pursuing my dream of one day being a novelist.

I’ve now completed Lesson #3 of Marie Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: Papers.

Fortunately, I had already cleaned out my filing box last year and purged it of unwanted material. Getting rid of cable bills from 2006 was long overdue—if I’d only known about Marie Kondo then. Most of what remained was tax forms, which I’d love to throw into a fire. They don’t spark joy; I have little choice but to keep them.

When it comes to paper, I was once a master-level hoarder.

Years ago, I realized that I didn’t need to hold onto every piece of paper that found its way into my life. At one point, I was saving every magazine, newspaper, and random note jotted onto a scrap of paper. Moving around as much as I did, I had to learn to let go. Lugging around boxes upon boxes of stuff that I’d never read again got tiring after a few moves, so I trashed those things. Until this past weekend, I was still holding onto things that didn’t matter to my life anymore.

The things I did hold onto during this process were things that made me happy. I found it hard to give thanks to old calculus and German course notes. However, I did look back fondly on some of my experiences in those classes. The people I met mattered. The professors. My classmates. The experience is what changed my life, not a question I noted in some random lecture because I thought it might get asked on a test.

I did cross into the sentimental items category (Lesson #5) while in this stage of the tidying process. For me, paper things tend to hold a lot of sentimental value. Old letters and holiday cards should probably be handled in that final stage. But, I rifled through that particular box and sorted it anyway. I didn’t throw out much because I can’t see myself letting most of those items go. However, I did organize them.

In the end, I discarded 4 grocery sacks and one full garbage bag of paper. Not bad for a couple of days of work.

The next step of this process will be komono—miscellaneous items—which encompasses a wide range of things. I’ll probably break it down into sub-categories and tackle one or two over the coming weekends. I imagine this upcoming step will be one of the toughest. Everything from kitchen gizmos to my massive DVD collection will come under review in this stage.

“You thinking about home already, lad, and you just set out in the world? The world will put a hook in your mouth. You’ll set off chasing the sunset, you wait and see…and if you ever go back, your village’ll no be big enough to hold you.”

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. Not only does it describe what The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan is all about, it describes all epic fantasy. It describes anyone who ever sets out into the world beyond their home on a new adventure.

When I was 18, I left home on my own journey. It wasn’t until many years later that I returned to where I grew up. I was a smalltown boy who’d barely stepped foot outside the community where I’d spent most of my life. In many ways, Jordan is right. The place I grew up doesn’t feel big enough to hold me. I have a longing for more.

The Eye of the World is the first entry into Robert Jordan’s magnum opus: The Wheel of Time. It’s classic fantasy. A group of people from a small village set out into the great unknown. They cross vast amounts of land. It all ends in one epic battle.

Sound familiar?

There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking. I’ve seen many fantasy lovers say it’s a cheap ripoff of Tolkien. But, there’s something purely enjoyable about The Eye of the World that takes ahold of the human spirit of adventure in all of us and doesn’t let go.

At over 700 pages, the book never dragged on too much for me, which can tend to happen with epic fantasies (see Eragon review). The plot continued to keep me wanting to find out the next step in the journey. And, I genuinely cared about most of the characters as I watched them change. Over the past two weeks, there wasn’t a night that I didn’t look forward to sitting down with the book for an hour or two and joining Rand al’Thor and his friends on their adventure.

There are more poetic authors out there, but Jordan has an easy-to-read style that’s necessary for such a lengthy work. Some of his descriptions are downright beautiful, such as this scene during a trek through the wilderness:

The land itself was quiet, as if the world were pausing to catch its breath.

Jordan shows his command of the language in bits and pieces without beating you over the head with it. In a year of using my Amazon Kindle, I hadn’t used its highlighting feature. His prose gave me the push I needed to figure out how it worked. There was enough quotable material that I needed to stop and reread some passages to enjoy their beauty for a second time.

On the whole, I loved most of the cast. But, I grew tired of Mat’s character and the dagger storyline. I’m hoping I like him more in future books. At times, I wished Rand, our primary character, would “man up” a bit earlier in the book. I also wished that he’d treat Egwene more like the strong woman that she’s obviously becoming.

What Jordan does as good as anybody is create a vivid and believable world. It has a rich history and good magic system that works within that world. He doesn’t do too much info dumping. You learn about his world as the characters learn, setting out from their small village and adventuring to places that they had only dreamed about.

