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On our particular Mastodon instance, Electromagnetic Field (EMF; #EMFCamp on the socials), a festival held every even-numbered year, is not something you could miss becoming aware of. Hence, we (that is James and me) have known it exists since its last outing in 2024. But it’s got to be the ultimate of fediverse influence to actually take that one stage further and buy tickets. And then some…
Back last year, I attended my first Fleadh , Irish music festivals with a focus on competitions, as very much an intermediate tin whistle player. So intermediate in fact, that we had an accidental misunderstanding about what was meant by a slow air, which is a required element as part of the four styles of tune in the adult tin whistle category. This year I needed to do better… An unusual…
The Radxa ROCK 3a Since we got a new thermostat, along with a new heat pump last year, we’ve been connecting that to the Open Source home automation software Home Assistant . This hasn’t been to do anything fancy, but Home Assistant produces graphs that are a bit prettier than those from the app that is provided with the thermostat, and as the thermostat is accessible via HomeKit, it…
Happy World Backup Day . I solemnly swear to back up my important documents and precious memories on March 31st. #WorldBackupDay I will also tell my friends and family about World Backup Day – real friends don't let friends go without a backup. =) World Backup Day The World Backup Day Pledge In this context, a backup simply means a copy of digital data, usually stored in the cloud (as often…
The gas boiler in our house has definitely been on its way out over the past few years; not only that, so have several of the radiators, and having lived all spring with them off to prevent leaking, the looming onset of summer’s end, meant it was time for decisions. Before: The combi boiler The cheapest option, would have been just to replace the gas boiler. But that’s no way to decarbonise your…
In a new departure for me, I recently ventured into the world of competitive tin whistle playing; last weekend was my first experience of attending a Fleadh, at the Comhaltas Midlands regional event in Birmingham, UK. For those now questioning “what even is a Fleadh?”, keep on reading… Whistle playing update It’s been a fair while since my last post about whistle playing ,…
I don’t really like blog post titles that just promise tips, but this post is truly a mishmash of other stuff I’ve learnt, so I couldn’t think of anything better. I at least refrained from calling it ‘Clare’s top tips’, which was the title I put on the slides for this section when I was giving the talk these posts are based on to my work colleagues! ©Fotomaki. Not a stock image of a smorgasbord…
In this second part of my ‘Building an IndieWeb house’ series, on the whys and hows of this blog, I’m going to go over the very basics of using the static site generator (SSG) Hugo to make a website, how to get that on the internet and the ‘syndicate elsewhere’ element of the ‘Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere’ (POSSE) concept. This will be the post that’s the most techy of this…
It’s been a very long time since I’ve given a formal talk on one of my hobbies; in fact, I haven’t done one since an exceptionally distant high-school English class. I think, for being in my mid-teens, I did alright in that talk (it was on fossils); at least, I recall that’s what my teacher said. I also remember the best talk in my class was the one done by a young gentleman on playing guitar –…
Here, I’m bringing together all 19 book reviews I’ve written for fantasy books read in 2024, as originally published on my Bookwyrm account . With the exception of cookbooks, fantasy has always been my most prevalent reading genre (although I’ll admit there’s a bit of presenting myself in a certain way on the internet here as, yes, I do read quite a few light romances too). Obviously,…
Our damson tree had an unusually large crop of fruit this year (kilos and kilos!), with very few worms, so I decided to make a batch of jam. The recipe below details what appears to have worked well. It was adapted from a plum jam recipe found in the book Jams & Chutneys: Preserving the harvest by Thane Prince ( IBSN 978-1-4053-2954-5 ; I’d also recommend the orange and beetroot chutney…
Having reached Fort William in 5 days, I was definitely hoping to climb Ben Nevis but was a bit unsure whether it would be a good idea after the days spent hiking [see the previous posts: West Highland Way (III) and West Highland Way (II) ]. After my first ‘full’ breakfast of the trip at the BnB, I decided to first deal with where my ‘no plan plan’ was going to meet the…
As we left the story of my adventure on the West Highland Way (WHW), it was 10 pm and I had just set up for the night in the wild camping zone at the Bridge of Orchy having covered 104.3 km (64.8 miles) of the 154 km trail from Milngavie to Fort William in 3 days of walking ( see the previous post for the full report ). This meant we now had the wildest section of the route to go, including…
The West Highland Way (WHW), which runs for 96 miles (154 km) from Milngavie to Fort William, is the UK’s most popular long-distance path. It’s not hard to work out why – from loch-side views, to lush rainforest, wild moors, soaring highland mountains and back down to the sea, it takes in some of the best of Scotland’s scenery, yet is fairly accessible hiking with lots of supply…
I decided to walk the West Highland Way (WHW; running some 96 miles, or 154 km, from Milngavie, just north of Glasgow, to Fort William) after some other holiday plans fell through with a couple of months to go. I hence found myself trying to figure out what I’d need to do to walk a long-distance path at relatively short notice. Why did I choose this challenge? Partly, of course, because of…
