Decided to upgrade my network infrastructure. For the first time since the early days of my home network, I’m going to give using a full computer a try. I’ve ordered an inexpensive mini PC that has two ethernet ports, and am thinking of trying OpnSense.
Replied to https://boffosocko.com/2022/11/17/55811695/ by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)

This is a brilliant idea and is broadly what underpins the mission of the IndieWeb space for the past decade. The difference is that it isn’t platform specific and a large portion of it is already built and working! Of course it’s in different stages and forms of usability for various platforms,…

I’m in.

Rel-Me Profile Link Verification on WordPress for Mastodon and Other Services

With the recent interest in Mastodon, there have been a lot of people using WordPress interested in taking advantage of their rel-me link verification feature.

Rel=”me” is a property you can add to links to say that the link represents the same person/entity as the page being linked from. Bi-directional rel-me link verfication means page A and page B both link to each other with rel-me…so you can prove both are under the control of the same person.

On Mastodon, doing this gives you a verified indication in your profile. But, the Indieweb community has already been using this for years for the same purpose.

There are a lot of WordPress plugins for Indieweb Building blocks. But for identity, this is built into the Indieweb plugin itself. In addition to suggesting other plugins to add more Indieweb stuff, it offers the identity features using rel-me.

On the Options page in Admin for the plugin, there is an option to set whether or not the site represents a single person/entity, and to set who the default author is. If you don’t set it, it will put the rel-me links on your author archive(usually /author/username). Otherwise, it will put them on the homepage.

It adds standard profile fields under your URL and uses them to generate rel-me links. By default, these links are hidden links, not visible, so they should just work.

However, if you want them visible, there are 2 options

  • One of two widgets. One for an entire profile with the rel-me links displayed as icons, the other for just the links displayed as icons
  • Manually adding them to your theme.

I know we should have a block, but I confess to never having written one. One of these days I’ll have to bite the bullet and do so.

I’m back from my vacation, where I spent a lot of time field-testing my venue code. As far as I can tell, it is working perfectly, but field-testing is what allows me to figure out the tweaks I need to make the experience better, so there will be some point releases over the coming weeks as I make the experience better. Here is an example of one of my venues…I tried to use some code to import old checkins at venues and create new local venues replacing ones I’d linked to remotely. However, it did create some duplication, so I will need to spend some time cleaning it up. Also, if I want to classify my venues and provide descriptions, I’ll need to add those.

Simple Location 5.0.0 for WordPress Released

Weeks in the making, I’ve released version 5 of Simple Location. Several weeks in the making, it is a major rewrite of the lower level code, and will open up to a variety of different future features.

This version retires Zones, the way I used to keep where I was private by default. But it does so by replacing it with a long desired feature…venues.

The way I am seeing data is changing as a result. By default, the display for a post will display the venue name if attached, then by default the location taxonomy, and finally, the textual description attached to the post. Displaying the location taxonomy by default is an option in the settings.

Right now, Venues can be created manually in the interface or created automatically if there is a check-in posted via Micropub. I have yet to create an interface to do it during the posting process, so there is work to do in a future version.

I’ve added some new providers, and done a lot of tweaks to existing ones.

I was eager to get this out, because I will be traveling this week, and would like to make some venues.

Working on introducing venues to my site….URLs that represent a specific place, as opposed to location, which I already have at /location, which represents posts in a city or town. Hoping to have it done before I go places on the 8th.

2022 Fall Foliage

As I did in previous years, took a trip yesterday(October 12), to complete my trips visiting all of the NYC Reservoirs in the Catskill/Delaware Watershed. These are the reservoirs that provide 90% of the water supply for New York City, despite being many miles from it.

The goal of these trips, which I started during the pandemic, was to enjoy the scenery of upstate New York.

The trip began on Route 55, to the Neversink Reservoir, which I’d covered in previous trips, then diverting off on Grahamsville to head toward the goal of the day…the Schoharie Reservoir…the final one I had not visited.

The trip also took us through Catskill Park, which is 700,000 acres, stretching from the Hudson River near Kingston to the East Branch of the Delaware River in Hancock. The northern limit is Windham, NY, and the Southern near the Roundout Reservoir. So, many of these trips have covered that area.

This includes the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area, which I passed through on a previous trip, but different route, which is 47,500 acres, as well as the 33,500-acre Big Indian Wilderness Area.

From there, passing into Shandaken, New York, past Halcott Mountain, we entered Lexington, which is on the border of Ulster and Greene Counties, proceeding there to the Schoharie Reservoir.

The Schoharie was put into service in 1926 to serve the growing water needs of New York City, and is the northernmost of the reservoirs. The water flows through a the 16 mile long Shandaken Tunnel to Shandaken New York, then empties into the Esopus Creek, and then 11 miles down to the Ashokan Reservoir, which we visited previously.

We did a loop around the reservoir on 996V, which begins northwest of the reservoir in Gilboa at the junction with Route 30, crossing near the Gilboa Dam, then parallels the eastern edge of the reservoir then looping back to Route 30 to continue.

Heading into the town of Roxbury, the birthplace of Jay Gould, the railroad financier, we paralleled the tracks of the Delaware and Ulster tourist railroad, which has been closed since 2020 due COVID, and later need for track repairs before reopening. It runs from Arkville to Roxbury and it is a not-for-profit endeavor.

Passing into Margaretville, we diverted along the Pepacton Reservoir, then through the Middle Mountain Wild Forest, and the Willowemoc Wild Forest down to Route 17, and back to origin along that.