TrickJarrett.com

Maybe it's just me.

Let's be honest, on this blog it is just me. But I found it unpleasant to read my blog. The line lengths were too wide. Spanning nearly the full page except for the right menu.

Blech.

After some research and I set the contents max-width to be 65 characters. I find this pleasingly comfortable but not overly compact. This is based on readability studies which place the ideal line length in the 50-75 character range.

Did some programming this morning. Nothing too major, mostly fixing small issues which had been bugging me.

First was improving the layout of the site when viewed on mobile. Just some CSS tweaks there.

Second I re-enabled the integration from my blog an my Wallabag article storage system. This was what enabled articles I'd saved to read later to be added to the automated end-of-day entries. I had broken it doing some stuff on the backend a few months ago and just turned it off rather than fix. So, I've fixed that now.

Third, I've been working on the integration of the blog with the discussion board. My idea is that I can make Glowbug automatically create new threads as well as give me the ability to force it when a post wouldn't normally be given its own thread. It's not complicated, the forum has an API system, but I haven't been able to bring my full focus to it.

A New Experiment: The Trap

I've had this idea for a while, and today I finally set up 'The Trap.' The Trap is an "old school" web forum. The idea is to see if a new forum can build a community. Additionally, it can be used to hold conversations relating to posts on this blog.

Why a forum and not a Discord? That's a good question. Largely it's because I am infatuated with the idea of self-hosted online presence. Additionally, I like the idea of a more casual forum and not a "live" location.

If you're interested in joining The Trap, you're welcome to.

The world needs more hobbit software

I just love the concept and agree with it. I think of Glowbug (this blog) as hobbit software.

Quick and easy implementation

Okay, hammered out the progress scroll in thirty minutes. Took some fiddling with the CSS to get right, but it should now be visible to all visitors to the site.

Edit 8:52pm

Also, thanks to Daniel whom I linked earlier, he flagged that the CSS for mobile viewing wasn't working. It'd been so long since I set this layout up, I assume I just hadn't set it up at all. Looking at the code I spotted that it was set, but it was set for a size smaller than most phone screens these days. So it's fixed now.

Microfeatures in Blogs

Came across this delightful blog entry which shares some items that Daniel, the author, enjoys seeing implemented on other blogs. For ease of reading, I'll reproduce the list here, but do go read Daniel's post:

• Aside links in larger articles
• Tables of Contents (also calling out displaying page progress)
• Linkable Headings
• Multipost Grouping
• Dialogue blocks
• Code blocks crediting origins/sources
• Markers for external link
• RSS Feeds
• Links to other sites/blogs

I loved the list and have already made some notes for Glowbug (my own blog's engine) implementation. Their inclusion of "Markers for external links" also made me happy given this blog's already implementation of showing linked domains, et al.

I already have an idea for an on-page progress bar. My idea is to add the ability to seen previously seen on the progress bar. Specifically if scroll down a page, and then back up, it should keep the furthest you've scrolled visible and just change that color so signify it isn't currently seen. I don't have time to hack on it this morning, though I might try to get it done tonight before I fly out tomorrow.

Multipost Grouping is something I technically have implemented on the back-end, but haven't really used, and also isn't quite the implementation the author was referring to. My implemention was a thing I called 'chapters' and comes from an old idea I had years ago for a life-blog which let me write entries into chronological "chapters" to capture eras in my life. This concept came about when I was younger in my 20s I think, when my life was somewhat more likely to change. The reality is I also don't tend (at least, currently) to write posts which are grouped in any way other than tags.

I am definitely going to add capabilities for Dialogues to my blog. I don't regularly need them, but agree having them would make the blog better.

My daily automated post potentially includes links to other blogs if they are posts I add to my Wallabag to read later. I like the concept, and the idea I've come up with is a "starred reading" functionality for the blog, where it is posts I've read recently on other blogs and want to recommend in an ongoing fashion. I've added it to my backlog, we'll see if I implement it or not.

I think I may move the automated evening posts into a separate thing. I go in spurts on this blog. And I don't particularly enjoy seeing a string of automated posts and I know it's not ideal for my blog readers (the three of you there are.)

I'm not sure the solution yet. I'm at the "Identify problem" phase of it. We'll see where I land.

Hachyderm's server report says there are 36,143 peer instances for it on the Mastodon network. My blog runs a cron job which pings instances.social for the top 1000 instances by active users. I then capture any new ones from that list and add it to my list. As of tonight, my blog knows 2,417 of the instance domains. This represents just 6.7% of the network by instance quantity, but my estimate is that it is 90+% of the userbase.

This code enables my blog to automatically identify when I link to a post on Mastodon (admittedly, not something I'm doing a great deal of these days.) When it knows the link is for a Mastodon post, it can generate the code for embedding the post directly into the blog, rather than simply linking to it.

Testing Threads.net Embeds

The drone dragon is awesome, but also I wanted to see if my code worked for embedding Threads posts on the blog.

Update: Well, that is anticlimactic. It works, but it's pointing you to Threads. What about a post which is not a video?

Yep, that's disappointing.

For the first time in literal months, I did some work under the hood on Glowbug.

1. I turned off the BlueSky embed mechanism, given that bsky.link has become unreliable / gone down.
2. I also finally fixed the issue with the JSON feed in case someone has been depending on it for the articles.

You're all welcome. Anything to keep the masses happy.

