September and November 2024

Table of Contents

Firstly the Site

General

Well lots of work has gone on and lots to do. I well understand that this is a journey not a destination. However it is nice to complete something and see it working. Several successful builds have taken place and the revisions page is proving very useful to keep track of the changes.

Additions

The versioning and revisions items were among the first items I added to the template in order to track changes I made to the site.

Also I have added a hero section to the landing page and a very basic method of categorising the items. Much to do to finish this.

As documented elsewhere in order to greatly expand the content from blog and project I have added the kaleidoscope page to provide access to the topics I want to pursue.

Projects

In terms of Projects much to report.

Jons front step

Jonathans door step was rotting before our eyes and although I had already made and fitted a replacement sill for the garage door this had proved to be such a big job that this time I figured to keep it as small a job as possible and just repair. So cut a big piece out and make a new section using a template of the profile. Not worthy of a section of its own in projects so documented here TODO add an image of broken step!

And the replacement section.

Bird Houses

An ongoing project is to produce some bird houses and a bird table. Anyway just to make it harder I figured 5 sides would be good so much work has gone on perfecting the cutting and assembly of five sided bird houses. With I might add pointed roofs. A project necessitating the production of jigs and cutting frames etc.

Definately a big enough project to warant its own project page (TODO and coming soon?)

Emlyn’s Bird table

Another maintenance project has been to re-furbish the bird table given to us by Emlyn Williams in Caernarfon. A lovely six sided bird table with a Welsh slate roof. Repaired once before it was again in need of a new floor and a repaint. Work continues on this and once finished it will be re-located to the patio

The Weather Vane

My weather vane was also in much need of a refurb. The oak ammonite and sun were fine and just in need of a repaint. However the main boss section holding the components toggether was just softwood and had rotted. This I replaced with some hardwood re-cycled from some outdoor furniture, this time in the style of an Ichthyosaur to properly match the theme of the weather vane.

Whe it came to painting I had a great time mixing mica powder in yacht varnish with the aim of matching fish scales - whoopee.

What’s Next

I have plent of ideas but there is much yet to do with stuff I have just outlined in the site. Lots of detail yet to add, but…

Asto 5.0

Content collections

Asto 5.n is coming soon with big changes to the content collections. So waiting for this before adding any new data sources. The big one being the plans I have for displaying current and historical CO2 and Methane values.

Live Islands

Live Islands are already implemented in the version of Astro I am using but I intend using this functionality for the CO2 and climate data as mentioned above so I can get live current data. So this will wait for the time when I can load and store historical data.

Cloudinary

And finally the Cloudinary integration with Astro again is out but in experimental format until Astro 5.0 is released. This looks really interesting in terms of loading and displaying images so I fully intend adding this to my site. But all in good time.

Good catchup eh! Onward and upward.