The Wheel of Time is a 14-book series, which is about as epic as it gets. I’m just one book in, but I’m certain that I’ll continue on to The Great Hunt, the second book in the series.

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

A couple of weeks ago, I sorted several hundred books following Marie Kondō’s system for tidying. It was my first big collection of material items that needed a serious KonMari makeover. While it was tough in some ways, it was a downright breeze in comparison to this weekend’s challenge: DVDs, Blu ray discs, and a couple of useless HD DVDs that I at one point thought would win the format war.

Lesson #4 under Kondō’s direction is komono (miscellaneous items). This is the largest category and encompasses many sub-categories. It’s best to break each of the sub-categories down and tackle them one at a time.

For me, movies and TV shows on DVD is the largest collection of things that I own. I thought it best to handle this job first with the hope that everything else would seem easy in comparison.

Because I’m taking this journey on the weekends only, I actually failed to finish sorting my entire collection in the span of two days. I vastly underestimated how much work it’d be. I got a lot of good work in over the weekend, and it helped me figure out some different ways to tackle the collection.

Does it spark joy?

The question Kondō asks about each item you own is whether it sparks joy.

I’ve been building my collection for going on 18 years. I’ve rummaged garage sales, flea markets, and bargain bins for cheap DVDs. If it even seemed remotely watchable, I’d pick it up. If there’s anything that I’ve ever truly hoarded, it was DVDs. I’ve slowed down a lot in the past couple of years, mostly only purchasing movies and such that I really wanted. But, I’d still pick up the occasional cheap flick.

A while back, my collection had grown so big that I had to start organizing them into smaller sleeves or binders. The movies comfortably fit into a few boxes, but my TV collection was unreal (as shown in the photo at the beginning of this post).

Whether something sparked joy for me didn’t seem the appropriate question. My collection makes me happy. I enjoy always having something available to pick up and watch from a wide variety of genres.

The question I asked myself is whether I’d ever watch a particular movie or series again.

That proved to be a good gauge in deciding how I felt about holding onto something. On the first day, I blew through the movies. I had well over 100 films that I knew for a fact would never be placed in my DVD player again. They’d served their purpose and provided the joy necessary in the moment that I first watched them.

Where I hit a roadblock was with the TV series on the second day. I simply ran out of time to get into the more organizational aspects of the KonMari system. I mostly finished discarding shows that I wouldn’t watch again, but I’d like to do another solid pass.

Going forward

One of my major plans is to rip all of my movies and shows onto a solid storage system with backups. That’s going to be a time-consuming and likely years-long job that goes beyond KonMari.

It’s something I need to do because DVDs, no matter how well you take care of them, don’t necessarily last forever. And, it’d be a lot easier to play them on a computer or over the network (maybe with something like Plex Media Server).

My current plan is to make a vow to not watch anything unless I’ve first ripped it. That way, I can hold myself accountable to this enormous task of cataloging the collection. I figure I’ll get around to everything eventually as I cycle through my movies and shows.

In the meantime, I’m going to jump into another sub-category of komono next weekend and continue down this journey.

Want to plan, draft, and revise a novel in five days?

That’s exactly what Scott King did. And, he outlined his journey in The Five Day Novel.

Over the years, I’ve grown a small collection of writing books. Not many. Just enough to remind myself that I need to keep plugging away until I publish that first novel. I’ve made a vow to myself to read more about the craft from other authors, which is something I need to do on a more regular basis.

After winning NaNoWriMo last year, I’ve become more interested in the topic of writing more words in less time. Every writer has their own process, but I think most of us want to be able to write faster if we can. That’s why The Five Day Novel appealed to me. I didn’t want to take on the challenge of writing a novel in five days, especially after having experienced how tough it was to write a novel-length work in thirty. I wanted some insight into how someone could punch out that many words in such a short time.

The best part about the book was reading the author’s journey. After seeing his struggles, I thought, I’m right there with you, buddy. It’s no small feat to write 50,000 words in a month. It’s insanity to try it in two days, which was the time he took for the first draft (the other days were reserved for outlining and revising). I wouldn’t recommend such a feat for anyone but a seasoned genre author.

