Brian Schnabel's Head Space
Where Magick and Mind Digitally Interlace.

Personal Reflections: Audio Projects, Accessibility, and Winter Updates

Wednesday, December 3, 2025: 7:55 AM: Updates: I’ve got the final volume of the Mayfair Chronicles completely recorded and will be putting the final touches on it this morning. I’ve been using Audacity for converting my Audible books I definitely will be listening to more than once to MP3 because it makes them easier for me to access with JAWS for Windows and eventually only Narrator, using these screen readers with a player I can efficiently run in the Windows environment.

Unfortunately, Amazon seems to suffer the same disease with their software for Windows that Apple does. Their idea of accessibility is a joke, and I’m tired of being punished for daring to live with blindness. So, converting things to MP3 for my own personal use is my best solution.

I slept somewhat last night, using Tummo and a few other tricks to help things along. I know I traveled, me vaguely recalling a vision in which I was talking with one gentleman about buying real estate. We seemed to be in a parking lot in front of a single level office building during midafternoon. It was overcast and raw out. This weather condition seems to be setting itself up as a kind of theme of late.

What it means? “I don’t have a clue.”

Maybe I’m about to get another offer in the mail from a realtor to sell my parent’s house in Delaware? I’m not even sure how the hell someone from New Again Homes connected my name with the address. “There’s no reason I should be receiving any solicitation from anyone involving that address.”

But, if it happens again, I’ll start making phone calls to find out what the hell is going on. If Dad put my name on something without my authorization, he and any other parties involved will be dealt with severely. “I will not be taken advantage of.”

It sounds pretty icy out there. I might attempt a trip out this afternoon, depending upon how intense the sun is. But for the moment, I do believe that after yesterday’s slushy event, I’m just going to stay put.

My sense is that, after I wrap up with my audio project, it’s time to begin back posting more of my journal to this website again. I’ve already taken care of the server regarding the latest kernel update for the system and WordPress 6.9 update, and everything seems to be running smoothly.

I’m thinking, too, that I should probably be ready to continue work on my own custom built WordPress theme by the new year. I’ve got a lot of work done on it already so completing it shouldn’t be too much trouble.

Do I need to put all of my journal online? Probably not, but I’ll more than likely do it anyway, sanitizing what I need to hear and there along the way. My policy for posting online material is simple. If you are a licensed professional or business owner, I’m more than likely going to use your first and last name. In a case here and there, I may deviate from that. But generally, I will not worry about anonymity there. If you’re just a personal friend or family member, as frustrating as you might be from time to time, I’ll keep last names out of it. I think that’s reasonable.

Since my beginnings in web development back in 2000, it hasn’t escaped my notice in general how the people who know me largely surf my handywork with a view to criticize or object to what I write, only. Beyond that, they don’t visit at all.

Other folks have always generally come to get information, particularly where technology is concerned. They don’t know me but benefit all the same, “Which is cool!”

I am considering taking posts that have a primary categorization via Copilot but could also fit into secondary categories and posting them there as well. The descriptions for these kinds of posts would have to be rewritten and retitled for each category.

However, I’m not really sure I want to do that to myself, let alone anyone who might visit. It is a way to ensure that some posts have a better chance of getting viewed. But I’m just not that desperate for traffic.

I do enough on Brian Schnabel’s Head Space as it is. But if my inner witch feels there’s a strategic reason for me doing something like this with a post, “I’m sure I will know.”

Thursday, December 4, 2025: 11:56 PM: Updates: Well… The last vision I had involving Dad took place on November 30th and he called today, within the usual four-day, ninety-six-hour period. He called around two this afternoon and I let it go to voicemail figuring he’d leave a message if there was something he really needed. Then he calls me at 9:23 PM and I picked up figuring it might be something really important. He called me to explain that his earlier call was because he was trying to place a classified ad to sell his Camaro, but he had forgotten the URL of his website. His solution for that, based on what he told me they ended up doing, should work easily enough.

I really wanted to get off the phone with him at 9:40 PM but didn’t actually hang up until around 10:20 PM despite multiple attempts to politely do so. I don’t think I’m answering my phone for anyone after 9:00 PM anymore; I am going back to scheduling Do Not Disturb or simply filtering calls after 8:00 PM again.

Of late, I’ve been modifying the Twenty Sixteen theme function file on Brian Schnabel’s Head Space to trigger the Classic Editor and Classic Widgets interface so I could manage things more easily with my screen reader. I was also using the theme’s function file to clean up the code WordPress outputs globally on all themes so the theme would actually validate correctly with the W3C Markup Validation Service. However, after WordPress updated to 6.9 and Twenty Sixteen updated to version 3.7, I decided to take a different tack and worked with Copilot 365 to create a plugin to do that.

What I have now is a plugin that permanently enables the Classic Editor and Classic Widgets interfaces in WordPress and cleans up W3C validation issues without breaking certain functionality in the WordPress Dashboard. It removes trailing slashes from void elements, strips unsupported CSS properties, and removes invalid script types for better HTML compliance. It doesn’t break the WordPress default site map or feed either.

While I was at it, I also fixed some discovered security vulnerabilities in two other plugins I’ve created in recent months: A clean category URLs plugin and an author archive redirect plugin. In addition to Copilot, I’ve been using the Plugin Check plugin for developing this stuff.

