2024

    Shared Notes: Small Image Galleries

    I’ve had no luck with the plugins on offer at Micro.blog, so I have set up two- and three-column flex boxes that become single columns on small screens.

    Set up snippets for the HTML in Drafts and wherever else you find convenient. Write the post itself in Markdown, unless you have other CSS classes to apply.

    Continue reading →

    Was in the dentist’s chair for two hours today. (One procedure became another, the second done by an extern.) I don’t want to use my mouth, but I haven’t eaten in twelve hours. Gotta cook something soft.

    Shared Notes: Digital Gardens

    New post format: notes written only for myself, but perhaps of interest to others. Will file under a new shared notes category for now, while also using the blog's other relevant categories.

    I ran into the term “digital gardens” on the 🦣 profile of @[email protected], which I looked up because of a repost by @[email protected] of a piece on the latter’s search functionality. RDK’s whole website, Just Text, has a quirky feel that reminds me of some Micro.blog-hosted blogs. These have extra pages about stuff that matters to them, lists, photos, a Tweet archive, other collections of related content.

    Continue reading →

    View as detailed in long caption The clouds were changing shape and color, getting very dark in one part of the sky while the sun was playing with white clouds and a blue sky in other parts. The photo only hints at the dynamism, but my eyes were on the road, and I only had a brief moment without any cars near mine.

    In any case, the site is humming along. And Micro.blog’s IndieWeb features are already making it easier to move about and socialize in other spaces without thinking about what to post. (2/2)

    Still getting used to the automatic crossposting option on Micro.blog. There are no preference settings for how an automatic crosspost should be handled on a given platform, and one approach to all isn’t always going to do. (1/2)

    Was just feeling good about the new iteration of my site, but then apparent server issues on Micro.blog (host) and Knowledge Commons (where a few linked-to files live) appear. I’m trying to be patient. I really want this IndieWeb solution to work for my life on the web.

    Loud TV screen at the gas pump. Will have to remember to not stop there next time.

    Waging War with Factories

    Production. B-17F heavy bomber. Working on the roof of a B-17F (Flying Fortress) bomber swung over on its side in the Boeing plant at Seattle. A turret will be mounted over the large circular opening. The Flying Fortress, a four-engine heavy bomber capable of flying at high altitudes, has performed with great credit in the South Pacific, over Germany and elsewhere.

    – Andreas Feininger, December 1942, United States, Office of War Information, Library of Congress

    The library has a large collection of photos showing the manufacture of B-17 bombers under the subject heading United States–Washington–King County–Seattle.

    Comments Back On (Tentatively)

    I activated a second feature on my Micro.blog-hosted site that I had turned off years ago while still on WordPress: Comments. They had become more trouble than they were worth, and there was always the once useful bird site, where real conversations could transpire. But those were different times.

    In a moment of optimism, I have chosen to believe that the sign-in requirement with Mastodon, BluSky, or Micro.blog will reduce potential friction for me because I’ve encountered a lot less of it on these federating platforms. But time will tell. Right now, I can unmark a problematic comment so it doesn’t appear, but only after the comment is initially posted. (The developer behind Micro.blog is considering making prior-approval an option.) I also have the usual mute, block, and report options.

    Next step: seeing what happens—and what I might still need to do—if I get any responses from other sites via webmention. I’m definitely enjoying what the IndieWeb community makes possible, but I wish its tools and documentation were more accessible to non-programming folk. I can deal with modern HTML and CSS, but that’s as far as it goes.

    I still need to work on the styling (colors, fonts, etc.) of this version of my website, but I’m becoming satisfied with it’s basic organization and functionality.

    The Republican Party’s divorce from the rule of law is complete.

    Aaron Blake, Washington Post

    Any general machine can be misused by any malign actor with ill intent. The pursuit of failsafe guardrails in AI will prove futile, for it is impossible to predict every bad use that anyone could make of a machine that can be asked to do anything. That is to say, it is impossible to build foolproof guardrails against us, for there are too many fools among us.

    Jeff Jarvis, “Demote the Doomsters”, Buzz Machine, May 21, 2024. via @[email protected]

    ☺️ It is amazing to watch a tiny human, my granddaughter, develop language for herself.

    Whenever I finish fixing one thing on my site, a new issue arises. Still, if I tell my perfectionist self to get over it, I can have a good weekend, holiday traffic be damned.

← Newer Posts Older Posts →