The thing I’d really hoped for was more practical advice. While King did provide some good tips (e.g., turn off the Internet, have a soundtrack while writing, eat good, sleep well, and exercise), he didn’t bring anything new to the table. Most of the practical advice was what you’d find in any blog post from 100s of authors rehashed over the Web. It’s not that it was bad advice. These are good things for anyone to do in any creative endeavor.

I suppose a budding novelist makes these book purchases looking for that one piece of advice that will change everything and magically turn them into the next Stephen King. And, it’s always a little bit of a letdown when you don’t get the magic bullet to make it happen. Who knew the secret to writing a novel in five days is to simply hunker down and do the work? 😁

One of King’s focal points is that if you want to be a writer, then simply be a writer. And, that means you must actually write stuff.

The book stands on its own well enough if you go into it simply wanting to follow King’s journey to writing a novel from start to finish in five days. But, don’t expect much more than that.

If you’ve never written a novel and want to finish that first draft to get a feel for the process while learning about yourself as a writer, I recommend No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty instead. It has far more practical advice for getting over the humps in the process. And, it’s a pretty funny read at times. It’s helped me both times I attempted National Novel Writing Month with getting my word counts up.

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

There’s no need to let your family know the details of what you throw out or donate. I especially recommend that clients avoid showing their parents.

I broke one of Marie Kondō’s rules. Now, I’m realizing why such a rule is so important.

My parents have been on board with my tidying journey. I’ve talked with them over the weeks that I’ve been on this adventure. It’s all wonderful until that moment they realize that you’re getting rid of something that they personally believe should be special to you.

For me, it was an old Christian bible that my parents had given me. Being perfectly honest, I didn’t even realize it was from them. Growing up in a religious family and within the Bible Belt of the U.S., you tend to accumulate bibles in 30+ years. I had about 10 lying around (and have had more at times). I kept one that was from my grandparents that I’ve had since I was a small child because I have fond memories of the time it was given to me. I also kept one from my Bible As Literature class in college, which has translator notes that I find interesting from a literary and historical perspective.

I suppose my parents (my father is who I’d talked to) expect that I should have that same sentimentality about something they gave to me. I’d like for the book go to a church or someone who will actually use it rather than gathering dust.

I’m of the firm belief that books should be read.

During the conversation with my father, I felt guilty, which is the opposite of any feelings I should be having during this process. What I realized is that I didn’t feel guilty about discarding the item. I felt guilty for making them feel sad. Given the choice right in this moment, I would still make the decision to discard the item because it does not spark joy for me.

I have many items from my parents that do spark joy. I have photos, birthday cards, and other miscellaneous items that I could never part with. Those are the things that are important to me. Those things are what I’ll have to remember my parents by when I’m an old man looking over his life. I won’t look fondly upon one bible of a dozen that I dragged from home to home over the years in a cardboard box.

Holding onto things is tightly ingrained into Western culture, even when those things are long past their usefulness in your life. The process of letting go is tough. It’s made even tougher when you allow others to project their feelings into how you’re going about your own journey.

Marie Kondō stresses “don’t let your family see” in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It’s best to take her advice.

Guilt should play no role in what you decide to let go of. It only adds weight to your shoulders while you’re in the process of becoming lighter. The process of decluttering is as much mental as it is physical. Don’t allow others to hold back your progress.

And, don’t let your family see.

Exciting stuff. Buckets and electronics cables. Right?

With Marie Kondō as my tidying angel, I had major plans for the weekend’s organizational sprint toward the glory of having a perfectly tidy home. But, my body had other plans. I came down with a bit of sickness. It was nothing major—just enough to make me feel unmotivated to do much of anything.

I know one of the best ways of forming good habits is to always perform the habit when you’re supposed to. No skipping. No cheating. After four weekends of using the KonMari method to tidy my home, tidying is becoming more of a habit for me, but it’s not yet ingrained. I didn’t want to blow my current progress by missing a planned tidying opportunity. So, I went for two smaller categories: buckets and cables.

Over the years, I’ve somehow accumulated about 30 or so buckets. I garden, so they come in handy. Buckets sound easy. Get rid of those with missing handles or those with other breaks. Organize them. It’s the cleaning that’s hard. Most of them needed a good washing. That’s when I realized how weak my body was from whatever ailed me. I muddled through the job and feel great that the problem is out of the way.

I kept about 15 buckets. That leaves me 12 for covering my cabbage plants in the event of a late freeze with a few to spare.