This WordPress plugin checks if a custom-developed plugin meets WordPress.org directory standards. It reviews new submissions for issues with best practices, including internationalization, accessibility, performance, and security.

That’s what alerted me to the vulnerabilities I fixed. “It’s handy!”

The only custom creation I didn’t have to do much with after the WordPress 6.9 update was my no page pagination plugin. It disables pagination on archive and homepage URLs by intercepting requests to URLs containing “page/2” or “page/3” and so on, redirecting them to the canonical root. I wanted to avoid duplicate content, reduce crawl depth, and keep the site structure lean. If you understand code and have the right tools to help with the things you don’t, “Who said you can’t always get what you want?”

I could have probably incorporated everything into one big, beautiful plugin. But I feel it’s smarter to keep the number of functions a plugin performs small. It’s just a lot easier to manage things that way; small and light weight plugins making it easy to isolate issues when they arise, if not preventing them all together.

In other news, I had a rather creepy vision yesterday morning about wanting a rather flirtatious and precocious 13-year-old. There was no nudity in the vision but just the idea of it…

Then, this morning there was the vision about a woman helping me load dirt with small slabs of rock into my laptop bag with my laptop. The dirt and rock was put in the bag in such a way as to protect the laptop when we used the bag with its newly acquired weight to force our way through something.

This vision took place outdoors on a rather overcast day. We seemed to be at some sort of outdoor fair or carnival with lots of other people around. I definitely saw bleachers nearby but noted that no one was paying any attention to what we were doing.

What it all means? Well… There’s the chance that the vision involving the 13-year-old girl was triggered by my reading the Mayfair Chronicles. However, too, is the fact that 13 is a violent or powerful storm warning of sorts.

As far as the vision with the dirt and laptop goes? It might just be a suggestion to incorporate more earth elements into my meditation practice, things like crystals and other stones along those lines. However, I’m really not sure.

What I am sure of is that it has been a rather productive day. Even talking with my Missouri client and friend John was cool, too. He suggested a book he thought I might be interested in considering my current situation. It’s called, it’s them, not you: how to break free from toxic parents and reclaim your story by Josh Connolly.

Apparently, this is a book that offers practical guidance for dealing with toxic family dynamics and seeking emotional freedom from your past. The information John emailed me after our call says Josh Connolly is a Resilience coach who seeks in his book to provide validation, boundary-setting tips, and a structured recovery process using methods like breathwork and inner child healing.

The book description says it includes exercises, journaling prompts, and video links to support healing and self-reflection, intended to help readers reclaim their independence regardless of how they choose to manage challenging family relationships. “It sounds like it could be an interesting read.”

Saturday, December 6, 2025: 4:46 PM: Reflection and Release: This afternoon, I settled in for a long meditation session—three and a half hours, to be exact. It was one of the more productive sittings I’ve had in a while. I should do this way more often, like every day if I can.

During the session, my thoughts kept circling back to the ongoing situation with Dad, especially since he texted yesterday about sending me a Christmas card and a check. That communication brought up a lot of questions: what do I actually want to say to him in a letter this year? I’m weighing how to respond, given what I now know about his fraudulent activities and what I suspect his next move might be. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to send anything at all.

I also spent some time considering the future of Brian Schnabel’s Head Space. There’s been a noticeable uptick in site traffic from users connecting through public VPNs abroad—Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere—even when it’s clear they’re local to the Tri-state area. I’m wondering if it’s worth restricting access to just the Tri-state region and blocking the rest of the world, or if that’s just overthinking things.

During my meditation, I received two distinct messages. First: if someone with questionable integrity offers me help and it genuinely moves me forward, I should accept it. Second: I must avoid remote viewing anyone at someone else’s request—personal boundaries matter. There were other threads mixed in, mostly about recent contacts and upcoming communications.

It seems likely I’ll cross paths with my complex manager again soon, or perhaps his girlfriend. If not, I may hear from Goldberg Realty Assoc., the company running our complex. I’m also picking up on the possibility that Marilyn might reach out in the next few days. My sense is that some form of these events will unfold around the mid-afternoon period, give or take a few hours.

There were some other things in there too indicating that I was being remotely viewed by a party unknown. I sensed a bit of interference in my progress from the earthbound side of the equation. But, even still, Things went relatively well.

I know I’ve said I should do meditations more often in the past. But I’ve never settled on a cycle for doing this.

I think part of it is just me. I don’t always trust myself to know what I’m doing and don’t commit out of a fear of wasting my time with meditation, sitting for ideas, etcetera. However, the inner witch is getting stronger and talking to me clearly now in a way I can finally understand.

It’s about time though, right? After all, “I’ve only been at this for about 30 years!”

Oh well. Maybe it’s about time I just map out three hours a day in stone and meditate without fail starting tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM. “Isn’t that what Ben Franklin did?”

Posting that's a little off the trolley at times... Brian is a single Newtonian Gardens Apartments resident, Self-Publishing Author, cPanel WordPress Web Host and Windows 11 powered computer tech. He’s a musician, sailor, hiker, cycler and some women would say, “Magical, too!”