Excursions

What’s the feed reader service of choice amongst the community here? I remember many floating around, but always failed to note the recommendations.

After a really productive few days, I thought it was a good time to update what’s happening Now. And as I was journaling what I was involved in, I realised benefits of my recent blogging habit — I had my microposts as reference. That’s one big positive.

One of the worst feeling is the helplessness you feel as you look into the painful eyes of your child down with fever, as they look back at you with a hope that you will abate this pain they are going through. Ah. Absolutely crushing! 😣

At times, I just wish I wasn’t following the technology space closely. My buying decisions would’ve been simpler, driven completely by what’s on display now. And not by the fear of roadmap, fear of remorse in future.

My MacBook is dying and I find nothing that can replace it.

I had recently realised the project I had much plan for wasn’t updated since sometime back. So much that for an observer it very well looks to be “potentially defunct”. There are many reasons why I couldn’t push regular updates to this. Priorities at home and at work just didn’t allow me enough time.

However, deep down I knew I just wasn’t satisfied with what I had achieved. I had a huge list of things that I needed to implement and the effort required I thought was huge. But I just couldn’t look at the stagnant progress of this service. I found it useful at multiple times and I know it can be improved so that others do too. So, I have decided to take up the project, small improvements at a time.

To start with, all the threads, mainly from posts featured in discover section and Emoji collections, are up to date. Well, @manton’s hard at work and has already grown the list of Emoji collections. Well, all the Emoji Collections from Micro.blog are available at Micro.threads now. So I (and others) can now get all the recommendations for that one 🍕 parlour or one’s 🗺️ogue.

But there’s more. The huge list of limitations I talked about at the top? Yeah, I have decided to start addressing them small updates at a time. Firstly just by noting them down.

• Threads concept itself is limited. Currently it takes a post id, fetches the conversation (thread) and then pull out all the links and only show these links as a thread.
• Creating thread is a mess and so is updating it.
• No way for external users to generate threads. Keeping threads updated is a chore at this point.

So, I have been back to drawing board, working on the ways I want to address these and present what I have in mind. I have a clear objective with this service. What’s to come has already found its place on the homepage, just as a placeholder for now. I wish I manage to deliver it to my satisfaction, first and fore most. If along the way, it helps the community, well and good.

Back to work.

The recent experiments with blot.im has given the perfect opportunity to explore if I can get a Micropub endpoint created specifically for my needs. Till now, I have been using a custom fork of a endpoint from Pelle Wessman for my Hugo site. It has served me well.

However, I always wished if I could get one written specifically for my simple needs. One that I know and understand every part of. Given that I have no endpoint yet for the blot site, this is clear opportunity to create one geared for making this site micropub enabled. Hugo site will address my third-party-posting needs till then. So here’s the start. I will capture this journey, of course, here and will keep this updated with progress (I hope). Below are the things at this point that I need to get started.

• https://indieweb.org/Micropub#How_to_implement
• https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-python#introduction
• http://dropbox-sdk-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/moduledoc.html#module-dropbox.dropbox

I want to explore python first as an option to get this implemented. I have come to realise that I do not like Javascript as a language. I can get work with it, but at times the inconsistencies and the constructs get in my hair.

Whatsapp is following Facebook’s footsteps — fighting fake news problem with full page ad in news paper. Wish these ads reach the victims — I myself know few and I know they can’t be convinced so easily.

It’s fascinating when you find art all around you. And some looking down at you. Inspiring.

@colinwalker Do you have a different feed that is fed to micro.blog than your exposed rss? Your titles are shortened for longer posts in your rss, while not in m.b. I was recently exploring the option to control the titles in my feed.

‪This how-to series from Apple on Twitter is brilliant marketing. Showcases the product, ‬guiding users at the same. Done well too.