Is OnePo fully accessible? Um... yeah almost certainly not, because I haven't had it tested rigorously for that, nor have I consulted anyone with a disability about their actual experiences. Those steps would be good to take.

One bit of accessibility progress though: alternative text for images.

Adding an alt text field for images in posts was easy-peasy. Adding this to images in comments was an absolute bear, because of the lil' shortcut pattern I had before: tapping the image button on a comment immediately prompted you for an image file, and then immediately uploaded it, and you were done!

This was a nice pattern in a lot of ways, very light and breezy, but also totally brittle: the moment you wanted to add alt text it didn't work for us at all.

So I reworked the image comment editor, and now there is an alt text field beneath an "Upload Image" button, all proper-like.

There's another win today though: image uploads should be considerably faster, especially over slow links, and especially when the original file is large. That's because images are now resized on your device before they are uploaded.

It's true that this puts a slightly greater burden on the local device, but in practice it's a device every web browser has been ferociously optimized to handle, and most likely handles in dedicated hardware. That's because every website is crammed to the gills with images that don't precisely match the size of your screen. So asking your device to do this is reasonable, and it significantly reduces the workload for the server.

"Uh... yeah Tom, that workload must be awful with somebody posting once every hour or so!" Yeah, true, but I still get to learn useful things about doing this kind of stuff at scale, even if scale hasn't really happened here.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall. Photo-comment away, and let me know if anything breaks!

P.S. Hovering the mouse etc. will not display the "alt text." That's because it is truly set up as alternative text (e.g. the "alt" attribute) for accessibility purposes, and regular browsers intentionally don't display it by default. That "text on hover" thing you may be thinking of is the "title" attribute, and describing an image effectively for those who can't see it isn't really the same use case.

Another one I'll never get to.

Tag line for a comic series. Or a book. Or something.

"Every man must face his demons, but in this case, they're real."

It's a bit weird, because I do NOT want to imply that non physical demons are any less real, but I was trying to think of a simple, snappy tagline. 

The idea is that his internal problems create / spawn tangible monsterous creatures. Perhaps based on the 7 Deadly Sins.

So he has to fight them on two battlefields - in his mind and with his body. 

Seems like it could be a lot of fun. 

Maybe I'll do some daydreaming / sketch / concept work on it if I get some time. 

Okay, y'all are probably sick of seeing that dragon's head at this point, but it kinda started something for me.

I've been really enjoying this super simple (technically speaking) technique. I do a very fast, rough 'pencil sketch', create a new layer, and just use a single ink brush which varies widely in line weight based on pressure applied to the stylus.

What that does: It makes it really easy for me to 'intentionally make mistakes'. Or as Bob Ross would say: "Happy little accidents." That, in turn, creates a kind of bold detail work. Lots of visual texture where my stuff is usually so very steryl in its cleanliness.

Also, these look like they would make for amazing stickers - which are also available on the site.

So I'm going to do some more. I'm trying to stick primarily to 'the heads of creatures of known types'. Dragon, bugbear, and I cheated a little with the goblin.

What kind of creature would you like to see next? Bonus if it's a type that live a VERY long time so I can use lots of lines to make it look 'grizzled and old'.

<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to. Now no longer in alphabetical order so I can get on with it>>

NJ is a state that borders my homestate of Delaware, so I'm through/in there a bunch.

Just spent 2 days/nights at the Jersey Shore with my little. Who isn't that little anymore, she's 12. And like many other 12 year olds, she didn't particularly want to be at the shore, she wanted to be home & online gaming and chatting with her online friends. The weather being overcast, cool and windy didn't help. Arranging the trip so that another family with a 12 year old girl was also in our group helped nominally. The spotty spotty wifi at our RV campground both helped and didn't help. 

At the beach shore, I told my kid that if she managed to catch a seagull we could go home a day early. So she enlisted the other 12 year old and the 7 year old to help, and they spent a crazy hour or so attempting to capture a seagull. They got crackers and tried building traps. They engaged in flanking maneuvers. At some point army crawling through the sand was employed. No seagulls were caught in this endevor.

