Now August 2026
August 2026
It’s 2026-08-15, and here’s some of what I’ve been doing.
Professional & PhD Stuff
- learning a little more Python (and especially Beautiful Soup) as part of our ongoing In the Library in the Lead Pipe journal migration project.
- serving on a couple statewide committees related to a new Teaching and Learning with Technology Committee. I’m always glad to work with Jonathan Lashley & Liza Long, as well as other thoughtful folks from across the state.
- helped sort out a few account issues that popped up as the ISU Pressbooks instance was merged into the a statewide one. Now most people will log in at the Idaho instance.
- progressing more slowly than I’d like through my exam reading lists, but still making progress!
- attending online events like OEN Engage! 2026 and the Clover Park Technical College 2026 AI+OER Institute.
- preparing the conference buddy program for OpenEd26 (it’s mostly small refinements on what our team did last year).
Fun & Personal Stuff
- participating in Blaugust2026—this will be my fourth post this month, and I’m aiming for five! (I also highly recommend you check out all other folks participating this year.)
- I’m also aiming to do 100DaysToOffload this year (especially if I start doing smaller posts related to my PhD project).
- enjoying our backyard-grown herbs, peppers, and strawberries.
- still doing “Daily Pages” (that’s my evolving sort of “Morning Pages”-inspired thought processing journal) throughout the day on most days.
- really appreciating the Watch Duty folks, whose web app and on-device apps have provided constant information about wildfires and air quality this smoky summer.
Bonus Page Refinement
While writing this post, I noticed & fixed a small accessibility issue with my /now page!
For accessibility and semantic purposes, it’s best to have only a single H1-level heading per page. However, because this page automatically loads the content of the most recent blog post in my “Now” category, that posts’s title automatically produces an H1 level heading on this page as well. So I made a new Jekyll layout that basically duplicates this page’s previous layout, with the difference being that this Now page’s title is rendered as an H2 (but styled to look like an H1).
Hurray for continuous improvement!
Kudos
Did you enjoy this? Let me know:
Perhaps even leave a comment below?
Cite this post:
Randall, Ryan P. “Now August 2026”. Published August 15, 2026. https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/now/now-august-2026. Accessed on .