I bumped up a little plugin for my site that generates rewrite URLs for avatar images. So if you visit /avatar/username you get redirected to the avatar for that username. You can add ?s=250 to pass the size to the other side. This is the same query used by Gravatar. Right now, this calls the gravatar URL and does a temporary redirect to it, setting cache control headers to save the redirect. This means that there could be up to two http queries per avatar image. In a future version, I might actually serve the avatar locally. I got tired of broken URLs for my image. Now, the same link will always produce my image.
Micropub 2.2.3 for WordPress has been released. It fixes a variety of warning notices.  Published, updated, name, and summary properties are no longer stored in post meta. When queried, they will be pulled from the equivalent WordPress properties. Content should be as well, however as content in the post includes rendered microformats we need to store the pure version. Might address this in a future version. As timezone is not stored in the WordPress timestamp, store the timezone offset for the post in meta instead of the full published and updated date. It will also sideload and set featured images if featured property is set. Note: Version 8.9 of JetPack apparently breaks this plugin. This is under investigation.
Episode 15 – micro.blog()


After a gap of over a year, we resumed our IndieWeb podcast and got together to discuss what has been going on, how we have been building the community during the pandemic, and about our topic of micro.blog. There is also a video attached this time.

 

Olympia Hotel
If you look in this picture, not only do you see the Western Hotel, you see the Olympia Hotel in the background. The Olympia was abandoned(look at this picture from 2008) and derelict until purchased in 2010 and returned to commercial use in 2015, and there were plans for excursion trips along the railroad line which never came to fruition. The former Erie Railroad route is now operated by the Central New York Railway for local service and the New York, Susquehanna, and Western for through service and leased from Norfolk Southern. The line runs from Port Jervis, through Narrowsburg, Callicoon, Hancock, Deposit, and terminates in Binghamton.
Took a drive on Friday down to Callicoon, New York, walked around a bit, then down the Delaware to Narrowsburg, and back up in a loop to head back through Bethel, site of the Woodstock Festival. Eventually I’ll be able to display this trip using my own mapping system, instead of this screenshot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

RSVPed Attending Digital Discussion: Take the A Train!

Constructed by the city-owned Independent Subway System (IND), the A train, known then as the 8th Avenue System, opened in 1932 as a 12-mile subway line running from 207th Street in Upper Manhattan to Chambers St in Lower Manhattan. By the 1950s, the line had grown to be the longest line in the New York City subway system, running 31 miles across three boroughs and traversing diverse communities along the way. It is also known for having been immortalized in Billy Strayhorn’s song ‘Take the A Train’, a song which has become a celebration of the subway itself.

Join Museum Educator Kate Lanceley for a digital discussion that will explore the history of the A train line. Discover unique features of the line and the history of its construction, including the individuals who helped build it and stories about some of the communities it serves.

Filed an Issue Authorship (github.com)
I’ve found URLs where the top level has two items…one of which is an h-card, the other an h-entry. There are two questions that come from this for the specification.

First, if there is no author property on the h-entry(it could be a different h- element), can I assume that a top-level h-card also reflects the page author?

Second, if there is an author property that is a URL, is there a point in checking to see if there is a more complete top-level h-card with the same URL on the page? It seems this is also a practice that people do.

Consistent Microformats

One of the problems in consuming microformats is consistency. There are a variety of different ways people structure their pages.

Many people have written code to solve this problem. I do it in my library, Parse This. Aaron Parecki does it in his XRay library.  The Microsub specification has a stricter jf2 output in order to simplify the client having to make all sorts of checks.

This is the point. It is easier to consume a clean and consistent parsed microformats structure.  Some of this would probably be solved by some consensus on the matter.

So, what does Parse This, and its ilk do? I lack a name for this sort of code.

  • It has two options: feed or single return
  • Feed tries to identify and standardize an h-feed. This means if there are multiple top level h- items, it will try to convert it into an h-feed.
  • Single will try to identify the top level h- item that matches the URL of the page.
  • In both cases, it will run authorship discovery in order to find the representative author and add this as an author property to the h-feed, or single h-entry etc.
  • It will try to run post type discovery.