I have a few other memories of New Jersey:

• When I was in college the college bowl intercollegiate match was in New Jersey somewhere (Newark maybe?).
• Also in college I dated a guy who's parents had some swank house in NJ. I got to be an akward guest there a few times. I recall having some most excellent grilled steak at his house. His name may or may not have been Ed. (It's been a long time.)
• I've taught a few software classes to guys at a refinery near Newark, and learned that many of them had never been to NYC proper, even though they lived right there.  The horror.
• I've flown in/out of Newark a bunch, but that doesn't really count. I also often park in Hamilton to take NJ Transit trains into Manhatten. Also doesn't really count.
• There was a "burning man inspired" event called Freeform at the Salem County fair grounds back in 2012. I learned there that I couldn't count on my kid's father to watch her, even though we had agreed it was my turn to go off and have fun. Looking back it was just another crack in the trust. I sometimes get annoyed at myself for putting up with him as long as I did. But then I try to give myself grace with the knowledge I was doing the best I could with what I knew/hoped at the time. 
• CM Adams lived there for a year recently and I hung out with him a bit. We hiked a park or two, had excellent pizza, crossed over the boarder to PA and saw Rocky Horror live!  CM & I also went to a cool sculpture garden near Trenton called Grounds for Sculpture. It was cool, I do plan to go back someday.

I could probably dredge up some other New Jersey memories, but yes, I've been to New Jersey.

I continue to be bad at updating, but the long and short of it is, I DID get the tooth out, and a bone graft was done, and now it's been almost a month and by the end of the week, the surgeon thinks the hole in my mouth should be closed up.

He said when I had the stitches out two weeks ago (ow!) that it's healing up well, and in three and a half months, I go back to have it looked at again and see if I can get the implant or what next.

I got to be unconscious. Lovely, lovely blackness, going to dark with a tooth in and resurfacing with a tooth out and no memory of anything in between.

As I was waiting to go under, there was a guy moaning loudly in the next room in pain and G and I looked at each other like...fuck, that is NOT what we need to be hearing right now. Closed the door and tried not to think of it.

I bled for 12 hours after, before it finally stopped. It hurt...but the pain was manageable enough. 

It's still hard to chew on that side of my mouth, in fact I'm not really doing that yet so eating isn't exactly pleasurable but I'm getting there.

It seriously set back my eating better and exercising more plan by a month, which peeves me, but...I mean...it had to be done.

Working on my first instructional ebook. How to Draw Fantastic Humans.

The idea is to follow it up later with How to Draw Fantastic Elves, then Dwarves, etc..

If you've ever wanted to learn how to draw people, I would deeply and sincerely appreciate any questions you might have so that I can address them in the book.

Please and thank you!

Every day, I have always had a deep need for long quiet. It is more challenging to find in a blended family household of four children, and sometimes I feel so pushed and bent, like I am on a ride that is spinning me too quickly. My career, as it is now, is a difficulty, as the daily requirements of what I do and how it is structured relies on a personality and constitution that thrives on stress. I suppose at some point in time, this may have been me. My nervous system has declared otherwise.

There are times when I need to sit in a chair and have deep thinky thinks. I often do not arrive at any set conclusion, but I do know the process is important. Righ tnow I am in an orange chair with a floral foot rest. A cup of strong coffee is beside me and the silver light outside floods the living room and catches all the blues. 

Outside the dahlias push up, the roses struggle as they lately do in our cloudy Junes. I have had breakfast: leftover kimchee rice with a freshly cooked egg. I wonder sometimes that all portions come in these giant containers lately. Anne wrote a post that intersected with many thoughts I have not been able to express. I have read it twenty times at least. Maybve more.

The other day, in Capitol Hill, in the center of the sidwalk, was a brand new Fischer Price Castle. It was in a battered box, dusty and kept in an attic or basement, but brand new. I picked it up and carried it home, set it on the table, and wiped it clean. I explored every inch of it, the yellow drawbridge, the staircase that swings out. This castle is over 50 years old, and we had one we played with. As an object, it stirred up old memories. Going into the co-op grocery, whole wheat bread, good food sweetened with honey, not sugar.  Sprouts grown on the windowsill, handmade quilts. Handwritten cookbooks people would share, the beards and long hair of the late seventies, where, in Alaska, things had not shifted yet and people were hopeful, had moved to make change real. People came there to find themselves, and very often, they were the people who lived outside the system or were not accepted. 

