The Wanderer's Notebook on first-folio.theme.lobb.ie

Shortcode Showcase

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This page demonstrates every shortcode available in the First Folio theme. Use it as a visual reference.

Callout

Four built-in types plus custom styling:

Tip
This is a tip callout — use it for helpful suggestions.

Info
This is an info callout — use it for informational notes.

Alert
This is an alert callout — use it for critical information.

Warning
This is a warning callout — use it for cautionary notes.

Buy Now
Available worldwide

Custom Callout
This callout has a custom title and background colour.

With float positioning:

Navigation and CTA Features

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This page demonstrates the navigation features of the First Folio theme.

The breadcrumb trail appears automatically on article pages, showing the section path, author, and date. It uses purple accents for sections and orange for metadata.

Control it with frontmatter:

breadcrumb: false — hide on article pages (default: true)
breadcrumb_list: true — show on list/section pages (default: false)
hideAuthor: true — omit author segment
hideDate: true — omit date segment

Signpost CTA

The signpost bar appears below the banner/hero image. Configure it in frontmatter:

The Cartographer

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

She drew the roads from memory, the river where it used to run, the bridge they took down in the nineties. She marked the shop that sold paraffin, the tree where the owl sat every January, the gap in the wall you could squeeze through if you were ten and determined. None of this was on any official map. All of it was true.

The Waiting Room

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A short scene demonstrating the theme’s theatrical shortcodes.

A waiting room. Two plastic chairs. A water cooler that gurgles intermittently. FIONA sits reading a magazine. DECLAN enters, looks around, sits.

DECLAN

Is this the right place?

FIONA

Depends what you’re waiting for.

DECLAN (hesitantly)

The… results?

FIONA

Everyone’s waiting for results. Sit down.

DECLAN sits. The water cooler gurgles. A long silence.

DECLAN

How long have you been here?

FIONA (not looking up)

Hard to say. The clock stopped working on Tuesday.

DECLAN

What day is it now?

Morning Song

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A demonstration of the poem shortcode, which preserves line breaks exactly as written.

The kettle clicks. Outside, a blackbird tests the morning with three cautious notes. Light finds the table, the crumbs from last night, the book left open at the page where sleep arrived. There is no hurry. The day will assemble itself from these small, unhurried pieces.

Three Things I Learned from a Broken Compass

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I bought a compass at a market in Galway. It was brass, heavy, and completely unreliable. It pointed south-southwest regardless of where you stood. I kept it anyway.

Thing one: certainty is overrated

The compass was wrong, but it was consistently wrong. After a while, I learned to compensate. I knew that wherever it pointed, north was roughly 200 degrees the other way. A broken instrument you understand is more useful than a working one you don’t.

Thing two: all tools are extensions of intention

The compass didn’t find north. I found north, using the compass as a reference point. The tool didn’t do the work — it gave me something to push against. Most tools work this way, if you’re honest about it.

Thing three: keep the broken things

I still have the compass. It sits on a shelf next to a clock that runs fast and a pen that skips. These objects remind me that imperfection is not the same as uselessness.

Note
This piece exists to demonstrate the details and callout shortcodes. The compass is fictional. The sentiment is not.

Shakshuka

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One pan, twenty minutes, and the satisfaction of cracking eggs into a bubbling sauce.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 red pepper, diced
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika
400g tin chopped tomatoes
4 eggs
Fresh coriander and crusty bread to serve

Method

Heat olive oil in a wide, deep frying pan over medium heat.
Cook onion and pepper for 5 minutes until softened.
Add garlic, cumin, and paprika. Cook for 1 minute.
Pour in tomatoes. Simmer for 10 minutes until thickened slightly.
Make 4 wells in the sauce and crack an egg into each.
Cover and cook for 5–7 minutes until whites are set but yolks are still runny.
Scatter with coriander and serve with bread for dipping.

Four Fields

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first field is the one you crossed at seven, grass to the waist, the dog ahead. The second is the one you saw from the train, gold in September, already someone else's. The third field you walked through arguing. The rain came. You kept arguing. The fourth field is the one you dream about: flat, enormous, and always just behind you.

Morning Routines

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There is a particular quality to the first hour of the day, before the world has fully arrived. The kettle. The notebook. The light that comes in low and long.

Morning routines are not about productivity. They are about the small rituals that make a person feel like themselves before the day asks them to be something else.

The French press takes four minutes. That is enough time to write three sentences. Three sentences, over a year, is a book.

On Walking

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a particular quality to ideas that arrive while walking. They come unbidden, fully formed, as though they’d been waiting for you to stop sitting still.

Nietzsche said it: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” Kierkegaard walked the streets of Copenhagen for hours. Wordsworth logged an estimated 180,000 miles on foot. These are not coincidences.

The rhythm of walking does something that sitting cannot. It loosens the grip of the analytical mind and lets the associative mind wander. Step, step, step — and suddenly the solution to a problem you hadn’t been thinking about appears.

Harbour

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At low tide the harbour empties to mud and the ribs of old boats. The water goes out like a secret someone decided to keep. We sat on the wall and ate chips. The vinegar stung a cut on my thumb. You said something about the future. The gulls were not interested. The tide came back, as tides do, and covered everything we had been looking at.

Thread

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the sewing box: a thimble, three buttons from a coat nobody remembers wearing, and a length of thread still knotted at one end. She could fix anything. The thread is evidence. The knot is proof of intention. The coat is gone but the buttons remain, patient as stones.

Glass

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There was a pane of glass in the back door that had a bubble in it. When you looked through the bubble, the garden bent. The apple tree swam. They replaced the door eventually. The new glass was perfect. I never looked through it.