I did it! That is, I finally completed the London marathon 21st April 2024, with a time of 6:33:02. Oh my gosh, has this ever been a lot of hard work – I’ve effectively trained for it three times after first the delays of the pandemic pushed it into 2023, then injury meaning I had to defer to 2024. So my initial reaction to crossing the line was really just one of relief. ©Spotograf. A few metres…
I’m finally there… that is past the longest run of training, past the last long run of tapering even, and it’s looking more likely than not that 2024 will be the year I really make it to the start line of the London marathon. It’s now ~1.5 weeks to go – I’m nervous, excited, still not really confident (I’ve just learnt the word is ‘maranoia’)!…
With a lot of hobbies, there’s always the bit that’s the chore. Maybe washing your brushes if you’re painting, figuring out code if you’re blogging, weighing the ingredients if you’re baking (endless washing if you’re running?). With making paper planners, it’s the dating, printing, cutting and punching. Designing your layout is fun; adding the stickers and writing in your plans or journalling is…
It was ~2 years ago that we started this blog as a way to share long-form musings or the simple stuff going on in our lives with, well, with anyone who wanted to read it. Then, ~2 months ago, coffeenow also joined the fediverse, and now has its own account on Mastodon . It’s no doubt that Mastodon is not your standard choice for promoting a blog if your purpose is to drive engagement (here,…
Ok, so for those who don’t know, the London marathon didn’t happen for me this year. I think I’ve always been clear that there was a bit of an ‘if’ getting to the start line. When you are pushing yourself doing runs that are that far, and far further than you’ve done before (although, well, it actually went wrong at the same distance as the longest I got to in 2020), there’s always a risk of…
I decided to enter the Sandy 10 this year after learning that it was the 40th anniversary of this race and realising that I had run the 30th anniversary race, which I think was my very first race as a member of North Herts Road Runners (NHRR) . I also still have the souvenir t-shirt (as well as a bottle of beer) from that race, so wore that too for a bit of well-earned nostalgia. Team NHRR…
It’s January. And, for a lot of people, at this time of year, there’s a renewed focus on fitness goals. This isn’t quite the case for me, as I’ve been training for the three-year marathon (yep, still plan to do it, injury excepting) since the start of October. Not quite training like I managed in 2019 and early 2020 - as you can only start from where you are - but training, nevertheless. As for…
When there’s a big banner for a 10 km race staring at you if you glance out of your office window, it does seem rude not to enter. Mind, this was back pre-pandemic in 2019, not long after I learnt I’d got a 2020 London marathon ballot place and at a point I could actually run a full 10 km. Fast forward to 2022, and things aren’t quite so good with the running, but the training for the…
Amongst the hasty planning of our wedding, it occurred to us (well to Clare) that I could provide a musical interlude on the tin whistle that I’ve been learning to play over the last 18 months or so. I was initially a bit hesitant about this (can we say reluctant…). While I feel my playing has come a long way, it also started from a rather low level. A few piano lessons as a child…
Where were we; oh yes, we were eloping to Scotland. Wow. It’s still a little scary to think it. And it’s getting even harder to write about. But here’s part two of the ‘haste to the wedding’ story, from leaving home until the end of the wedding day. And for those who don’t know the reason these posts are entitled ‘haste to the wedding’, it will become apparent, but only as you get towards the end…
Well, the secret is out now, after being together 20 years, James and I eloped for a late-summer wedding overlooking the gorgeous Loch Lomond, not too far north of Glasgow. And as we’ve been asked a few times what prompted this, a blog post seems in order. However, that’s not really so easy to write, not least because of course this is all quite personal. But, here we are with a little of the…
I’m writing this on Friday 24th June, what is apparently ‘ National Cream Tea Day ’, and while the cynic in me suggests that this is just another marketing opportunity, I also seem to have succumbed to scone fever with two recent events requiring the baking of scones in fairly large quantities. However, it’s not me doing the baking - James is the one who’s rather good at scones - so much so that I…
This blog uses a fair few icons, mostly for decorative reasons, such as the icons in the menu. Until today, these had been placed using a font kit from Font Awesome , which worked by using JavaScript to replace tags in the form of <i class="fa-…"></i> with the appropriate icon from their library. However, for some time I’d been wanting to move away from this method because hosting stuff away from…
For understandable reasons, the usual cross country league I take part in, via North Herts Road Runners (NHRR), wasn’t on this year, but it was great news when I heard that the club had arranged for us to take part in the Herts Sunday cross country league, the winter sister competition to our usual summer interclub competition. As I prepared, I was very pleased to find that I’d had…
For the past year, I’ve been learning to play the tin whistle from a starting point of very little musical experience. I’m hoping to write more about that process in a future post, but here I’m focusing on my most recent efforts practicing some jigs during January. Hence, ‘jiganuary’. My high D and low D tin whistles (actually made from plastic) Partly this post has…