We were still five years behind the culture wave of the rest of the United States.

Shortly after we moved to Hawaii, and there the 1980's were in effect, materialistic and hairsprayed and those that lagged wore liesure suits.  Another One Bites the Dust blared from the car stereos as we crossed the busy street on the way to school. It was a big change from the guitairs, and Gordon Lightfoot I'd known before. Wall to wall carpet smelling of chemicals, pools with people who came to be perminently on vacation, and heat, body oil, and that infidelity song about the man who places the ad in the paper. My father had cancer, I remember the smell of chemotherapy and vomit. We went through the trash in the park, gathering up tin cans to recycle.

My mother hated it, and after a few years we came to Seattle. I remember downtown, the child and teenage prositutes that congregated around Pike Place Market. We sat for long hours in Pioneer Square, feeding pigeons, while parents look for work or places to live. Coffee in paper cups, paper bags of popcorn. Long bus rides after being soaked in the rain, and a certain downtrodden hopelessness that filtered through everything. Boeing had done massive layoffs.  

People in our neighborhood surrendered children to Child Protective Services, or sent them to live with relatives as there was no work, no food, and social services were thin. Dad was still ill, he'd walk around the waterfront looking for work, and he'd get free coffee from the Millionair's Club or places like that. My mom took us to pick blackberries by the side of the highway, or apples from some of the trees that remained after the road was built in, splitting up orchards. The Green River murderer dumped bodies.

The rain came down and drummed our roof, and she moved us to rural Washington.  Economic despair was there, and we struggled. Some of my friends lived in "fifth wheelers" or single wide trailers with blue tarps over the roof. We lived in a convereted commercial chicken house. The smell of chickens was pervasive, and there was no insulation in the walls. The floors were plywood, and uneven, someone had simply stapled carpet on top of them and in places, used glue to hold it down, including the bathroom. The house was sinking into the mud, so we had to crawl underneath and use car jacks to push it up. We tore up the stained and mouldy carpet that was saturated with animal leavings from the people before, scrapped, pulled nails, and saved up to put down 3/4 plywood on the floor. We salvaged a couch from one of the outlying buildings, dried it in front of the wood stove which was our only source of heat, and accepted that it always had a damp smell. We could only afford one can of paint, so we watered it down to paint over the fly specs on the walls. We salvaged a dresser from the other buildings that had to be torn down as they filled with animal feces. We bagged up garbage, a mount of it as high as the house, dispersing rats. When the rats ran at us, the pitbull terrier dog Minnie we'd adopted from the local vet ran to defend her children. She grabbed rats and snapped their necks, sending them flying in the air. She was the gentlest soul, the greatest treasure and find of a dog. We cleaned the land, we allowed it to restore itself, to grow thick with vegetation where too many horses and cows had been kept. We learned the names of the plants, we learned the shape and flow of the subterranian river that flowed underneath it. At night, when we lay down, we could hear the river run under the house. 

The property came with animals. The people before us had trapped wild geese and ducks, and then fed them so they stayed on the pond. We inherited a vast array of ducks of all kinds. We were unsure how to keep them, so my mother got books from the library and asked around. We tore down the chickenhouses built over the streams as it dirtied up the water in the pond. We set them free range, and I learned to outsprint the rooster and the gander. There were frogs the size of a throw pillow and as small as my thumbnail. I know how to start a fire and thaw and burn frozen wood. I can cook on a wood stove. We put in gardens and I found a nearby abandoned apple orchard, likely one of the original white colonial settlers to the area. We picked apples, Surveyor's Berries, blackberries, wild hazelnuts, mint, and dark rooted, thick, damp watercress before I knew the word "forage". Soon most of our food came from our garden.  I explored the woods around, for miles and miles, sometimes with just a buck knife, or when I was older, a pellet gun or even a pistol. Strange to me to think that I had and carried my own pistol at sixteen, but there were still cougars and other wild animals you may want to scare off.

The library in town was tiny, but so good.  It was the size of a master bedroom, and right beside the jail. I read so much from there, and I rode the school bus and hated the local schools and eventually commuted out of our rural community to a private college prep school. It took me a car ride, three buses and an hour and a half each way but I did it and then I got a scholarship to NYU. The morning I left for New York City I got up and walked down to the duckpond, one last time.

