Mastodon, now in FeoBlog

One of the first questions I got when I told folks about FeoBlog was "Does it support ActivityPub?" (i.e.: "Does it interoperate with Mastodon?")

And while there are some reasons why it can't interoperate directly with ActivityPub, it's always possible to sync data back and forth.

So, I wrote feomasto, a little tool to sync my Mastodon feed into FeoBlog. You can see the results here.

Some design decisions I'm interested to hear feedback on:

1. Since FeoBlog is all public, I decided to only sync "public" and "unlisted" posts from Mastodon, so as not to expose any private posts from users I follow. (i.e.: not "private" or "direct" posts.)

2. So as not to unnecessarily use bandwidth of (often for-free) Mastodon servers, I decided to not inline images. Though, I could see myself coming back and deciding to add them as FeoBlog attachments, which would allow for inlining them without touching Mastodon servers. (Beyond the first download.) For now, I just link to the attachments so you can click in and view them as you wish.

Let me know what you think!

I'm also still really enjoying writing stuff with Deno. Not having to deal with package.json, tsconfig.json, npm, etc, just removes a lot of friction. Plus, it's super easy to write, run, and share a standalone script that imports dependencies from online. (Though, I haven't really used the new module stuff in Node, so maybe you can do that there too these days?)

Deno & rss2fb

Had fun writing code for Deno! :D

https://deno.land/x/rss2fb@v0.1.1

Just published my first #Deno package. It's pretty cool!

One unexpectedly nice thing -- if there are errors in code hosted on https://deno.land, the error message contains URLs that take you directly to the line(s) of code in a web page. ❤

https://twitter.com/NfNitLoop/status/1411547380302839811

It's a pretty fun and easy way to write and distribute some TypeScript!

I want to write more, but I was "done in 20 minutes" a couple hours ago, and I need to clean the apartment. We're heading out of town tomorrow to see some friends for the 4th of July. So I don't get to play with code again until we're back on Monday afternoon. 😢😛

FeoBlog v0.4.0 Released

Version 0.4.0

Released: June 25, 2021 https://github.com/NfNitLoop/feoblog/releases/tag/v0.4.0

• The web client is now the default view.
  FeoBlog has two ways to access content. One is plain HTML (A.K.A.: Web 1.0), which works well for old browsers and search engines. The other is a web client (Web 2.0), which has a nicer interface. Now, if you visit a page in a browser that supports JavaScript, you'll get automatically redirected to the newer, nicer web client.

• Post drafts are now saved.
  If you navigate away from the "New Post" page and come back later, your post will still be there. Whew!

• Added some helpful warnings when writing markdown posts
  Now if you forget to link that [reference], you'll get a warning reminding you to add a link.

• Better support for password managers
  You should save your private key ("password") in a password manager. But some password managers were filling in the wrong fields. Hopefully that's fixed. (If not, please open an issue!)

• An updated README to explain the core principles behind FeoBlog's design

• Support for attachments on iOS (and probably Android)
  Oops. You can't easily drag-and-drop on a phone, so I added a button to attach files. Now you can take photos and easily upload them from your phone!

• Improved automatic link generation when adding attachments
  When you add an attachment to a post, FeoBlog will generate a [link] and a [link]: files/reference.example for you. Now it'll do a better job of placing those within an existing document.

What is "political" at work?

re:

(Twitter)

I assume that's in response to this line in the blog post:

1. No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account.

This is such a tone-deaf "got my privilege blinders on" rule.

What counts as "political" discussion?

I've worked with people who I'm sure would claim it's "political" that I casually mention my husband in work chat, since they're "politically" (and likely religiously) against same-sex marriage.

Is openly mourning the death of yet another black person killed by a cop "political" because "black lives matter" is somehow a sentiment that needs to be "both sides"-'d politically?

What about saying that you're for equal pay for women, and compensation transparency?

I'm not saying work chat should have a #politics channel or invite irrelevant quarrels, but when you're in chat with folks 8+ hours a day (especially when you're remote), "real life" stuff creeps into chat. It's impossible to separate politics and real life in general, but it's doubly impossible when your existence and lived experience is politicized.

I suspect what counts as "political" will just be whatever makes trouble for The Company, or makes the leaders uncomfortable. They don't want to take a side because that's hard, so they'd rather just pretend the problem doesn't exist. And who will bear the brunt of that rule? People who speak up about issues.

And that leads me to the thing that always makes me confused at this kind of thinking, something that feels like cognitive dissonance when I come across it at a company: You can't be for "diversity and inclusion" and against talking about "political issues". Your workplace is not inclusive if some of your coworkers need to censor themselves, and others get to be "the default". And your workplace will not be as diverse once those employees find other, better places to work.

