Dan Antion

Is this Your Rabbit Hole?

I’m guessing I’m not alone in having things that occupy my mind to the exclusion of the things I should be doing. The rabbit hole I chose to go down instead writing an interesting post for today has to do with the Thursday Doors Recap Page.

I know, I know, I wrote about that page a wile ago. Forgive me.

Actually, unless you participate in the Thursday Doors challenge, you can jump down to the gallery. That is, unless you want to know more about this little technical journey of mine.

One problem with the Recap page, is that I only include the title/url of the blog post and the location information the blogger has provided via a static form. I would like to provide information about the doors post, to help Recap readers to decide which URLs they might like to explore. Of course, I would love it if every reader followed every link, but…

I’ve been testing the possibility of appending “hashtags” to the end of the link that bloggers leave in the comment section of Thursday’s post. I can pull those tags out and display them in a separate column in the Recap page. For example, the following two URLs will take you to the exact same place:

nofacilities.com/2022/02/17/buckingham-square-district/

nofacilities.com/2022/02/17/buckingham-square-district/#Hartford#Connecticut#19th-Century

The difference is that I can process the second one to include the words “Hartford” “Connecticut” and the phrase “19th Century” in a separate column. The URL that I present in the Recap page will still show the title of the blog post. The entry on the Recap Page would look like the line below:

Buckingham Square District               Hartford | Connecticut | 19th Century

I should add that this would be taking advantage of a feature that was originally designed for a different purpose. Except in some extremely unlikely, albeit unfortunate circumstances, these tags would not interfere with the expected operation of the links provided. If that were to occur, I would repair the link.

This is a work in progress, but I am going to ask for a few volunteers to help me test this process on Thursday. Thursday’s post will include the instructions. If this works, we will end up with a more informative Recap Page – one that lets the participant tell you about their post – without any additional work on my part and with very little work on the part of the blogger.

Sunrise
Sunrise over honeysuckle
A little later in the morning
Geese
These guys are trying to get together in formation
Yes, I’m coming with you.
Maddie, can we just finish our walk and go home? It’s cold.
The gate is open and Maddie can finally check out those leaves
The ice is gone.
The right time
Munch
Just a little snow, but only 15°f (-9°c)
Baby Smoke
Saturday afternoon snow squall.
We were finally able to get to the flag pole

57 comments

  2. Great idea, and I’m going to be very sadly not using it. I already tag my photos with locational keywords and other metadata without a markup. Putting your # markup would then either double the number of tags or make for two sets of tags which will require separate searches to pull up.

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  4. I’d love to be helpful about this, but, since I know exactly nothing about hashtags, I can’t be. I do know about sunrises, though, and you’ve captured some dandies; that first photo is especially good. As for the geese, they only pretend to be going north; they are really all headed to central Indiana.

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  8. Hi Dan – count me out on things technical … I’m just happy to read, and on occasions only really have an interest in the photos … but can easily dream my own rabbit holes – cheers Hilary

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  9. Two incredible shots of Old Glory. That’s a chunky bunny! Baby Smoke is just never going to have a fluffy tail. I think that puts him in more danger because he will definitely be mistaken for a rat. That’s sad.

    Maddie seems to be enjoying the “warmer” weather! Love the wind-blown look on her. Hope those geese were flying in the right direction. Looks like this is their first day training for flight formation! 🤗

    Ginger

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    • Sometimes, I say, “I’ll save this flag photo for next time,” but I always take more, so I decided to include two for today. I couldn’t decide which I liked better. Baby Smoke has been hanging out with the other squirrels. I guess he just doesn’t have the fluffy tail gene, but he certainly has learned how to forage and beg like a squirrel.

      Maddie does like the warmer weather. I take her out in the morning, she checks the temperature and, if it’s warm enough, she starts pestering me to walk.

      Those geese, Ginger, yeah, they didn’t have their act together at all.

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  14. 🖐🏻🖐🏻I’m an adventurer. Just tell me what to do and I’ll try it. I’m one of those readers who follows every link. 🤷‍♀️The flag photos came out nice. Ummm… baby Smoke looks suspiciously like his alley cousins in that shot. 😱

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    • Thanks for the support, Cheryl. I think if I get a few people to give it a try, I should be able to make it work.

      Baby Smoke does have a rat-like look to him, but he’s a squirrel. I need to get a picture of him sitting up and begging.

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  15. That new shot of the flagpole has a familiar look to it. As for the geese the message is look to them for in formation and only rarely for information. And I blame the whole Monday situation on not enough quality bar time on Saturday. Can I get a #do_over hashtag for Saturday ? A lot of the flags were glazed in the hanging position after the sleet storm here on Friday. On a brighter note there is green grass showing on the middle of the lawn… Happy Monday.

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    • I have tried to get the perfect photo looking up the pole before, John. I’m still not thrilled. Our forecast says that winter might return Thursday night into Friday. So much for things turning green here. Happy Monday, Only five days to go until the weekend.

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  17. I believe you are asking us to use specific tags in the tag window on the right during selection of the title of our posts when creating or editing a post. WP doesn’t use the word hashtags which is going to confuse some readers.
    Love the sunrise.

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    • No, I’m asking you to add a few tags, maybe location, subject, etc to the end of the link that you add in your comment. You don’t have to change anything in your post or on your blog page.

      I’m using the term ‘hashtag’ for convenience, since most people understand it and that’s what these look like. Technically, these are called ‘fragments’ but I fear this post was too technical as it is. This wouldn’t affect the link on Thursday, but it would allow me to add some (your) information on the Sunday Recap.

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    • Thanks Deborah. I hope people will add them. The Sunday recap is getting a lot of traction, and this might help to pique someone’s interest.

      I went to get some takeout. It was blue skies and sunny. And hour later, it was near whiteout conditions.

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    • Thanks Diana. It’s fun writing little bits of code (without someone waiting impatiently for the results). The critters are waking up. I think spring is near. We’ve see our first chipmunks this past week.

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  25. What beautiful photos! I’ve never done that Thursday door activity. Next time I’m in a city or on a university campus, I’ll be on the look out for unusual doors.

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