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Jeremy Cherfas

Getting set for virtual Homebrew Website Club. Want to join us? https://indieweb.org/events/2017-11-29-homebrew-website-club#Virtual_European_Time

Jeremy Cherfas

Dropping the cash to try fsnotes

2 min read

A cup of coffee here, a cup of coffee there, pretty soon you're talking about a bottle of wine. Nevertheless, I thought it worth dropping 2.5 coffees to check out fsnotes, which bills itself as a "lightweight notational velocity reinvention".

I depend totally on nvALT as my general place for keeping scraps, vital information, inchoate thoughts and more besides, and the one thing that has always bugged me has been the inability to have more than one folder. Mainly, I envisage using an additional folder as an archive; notes that I truly believe I have finished with but that I really do not want to throw away because there might be something in them I need later. NvALT's blazing search speed would be fabulous for that kind of treasure hunt, but I honestly don't want currently dead notes cluttering up my view of all that stuff.

I asked about multiple folders 21 days ago and a couple of days ago the developer, Oleksandr Glushchenko, delivered just that. Definitely deserving of my support.

First impressions are that fsnotes is every bit as fast as nvALT. I haven't been able to give multiple folders a good workout yet, because I only have one big folder of notes. My minor niggle is that the display of links is different from nvALT's. A well-formed Markdown link is clickable in the preview mode, but not in "native" mode. I suppose I could fix that easily enough in my existing notes, and it need not be a problem going forward, but it is an annoyance right now that might stop me switching completely over to fsnotes.

Maybe I'll raise an issue on github for that.

 

Jeremy Cherfas

Little Beans Bring Big Farm Losses as Global Glut Mashes Exports, via Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-22/little-beans-bring-big-farm-losses-as-global-glut...

So was the International Year of Pulses a success or a failure?

Jeremy Cherfas

Colin Tudge explains the crucial difference between @OFRC and @oxfordfarming. The R stands for Real, and also for Radical. Start from what you want, then work out how do do it. http://www.campaignforrealfarming.org/2017/11/why-the-oxford-real-farming-conference-is-distinct-and...

Jeremy Cherfas

Seeing White from John Biewen and Scene on Radio was far and away the most interesting and valuable series this year. @nwquah

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

Just a quick check that I can take advantage of the new, twice-as-nice Twitter.

Jeremy Cherfas

1 min read

Tempietto

As suggestedby @mrhenko, a test post containing a photo but no title.

Jeremy Cherfas

A post with a photo, for testing purposes

1 min read

St Peter's in the gloaming

Just an old snap.

Jeremy Cherfas

Narrowing things down. I can post a photo to Known from my desktop with OS X.

I don’t expect it to show up on micro.blog because that gets a feed of selected categories only, and Photos isn’t one of them.

How about an image in a post?

Jeremy Cherfas

Blast. I can’t seem to upload images to micro.blog or to WithKnown. I’ll have to work on that tomorrow.

Jeremy Cherfas

So, double the characters for all on Twitter. Does this mean twice the outrage and hate, or will there be an outbreak of finely expressed, carefully nuanced peace, love and understanding?

Jeremy Cherfas

iTunes 12.7.0 or maybe OS X 10.13 has stolen my song artwork. That is, it no longer appears in preview, although it is still visible in iTunes. I need this for podcast cover art. So here's hoping that it is there and will show in podcast players.

Jeremy Cherfas

It is odd how [John’ prizewinning post](http://johnjohnston.info/blog/wordpress-wild-and-freehe-though-that-he-knew-what-love-wa/) gives too many redirects when I first go there, and is fine if I reload. @c

Jeremy Cherfas

If it's interesting, I'll listen, regardless of audio quality

2 min read

Ah, the old chestnut about audio quality of podcasts. So I'll give my standard answer. If what you're saying is interesting, audio quality is less important. Asymcar is my goto example for that. And if what you say is not interesting, no level of production value will make me listen longer.

