“For nothing passes door and window here save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top.”

The tired hobbits are in the house of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry:

“At last Tom and Goldberry rose and cleared the table swiftly. The guests were commanded to sit quiet, and were set in chairs, each with a footstool to his tired feet. There was a fire in the wide hearth before them, and it was burning with a sweet smell, as if it were built of apple-wood. When everything was set in order, all the lights in the room were put out, except one lamp and a pair of candles at each end of the chimney-shelf. Then Goldberry came and stood before them, holding a candle; and she wished them each a good night and deep sleep.

‘Have peace now,’ she said, ‘until the morning! Heed no nightly noises! For nothing passes door and window here save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top. Good night!’

She passed out of the room with a glimmer and a rustle. The sound of her footsteps was like a stream falling gently away downhill over cool stones in the quiet of night.”

—John Tolkien, The Lord Of The Rings, book 1, chapter 7

One of my favorite moments from one of my favorite books! The next time I wish my daughter “Good night,” I’ll quote Goldberry when she wished the hobbits good night. This will be probably tonight. :-)

A jump from WP 4.9x. to 6.2.x and move to https (SSL)

Finally. Our personal blogs are now updated (from WordPress 4.9.x to 6.2.x), Classic Editor and Classic Widgets plugins are installed, https certificates added (transition from http → to https), MySQL tables updated (thousands of http entries replaced with https), a few minor issues fixed.

Next — find/tweak better themes, start blogging more often. And follow more RSS feeds. :)

And kudos to @gonzomir who is a true master of the Web, WordPress, and the server command line craft, and who helped me and @molif pull this off successfully! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Oh and also — fix one critical PHP error in a plugin of critical importance! Update (one day later): The critical error was fixed! :)

https://twitter.com/optimiced/status/1661851873941368832

“After the rain”

Yesterday me and Ani went to the little park nearby, to walk our dog Murphy and to see the nature enjoy a refreshing morning rain. These are a few shots from that walk — I am especially proud of the last one where I managed to “catch” a bee right in the moment when it was leaving a rose hip flower! :-)

Water drop pearls after the rain.
Water drop pearls after the rain.

A beautiful mushroom in the grass.
A mushroom hiding in the grass.

A white heart -- a leaf from a rose hip bush.
A white heart..

A beautiful blooming rose hip bush.
A blooming rose hip bush.

A little bee meets a spider!
A little bee meets a spider!

The Lighthouse (2022, Figma edition)

Years ago, while exploring Gravit Designer*, I created with its help an illustration of a lighthouse on a night sea.

The Lighthouse -- a vector illustration created in Gravit Designer, in 2015.
“The Lighthouse,” a vector illustration that I created in Gravit Designer, in 2015.”

Fast-forward to today, now Gravit Designer is Corel Vector* (RIP, Gravit!), the world of graphic design software has changed a lot, and one of the most popular apps for screen design became Figma Design. I wanted to try Figma and learn its basic tools and workflows, so I opened Figma and tried to make a similar illustration in it. And couple of hours later — voilà, all done!


“The Lighthouse” (Figma Design, 2022) — final version with colors and everything.

The experience was fun and overall I liked Figma’s vector tools and how they behave. Only nitpick: I am missing a real noise filter in Figma, but now that Rogie King is working on a Noise & Textures plugin — currently it’s work-in-progress — I am sure this will be not an issue soon.


“The Lighthouse” (Figma Design, 2022) — vector outlines and colors overlaid.


“The Lighthouse” (Figma Design, 2022) — vector outlines only.

P.S. It’s sad to see Dribbble change so much — now it’s even impossible to post an image and not see it blurry and pixellated.