The electronics cables were a breeze in comparison. How many old USB-to-some-device and telephone wires does one need? I started with four small boxes and knocked them down to a single box. I also managed to find two missing Nintendo game system cables that has kept me from breaking out the old SNES or N64 for retro game nights.

Most of the things in these categories were less about “sparking joy” and more about needs. At this point in the process, it feels natural to know what things I need to hold onto, even in these oddball categories.

I’m coming off a three-hour nap as I wrap this post up. I feel a bit rejuvenated for the moment. Maybe come next weekend, I’ll have the energy to tackle something bigger.

I got the opportunity to spend a few days playing around with the Modula Image Gallery plugin for WordPress, created by the team at Macho Themes. Over the past week, I’ve tested it against several themes and the results have been good. It’s easy to see why the plugin has garnered an average 4.5 rating on WordPress.org.

TL;DR: If you’re looking for a gallery plugin that will serve any needs you have, Modula is one of the easiest-to-use gallery plugins you can install for WordPress. The interface blends well into the WordPress admin and the front end output worked across every theme I tested against.

What’s covered in this review

In this review, I had a chance to test the primary plugin and its pro add-ons.

• Modula Image Gallery - Main plugin, which is free on WordPress.org.
• Modula Pro - Add-on that adds extra lightboxes, effects, and more.
• Modula Video - Add-on for creating video galleries.
• Modula Speed Up - Add-on that optimizes images and delivers them from a CDN.

All three of the add-ons are available with the purchase of “pro” upgrade. Check out the differences between the lite and pro versions.

Custom grid: The bee’s knees

If I was going to sell you on one feature, this would be it. Custom grids are awesome.

Have you ever put several photos in a gallery and wished that you could arrange them so that they fit just right? There are things like Masonry grids and such. However, those don’t usually offer fine-grained control over the output of the gallery images.

By selecting “Custom Grid” for the “Gallery Type,” you get 100% control over the alignment of each image. This feature allows you to drag and drop images anywhere that you want them. Then, you can resize the images by clicking on the bottom corner and dragging to your desired width or height.

Being perfectly honest, I probably lost a good hour or so just arranging gallery items for the fun of it.

The best thing of all is that the custom grid option is packaged with the free version, which is the sweetest feature the plugin offers. And, if customizing the images on the grid isn’t your thing, the plugin can automatically handle this via the “Creative Gallery” type.

The good stuff

Aside from the awesomeness of the custom grid option, there are two things that stood out to me.

Nice interface

Everything about using Modula Gallery feels right. Without reading a single doc, I was able to quickly figure out how to use the plugin. Modula fits right in with the core WordPress admin interface. There’s not a whole lot of guesswork about how to create galleries.

Theme integration

I was expecting to completely break this plugin as I tested it with over a dozen themes. That’s the nature of building plugins that have highly-custom front end output. But, I couldn’t do it. The Modula Gallery team has done a great job making sure that the plugin’s galleries look and function great across a variety of theme designs.

Modula Pro

The Modula Pro add-on opens up a whole new world of possibilities. You get the following when upgrading to the pro version:

• 6 Lightboxes
• 12 Hover Effects
• 4 Loading Effects
• Filters
• Unlimited images
• Dedicated support
• Video and Speed Up extensions (see below)

The lightboxes, hover effects, and loading effects are standard fare. They’re the bells-and-whistles that I don’t care much about. I’m just fine with the stock features. However, they offer a nice upgrade for folks who want to customize their galleries.

Filters is where the real power of the pro plugin comes in.

The filters feature allows you to categorize your gallery images. In turn, these appear on the front end as a list of links above the gallery for the end user to filter images on the fly. When a visitor clicks on a filter, the photos are rearranged to only show those images with a given filter.

Modula Video

The video gallery extension isn’t something that I think I’d personally use. I’m not one to post many videos. However, I could see it being useful for an animator showing off a portfolio of shorts or a band listing their music videos.

This is the one feature that I needed to read the docs to figure out. Fortunately, the video gallery docs were easy to follow. I had assumed that you uploaded a video to add it to the gallery. Instead, the plugin requires you to enter a video URL when editing an image. Not a bad way to go, but it was a source of confusion for me from the outset.

I’d like to see how the feature would work in reverse: click an “Add Video” button and have the user add a thumbnail/image for the video.