In between is a grey area. So, specifically addressing Henrik's question, that microcast was perfectly OK, except that once we had dealt with the weather and the question, I had had enough. On all outdoor recording wind noise, handling noise and bumps are the most distressing to me because they are always a shock to my ears. But if I know it is going to be over in three minutes, I can survive.

I've recorded outdoors and walking along myself, almost always with either the built-in microphone on the earbuds or else with an external Zoom iQ-6. The Zoom is actually worse, because it is so much more sensitive to wind and handling. A few times, when I was doing Dog Days of Podcasting, I cheated and recorded while walking along only to shadow myself with a decent mic when I got home. That's fun because you get the spontaneity of unscripted speech with much better sound quality.

Jeremy Cherfas

It may be a fine Saturday morning, but that doesn’t mean I can lie in bed forever.

Jeremy Cherfas

Puzzled that my feed from reading.am does not seem to have updated since three days ago, and I know I have added things since then. Went there to check and discovered I was no longer logged in. But then, why did the pages I marked as "reading" not tell me that I wasn't logged in? Bad!

Jeremy Cherfas

Test: Reconnected to the old DB, deleted all previous tokens, re-authorised. The suspense is killing me.

Jeremy Cherfas

Doing a clean install of Known at Dreamhost to trouble shoot my issues with micro.blog (and the instructions). I **will** get this sorted out.

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

Am I now completely shut out of micro.blog, and if so why?

Jeremy Cherfas

Wouldn't it be nice if micro.blog could talk to WithKnown as well as listening to it.

Jeremy Cherfas

Following people from inside the micro.blog iOS app currently seems impossible. There's no search that I can see. If I get to their mb page and click follow I am supposed to log in again. I just want to help @jeffperry if I can.

Jeremy Cherfas

Just set a reminder for three months time so that I can continue to enjoy a chronological, ad-free, unmessedaboutwith stream of photos from Instagram, thanks to instagram-atom.appspot.com

Jeremy Cherfas

Ok. I will boycott twitter today. As I post less than once a day on average, I'm not sure anyone will notice.

Jeremy Cherfas

"Love” is not a common or usual name of an ingredient" I just love how the took Nashoba Brook Bakery to task. Because, truly, it is important to make sure that labels always tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right? https://www.foodpolitics.com/2017/10/fda-says-love-is-not-a-food-ingredient/

Jeremy Cherfas

By what insane twisted logic of airport security theatre is it OK to have soft cheese in the hold but not in the cabin? Bereft

Jeremy Cherfas

All packed and ready for trip that culminates at , hoping that cheap Irish airline doesn't notice the weight of my handbag.

Jeremy Cherfas

Must we copy everything?

1 min read

I dunno. I see this Add a "tweetstorm" UI for chaining status updates with chained POSSE tweets and I think of something I wrote a while back: Or you could write a blog post. Does the really need to make indie copies of everything the silos offer? Even the workarounds?

Maybe I misunderstand, and a feature like this is what weans people off the silo pap. All I know is, I don't think it would work for me.

Jeremy Cherfas

Wouldn't it be cool if micro.blog had whatever it takes to work with Launch Centre under iOS?

I'm sure I wrote this yesterday, but it seems to have vanished without trace.

Jeremy Cherfas

Rockin' my imposter status

1 min read

Finished the first phase of moving two WordPress driven sites from one hosting service to another this morning. I was a bit wary, having read all the things that can go wrong, and I took a few wrong turns into dead ends. But I managed to back out and didn't screw up too badly on the first one. The screwing up I did accomplish was mainly the result of my impatience, doing things in quick succession when I should have given them time to settle down in between. But I learned my lessons, and this morning's transfer went much more smoothly. Scarily so, in fact.

There's plenty left to do, moving various ancillary things, all part of an ongoing effort to tidy up in general, but I don't foresee any more difficulties, touch wood.

And in case anyone cares, I couldn't have done it nearly as easily without the Duplicator plugin for WordPress, which truly is a life saver.