But, maybe Basecamp isn't for diversity and inclusion? Seems like their "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" working group is getting axed:

3. No more committees. For nearly all of our 21 year existence, we were proudly committee-free. [...] But recently, a few sprung up. No longer. We're turning things back over to the person (or people) who were distinctly hired to make those decisions. The responsibility for DEI work returns to Andrea, our head of People Ops.

I'd love to hear from members of that working group how they feel about these changes.

My ideal workplace would be one that actually sticks to and implements its stated values. If you value DEI, then it seems like the issue isn't "political" discussion, it's sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., statements. And, hey, some of those are already illegal in the workplace so you're probably already enforcing bans on that kind of speech. If you've got people in your company who are angry because they don't get to be the "other side" of those "political" issues, I'd suggest you've found the "divisive" problem in your company culture.

Bike Ride

We ended up buying the e-bikes that I was thinking about. They've been great! Definitely happy to have a motor to help me up some of the steep hills in this neighborhood. Even with the electric motor at full, and on the lowest gear, some of them are quite tough, so I definitely wouldn't be managing this on a non-electric bike.

After a few trips out, my husband found a nice circular route for us to ride which has been our de facto route recently. It starts with a climb up a into some hilly neighborhoods, and just when I'm getting exhausted it ends with a nice downhill coast most of the way back home.

We got a little bit of rain last month so the hillsides are looking nice and green. Here's one of my favorite views from that route:

E-Bikes

A few months ago, I was perusing the YouTubes, as one does while social distancing during a pandemic, and it served up a video review of an e-bike. It's been a while since I owned a bicycle, so the tech was new to me, and I watched enough videos that now YouTube thinks I'm an e-bike fanatic or something.

So after months of watching videos I thought, hey, I should try riding one of those things. So, today Heiðar and I went out to test ride a few.

At the first stop, I tried out a Trek Verve+ 2, and (I think) the Trek Verve+ 3. They were both quite nice! They've got a "mid-drive" electric motor, situated down between the pedals, that assists you as you pedal. Even if you turn it off completely, the bike rode quite nicely despite the extra weight.

At the second stop, we tried out a brand whose name I'll avoid mentioning. When their sales guy heard we'd tried a Trek earlier that day, he spent a lot of time telling us how bad it was. He claimed mid-drive motors are worse because they're harder to pedal when the assist is off. (I did not find this to be the case, and in fact, the bikes he was selling with hub drives in the wheels seemed harder to pedal with no assist.)

Still, he was nice and we each tested a few different models. I'm both out of practice and out of shape so we called it quits for the day, but I'm looking forward to trying some more later this week.

I'm trying to decide if the expense will be worth it. I'd like some activity to get me out of the house, and biking sounds fun. We're thinking e-bikes because the neighborhood we live in (and San Diego in general) is pretty hilly, so having something to help get up the steeper hills would be nice. But there's always the chance that after biking for a while the novelty will wear off and we'll have bought ourselves a couple expensive, electrified dust collectors.

FeoBlog v0.3.0 Released

This release brings file attachments to your posts, so bring on the cat pictures!

It also adds automatic builds and releases via [GitHub Actions], which is a nice thing for me. 😊

Version 0.3.0

Released: Feb. 25, 2021
https://github.com/NfNitLoop/feoblog/releases/tag/v0.3.0

New Features

• Attachments!
  You can now attach files to posts by dragging them onto the post editor. A link to the file will be automatically generated for you. If the file is an image, it'll be inlined in your post by default. Syncing between servers will also sync file attachments.
• Release automation.
  This is more for me than for y'all, but the result of this is that releases should be regularly available via the releases page.

Note: There's a known issue (Bug #16) that is preventing Windows builds from working at the moment. I'll enable Windows builds when that's fixed.

Improvements

• Switched to comrak for server-side (plain HTML) rendering of Markdown.
  Users shouldn't notice any changes, but this library operates in a "safe by default" mode which is nice.
• Improved browser caching.
  Protobuf "Items" (and file attachments) are now served with HTTP headers to allow browsers to cache them indefinitely, since they should never change.
• SQLite's "Write Ahead Logging" ("WAL") mode is now enabled when available, which greatly increases write throughput when syncing. This also means that reads and writes do not block each other.
• Disable in-browser signature verification during sync.
  This further improves sync speed, since in-browser crypto is particularly slow. The server will still validate that the objects it receives are cryptographically signed. (And the in-browser client still always verifies content signatures before displaying them.)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some minor rendering issues when viewing a server w/ no posts.

