2026

6 posts published in 2026.

E-Prime

Writers who employ E-Prime avoid all forms of the verb “to be”, including be, being, been, am, is, are, was, were along with their positive and negative contractions (isn’t, we’re, etc.) Proponents of E-Prime suggest that its use can strengthen writing and clarify thinking. Chiefly, writing in passive voice using E-Prime becomes quite difficult.

#words#habits#writing#speech#psychology

Goofy Mantras

I’ve spent years dabbling in the kinds of things that make you sound a little unhinged at dinner parties: mindfulness, affirmations, sigils, orgonite — the whole hippie-nerd crossover catalogue. I’ve gotten real benefit from some of it and had a good laugh at the rest. But one simple practice stands out: a daily mantra I say to myself. It doesn’t sound profound. It lacks polish. It feels a little goofy. And those qualities makes it work.

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#mindfulness#habits#mental-health#self-compassion#play#words

Building for the Web

I have spent thirteen years building for the web, and most of that time I have not known what I was doing. The useful thing I learned wasn’t how to stop feeling that way — it was how to stop pretending I didn’t.

#code#hugo#wordpress#simplicity#identity#linux#jamstack#selfhosted#freelancing

Flow Disruptors: How Dreams and Daily Choices Reveal What Matters

Dreams can be a window into our deepest feelings, helping us make sense of what lies beneath the surface. But sometimes, they also reveal the hidden distractions that pull us off course in life. Reflecting on my dreams from last night, I’ve decided to call these distractions “flow disruptors.” (No, not the medical devices.)

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#flow#focus#fatherhood#fitness#productivity#javascript#dom

Wordpress 7 Gallery Lightbox Breaks Bootscore-Based Themes

The new gallery lightbox navigation↗ added in WordPress 7 is super cool! However, when a lightbox is opened in WordPress 7, it adds the inert attribute to all direct children of the <body> element. At UF, we used a Bootscore-based WordPress theme (a boilerplate Bootstrap CSS enabled theme), which wraps the site content in a <div id="page" class="site"> (see header.php↗), causing the entire site to go “inert” when the gallery lightbox is opened–not ideal.

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#wordpress#code#javascript#dom#work

Gravity Forms Image Aspect Ratio Validation

Despite giving very specific instructions, sometimes users don’t follow them. By default, Gravity Forms does not offer image aspect ratio validation on a file input field, so I had my n8n WordPress code chat agent generate this. I have not tried using the code, and this was for a specific form, so it would need to be modified and tested before use.

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#wordpress#code#php#work