Small Hours

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The fridge hums its one note. A tap drips in the dark like a clock that forgot what it was counting. You stand at the window. The street is all amber and nothing. A cat crosses the road with tremendous purpose. You pour the milk. You drink the milk. You go back to bed knowing nothing has changed but something has shifted.

Typography in the First Folio Theme

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This post demonstrates how standard Markdown typography renders in the First Folio theme. Use it as a reference when writing content.

Headings

Headings from H2 to H6 are available. H1 is reserved for the page title.

Third Level

Fourth Level

Fifth Level

Sixth Level

Text Formatting

Regular paragraph text. Bold text for emphasis. Italic text for subtlety. ~~Strikethrough~~ for corrections. Inline code for technical terms.

Blockquotes are useful for highlighting important passages or attributing quotes to their sources.

Miso-Glazed Aubergine

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is the dish that makes people reconsider aubergine. The miso glaze caramelises into something deeply savoury and slightly sweet.

Ingredients

2 large aubergines
3 tbsp white miso paste
2 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
Sesame seeds and spring onions to serve

Method

Halve the aubergines lengthwise. Score the flesh in a crosshatch pattern.
Mix miso, mirin, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar.
Brush the flesh side with half the glaze.
Place cut-side down on a baking tray. Roast at 200°C for 20 minutes.
Flip, brush with remaining glaze, and roast for another 15 minutes.
Scatter with sesame seeds and sliced spring onions.

Warning
Watch the glaze carefully in the last 5 minutes — miso burns quickly once it caramelises.

The Featured Image Layout

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The featured layout places the article’s image prominently within the content flow. Unlike the banner or hero layouts, the image does not span the full viewport width — it sits within the content column, scaled to fit.

When to Use Featured

This layout suits articles where the image is important but not the primary focus. The image appears after the title and metadata, before the body text — a natural reading order.

Configuring Dark Mode

Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The theme supports four dark mode strategies, configured via params.mode in your hugo.yaml.

Mode Options

`auto` (recommended)

Follows the operating system preference using prefers-color-scheme: dark. When the user switches their OS to dark mode, the site follows automatically.

params:
 mode: auto

`toggle`

Adds a toggle button in the header. Users can switch between light and dark mode regardless of their OS setting. Their preference is stored in localStorage.

params:
 mode: toggle

`dark`

Forces dark mode for all visitors.

How the Masonry Grid Works

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The homepage and section list pages use a masonry grid — a layout where items of varying heights pack together without gaps, like a stone wall.

The Hybrid Approach

Pure CSS Grid gives us responsive columns but leaves vertical gaps. Pure JavaScript positioning is fragile on resize. The First Folio theme uses both:

CSS Grid handles the horizontal layout — responsive columns that reflow based on viewport width.
JavaScript runs after images load and adjusts vertical positioning to fill gaps.

This means the layout works (albeit with gaps) even when JavaScript is disabled.

The Background Image Layout

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The background layout places the article’s image behind the content, with configurable opacity and blur. The text remains fully readable while the image provides atmosphere.

Controlling the Effect

Two parameters fine-tune the background:

opacity — how visible the image is (0.0 to 1.0). Lower values are more subtle.
blur — how much the image is blurred. Higher values create a softer, less distracting backdrop.

This page uses opacity: 0.15 and blur: 8px for a gentle wash of colour behind the text.

Soda Bread

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Soda bread is the simplest bread you can make. Four ingredients, no yeast, no kneading, no proving. From bowl to table in under an hour.

Ingredients

450g plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
400ml buttermilk

Method

Preheat oven to 200°C.
Mix flour, salt, and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the buttermilk.
Mix quickly with a wooden spoon — do not overwork the dough.
Turn onto a floured surface and shape into a round.
Cut a deep cross on top.
Bake for 35–40 minutes until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

Tip
The cross on top isn't just decorative — it helps the heat penetrate the thick dough evenly.

Colcannon

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Colcannon is the sort of food that doesn’t photograph well but tastes like home. It’s mashed potatoes with greens, and that’s all it needs to be.

Ingredients

1kg floury potatoes (Roosters or Kerr’s Pinks)
200g curly kale, stripped from stems and chopped
4 spring onions, finely sliced
100ml milk, warmed
50g butter, plus extra for serving

Method

Boil potatoes in salted water until tender, about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, blanch the kale in boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain well.
Drain the potatoes and return to the pot. Mash until smooth.
Stir in warm milk, butter, kale, and spring onions.
Season generously. Serve with a well of melted butter in the centre.

Variations

Replace kale with savoy cabbage for a milder flavour
Add crispy bacon lardons for a non-vegetarian version
Stir through a handful of grated mature cheddar

The Wanderer's Notebook on first-folio.theme.lobb.ie

Shortcode Showcase

Callout

Navigation and CTA Features

Breadcrumb Trail

Signpost CTA

The Cartographer

The Waiting Room

Morning Song

Three Things I Learned from a Broken Compass

Shakshuka

Ingredients

Method

Four Fields

Morning Routines

On Walking

Harbour

Thread

Glass

Small Hours

Typography in the First Folio Theme

Headings

Third Level

Fourth Level

Fifth Level

Sixth Level

Text Formatting

Miso-Glazed Aubergine

Ingredients

Method

The Featured Image Layout

When to Use Featured

Configuring Dark Mode

Mode Options

auto (recommended)

toggle

dark

How the Masonry Grid Works

The Hybrid Approach

The Background Image Layout

Controlling the Effect

Soda Bread

Ingredients

Method

Colcannon

Ingredients

Method

`auto` (recommended)

`toggle`

`dark`