Jeremy Cherfas

The tools change, the job remains the same

1 min read

Funny, as I continue slowly to bring old posts in, to see what I wrote about my tools, in 2007 and then again in 2013.

The conclusion remains as it ever was; although the tools change, the jobs they need to do remain more or less the same. Find things and write about them.

Jeremy Cherfas

Quick gotcha: I moved this WithKnown site from shared hosting to a VPS yesterday, and today photos were not displaying and not uploading. Turned out that in the move the path to the Uploads directory had not changed. Fixed that, and all seems to be well again. I hope.

Jeremy Cherfas

Crossed the wide Pecos ...

1 min read

Playing Lyle Lovett singing Texas River Song, even though I know it's a stretch, to celebrate having eaten a giant bowl of my own dogfood.

A couple of weeks ago I followed Chris Aldrich to reading.am, which is a neat little spot for just putting down a marker for something that you're reading. I wanted more. I wanted to be able to save links to the things I marked. And now, a little over two weeks later, I've done it.

I have a PHP file that fetches the RSS feeds of things I've marked in reading.am, looks for any that are new since the last time the program ran, and then POSTS the results to Known's micropub endpoint. PESOS for my bookmarks!

There is no way I could have done it without amazing help from people on the IndieWeb IRC, and it isn't perfect by any means. There's more work to be done, for sure, before I even think about sharing the code.

But hey, it works.

And, as my main helper said, "Launch early and iterate often".

I'll be doing that.

Jeremy Cherfas

At last. Just heard the first, faint rumblings of thunder. Bring it on!

Jeremy Cherfas

Just seen a lizard with a bifurcated tail, both bits equally long and slender, by the compost. Never before.

Jeremy Cherfas

Virtual Homebrew Website Club

2 min read

We had a virtual meeting of the Homebrew Website Club yesterday evening, and as usual it was interesting and informative. We all forgot to take notes, but sketchess was prompted to do a brain dump, which I have added to and tightened up slightly to capture the main points.

  • There was a lot of discussion of the confusion among people new to caused by having so many different ways to achieve the same thing. Some people thought it would be good if there were, maybe, a recommended approach for specific circumstances. However, that does require the user to be clear what they are trying to achieve.
  • sketchess suggested that directed tutorials to achieve a specific outcome would be helpful. There was some support for this but, as ever, the issue of time can be a constraint.
  • We talked about the potential usefulness of different levels of wiki pages, or a special section, or something completely independent of the wiki.
  • aaronpk reminded us that the difficulty with independent offerings is that there can be difficulties in maintaining momentum. The wiki, as a collective effort, is more likely to be managed by individuals.
  • We noted that sometimes developers simply do not remember what it was like to start some activity, and also that a “getting started” for an experienced developer would be completely different from a “getting started” for someone who perhaps only knows silos. A beginner's guide written by recent beginners, with expert input from more experienced people, might be useful.
  • We talked about self-dogfooding, and that this may be inhibiting Generation 2 and up. They are not necessarily interested in building things themselves, although they want to make use of IndieWeb principles and practices.
  • Several people seem to be exploring the IndieWeb without making use of IRC or the wiki. Their efforts sometimes show up in IRC thanks to Loqi. Would it be useful to reach out directly and suggest they join and use the wiki?

Comments and edits welcome.

Jeremy Cherfas

And lo! The two series that vanished from Netflix last night were back tonight. I am no longer peeved, but I am mystified.

Jeremy Cherfas

Probably something to do with food learning

1 min read

@nicolakidsbooks it is probably part of the same phenomenon that made my bubba's chicken soup such effective medicine. That is, the exact same food can become very positive or very negative depending on when in the sickness cycle you experience it. Eat a novel food just before you feel ghastly, and you may well be put off it for life. Eat it as you're on the mend -- and the return of appetite is always a good sign -- and you'll probably ascribe magical properties to it, and turn to it whenever you're feelibng a bit better after feeling awful. Constraints on learning and all that.

