Today, I talk about my experience with Kindles (Oasis, Paperwhite) and the Kobo Libra 2. I touch on what I’m currently reading and I take a quick look at a highlighting workflow I recently built (episode 3 will dive more into that).
Welcome to a new podcast by me, Matt Langford. I’m calling it Micro Matt for two reasons. First as a nod to the platform that will be hosting it (Micro.blog), and secondly to represent the style of the podcast. It’ll be short 5 minute episodes focusing on a single topic every episode.
As a whole, it has no defined topics or niche. Episodes may vary from tech to sports to parenting to travel to life in general.
Thanks for listening!
I’ve been in charge of auditing my non-profit team’s software use and changing directions where we need. With some software, I have lots of leeway, with others there’s none. But it looks like we’re going to be using this set of products going forward: Quickbooks (existing), ProtonMail (from Google Workspace), DropBox (from Google Drive & Docusign), Notion (existing but consolidating lots of stuff), Todoist (from a white board).
Some of our goals in doing this are increasing privacy & security, modernization, lowering costs, and future proofing. It’s not locked in stone as of yet (still awaiting some communication from a couple of the companies), but it looks to be headed that way.
Tiny Theme has been updated to version 2.7 and includes a fundamental change to how posts can be truncated with a Read More tag. Previously, you needed to use a Summary Posts plugin (now archived). The feature is now built-in for all users. Simply add a more tag within your post and it’ll be properly truncated on your main blog page.
That’s hardly breaking news, but here is where things change. Hugo (and thus Micro.blog) has limited support for formatting and handling this style of truncated posts/summaries. Typically, all HTML formatting (links, photos, etc) would be stripped out when using that tag. Obviously, that’s not ideal. Tiny Theme will now handle that how you might expect. Your blog feed, even when using the More tag, will show all HTML as intended on the post feed even when you use more tags.
For years, I’ve been in what many call the EDC Community. Basically, that means I’m more cognizant of what I carry on a daily basis. Technically speaking, everyone has an EDC (or Every Day Carry). For most people, that includes a phone, keys, and wallet. Others take it a step further with a pocket knife or leaps and bounds further with a fully stocked sling/bag.
One of the most common extra items is a flashlight. If you’re questioning the necessity of carrying a flashlight by asking, “Why not use the flashlight on your phone?” then you likely aren’t the individual who needs to carry a flashlight. But if you find yourself needing a legitimate standalone flashlight often (perhaps due to your job) or just want to see what it’s like to carry one, this list is for you.
Tiny Theme comes fully designed out-of-the-box, but many people like to tweak things here and there. Perhaps you want to add a background or increase the width. As a quick example, I’ve designed a child theme using only 3 lines of CSS.
I’ve added a background color, modified the page width, tweaked the margins, rounded some corners, and centered the header. You can copy and paste the code below into your Custom CSS (access it via the Design page on Micro.blog). Use it as is or modify it to your needs.
As you can see, making wholesale design changes to Tiny Theme is pretty easy.
In mostly no particular order. As you can tell, I lean towards WWII, but there are a few exceptions.
I’ve been very happy with the success and development of Tiny Theme since its inception. However, there has always been one big obstacle I’ve had trouble over-coming. Basic CSS customization has always been possible, but I wanted to create a way for more advanced customizations without requiring users to over-write major elements of the theme (and thus missing out on future updates).
I’m calling this new feature Microhooks. It allows users to add (or modify) elements without having to over-write critical parts of Tiny Theme. For example, previously, if you wanted to add an email subscription box to the bottom of each post, you’d either have to code that in to every post OR completely over-write the single post implementation of Tiny…and if the single post implementation of Tiny ever got updated, well…good luck. Now, there’s another way.
Due to the growing popularity of Tiny Theme, I have created a documentation site that has information more current than this post.
There have been a bunch of “what apps am I using?” blog posts recently, inspired by an episode of Hemispheric Views. Robb Knight has a page with links to other people’s posts.
When I first created Tiny Theme, I knew I wanted to allow users to create posts with more than a handful of images. While technically possible from day one, the default layout was a simple vertical stack of images. While this is to be expected on mobile devices, it’s less than elegant on larger screens.
The solution comes in the form of the Adaptive Photo Layout plugin for Tiny Theme.
To create a gallery, you have to follow a few steps manually. This allows you to only use the adaptive photo layout when you’re sure you need it. Here’s the sample code:
Matt Langford
<div class="adaptive_photo_layout">
<ul>
<li><img src="LINK TO IMAGE 1" alt="IMAGE 1 DESCRIPTION" loading="lazy"></li>
<li><img src=
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I had a first-world file sharing dilemma. I wanted to be able to simply share files with others that didn’t require a convoluted process. I wanted to be able to set expiration dates and passwords when necessary. I wanted it to be custom branded. And here’s the kicker, it needed to be affordable.
When I started developing Tiny Theme, I set out with goals of (1) accomplishing everything without scripts, (2) make it as light as possible, and (3) use as few media queries as possible. To date, Tiny still has zero added scripts, is very light, and uses only 1 media query (to enable dark mode). However, shortly after releasing the theme, it became apparent that people wanted font choices. How could I enable that without adding any scripts or additional weight to the theme?
Going this route limited me to using system fonts. My first inclination was to leave the theme as is and allow users to decide if and how they wanted to customize font stacks (something you can still do). But with more requests, I realized a lot of people would prefer to have built-in options.
While attempting to build out my own capable font stacks, I came...
As someone who uses a Mac almost every day, there are a quite a few smaller utility-type apps that I frequently use. I decided to make a list, perhaps it’ll be useful to someone.
Adding domain specific verification to Nostr and changing your Bluesky username to your own domain can be accomplished by creating .well-known text files. If you’re using Micro.blog and would like to do this, it’s pretty easy.
Here’s a quick rundown of the Safari Extensions I keep enabled on my devices (iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS).
For ad blocking, many people go with 1Blocker, but I prefer Wipr. It’s a no nonsense, install it, and forget it app. 1Blocker is a fantastic app that allows almost limitless customizations and settings. Wipr is a fantastic app that has no customizations or settings. There’s a place for both, but Wipr wins for me.
Baking Soda and Vinegar are made by the same developer. Together, they change almost every video embed across the internet to use your device’s native video player. This means things like Picture-in-Picture are always available.
Stop the Madness essentially fixes broken sites and common annoyances across the internet. See full links instead of shortened URLs, hide banners on common sites, enables autocomplete on sites that have it turned off,...