It’s long past stir-up Sunday , the traditional day on which you should make your pudding, but not long past when a blog post on the family Christmas pudding recipe seems a good idea, so here it is. Many puddings are too sweet for me, and I’m not really a fan of Christmas cake, but this pudding is suitably rich in fruit, nuts, stout and brandy, and taste tested by my family over the…
It’s that time of year again; the time of year that any excess produce from the garden has to be preserved as chutneys, sauces, and, in a new attempt this year… pickles. I do love a good kebab - one place I lived even had a fabulous kebab van complete with its own fresh tabbouleh. A staple of the takeaway kebab is also a pickled chilli; I wouldn’t dream of picking it out to…
Although I love creative hobbies, time is always a factor that means I don’t do them as much as I like. A few years ago, I discovered decorative planning, and this led me into into exploring the concept of making my own personalised planner (for me, that’s designing and printing my basic planner inserts, and then adding lots of stickers, washi tape and doodles, although others do full-on art…
Update for 2024 Today (September 1st 2024) was the 13th iteration of the Duck n Dash aquathlon, and I’m still at a 100% attendance record, so just adding a quick report to update the report below from 2021 ! Round the switchback in the centre of the common. Every year, the weather for this race has been glorious, so it was a bit of worry when the Met Office forecast had a yellow warning for…
Getting a ballot place in the London marathon is a lucky thing. London marathon don’t publish the number of ballot places that they have, but estimates I’ve read say it’s ~17,000. We do know that there are usually ~40,000 runners - although this has been increased to ~50,000 in 2021 . They do also publish the numbers of applicants they get for the ballot, and that’s well…
I’ve found myself doing a more than average amount of baking over the last year or so, including bread and in particular sourdough. Here are some notes on the process that I follow to make sourdough. Sourdough starter As you may know, sourdough is a type of bread made using ‘wild’ yeast. Before making your sourdough bread, you’ll need a sourdough starter. As part of the…
Subscriptions are everywhere… music, tv, software… you even are, in a way, a subscriber to social media content, notwithstanding that you aren’t very in control of what you see there. Maybe even someone subscribes (via RSS) to this blog, not that I feel that’s very likely (we don’t know because we don’t track you). But it’s not just digital options where…
I think it’s a given that whenever there’s some form of software update, I’m going to initially dislike it. First of all, there’s the disruption of the update itself, waiting for something to download and restart until I get my program back, no doubt occurring at the most inconvenient moment. But then there’s also just that it is a change. It’s not that I…
In my previous post about setting up the blog, we were at the stage of having decided on, and got at least somewhere, with getting Hugo working to generate a website, but with much design still to do. And although design can be just going with your preferred template for the content, I want a little more input than that because I do just want a ‘feel’ that says ‘coffee now’…
Text or other blocky elements entwined with background images is a look that’s often used in stickers and planners, and although it looks doable - it’s only combining a few elements together - I hadn’t even worked out how to use custom fonts on Procreate, let alone how to only show part of a rasterised text layer without just erasing. But now, after following along with a tutorial published…
It’s blowing a hooley out there again, pun intended. Unfortunately, it also did the same on my return to running club this week; sunny before, sunny after, but during a torrential thunderstorm. Two days later and I might be dry but my trainers are still sopping. It’s also the day parkrun , a worldwide organisation that helps volunteers run free, weekly, timed 5k events, of which there…
When you make the decision to start a blog, one of the first things you need to consider is what sort of system you’re going to use to organise your content. If you read any article on starting out blogging, it will almost certainly mention WordPress. WordPress (meaning software available at https://wordpress.org , not to be confused with WordPress.com ; see below) is a very common…
Hello world. This is our first blog post. We are writing about pizza because pizza is the best. After coffee. It’s a post only to learn how to do a post, and show pizza. Pizza in the garden We made some pizza. It was yummy. We ate it in the garden. Here is a picture of cooking the pizza. In pizza dough, you have to use the following ingredients: Flour Water Salt Yeast You can also add some…
This website - https://coffeenow.moomop.uk/ - is run by Clare Hooley and James Keogh. We do not set any cookies or use an analytics service to record your activity (e.g. Google analytics). We do not collect any data from you. We also do not have any adverts, affiliate links or sponsored content. The script for the Bubbles widget is from https://bubbles.town/embed . All other images, fonts and…
Our blog couldn’t run without the following open source code and other community resources: The static site generator Hugo (Apache License 2.0). The theme Papermod (MIT License), and its dependencies fuse.js for search (Apache License 2.0) and highlight.js for syntax highlighting (BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License). Image gallery made with photo-box-grid (Apache…