Excursions

I recently wanted to create a new view (a page) for all my social posts. Apparently, even if you create the page there are still few additional configurations to be done for the template to make it available at a particular link.

Configuration to be done is to define a route which will serve that particular page. This can be done on the web editor at Blot dashboard in the template section.

You can create a new ‘view’ on the web editor in the view section of the templates (available at https://blot.im/template/<theme-name>/view).

Once you create a new view, go to settings page for the newly created view and specify its route. For example, the route (or URL) for archives.html is set to /archives. This enables the Blot engine to render the given template view at the configured URL. You can explore the archives view for more options.

I had no idea there is a new Cormoron Strike novel coming. I like the name too, “Lethal White”. Mysterious.

I better complete all the currently-reading books before September arrives. It is always fun to read Rowling write characters. 📚

Cathy O’Neil, along with criticizing these “big boys of tech”, feels some sympathy for them.

I might be the only person on Earth feeling sorry for the big boys of technology(…) They all started out wanting to make the world a better place using cool technology, and here they are, dealing with all of this democracy and public responsibility stuff, which they never signed up for and honestly don’t have the chops to handle.

You might very well be; if not the only, you are at least in minority. I have no sympathy for these “big boys”. There is no justifying the sheer carelessness these “geniuses” evince in the way they go about their businesses.

You can’t dream of making the world a better place without first being a part of that world; living there; seeing it through the eyes of the normal people. Anticipate every possible way that the platform you build can be misused and empathizing with every single person that such a misstep will affect. This is the foremost quality needed in the person that leads the group building such a “world-changing” platform.

On the first indication of you realizing you do not possess that, you should sidestep. If you don’t do that after multiple slip-ups, it reveals your selfish behavior. And you lose the right to ask for any sympathy.

With all the recent discussions around Mastodon and how it is different, possibly better, I thought there is no way to judge that without using the platform first, be a “native resident”.

But I have come to realise one fact, I just can’t post actively at multiple places. Especially important, none of those places can not be my blog. It has to be posted on my blog first and may then flow into other systems. POSSE.

Micro.blog was covered, via feeds. It had also got me covered for Twitter. Mastodon didn’t look to be an easy case. There is no easy way to push updates from feeds to Mastodon. Web hooks may be the only feasible way. I thought I had to get a more seamless solution than that.

And what better may to do that than syndicating right while posting. So I have updated Blotpub to support syndication to Mastodon. I can now indicate the Micropub clients to syndicate current posts to Mastodon. Nice!

I think I may need a how-to on ActivityPub. The goal and the approach sound so promising. But how do you “implement” this, if that’s even a right way to describe? Can I make, for example, my blog an ActivityPub enabled site? I could hardly find any helpful documentation.

I decided today that I do not want to display the likes, replies and repost types of posts on my blog’s homepage. It looked too crowded on there for my liking.

I consider these as the social posts - may be they will fit better in a section of their own.

Sleep has to be one of the costliest currencies out there. You borrow some from your daily kitty and you have to pay back with some high interest rate. That is over and above the drab feeling you carry throughout the day. It’s better not to lose any sleep over losing sleeping.

A trail in nature, to serenity. A quest to seek calmness. When your reinvigorated mind carries your weary body through.

So is it time now to dust-off our old Tumblr blogs now? I know we are (finally) fed up of Twitter and Facebook policy swings. But that doesn’t mean we should forget why the platforms that failed, did so in the first place. No point joining back before those issues are addressed.

This week’s episode of @Monday was absolutely brilliant. It was great listening to the thoughts from a long time blogger in @dori on current state of blogging. And I loved the fact that @macgenie didn’t push for the regular structure and let it be a frank discussion. Kudos! 👍🏽