Jeremy Cherfas

Netflix just vanished two shows I was in the middle of watching. I am extremely peeved.

Jeremy Cherfas

this is some text

Jeremy Cherfas

What with the London and Dublin podcast festivals, I reckon should be a blast. @thisheadstuff @hearsayfestival

Jeremy Cherfas

Owning my audio clips

3 min read

In the past couple of days, prompted by Marty McGuire's write-up, I raved about the potential of Audiogram to help promote the podcast by making it easier to share audio clips to social media -- by turning them into video clips. This afternoon, having managed to get tomorrow's episode edited early, and having had to chop quite a few interesting digressions, I thought I would have a serious play.

Tl;dr: It worked. I'd show you here, but I haven't found an easy way to upload video to Known yet. If you want to see the result, you can go to Patreon right now.

Installing Audiogram was not entirely plain sailing. Marty used Docker, and so despite warnings from other IndieWeb friends, I tried the same. All went well out of the gate, but then fell at the first. Something to do with virtualbox. So I switched to Homebrew and that did the needfull. Even then, though, Audiogram wouldn't start, but the error message made it clear that I needed to update node.js and npm. That done, it still wouldn't start.

Turned out I already had a local server running, via MAMP, and that was getting in the way. Switching off that server, and all was good.

That was two days ago. Today, I tried to use it for serious, and although there were plenty of hiccups along the way, I got there.

The instructions for modifying the theme are very straightforward, and with a bit of trial and error I was able to create a background for any future clips.

Uploading the audio, inserting the caption, all that was dead simple thanks to Audiogram's editor. Actually generating the videos, though, generated error after error, and some of them scrolled through several screens. But I kept my nerve, turned to search engines and StackOverflow and eventually got there.

Some of the fixes seemed to be pure voodoo. There's an invisible file that one of the Audiogram developers suggested deleting. The first time I tried that, it worked beautifully. The second time, not so much. Nor the third. But then, it worked again, at which point I called a halt, for now; a wise decision in my opinion.

I'm looking forward to seeing whether clips will attract listeners to the podcasts in their entirety. I put the first one on Patreon because the episode is not yet public, although Patreons have received it. I'll probably use clips there as bait and see how it goes. Once episodes are public I'll send clips to Twitter and, maybe, Facebook which will, I think make it relatively easy to trace any impact. And if the whole process isn't too hard (getting to the first video uploaded took almost three hours today) then I can imagine it might be useful to promote older epsiodes too, when there is a news peg.

So, grateful thanks to Marty McGuire and WNYC.

Jeremy Cherfas

I wonder what Jonathan Meades means when he describes a specific kind of English meatball as "a big ralph"

Jeremy Cherfas

We are still a long way from home

1 min read

Struggling to understand how different bits of the  work in WordPress, I received some very sound advice from lots of people, including this little exhortation from @chrisaldrich:

I'll admit I had to read it about 3 times before I grokked it myself, but it also was a great general and practical intro to the inherent value of microformats.

If that were what it took to grok Facebook or Twitter, would anyone beyond a small, self-selecting cadre of geeks be using them?

I thought not.

Jeremy Cherfas

"Paying to podcast is so passé"

1 min read

On what planet does Techcrunch live? Their report on Anchor's bid to lure podcasters from SoundCloud says n0thing about whether audio hosted there will be sharable via, say, Huffduffer, which to me was the biggest single problem with SoundCloud as a podcast host.

I would also argue that a promise by Anchor "to cut podcasters in when it starts to earn money" isn't much to go on.

But what do I know?

Jeremy Cherfas

Listening to http://www.cookerybythebook.com/home/2016/10/7/cbtb-37 for and IHAQ: any recipes for purple cookies? @iamsuzychase

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Terrific pieces in the shortlist for prizes. http://www.hearsayfestival.ie/new-2017-prize-shortlists/4593973316 Can't wait to listen.