These are all the parts I carry inside me. Despite the struggles of that time, my nervous system was not a wreck from how we lived. There is a centered part of me that knows that much in me can be solved by the pure joy of physical labor that betters a place. Inside me is a girl who finds abandoned orchards, who always knew how to make cookies and tea from scratch, who knows that the joy of a salvaged couch means that there is no harm a dog can do to it and thusly the dog can always sit on the couch. I loved the people I met and how they taught me. How to catch a fish and cook it on a campfire, but not in an REI camping sense. How to read a river, follow tracks, find a trail. Fridge pickles, the merit of coffee grounds, how to layer cardboard to make a garden.

I am born and live with hope in me, it is a feathered thing, indeed. It is in ducklings in the park, who know me and let me close, it is in the crows I feed in the alley, it is in the starling baby I found at the barns while riding recently. I thought it dead and picked it up, but once I saw it was still living I held her to warm her. There is a woman who lives and works at the barn, she speaks no English and I speak little Spanish saw me and came to me immediately. We both spoke bird, and hope, I passed the baby to her and the little bird is thriving now.

The summer I was thirteen I went back to Alaska. I worked with my aunt who groomed dogs. We groomed a lot of sled dogs. During my work there I met a woman who owned a fishcamp. We stayed overnight at her house, I slept downstairs, and admired the photographs of her from when she was young, and a model. Her name was Susan, and she left Seattle, and Mercer Island,t o come and live in Alaska, own her own fish camp, and wear nothing but soft flannels.  I understand now a little why someone would do that, but at the time it did not make sense to me. I longed to work on a film set, to be in that world, and that she had it and left was confusing.

I do not want to own a fishcamp. I don't need a retreat from my life, but I need the interior spaces within me to be larger, expand, breathe. 

I need to work, work is, actually, a pleasure of life, but I do not want it to destroy my body any longer. I need to separate the things thrust upon me that are the agreed upon things to panic about and be upset about and say, I will not.  This panic that I carry during work, the hard feeling of my swollen lymphs, the fight or flight, I want to let this part go. I am freer when I do not need things, as I can work less. 

I do not think people in my daily life know that these things are part of me. I still like a couch that can hold a dog.  I still know where hidden rivers run in run.

I need to heal. I did not know it started here.

May and June have spilled open their fruit. It is the season of throwing graduation caps in the air, and people saying, " you may kiss the bride!" My birthday closed my forty seventh year on the planet, and opened my forty eighth. My first film project in my 48th year is a documentary.

So much has happened. The town is sluggish with lack of work, the air smells faintly of salt water because salt is everywhere. 

Every Tuesday and Friday I drive an hour outside the city. I turn off one main country road to a smaller one, until finally I drive down a lane. A black Fresian gelding, and a black mini horse cavort together in a field. I drive past the stables, to a long line of horse trailers. There I tuck my small car, and finish the last sips of my coffee. Ahead of me, in the field, entirely on his lazy, lies Samwise. He is a Gypsy Vanner horse, the horse of a friend and while he is usually playful and frisky, he adores rolling in the dust and mud after a bath. Horses, I have learned, greatly enjoy being dirty.

I love the stables this time of day, when the morning is fresh and the doves coo and call to each other. Blueberry and Muffin, the golden eyed teenagery cats dart around, hunting me as I walk. Some horses are in stalls, but most are turned out. I still have yet to see anyone, though evidence of work is all around. Clean pavement glistens from its wash. Water pails are full.  I go to the tack room, choose my saddle, and get Grand's bridle from the wall.

Grand is one of the older lesson horses. Over thirty years old, he has a leadership streak that makes him more challening. He is used for adults, but even then one must be aware that he can be difficult. I walk to the field where he grazes and he looks up at me, accepting being caught with only the resistence of one pull or tug. We walk back to the barn where I begin the process of grooming him, picking out his feet, and tacking him up. 

Today we began to learn to jump. 

