For a while now, my website has been able to ask the browser for its location and use that to add location to posts. The problem is it is frequently inaccurate. So, I’ve been working on allowing my website to query other information sources to find out my location. The first one is my home automation system, which tracks my location to determine if I’m in the house or not. The same system also has the data from my weather station…I also post weather on my site. So, by doing this I can have the most accurate information when I post. Although it thinks I am next door when I check it against my house.
Working on Integrations
Spending some time working on integrations. Specifically, integrating data from my home automation systems into my website. In previous iterations, I have added support for weather to posts…but not directly from my own weather station. Added support for location, but not directly from my own phone’s location.
I am trying to decide how far I want to go. For example, in addition to actual coordinates, I have a property for my location that allows for the following options: At Home, Just Left Home, At Work, Just Left Work, Just Arrived Home, Away, and Extended Away. do I want to actually identify where I am, either with granular or general location just because I can? Or do I just want to add context to a post when I’m saying something else.
There are lots of other integrations I’m looking to do, for various reasons. There is a lot of data I’d like to store in my site that you won’t be able to see, for historic and future purposes.
This is a problem people may have solved on other sites, but I’m trying to solve it for myself. Especially since anything I post on my site is syndicated elsewhere.
I don’t often post family pictures, but I am making an exception. This is my brother and his family. My brother and sister in law were specially honored for their contributions to Torah Academy and the Boston Jewish community this evening. Glad I could attend.
Bridgy now supports stars (likes), replies and new issues in early beta. I believe the Issue kind is coming to post-kinds. Forgive me if this is already being worked on.
Do I Support Github now?
Replaced my front doorknob, changed the battery in my security camera, arranged a refund and warranty replacement for a malfunctioning component, made it so the recessed light over my TV turns off when the TV turns on, continued my redesign of a part of my website posting interface, went shopping and got some supplies for the next week or two, found some paperwork to try to renew my driver’s license for a second time and still got to get extra sleep…why can’t I be this productive during the week?
Once again at 37000 ft.
Waiting for JetBlue 1472 to LaGuardia. Less delayed than originally planned.
Third gate change.
At the urging of some colleagues, I’ve started working with a professional coach to help me work through some obstacles I encountered in this last year as a WordPress focus lead. I’m fortunate in that Automattic will pay for me to receive ten coaching sessions per year.
(Since I’m also taking a…
I envy that. Sometimes I feel I could use some professional and personal development, but the closest I get is buying myself books on the subject.
I think I finally got altitude stored when posting from my phone. But not sure how to display it or if I should.
Launching of Weather
With this post, I am launching weather for my website. So, why and what is weather? This is inspired by recent weather events.
In addition to the ability to show a location, I’m also now showing the weather conditions at that location at the time the post was made. So, as this post was made, it was 43 degrees with showers(indicated by the icon).
I may tweak the presentation in future. The new additions to my location plugin include not only displaying the weather on a post, but a sitewide weather display as well as a new option to show the last location reported on a post…Will be testing that and the weather in the coming days as I take a trip.
I have an idea in future to grab this information from my phone, which has a GPS chip, but am not there yet.
Looking for bagel thins.
Thinking of Homepage Mentions
Going to get a bit technical. This is your only warning.
One of the challenges I have been looking at has actually come because of others. Now, if you’ve been looking at my website, you might notice that, thanks to the efforts of myself, Matthias Pfefferle, and Ryan Barrett that there have been major improvements to the presentation of different types of responses on my site. I have a screenshot of the replies on a recent post.
Facepiles, the row of faces representing people who ‘liked’ or what have you, was actually the first project I tackled when I joined the Indieweb community back in 2014. I’ve learned a lot since then.
Either way, the current work not only builds on what I’ve learned, but the contributions by Ryan, who really wanted this feature available, really jumpstarted things. Now, all of these people below don’t know they commented on my site…as they commented elsewhere and I pulled it back to my site via webmention.
So, it brings me to a new problem I want to solve. Homepage mentions. What is that? So, in June, we implemented the ability to direct webmentions(which I’ve talked about before) that reference your homepage as opposed to a specific article to a designated page.
WordPress doesn’t allow the attachment of responses directly to the homepage, and david.shanske.com represents me, having a direct relationship to me on Twitter, Facebook, etc. So, any mention of my website or my username on one of those sites generates a mention that is sent to my site.
This is a problem in display. In recent weeks, I’ve had the following scenarios my website doesn’t yet deal with in a satisfactory way
- Someone referencing my website as me, effectively tagging me in their post as having been somewhere. Example: With David(david.shanske.com)
- Someone referencing my website as me in mentioning something I did. Example: David(david.shanske.com) kindly helped me.
Neither of this usages by others are displayed properly website, which is why they are not showing at all. I’m not sure how or where to display them.
Should someone mentioning me in this manner give me the option of generating a post, ala Facebook’s service of letting others post on your timeline, even if I moderate it somehow?
At the least, it should generate a message appropriate to the situation. And if it does, where should it go? Should I display recent mentions on the sidebar of my homepage? On a dedicated page?
The Indieweb declares a person tag as a tag on a post that refers to a specific person by URL and is done as a explicit action. Many of these mentions are explicit, but some are less so.
My goal is by mid January to figure out how I’m going to display these, one way or another, and write some code to do this. Perhaps as my project for Indiewebcamp Baltimore, coming up in late January.
I haven’t logged into Twitter in months, though I syndicate content there from my website. Someone mentioned me, which got pulled back to my site. Turned out to be confusion with my cousin. But, I decided to clean up my Twitter account. I removed a bunch of inactive accounts accounts I didn’t think I needed. I considered starting from 0, but I’m not sure. I have a lot of social media accounts I send stuff to, but I’m never really on any of those services. So, I mostly respond to responses, with some rare exceptions. Maybe it is time to prune things down.