On the whole, video galleries aren’t really my thing. But, the feature works well and would serve those who need video support.

Modula Speed Up

The Speed Up extension offers integration with the ShortPixel API for on-the-fly image optimization, which is a pretty sweet addition for pro users who need their galleries to load faster. ShortPixel can compress images sizes down by 100s of Kb at times.

The second feature of this add-on is integration with StackPath’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). This allows you to offload images to faster servers than you’re likely to be using for your site and serve up your images at much faster speeds.

All Modula Pro users can get this with no extra cost.

I tend to optimize my images offline using a photo editor. However, it can be a tedious process and one that not everyone will do, especially when uploading multiple images to create a gallery. With this extension, it certainly takes the hassle out of it.

The downsides

While I feel like I’ve been writing a love letter to the Modula Gallery team thus far, the plugin does have things I don’t particularly care for or that could be improved.

Social icons

I dislike having the social icons when hovering over individual images. Social sharing is probably best handled on the article/post itself. I can’t imagine ever sharing an individual gallery image as a site visitor. But, I suppose some users may enjoy this.

My hope is that the social icons are either disabled by default or that a switch to enable/disable all of them at once instead of individually is added.

Theme integration: Bottom margin

With some themes, any text displayed immediately after a gallery, such as a new paragraph, can butt against the bottom of the gallery. This is going to depend on the theme itself and how it handles its vertical spacing. From a plugin, this is tough to handle because there’s no good way for the plugin to know how every theme handles margins for all its elements.

Edit and trash buttons

When creating a gallery, the edit and trash image buttons look similar and are placed directly next to each other. On more than one occasion, I accidentally trashed an image when attempting to edit it.

Gutenberg integration

The one feature I wanted most for this plugin is integration with the WordPress 5.0 (Gutenberg) wide and full alignment classes. This would allow for galleries that stretched outside the content area, giving the images more breathing room.

These classes are added via theme support to the new Gutenberg editor. If your theme supports these classes, a quick workaround is to add the [modula] shortcode into a Custom HTML block like so:

<div class="alignwide">
[modula id="1000"]
</div>

Of course, manually handling this is not ideal. Christian Raiber of Macho Themes tells me that this is a feature that he’d like to see added to the plugin. I imagine there’s a good chance we’ll see direct Gutenberg integration.

The final call

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Macho Themes on a few occasions in the past. I’ve reviewed their code, helped them dig up bugs, and provided advice for making the user experience better on some of their projects. What I’ve learned about the team is that they’re super responsive to feedback, continually improving what they do. I’ve seen that in the way they’ve responded to me as well as how they’ve responded to users.

We don’t so much buy into products as we buy into people or the companies they work for.

I reported a handful of minor bugs. After mentioning how inconsequential one was, I was told, “It still matters to us, any small bug should be fixed.” That’s the sort of people you want working on the products that you use.

Modula Gallery is a cool plugin and one that I’ll use on client sites going forward. More than that, I trust that the people behind the plugin will continue to improve it over time.

Theme authors dont need new advanced starter themes. The most common issues in themes submitted to http://wordpress.org are still the basics: licensing, escaping, translations, and including script and styles. Encourage themers to learn the basics first.

Otherwise they will not understand the code they are including in their themes. If you are working on a starter theme, please look at what theme authors really need help with. Because it is not the build process.

~ Carolina Nymark

It’s a sentiment that I’ve heard before. I’ve addressed it to a degree on the Theme Hybrid blog last year. But, I mostly think it’s a misunderstanding of what this new crop of starter themes brings to the table.

I largely agree with the notion that the most common issues in themes submitted to the official WordPress theme repository cannot be addressed by simply providing more “advanced” code. However, there’s still a place in the WordPress ecosystem for developers who need more than the basics.

I struggle with the term “advanced” in this context. What we’re really talking about is utilizing newer and modern features of Web development. “Modern” does not necessarily have to equate to “advanced,” lest we run afoul of taking for granted everyday features not available 10 years ago. While modern starter themes are not the answer for everyone, they can improve development in many ways.

In this post, I’m going to address some of the concerns brought up in the Twitter thread quoted above and cover some of the reasons why I believe modern starters can be advantageous.

Also, I’m writing this post from the viewpoint of my own starter theme, Mythic. I cannot say whether all other modern starters handle things in the same way.

