Software History

The IndieWeb has a friendly bot called Loqi that is connected with a community wiki hosted on MediaWiki. The community extensively documents information, ranging from plans for upcoming events to UX patterns for applications relevant to the IndieWeb. The wiki continuously evolves. I regularly find myself saying

I have moved my blog to my own custom-made static site generator, letsjam. This change means that the way in which my site is created has changed significantly. A successful change is for all pages to look the same as they were before I switched to the new generator. I think the transition has gone smoothly thus far. But, a few readers have emailed me to report bugs or issues on the site.

One of the concepts in social readers I am really excited about is search. The specification upon which my social reader is built, Microsub, separates clients and servers. This means that there is plenty of opportunity for clients to experiment with search and come up with new ideas on how to help people find content and other websites. I have been exploring search for a while now so I was excited to think about what search would look like in a social reader.

I have been using Known for the last few weeks. Known is a publishing platform that adheres to many IndieWeb standards, from marking up posts with microformats to supporting post creation using Micropub clients. I decided to check out Known out of curiosity. I wanted to know what an IndieWeb-first, hosted social platform looked like. I have explored many IndieWeb tools and played around with them but Known was a notable exception.

Webmentions enable distributed social interactions over the web. Using webmentions, you can send replies, likes, and other interactions that were published on your site to respond to another web page. For example, I send Webmentions for all of the bookmarks I create on my website. If a site can receive Webmentions, they will be notified that I bookmarked their post for later.

A few days ago I published a blog post on how I am using Micropub to post content to my site. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, Micropub is a standardised way to post content to your site. By using Micropub, I can post content to my site from any Micropub-compliant client (although I have chosen to use my own client because I have a few custom requirements).

I used to have a section on my site where I shared a list of coffees I consumed. I was excited about this section because:

Over the last month, I have been working with James Van Dyne on IndieWeb Utils, the Python library I published toward the end of last year. IndieWeb Utils aims to provide helper functions that are useful when building applications related to the IndieWeb. For instance, the library contains features like a function to send a webmention and a function to generate a reply context from a web page.

A quick note: this post does contain quite a bit of IndieWeb jargon and may be confusing if you are only just getting started. Don't let my jargon deter you from the IndieWeb. This is an architectural discussion so I am asssuming readers have a good understanding of the standards incubated in the community.

Indexes has been on my mind of late. Yousef's introducing me of

A yawn. A hand lightly pressed against the cheek. Repositions as she goes to turn the page. Immersed in the book while we all wait. Looks up when someone comments on their flight time.

IndieWeb Search, a search engine that indexes sites owned by IndieWeb community members and other related sites, has saved over 421,000 web documents. I maintain IndieWeb Search as a passion project. I wanted a place to search content from IndieWeb sites so that I could find articles and guides that were applicable to the community. Using the search engine, I'm able to get direct answers to niche, community-relevant queries such as how to set up webmentions with a static site or understanding what IRC is.

The results to my poll asking

The rose outside my house has been growing for the last week. Two new buds started to bloom, with colours of pink sneaking through their green exterior. On Thursday morning, I looked at the plant and thought a particular bud was about to bloom. Hours later, the bud and its leaves had started to open. A plant that months ago I thought was a weed has continued to grow beyond my wildest expectations. From fear the plant was a weed to three beautiful pink blossoms. With each development -- seeing the starting signs of a bud, the bud opening, blooming -- I have felt joy. Next summer, I think I am going to grow more roses.

At a bonus edition of Homebrew Website Club this weekend, we discussed how to delete a Webmention. We talked about both how to and how not to delete a Webmention, and the ins-and-outs of implementations between different servers. I thought I should write about this on my blog just in case anyone else would find the information helpful.

At a Homebrew Website Club meeting a few weeks ago, we discussed the tea culture in the UK. Mark and I, the co-hosts, live in the UK, so we spent some time talking about tea. A pattern emerged. We collectively named some times at which drinking tea was common after the hour of the day the tea was consumed. For instance, I noted that I was familiar with the ten o'clock and the three o'clock. Mark noted the elevenses, where you drink a cup of tea around 11am.

At Homebrew Website Club this evening ^1, I shared that I do not regularly add links to my content, except in the cases where I am referencing a resource by name or quoting someone else. I forget to add links to interesting resources that I have published before, or other content on the web that may be relevant. After stating that I don't add many links to my content out loud, I realised why: adding links has always been a separate part of my editorial process.

Over the last year or so, the amount of handwriting I do in a given day is limited. I spend most of my time writing on computers. The ease with which I can type is a boon. I can note down more thoughts in a given period of time when I am typing. I have had few causes to write with pen and paper. With that said, I have a great appreciation for analog writing. I have a whiteboard on which I sometimes jot ideas. While I was working on the search engine crawler for IndieWeb Search, my whiteboard became invaluable. I had an urge -- verging on a need -- to write and draw out my ideas, away from computers.

At the end of the Hobonichi original journal, there is a section entitled

Inspired by my recent readings of the Before the coffee gets cold series, I decided to look for other Japanese works of fiction to read. I found The Nakano Thrift Shop on Amazon...

Strange Weather in Tokyo, written by Hiromi Kawakami, is a tale of a woman in her thirties who develops an affection for an old school teacher of hers. This affection, as the book progresses, turns into a full

I have said something of the ilk “awesome, in the traditional sense of the word” several times over the last year. I need to be explicit about the nature of my using the word to ensure my meaning is conveyed correctly.

I have a static website. This means that whenever I make a change to the site I need to

For at least the last year, I have opted to wear Hawaiian and otherwise colourful shirts. My wardrobe spans from plain light green shirts to floral shirts in a 70s style to Hawaiian shirts in a wide variety of colours. At Homebrew Website Club this evening, someone asked me to write about why I like to wear the shirts I wear. Around 20 minutes after the call, I am sitting here writing said post with a bit of excitement in the back of my mind; motivation has indeed struck. Thank you for the idea!

I return to the diner; warmly welcomed by staff and a regular I had met the previous day. I sat down with a smile. The regular has been going to this cafe for longer than I have been alive. Coming in from the rain, I feel warm.

This post is about two or so months old but I think this post is worth sharing nonetheless.

I used to think that you needed at least one piece of equipment—like a Hario cold brew bottle—to make cold brew at home. I recently tried to brew cold brew in a

This is the second post in a three-part series on my adventures learning how to use the Hario V60.

I was trying to implement the Fisher-Yates algorithm earlier this evening. This algorithm lets you randomly shuffle the contents of a list. I wanted to provide a list of songs and return a shuffled list. I decided to use Lisp for this since I don't know much Lisp and I want to build my skills.