IndieWeb carnival is a blog carnival on topics related to the IndieWeb specifically. An IndieWeb carnival will help motivate people to post more on their personal websites and provide inspiration for writing.

Existing systems:

• SemVer
• Calendar Versioning
• Sequential Versioning
• Hash Versioning
• Build Number Versioning

For a blog, the most complete system found by the author is:

• YY: The year of the most recent update.
• Push: A sequential counter tracking the total updates made during the year.
• Type: Categorizes the nature of the update:
  • N: New post.
  • U: Content update (e.g., clarifications or expansions).
  • F: Fix (e.g., typos or formatting corrections).
  • X: Feature update (e.g., design or functionality changes).
  • M: Mixed updates involving multiple types of changes.
• DDMM The date (day and month) of the latest update.

For example the version number v24.628.M.2111 tells me that:

• The blog was last updated in 2024.
• There have been 628 updates so far this year.
• The most recent update involved multiple changes on November 21st.

Eventually, I got sick of manually converting my equations, so I wrote a Python script to automatically convert LaTeX expressions to MathML in my blog posts. I started considering writing an automated tool for inserting my navbars into the HTML files, and then I realized that I was completely wasting my time. After some shopping around, I decided Zola was the least deranged of the existing site generators, so I tried rolling with it.

I’m using a fork of Zola with Typst support written by cstef.

For thousands of years, man has invented technology to ameliorate the petty pains and discomforts of his life. It would be an insult not to use it.

In lieu of that, I like the idea proposed by Chris and Dave where you basically new versions of these slash pages as blog posts and redirect the slash URL to the latest one, kind of like a bookmark. I may start doing these for some of them, starting with /defaults which is, conveniently, already a blog post.

Old slash pages can be referenced and stay at the same URL. At the same time, the most recent slash page gets the default URL name, such as /defaults

A feedback roughly 1600 TILs written over 10 years

Promises

1. Bear won't shut down
2. Bear won't sell
3. Beat won't show ads.

The project is built to last. The codebase is intentionally simple and maintainable.

Roadmap:

• full documentation
• support of trusted developers with access to the codebase
• clear instruction to maintain the platform

The roadmap should ensure the platform will live on without Herman.

I've recently chatted to a few bloggers and legal professionals on what a good structure looks like for a project like this. And the common theme was that the legal structure didn't matter nearly as much as the intentions of the people running things.

It means if one platform becomes bigger, then it won't last as someone will want to takeover for profit.

TILs (Today I Learned) are useless, have terrible signal-to-noise ratio, create FOMO.

True, but they are not meant to be the best raw material ever made. They are made to add some randomness in your feeds (or way your consume news or content). They are personal. They don't share or are structure as a lesson. Most of the TILs I read are on Mastodon, toots shared on the fly because someone learned something. The tag Today I Learned is missing, but it remains a TIL nonetheless.

TILs are a way to discover things. Why on earth do you need some random facts to spark your interest in something?

Good point.

There are other advantages to the TILs. They can be read on the fly, in public transportations. They don't need focus or immersion as a fiction book needs.

I think in between: a majority of TILs is undesirable, a few can be useful. A balance is healthy. It is sometimes convenient to put your concentration aside, and distract yourself while reading something short.

Pika is blogging powered by people. No algorithms or AI, but real human beings writing about their experiences. Tell your story at Pika now!

How to maintain the slash pages over time?

Leon had some similar thoughts on this with an idea for each blog post being a section of a page but rendered as one. The end goal for him, and me, is that the new additions get syndicated via RSS, POSSE, and so forth. I like the idea of redirecting /now to the latest post tagged as now so one could see the latest version of what I'm doing now.

The new structure of the blog:

• Today I learned
• Articles
  • Problem-solving
  • Reflections

Shaarli is a kind of link blog

I shortened my sentences. I used keywords that Google could identify easily. I wrote in a way that allowed Google to understand our content, following a set of nebulous rules laid out by the overlords. The rules were never expressly stated, but trial and error from millions of people that came before our blog seemed to point to a common path. And that path was “Juicy Info Nuggets”.

In September of 2023 Google started rolling out what it called its “Helpful Content Update“. The stated goal of this update to search results was to reduce the amount of spam and AI-generated crap that littered the internet. The actual result? The destruction of small publishers, blogs, and the Rise of Reddit.

And where does that leave bloggers, small publishers, and the like? Well, after years of training online publishers to write in a fashion that Google web crawlers could easily identify, in easily digestible nuggets of information, Google will be taking those nuggets and giving them away for free. Because hey, when you’re a huge monopoly you can do whatever you want.

As much as I hate online ads, they supported people to do the thing that they enjoyed as a profession — but that ability is now extremely rare. Bloggers are the ones that tell you this doesn’t matter. That they do it for themselves, not for the income. Writers, on the other hand, won’t bother if the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Being a blogger means that writing online, even when your posts are scruffy and error-prone, is something you do for the enjoyment of it, and that’s the best place to be.

Daily blogging topics

Two types of blogs:

1. Complex CMS
2. Collection of static HTML files with one or two CSS files

The first one is used by everyone and only the second is used by software engineers. It should be the other way around.

I invite you all to help make the web more accessible, partially as a matter of taking pride in our craft, and partially because the web used to be more interesting when more of it was made by people different from us.

Owning one or multiple blogs. It all depends on the need. Leon Mika provides his usage, on the contrary of Kev Quirk in Why Have Multiple Blogs

Again just blog. Or don't after tried it.

They started a blog because they wanted a bunch of fast game prototype.

Why they continued?

1. I enjoy writing
2. Writing helps think more clearly and flesh out ideas.
3. Publishing something forces me to do better.
4. The blog is a place to document my personal projects.
5. Looking at a log of things I’ve done makes me feel better.
6. The blog project solves problems
7. Become a better writer and as consequence a better developer

During the years, the posts have grown larger and more ambitious. The interests also changed, so are the posts.

#idea #blog create my own ama page. A follow-up with few questions is to create a FAQ page :)