Translations

Mythic utilizes the Node WP i18n project to handle the translation process. Here’s a few of the things it does:

• Recognizes the textdomain defined via the Text Domain header in style.css.
• Adds textdomains where they’re missing.
• Replaces incorrect textdomains in use.
• Builds the POT file for translators.

The theme simply offers a wrapper command for this to simplify the process to the point where the theme author doesn’t need to figure out how to configure it. They just type in a command and watch the magic happen.

Of course, Mythic also wraps all of its text strings in the appropriate translation functions.

Escaping and sanitizing

Many basic starter themes just give you a jumping off point. What you do with the code after that is up to you. With Mythic, that’s not the case. By using its built-in tools, it can help you build better themes beyond the starting line.

Mythic integrates directly with the WP Theme Review Coding Standards. With a one-line command, it will analyze all of the theme’s files and spit out the results, pointing out the exact file names and line numbers where there are issues. It does this without the theme author having to learn how to configure an extra tool or use another plugin.

This is as good as it gets for a starter theme addressing common issues such as escaping on output and sanitizing on input. Outside of leading by example within the theme code, there’s little more that any starter can offer.

Mythic also has style and JS linting built in, so it can let you know when you’ve done something wrong in those areas.

Modern PHP

While Mythic currently has a minimum PHP version of 5.6, I plan to bump that beyond PHP 7 at some point in the future. This is important because taking advantage of some newer PHP features means the code is better structured and clear.

For example, type and return type declarations improve code by making sure accepted and returned data are of the appropriate type. Let’s look at a basic math class with an addition method:

class Math {
	public static function sum( int $x, int $y ) : int
	{
		return $x + $y;
	}
}

The Math::sum() method takes two parameters: $x and $y. It only allows an integer to be passed in for either of those. And, because we set a return type declaration of int, we’ll only ever get an integer back. Using modern techniques like this makes your code much better. In many cases, it makes it safer because you know 100% for sure what type of data to expect.

This is just a small sample of how using more modern features can make theme coding better. PHP is becoming a nicer language to work with.

Prefixing / Namespacing

One of the major problems for a long time (and it’s still sometimes an issue) is developers not prefixing their function and class names.

With Mythic, that’s a non-issue. Because we use namespaces out of the box, developers must learn how namespacing works to even build with the theme. Otherwise, they’ll get fatal errors during the development process. There’s no getting around it because of the way the theme is set up.

Forcing theme authors to use namespacing by nature of the system design instantly solves one common issue.

There’s a few folks on the WordPress theme review team who have an aversion to namespaces, a feature implemented in PHP 5.3. It’s time to learn. The standard way of “prefixing” is baked right into the PHP language.

Composer

Mythic teaches you how to use Composer, which is the standard used by nearly the entire PHP world outside of the WordPress bubble. Composer allows you to pull in packages when you need them instead of reinventing the wheel or copying/pasting third-party libraries into a theme sub-folder.

Here’s a few of the packages that I offer for theme dev that work along with the starter:

• Hybrid Breadcrumbs - Yummy, yummy breadcrumbs.
• Hybrid Font - Google Font wrapper functions.
• Hybrid Carbon - More robust featured images.
• Hybrid Customize - Small customizer control library.

Code reusability is one of the cornerstones of smart development. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when there’s an existing project that already covers your needs with other folks maintaining the code base and fixing bugs.

But, you don’t really get the benefits of those things without using more modern tools.

The build process

It’s a mistake to not look at the build process as something that can help address common theme development issues. Build scripts are powerful tools that can improve code if you use them.

It took nearly a year to create the Mythic starter theme. My mindset throughout the entire process was improving theme code for the next 10 years. A major part of that was looking at how the build process could help theme authors with common problems. The other devs who worked on the project and I spent more time refining the build process than any other piece of the puzzle.

Why? Because we believe in efficiency and following standards.

Like it or not, build tools are a part of the modern development workflow. And, they can actually improve code.

WordPress.org vs. literally everywhere else

While I’ve coded Mythic to play nice with WordPress.org’s rules—some of which are unnecessary hindrances to improving how theme authors build upon the platform—it’s only a tiny fraction of the themes that exist in the world. The best theme authors I know are not submitting themes there. They’re building custom sites for clients. Mythic’s primary audience is for those developers.

