I really like Garrick’s method of adding Bluesky comments to a Quarto-based blog. I’m already wired up to use Bridgy at my personal blog and Quarto datablog, and enabling it to connect to Bluesky was just a matter of adding the connection with an app-specific password. The difference between using webmentions versus the direct point-to-point link that Garrick and others have implemented is something to consider: it looks like the direct feed from Bluesky, at least, preserves a lot more of the continuity of a thread, while the webmentions approach (especially using Bridgy) potentially makes gathering comments a little more seamless in the POSSE sense by not requiring the link back to the original post.

At prettygoodhat, I needed one template change to insert the bluesky syndication link if specified in the post’s front matter. In single.html:

{{ if (isset .Params "blueskylink") }}
<a class="u-syndication" style="display: none" href="{{ .Params.blueskylink}}">{{ .Params.blueskylink}}</a>
{{ end }}

This adds the stub for the syndication link if one is found with the blueskylink id in the post’s header, and that should be all it takes for Bridgy to collect replies associated with the corresponding post.

Garrick’s extension gives me a thought on improving my own hookup of Bridgy to Quarto, too; that may be the right way to go over at the ol’ datablog.

My Friday “day off” turned into a “well, I’ll work about half of it” day. But I got enough downtime after mid-day to end my work week pretty relaxed and on a positive note, having learned enough to solve an interesting problem and make mild progress on a couple of things. Among my weekend tasks so far is reaching out to the public radio station in my old town to cancel my monthly donation; it’s clipping one more tether to that place I lived for nearly 20 years, and it has me feeling kind of moody.

This week, Annie Mueller posted this beautiful piece. In reflecting on changing her blog platform, not only has she written something really moving about why she writes and shares online; she overcame the friction that the whole endeavor had got wrapped up in for her. When I think about why I continue to care about Writing On The Internet, I’m often torn between liking the systems, the machinery, and the actual things I’m saying, such that I think there’s much that I don’t actually put to paper because the tools aren’t satisfying, or the output doesn’t look the way I imagine it might.¹ I really love how Annie found the right landing place for her own why and how.

• 💉 I got my flu and COVID boosters yesterday. So far, I’m a little tired and achey, but not feeling the side effects too badly, which is a nice change. The prior COVID vaccs have really flattened me hard for about thirty-six hours.

• 📼 I rewatched Edge of Tomorrow in some evening downtime this week. You know what? It’s a really good, well-executed sci-fi banger and more people should be really into it. Also, Bill Paxton in this movie is amazing.

• 🕹️ Most of the gaming I normally do has felt really heavy lately, a combination of limited time to really get into anything, an absolutely wrecked attention span, and general dissatisfaction with … everything? I picked up Inertial Drift and it’s hitting the spot: It’s a fun and well-designed racer with cool twin-stick controls, easy to pick up and put down. It’s a perfect Steam Deck recliner, too.

• 📖 Molly White wrote a good article about POSSE publishing to own one’s online presences. She links to her software implementation, too! But, usefully, her writeup focuses on the reasons to do this, too.

Out and about in indie-blogging this week, the always interesting (check the keyboard posts!) bsag is experimenting with webmentions, and has a method of caching mentions locally that takes me way back to my own first implementation. Indieweb rules!

In other blog news, I’ve swapped in webmention support for links from Mastodon, at least partially. Reposts aren’t quite displayed as I’d like, but likes and replies should be working. I had to remember/rediscover a couple of bits of blog plumbing, which makes me sort of want to revise my whole setup here. BUT. I don’t think I’ll go quite that far.

I realized this morning that I have been on micro.blog for just over a year now. So, happy micro anniversary to me :) I continue to enjoy relationships here and the way m.b enables indieweb infrastructure is a great model. Cheers all, @manton and @macgenie!

Last time I went on vacation, I got all relaxed and thought, “sure, I can coach the soccer team.” This time I’m all relaxed and thinking, “maybe I’ll start up a tiny podcast here on my micro.blog.” 👀

Yeah, the barriers to entry are still too high for most, but this is certainly a good reason to host your own media. I can just log in to the server and run exiftool to verify that my images are all clean! It’s a nice level of confidence.

This note by @manton reminded me that I’ve been meaning to update my media endpoint to remove location data:

Micro.blog for iOS now strips the location and other metadata from photos before uploading too. It’s easy to overlook but really important.

Now, so does my micropub posting flow!

/now: Reading up on h-entry and workin’ on my microformats.