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Jeremy Cherfas

(Partially) fixing webmention display

1 min read

Rather happy to have scratched a long-standing itch into submission. I use the semantic-linkbacks plugin to display webmentions on one of my WordPress sites. It has an option for displaying webmentions as facepiles, which keeps things neat. But my WordPress theme also displays webmentions as comments, which is mostly redundant. Not entirely, though, because a few webmentions contain actual content, which is not visible in the facepile. I could completely void display of the webmentions, but that loses the little bit of content there.

Fortunately, the latest master of the plugin has settings to display the facepile for  each kind of webmention, so I could stop it making facepiles for actual mentions. Then all I needed to do was hide the theme's display of any webmentions that are just likes or reposts. And that is easily done by adding

.p-like {
	display: none;
}

.p-repost {
	display: none;
}

to styles.css.

I'll probably have to revisit that if I ever get any other kinds of webmention, but for now I am content.

Jeremy Cherfas

Amazing work from @chrisaldrich explaining how and why he's gone about bringing his blogroll into the 21st century. I'm honoured to be on the list, with just one comment: the Vaviblog site, while still live, will not be updated, until it reverts to its original purpose. I have not yet found a way to import all the data from that instance of Known to my current instance, as I would like, so for now that site is a relic of my first steps onto the IndieWeb.

Jeremy Cherfas

The ongoing saga of attempting to connect micro.blog to Known

2 min read

More good help from Manton, cleverdevil and others, but alas no nearer (although I may have eliminated some possibilities).

  1. I was allowing both HTTP and HTTPS. There could have been some kind of mismatch, I suppose, but after editing .htaccess to force SSL, it made no difference to micro.blog's OS X app.
  2. Then thought that possibly a different endpoint would help (despite the fact that I know all the same details are on the home page). 
  3. Pointed micro.blog first at /profile and then at /profile/jeremy; still no good.

At this stage, given that Manton managed to get everything working from a clean install of Known out of the box, I think I need to try the same. If that works, well, if nothing else, it works.

I had been fretting about losing data, but if I install into a new sub-domain and it works there, I can always edit the config.ini to point back at the old database. It will be a good opportunity to see how good the instructions are to install at Dreamhost. Last time I managed without any instructions, and I also didn't write up my experiences. This could be an opportunity to pay back.

Jeremy Cherfas

I really want to use micro.blog and WithKnown, but ...

3 min read

I have never yet been able to post from my micro.blog to this stream, although the feed from here is reliably picked up there, and brid.gy reliably pulls replies from there to here. @manton suggested we move my complaints to help@micro.blog, but I can see no way of actually engaging with that account. So this afternoon, I decided to attempt to go back to the beginning.

It was a miserable failure.

Here's how it went:

  1. Revoke all current authorisations for micro.blog
  2. There were four of them, two from yesterday when I last tried.
  3. Launch OS X app
  4. OK!
  5. “If you’re using WordPress or another server, first open the preferences window and enter your web site URL to set it up for posting within the app.”
  6. Roger that. But the old website was still there. Is that going to be a problem?
  7. Start a new post; the old website is there at the bottom. This is going to be a problem.
  8. Same old Same old; Error sending post.
  9. Post does not arrive at micro.blog
  10. Post does not arrive at WithKnown
  11. WithKnown Error log is empty.
  12. Access log shows no sign of anything from recent attempt to post from micro.blog
  13. Check to make sure I have up to date micro.blog app
  14. “Micro.blog can’t be updated when it’s running from a read-only volume like a disk image or an optical drive.” Move Micro.blog to Applications folder using Finder, relaunch it from there, and try again.
  15. Strange. Check path to micro.blog.
  16. Path is “/Applications/Micro.blog.app”.
  17. Check the App Store; disappointed but also content that there is not an update.
  18. Delete web site URL from preferences; quit micro.blog, mostly for superstitious reasons; launch micro.blog.
  19. Very strange; web site URL is still there. Or back? Maybe the app pulls it from micro.blog?
  20. Repeat; same outcome. Superstition justified. Go to my account at micro.blog.
  21. See I have three App tokens. The one for MarsEdit is definitely pointless, as I am not hosted at micro.blog. Remove it.
  22. Throw caution to the winds; remove the tokens for IOS and OS X
  23. OK, IOS now says “Internal Server Error” on attempting to connect. I think I ought to sign out now and then sign back in.
  24. Phew. All is good. And I have a new app token.
  25. On iOS, try to write a new post; insert my Known site; authorise micro.blog; write a test post. Post it.
  26. “Error sending post”. Tear hair out, as now I do not seem to be able to post to micro.blog from iOS app.
  27. Go back to 22; remove iOS app token and authorisation token at WithKnown.
  28. Log back in. Can no longer post without adding WithKnown, and posting gives an error, as at 26.
  29. Try again from OS X; same error as at 8.
  30. Post to WithKnown; feed is picked up.

Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

Jeremy Cherfas

More power to @ChrisAldrich A nanowrimo book on indieweb will be novel even if it isn't a novel.

Jeremy Cherfas

Replied to a post on werd.io :

I do hope the indieweb dinner includes some spam for the bots.

Jeremy Cherfas

I'm still a little hazy on the plumbing details of all the bits and pieces of IndieWeb but I would have thought that if withKnown has a micropub endpoint and micro.blog can send to the WordPress endpoint, it ought to be able to send to WithKnown. But I'm probably exposing my ignorance. And maybe it is on the roadmap.

Jeremy Cherfas

The Decentralized Social Web

Terrific video of a talk on by Keith J. Grant, who kept remarkably cool during his live demos.

Jeremy Cherfas

Why Facebook is in a hole over data mining | John Naughton

One could, for example, imagine an honest business model – in which people paid an annual subscription for a service that did not rely on targeting people on the basis of the 98 data-points that the company holds on every user. All it would need is for Facebook users to fork out $20 a year for the pleasure of sharing LOLcats with one another.

What’s the likelihood of that happening? You know the answer. Which is why Zuck will continue to keep mum about the sordid reality underpinning his money machine.

Jeremy Cherfas

YouTube Demonetization: The Great Platform Problem

Interesting piece on "owning" your distribution channels. .

Now, here’s the thing I’ll tell you—if I was running this site on, say, Medium or Tumblr, it would not have buckled. But to me, I think that independence from platforms is a hugely important thing to have in 2017. If you can spin up the server yourself and figure out a way to cobble together funding, you may miss out on some of the perks of larger sites, but you call the shots.