It’s easy to look at the problems faced by the WordPress theme review team and think of those issues as universal. And, perhaps they are when talking about free and commercial themes. However, in my experience, these issues are far less common with the types of developers who’d use Mythic for their client builds.

If we want developers to be better, I recommend challenging them to learn modern techniques, tools, and features. Many of them force you into coding to standards by design.

Variety is the spice of life

The Underscores theme is a nice jumping off point for someone just getting into theming. It’s the de facto standard for themes that come into the official repository. It’s done wonders for making theme code better over the years. Even I encourage first-time theme authors to use it rather than my starter.

But, once you need to tackle some more advanced things, you may find that you need a bit more.

That’s where Mythic and other modern starters come in. They offer that upgraded developer experience that’s lacking from “simpler” starters.

My feelings about The Well of Ascension, the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy, were hard to pin down.

The vast majority of the book is a solid 4-star read. But, the final few chapters are as good as it gets in fiction. During most of the novel, I was wondering if all the buildup and misdirection—we know Sanderson is going to tighten all those threads by the end—would pay off.

Sanderson delivered. And, I’m here once again to sing his praises.

At this point, I’m almost of the opinion that Sanderson can do no wrong. He’s a master of the craft. Even when he’s not at his best, his writing keeps me in a warm and cozy comfort zone.

The story picks up a year after the events of The Final Empire. The Lord Ruler is dead by the hand of our heroine, Vin. Eland, her love interest, has been crowned king and set up a system of government with representatives for each group of people in the kingdom. Sazed is traveling and imparting his knowledge upon the former skaa slaves. There is now a religion that teaches about Kelsier, the savior, the man who’d given his life for the the cause.

Luthadel, the city and seat of power that King Eland holds, is under threat by more than multiple enemies, one being his own father. There’s a new and mysterious Mistborn in town. Oh, and you remember that tiny problem of The Deepness from the first book that we never got the full details on? The one that the Lord Ruler said he was holding at bay? Yeah, it might be back.

Our merry band of thieves have now found themselves in new roles. They must learn how to hold an empire together or lose everything that Kelsier had fought and died for.

The political maneuvering that took up most of the book’s plot was interesting. It was a sharp turn of events from The Final Empire. Overthrowing a government is one thing. Keeping one running may prove an impossible task. Much of the focus was on the politics of running and maintaining a kingdom with a war right at the front door.

The Deepness and The Well of Ascension seem to be a secondary plot while everything else is going on. We’re only given bits and pieces throughout. While the new kingdom focuses on the threat of downfall in its infancy, no one has dealt with the much bigger problem underneath it all.

Vin is still growing. But, those old feelings of distrust come back. I struggled a bit with is the teenage angst from Vin. Some of it is understandable because she’s a teenager who’s still trying to find herself. But, the self-doubt dragged on a bit for me. We’d already seen her grow from a scared girl who hides in corners into a powerful woman in the first book. She’s still one of my all-time favorite characters from any work.

Is the payoff, the climax, enough to give this book the 5 stars I hold for only the most enjoyable reads?

Almost.

But, I must rate Sanderson against Sanderson. It was missing a little bit of the magic of the first book, but I’m excited to see where the third installment takes us.

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

I took the weekend off from fully following Marie Kondō’s advice on my tidying journey. I was struggling picking the right category of things to give the full KonMari treatment, but I knew I had a whole lot of junk that spanned multiple categories that just needed to be tossed.

I filled two of the trash cans (the big kind you sit next to the road for the trash man to pick up) over the course of Saturday’s junk-tossing marathon.

While I love Marie Kondō’s system and have been following it step by step, I felt like I needed to get a bunch of crap out of the way so that I could move forward. I had old, broken planter pots. Plastic totes that were cracked down the side. And, all sorts of other oddball things that were past their days of usefulness. I didn’t think it best to hold each of these items to see if they sparked joy. They simply needed to be thrown away.

It was a liberating activity because now I feel like I can better see some of the areas that I can focus on next.

On Sunday, I started this year’s gardening efforts. I plan to cut way back this year with the garden so that I can focus on other goals.

I pruned the peach and plum trees. Truth be told, I’m a little late on this. We seem to be getting an early Spring. One of my peach trees is already blooming, which may not be a good thing. Last year, the same thing happened, but a late frost killed all of the blooms. With any luck, I’ll get to eat a few fresh peaches and plums right off the front porch.