Grand and I have been studying dressage together. They tried me on two horses, one that I thought possibly was asleep throughout the lesson, the other simply decided she did not like me. Grand was another try, a tall gentleman who has serious considerations for his herd. I have seen him whinny and strain when the babies are brought in for the farrier. As I lead him to and from the stable, it is not uncommon for the other horses to run to greet him, whinnying. He is popular, and deeply social. The first time I rode him he resisted me. Now he often comes to me, trusting me enough to groom his face and the spot he likes best. brushed gently, right between his ears. He is excellent at dressage, and responsive once I urge him beyond a disintersted walk and he knows I am serious about trotting. He has also come to know me as I know that the left right hoof is sensivtive, that he sometimes stumbles on his left and that he prefers a strong handle on the bridle instead of leading with my legs.

He likes me. I think that won some esteem among the instructors. 

Today we are just stepping over logs stacked, but we move quickly from a walk to a trot and then he casually takes me into a canter. We are not supposed to canter yet, but I'm seated well on him and he goes for a bit before he minds Kayla who calls to him. I started lessons for my job, now I am riding for me. I like this powerful, opinionated fellow, a beautiful bay horse. I wonder who he worked with for so many years, before he was sold into retirement to give lessons. I do not think I could do this to my friend but perhaps I do not know. He is beloved by the instructors at the barn, though he gives the fewest lessons because he is so spirited. It is clear to us both that he loves to jump, though he's not allowed to fully jump any longer due to his age. No one has to tell me that I am learning quickly. 

My life is uncomfortable with growth right now. My son leaves soon, there will be travel all summer before I meet him in San Jose for college. I have accepted and will attend a low residency Writing for Film and Television MFA program. 

I just submitted my book to an agent friend, who, strange to say, I have known thirty years. He agreed he'd read my book.

Seattle rains as it does in June. Every evening I sojourn to the duckpond in Volunteer Park to visit the clutches of ducklings there. I write and clean and prepare for my documentary shoot. I apply for full time jobs so I can continue my riding habit and pay the remaining balance my scholarship for grad school does not cover. I daydream of eventing. I heal myself in the singular focus of human and horse. I emerge from my Fridays tired, rested, and whole, smelling of Grand and hay. 

I am shy and not always welcoming to what comes next. As I age, change is harder. I turn the dial on the things that I know will keep me healthy. Age, and hypothyrodism and a bad bout of COVID lead to a massive weight gain. Since January I have lost twenty pounds. By December I hope to lose twenty more. Riding is part of that, the vitamins are part of it. Transition and grief are not tipped out into wine glasses or coffee cups any longer (though I still enjoy small amounts of each) and I seek sleep, long, deep hours of sleep.

By September, I will know what happens next.

Until then, I will tell you what I know, here.

I made some improvements to OnePo this week. Specifically:

• I brought back the ability to insert more text, image and video blocks in between existing blocks in your post. Personally I found it too crazymaking to always add things at the bottom and then nudge them up.
• However, there were user experience concerns expressed about that being too much before. This is why I took a stab at a better experience for it: the buttons to add new blocks are nestled in a single "+" toggle above each existing block, and you can toggle it closed again.
• Speaking of nudging things up from the bottom, that was not a great experience either, particularly if you had to nudge something with the arrows ten times. So now we drag blocks around instead.

These changes work well on desktop, should also work well on tablets (let me know if you get the chance to try it), and work okay on mobile. I do find the new experience of dragging an image a little weird on the iPhone, but it works and hopefully I can continue to fine-tune it.

However... these changes are a bit selfish. There's nothing wrong, obviously, with putting my own uncompensated free time into features I like. Honestly! The nerve of this guy!

But, I've also promised alt text for images and that's a matter of accessibility. So I will get back to that next.

Alt text will be easiest to add for images in posts, because those are full-blown blocks in the editor. Adding one more editable field to them is no big deal.

But for images in comments, it's necessary to rethink the user experience. Right now it's a bit of a hack: "just pick an image and it'll upload and bam your comment is live!" That's cute, but it closes the door on adding alt text before your comment is live. And also there is currently no way to edit an existing image comment. So yeah, rethink.

I did carry out some interesting experiments in that area recently, which also included improvements to the image uploading experience. If I manage to carry that through, image uploads will be a lot faster because the browser will be doing the initial resizing work if necessary.