A smattering of stray thoughts I’ve had this month

April 2026

This is brand new for April and will be the inaugural post for Stray Thoughts.

On my 365Pixels daily photo blog, I have a Stray Pixels section for extra photos, and I thought I’d carry the name over to this. I’m not very good at keeping my Now page active on my website, so maybe trying a monthly Stray Thoughts blog post can morph into becoming a monthly Now Page update. Let’s see how it goes…

Why do this? Good question. I’m not sure yet. All I know is that it’s sort of therapeutic and kind of like journaling, and it might be fun to look back years later at what my monkey-brain was doing. Plus, maybe it will make you laugh, or give you an idea, or let you know you’re not alone with what you’ve been thinking about.

💬 I have a large Field Notes collection that was just kind of dumb to acquire over the years, and I’ve been selling them on eBay. It’s been a pleasant surprise how frictionless it has been. I’ve had horrible experiences on FB Marketplace and other selling sites. eBay has been very easy. I’ve only had one issue where the purchaser claimed to have lost the box to porch pirates, and eBay returned the money within a few hours, eating the loss, which I was very impressed with. By the way, Field Notes is still a thing; they sell very well.

💬 I still haven’t completed 100 Jumps yet, and it’s starting to frustrate me. But it shows how much of a lousy gamer I am. I don’t think I’ve ever completed a game, you know, X-box, PlayStation, Nintendo-type games. I’m just not that good at them. I want to like them, but I get stuck or don’t know what to do, so I end up looking it up online, which kind of takes the fun out of it.

The most recent game I really enjoyed playing was The Last of Us on PlayStation, but I’m continually stuck, not knowing where to go or how to finish a hard section.

I’d rather go read a good book, to be honest.

💬 It took me a while to figure out Templates in Drafts, but it’s really handy for structured monthly blog posts. I think it’s worth your time if you have structured blog posts where you want the same format each time. Definitely a time saver.

💬 Why does it feel so good to go out and get a Starbucks coffee and a sandwich? I’ve been home, sick, and the draw, the desire for the treat of going out and getting a coffee and some egg bites or an avocado egg toast from Robeks, it just makes you feel better, it’s a little treat, it’s odd, I don’t understand why this is.

💬 I should speak a second language. My mom’s mom was full-blooded Portuguese and decided not to teach her children because at that time and place, it was frowned upon to speak anything but English, and that makes me sad on a daily basis.

💬 I’ve given Craft a good go of it. I used it full-time for several months, set it all up, and made it look super pretty and clean. And, it’s nice. It’s a beautiful app with amazing tools. It just may be too much for me. I’m back full-time to Drafts. It’s simple, less pretty, and does one job really well.

I’ve made a few templates and some scripts to send things to Obsidian, and I’m very happy to be back. It just lets you write, without fiddling with settings and aesthetics. The deal-breaker was Craft’s “block” approach. I just want to write in Markdown, and Craft allows you to do that, but it puts everything into blocks. It drove me nuts trying to edit those blocks.

Something I use all the time is the Drafts shortcut, “Dictate Draft” feature. When I have ideas, they are very fragile and short-lived in my brain. Wherever I am, I can just activate and talk, knowing it will be saved in Drafts for editing later on.

Drafts, I love you.