Contrasts, Linux, and Plain HTML
Just over a month ago I posted about the Random Color Contrasts bot - the post was essentially a way for me to dump my bookmarked combinations from Mastodon and save them somewhere1. Since that post I have kept bookmarking more combinations. I don't have a real use for them - except that I have used a couple of combinations for themes both here and on my personal site.
Some of the obvious options would be to create some sort of database (in Notion, for example) to drop them in there. But then the thought occurred to me...I wanted to hand-code a plain HTML page but I didn't have an idea what I would do or why. Suddenly I have the (almost) perfect idea.
While I was supposed to be working I quickly set to work on cobbling together a plain HTML document. I started with the usual <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY</BODY></HTML> etc. etc. I decided a Table would be my best bet to display everything - at least in terms of writing it up with plain HTML. So I put together a table and populated it with my most recent bookmarks:
<table>
<tr>
<td style="background:#94C79F; color:#03316E;">Vista Blue #94C79F</td>
<td style="background:#66905A; color:#0A0636;">Hippie Green #66905A</td>
<td style="background:#A8665C; color:#06020E;">Coral Tree #A8665C</td>
<td style="background:#87803F; color:#0F024B;">Pesto #87803F</td>
<td style="background:#D5D9B4; color:#684057;">Green Mist #D5D9B4</td>
<td style="background:#5FC5E3; color:#2C3364;">Seagull #5FC5E3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background:#03316E; color:#94C79F;">Astronaut #03316E</td>
<td style="background:#0A0636; color:#66905A;">Black Rock #0A0636</td>
<td style="background:#06020E; color:#A8665C;">Jaguar #06020E</td>
<td style="background:#0F024B; color:#87803F;">Tolopea #0F024B</td>
<td style="background:#684057; color:#D5D9B4;">Eggplant #684057</td>
<td style="background:#2C3364; color:#5FC5E3;">Biscay #2C3364</td>
</tr>
</table>
After I did that I went and applied some CSS styling so that the colours displayed in a manner similar to how they're posted on the Random Color Contrasts Mastodon bot. I stopped there, but eventually came back to it later in the evening and played around with CSS styling some more, and tried using <DIV> blocks to create everything but eventually settled back on using tables.
I set up a new Site on Netlify and created a subdomain for the project:
So it's up and live, but does not yet contain all of my combinations that I've saved (in fact, none of them from that original post). It's an on-going project and just a little bit of fun.
But the blog title mentions Linux. Where does that come in?
I have an old desktop PC that my mother-in-law used to use, but became obsolete and was eventually replaced with a newer desktop2. I upgraded the hard drive to a 1TB HDD that I had lying around and for a while it was running Windows, but not long ago I installed Linux Mint XFCE on it. I haven't done much with it, and I wanted to do a new install - something lightweight. But in checking out my system specs I realized that there's no reason why it couldn't run Cinnamon. So I did that on the weekend.
Let me just say that I love the Cinnamon experience. It runs smoothly on this old PC, the only drawback is that it takes a while from power-on to login. Not the end of the world. All the drivers work super great and it even added my wireless printer all on its own if I need to print anything. Smart!
But I don't have a practical purpose for another personal computer. Apart from my work laptop - which I spend the most time on - I have a Microsoft Surface running Windows 11, and an old MacBook running MacOS (Catalina, I think? It's a few versions behind.). I use the Surface for day-to-day computing and managing my Kobo, I have my 11ty site saved there. That kind of thing. The MacBook I use for podcast and audio production, and where I save all of my digital music.
So why do I need another PC? Frankly, I don't. Linux is just something fun to mess around with. But here's where another idea came about.
I realized yesterday that I spent a LOT of time working on this Contrasts project instead of working; this happens a lot when I get started on a project that I get excited about. I can really see myself getting lost in it, especially in the initial stages of adding all of the colours I've saved. So I decided that I'm only going to edit the page on my Linux machine.
I still have all of the files3 onto a spare USB drive. I thought about trying to turn the machine into a cloud storage server but that is honestly out of my depth. I haven't moved the folder onto the desktop permanently yet but I really should if my intention is to work on this only on the Linux machine. But for now it sits on a USB drive, which is plugged into the tower.
So that's it. If I get the itch to work on it, I have to physically be at that machine in order to do it. I hope that doing it this way might also force me to expand my use of the machine a little bit beyond just playing around with it.
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Or if you prefer, find me on Mastodon.
It seems that somewhere along the way my styling changes may have broken the way the posts are showing but I'm not going to stress about it.↩
That one is also slowing down, but I think I can make it last a little longer by swapping out the HDD to an SSD.↩
"All" - it's just a single folder with an
index.htmlfile in it.↩