Morning glowbug debugging

Some morning debugging as I noticed the normal automated post from last night did not run. Quickly realized my introduction of related links for blog posts broke it. But, in fixing that, I discovered another bug in it, this time pertaining to the running of the script for a specific date rather than the day it is being executed (aka, the code which lets me backfill a day for a post.)

Tracked down the error to a boneheaded variable usage mistake after a bit of puzzling out what was going wrong.

I do quite enjoy morning challenges for my brain, they feel like going to the gym for my hippocampus.

Testing Related Links

There are times where something is going on and I have multiple links I want to reference. Usually this is news and capturing links to multiple news stories, etc.

I've now added the functionality where I can attach multiple links to an entry, beyond just embedding them in the body of the post. It allows me to standardize their display, and potentially more functionality in the future.

Related Links:

• This is an arbitrary title for WaPo
• http://www.reuters.com
• NBC News

Migrated my old About page

I had a version of this 'About' page on my old blog. Decided to move it over and update it today.

Migrated post: Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018)

I was reminded I never migrated this post from my Wordpress blog. Here it is, if you're curious for my writing in response to Bourdain's passing.

It's wrong to call myself a fan of Anthony Bourdain. That overstates it. I read Kitchen Confidential and enjoyed it. When I watched one of his shows, I enjoyed it. But I didn't seek his content out, I didn't wait for news of new seasons or projects. But above all, I held jealousy of the career and life he had. It is a romantic way of life.

The vision of traveling the world to eat food and experience life around the world. I've been able to see many places around our world, and yet there remains a whole world that I haven't seen yet. What I've done is a step more than most people, and those places I have seen have confirmed this famous quote by Bourdain.

Small Glowbug Updates

I've been making some small updates to Glowbug (the engine under this blog.) Nothing major, but a few small things recently.

First, I made it so the system can automatically give image uploads a random name without me having to do anything before uploading. This also works for the system where I have it able to download images from the Internet for local hosting.

Second thing, which I did today, was that I modified the Markdown parsing to apply the caption text for images. Not only as the accessibility 'alt' text for images, but also so that the text will appear when images are moused over.

A photo from a few months ago, capturing a rainbow from the new office. Using this as a test for a tweak to the uploading system for glowbug.

No More Newsletter

When I moved my blog to Glowbug, I envisioned an email newsletter automatically going out. I never got to an automatic email, it was a nightly (or morning) routine to send it out manually to my list of... four subscribers.

Each of them were personal friends who had signed up for this list years ago when it was something completely different. (Thanks to each of you, by the way.)

However, I am not dedicated with the blog to merit really continuing to push and try to make it a thing. So I'm officially pulling the plug on the blog's newsletter feature.

Maybe one day I'll start it back up, we'll see.

Adding the Writing Log to End of Day Automated Entries

As you'll see in today's end of day post, the auto inclusion for tracking my writing log is done. At least for a first draft.

The output is very rudimentary, if I have a writing log entry for the day, then it will insert a header for "Writing Log" and then a sentence giving context to what I did.

Example:

Trick wrote 996 words over 40 min. with an average writing speed of 24.9 words per minute.

It has some additional functionality. I can theoretically track work on multiple projects at once, so if I do that it'll add a note for how many projects I worked on. Additionally, it will track my daily streak total if I've written for at least 2 days in a row.

I was thinking about doing a weekly summary every Sunday, but I haven't written that yet. I'll add it to the backlog.

Writing Tracker Coding

Spent a bit last night and this morning coding for Glowbug (this blog.)

For my larger novel writing efforts I've been using a Google sheet to track progress after each writing session. Overall, it works great and functionality-wise, there's no reason to change it.

Except... I decided I wanted to fold that tracking into my blog so that my writing updates can be integrated with the automated end of day posts.

This morning I finished implementing the basic tracking, after spending an infuriatingly long time tracking down a stupid typo which caused bugs. Next up is adding the graphs for tracking, adding more admin functionality, and then integrating it into the end-of-day posting. I feel like I should be able to knock most of that out tonight.

New Newsletter Name

As has been an important highlight for the last few days, the newsletter I send out has been on my mind. Right now it has the self-titled subject of "Trick's Words." But I decided I wanted to give it a better name. I brainstormed on it a bit and came up with two ideas:

Bits & Blips

I like this one because it has the alliterative title. And Blips was one of the original things as I built this blog engine, I called entries blips. Because the original vision was to be entirely a link blog, so blips would encompass the short entries in the same way 'tweets' (and now 'toots' and 'skeets') are entering common language.

The Daily Trickster

Gives it more of a newspaper feel and it still incorporates my name while perhaps also allowing me license to have a bit more fun in the newsletter.

We'll see. Still mulling these over and how I feel.

Update: I've landed on calling the daily update emails 'Bits & Blips' moving forward.

I am still waiting for evaluation on the blog's newsletter account to be cleared so I can resume sending it out. If they don't approve it soon, then I will go ahead and begin moving over to the other platform simply out of a desire to be done with it.

Update: And just received the all-clear. Incoming double newsletter delivery.

So apparently this blog's newsletter has been flagged and is under review for abusing the system. I'm fairly confident it will be cleared and something in how I generate it has gotten it flagged. It's not like this is a mass mailing, the newsletter subscribers are still in the single digits.

It might be the final straw which forces me off tinyletter though. I've been planning to move to a new platform for the newsletter, but I just haven't taken the time to do it. What I had worked and it was just something I could do for some added tools and API access, etc. If they do decide I've broken their rules somehow, well - that would be motivation.