I also planted out a small bed of red potatoes. This is separate from the main garden. I had a lot of potatoes left over from last year’s garden that were already rooting out on a table and producing baby tubers. I figured I might as well go ahead and stick them in some soil somewhere. I planted about half a 5-gallon bucket, but there’s at least 3 times that many left to plant from last year’s crop.

I could’ve finished the afternoon with some more tidying, but I got a bit tired. After a few months of little-to-light labor, my muscles were a bit unprepared for the work I put them through.

Yet another weekend has gone by where I didn’t get into my tidying journey quite like I wanted to. I spent most of the weekend outdoors, getting ready for the spring season.

At the end of last week, I started working on a new and improved chicken run. Over the weekend, I mostly tightened up insecure areas and added posts to better hold things in place. In the following video, you can see most of the chickens scratching away.

Ideally, they could be completely free range during the day, but they’d be more likely to fall prey to a hawk. The run is situated under a thick canopy of tree limbs, which makes it harder for predators to see them from above or swoop down.

Gardening season is upon us now as well, so they can’t be roaming about. Right now, they’re working through all the bugs and worms in all the fall/winter leaves that we gathered. These will eventually get put into the garden and used for fertilizer and to condition the soil. They also get daily greens (weeds thrown in to supplement their feed), which makes for some super orange yolks. They’ll get more greens as the season continues to warm.

The other big project this weekend was putting together a small garden bed close to the house, which will hold carrots and/or onions.

I just bordered the bed with some old wood and logs. Inside, I added eight buckets of litter from the chicken coop and about a bucket of ash from a recent fire where we burned off some old wood. The toughest part of the job was clearing out all the weeds that had taken over.

In other news, one of my peach trees is nearly in full bloom. I’m hoping we don’t get a late frost and lose the few hundred flours. I want little more than to taste fresh peaches from my own trees this year.

What can be said that has not already been said about A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin’s opening volume of his A Song of Fire and Ice epic?

The books and the television series that it has spawned have permeated American pop culture. At least half the people I know have watched it. Most of the other half can catch a GOT reference or two.

Like so many others, I watched the show first. It’s rare that I do this because I nearly always feel that seeing the show first ruins the book for me. I’m happy to say that this wasn’t the case with A Game of Thrones. While I knew the plot and had well-formed images of the characters in my head, these things didn’t detract from my enjoyment of reading the book.

I enjoyed the book so much, that I purchased and began reading A Clash of Kings, the second volume, on the same night that I finished the first book. I typically like to read a shorter work as a break between epic reads.

The first book primarily follows Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn Stark and several of their children, the family who rules over Winterfell and the north in the name of the king. It also follows Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf brother of the queen, and Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled daughter of the former mad king. Each of their stories intertwine and tell of a much larger set of events that will forever reshape the Seven Kingdoms.

The scale of this world is massive and any wrong turn could mean a character’s death or the fall of a great house.

What I like most about Martin’s writing style is that he gives a unique voice to every character. Each chapter of the book is written from a third-person viewpoint that follows a specific person. What he does better than anyone is make you feel each story from a different viewpoint. Much of it is subtle, but there are stylistic changes with each character that only a well-seasoned writer can achieve without feeling like you’re being jerked all over the place.

A Game of Thrones is much different than other high fantasy, which is a fantasy set in a fictional world other than our own with its own rules. Whereas most high fantasy tends to lean toward a noble hero or group of heroes going about to do noble things, things aren’t so cut and dry here. There’s a gritty realism that sets this story apart from the field. The good guys sometimes die. The bad guys sometimes sit on the Iron Throne. And, many of our characters are little more than children who are having to learn the shitty reality of life long before they should.

Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

Tyrion Lannister

There are characters I love, such as Tyrion Lannister. I love him for his wittiness and how uniquely human all of his faults are. There are characters I abhor, such as Sansa Stark. She represents all the annoying qualities of any highborn lady, but I also feel the hard life lesson she must learn in this book more deeply than any other character.

In A Game of Thrones, battles are won behind closed doors as much as they are on the battlefield. The political maneuvering and deception kept me wanting more.

The world Martin has created is massive. The story is epic in scope. I can’t get enough of it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.