Last weekend we decided to get out of Vancouver for a little while. One of our favourite semi-local places that we’ve found is Cultus Lake. It’s a great camping location, but the whole area has some excellent hikes, lake-related things to do, and just a plethora of random activities.
We have driven past the entrance to what is known as the “Teapot Hill Hike” several times, and last week we decided to see what it was all about. It’s a hike. Up a hill. And people bring and leave teapots (and other tea-related paraphernalia) on the side of the trail for other people to find in a Where’s Wally kinda way. It’s very cute. The hill is more hilly than I had anticipated; it gets pretty steep at some points. But it was 100% worth it. It’s fairly quiet, there’s some good views, and it’s really quite cute finding a little tea set nestled into a tree trunk.
The round trip took about 90 minutes and there’s a dozen or so car-parking spaces at the trailhead with other on-the-side-of-the-road parking close by.
For the first time in more than a year we went to a restaurant last weekend. We chose Bodega on Main St. which is within walking distance of our home. It’s a Spanish Tapas place that has been well-reviewed and has a small outside patio. We had decided that if we weren’t able to get an outside spot that we would try sitting inside and see how we felt after a drink. However, we didn’t have to do that as we secured an outside table which made me feel immediately more comfortable.
That immediate comfort was quite quickly interrupted however as our server – our first in over a year – wasn’t wearing a mask. Now, masks are “recommended” but not mandated here in BC so the server was entirely within their rights to do that and there could well be a solid reason why they have chosen not to, and I respect that. It still weirded me out. This was the first time someone had been within 6 feet of me that isn’t someone in my “safe six” who wasn’t wearing a mask for a very long time. I got over myself and realized that this is just the way of the world and I have to learn to cope with that and I desperately didn’t want to ruin what was hopefully going to be a really lovely evening. Our other server was wearing a mask.
The food was great and it was really lovely to be able to have a cold, on-tap beer that wasn’t within 5 square feet of where I’m writing this post. We also had some quite random entertainment. Main Street is, as the name would suggest, a fairly large and busy street here in Vancouver. Close to the bar, it’s 4 lanes in one direction and 3 lanes in another. All 7 lanes of traffic were stopped for about two minutes as approximately 30 geese sauntered across the road. Everyone was remarkably patient, I don’t recall hearing a single car horn.
About 10 minutes later the geese decided they had made a mistake. So, once again all 7 lanes of traffic stopped – for a solid three minutes this time – as the geese made their way back to the park. One of the folks on a table next to us, as he was recording it on his phone, commented “I fucking love this country, man. The people even stop for the ducks”. Well said.
Last weekend was pretty busy! We also walked almost the entirety of the sea wall – it’s about 10Km, plus a bit extra as you get back to Yaletown. It was delightful. And I rewarded myself with a Marble Slab icecream – something I haven’t had in a couple of years – which was equally delightful. I should do that more often (the sea wall, not the ice cream)
11 years ago today I asked a question on Stack Overflow about how to use CSS transitions to change the visibility of things. It has 1657 upvotes, has been bookmarked 460 times, and continues to get folks answering it even after all this time. What I was asking still isn’t technically doable in CSS (there’s plenty of other – arguably better – ways to do this now).
With the release of WordPress 5.8 came the official release of the block editing experience within the widgets screen. My Content Visibility suite of plugins has supported the Block Widgets (widget blocks?) for a while now, but thanks to a suggestion by a user, I updated the core plugin to allow you to show or hide blocks in a widget area/sidebar when someone is viewing a post in a particular category or tag. I also updated the other plugins to say they support WordPress 5.8 and also released a new specific users add-on.
Content Visibility Specific Users allows you to say “only show/hide this block to this specific user or users”. So, for example, if you have an already-published post or page and you want to test an edit to one of your blocks, you can duplicate the block you want to edit, hide the original block from you and only you, and show the new edited block to you and only you. Maybe your manager (or client) wants to see what the edit looks like before they give sign-off; add your manager to the list of users who can see the change and ask them to refresh.
There’s more coming to Content Visibility over the next little while; add-ons for Gravity Forms and other popular WordPress plugins, a website which showcases the plugin including a developer-focused documentation area and an official roadmap, improvements to how large lists of things are loaded (such as “all posts” or “all pages”) for performance, some UI tweaks to allow you to more easily see which blocks have what rules, and more.
React Comparison Slider is an accessible, keyboard-friendly “before and after” component by Matt Rothenberg.
BC COVID-19 Vaccine Count: 81.3% partially vaccinated and 61.4% fully vaccinated. (+0.7% and + 8.2%)
Canada COVID-19 Vaccine Count: 79.7% partially vaccinated and 57.5% fully vaccinated (+1.1% and + 7.5%) 👩🏼⚕️