First Post! (... with a cat)

FeoBlog v0.3.0 is out and it supports file attachments. Everyone knows The Internet is for pictures of your cat, so here we go.

Version 0.2.0!

Version 0.2.0 is out now.

New Features

• Comments!
• Lots of style updates. Items (post/comments) now have a single-line header of metadata.
• Identicons!
• Server-side support for replies.
• New feoblog db upgrade command to keep your database up-to-date with the latest versions of FeoBlog.
• Relative timestamps. (But you can mouse-over a date to see absolute times.)

And more. See all the details on GitHub

It's funny. I'm way more interested in writing FeoBlog than posting to it. Sometimes I feel my own words are boring or tedious, so I'd rather just read others'.

I've been having fun working on the next version of FeoBlog. It's going to have comments, as well as some other features I worked on along the way. (Faster loading of items. Relative timestamps. Some style updates. Uhh... other stuff I've forgotten. Don't worry, there'll be a changelog. 😛)

Example Client

Curious how easy it is to write a client for FeoBlog?

Check out fb-rss.py, a utility to sync an RSS feed into FeoBlog.

Demo Video

A video demo of the features available in v0.1.0 is now available on YouTube.

If you're interested in learning more, but haven't had time to set up your own server, hopefully this will help!

Video Editing

Today I recorded a screencast demoing some of the features of FeoBlog. I'm excited to share it with the world, but first I had to brush up on my video editing skills. (... as if I had any to start with.)

If I were on a Mac, I'd probably have just used iMovie. But, since I recorded using OBS on my Windows PC, I thought I'd just edit the video there.

Windows Photos

So Windows used to have an app called "Windows Movie Maker". Apparently that's just been folded into the Photos app in Windows 10. After I used OBS to "remux" my files to .mp4 files, Photos was able to edit them. Basic trimming worked, but when I went to export things, the resolution was limited to 1080p, though I'd recorded in 1440p.

I was a bit worried about things becoming blurry since some text was unfortunately already a bit small, so I looked for alternatives.

Shotcut

I came across a nice video on YouTube that recommended Shotcut, so I gave that a try. But at first it seemed unable to play my video files.

After some googling, I found that I needed to go to Settings → Display Method → OpenGL (instead of DirectX). That seemed to let it render my videos, but despite having really beefy hardware, things were still really sluggish.

I briefly tried out OpenShot, which has a much nicer site than Shotcut, but it had even more performance issues. (At one point, it took ~15 seconds to close after I'd clicked the close button, and all it was doing was playing back video clips I had put into the timeline.)

Back in Shotcut, I was able to edit things into a somewhat nice state. Tips for any beginners:

• If playing video/audio becomes choppy, save the project and re-launch the application.

• Save often. I found myself accidentally pressing keys that mapped to shortcuts I didn't know about. Having a restore point is handy.

• Though the app tells you it'll auto-detect your video size & frame rate from the first video you attach, it does not seem to do so for 1440p. You'll need to add a custom video mode in Settings → Video Mode.

  I'd neglected to do this, and my first export shrank my 1440p video to 1080p, then upscaled it back to 1440p since that was the export resolution I chose. Took me a while to figure out why just exporting my video had made it so blurry. 👎

Exports are still really slow, unfortunately. My 21.5 minute video is taking over an hour to export. It looks like a lot of operations may be CPU bound. I wonder if it would've been faster to just copy things over to my old MacBook Air and use iMove.

Giles

🐱 stares at my feet

"... yes?"

🐱 looks up at my face, then at my feet

Oh! Uh... is this the first time you've seen me in socks? 😆

So we adopted a cat about a month ago. We named him Giles. There are some pics on Instagram.

It's been nice seeing him come out of his shell. He was quite shy when we got him. Before we let him have free roam of the apartment, he would hide behind between the shower curtain and the front of the tub. Once he had access to the whole apartment, he lived under the bed until we started fishing him out from under there and having "no bedroom access" time.

Now he'll happily spend time with us in the living room or in my office, even when he has access to his hiding spot. But sudden movements do still send him running for cover. We can't scold him for anything because he seems to constantly think he's already in trouble. Poor thing!

Public Release

The first publicly released version of FeoBlog, version 0.1.0 is now available on GitHub! 🎉

https://github.com/NfNitLoop/feoblog

First Post!

... on my personal account, at least. :)

Hello, World!

This is the first post on my public FeoBlog server. 🎉

Tomorrow, I'll work to get the source code cleaned up and published to GitHub so people can run their own servers. For today, ping me personally if you want to be an early tester. :)