Dan J’s Website

I use, but don't really like, CloudApp to share files (mostly images). The desired solution is:

1. Drag a file to an icon or something
2. The file is uploaded somewhere that it can be linked to via URL (ideally at a domain I control)
3. The URL goes on my clipboard and I can easily share it

If you pay for CloudApp, it does work with your own domain... but I kind of dislike having a third-party service for this at all.

The link above is to an old article from 2012, so there are almost certainly better solutions for self-hosting a file-linking thingamabob, but I'm bookmarking this as a start.

Example that may be relevant to building my own static CMS (if you have a static site generator, you need some trigger to regenerate the site in response to a Micropub call, if you want to be able to update the site from a Micropub client).

(via Indieweb wiki on Micropub)

This thread links to a bunch of people's work on communicating with the ErgoDox (or, more generally, QMK) from code. ErgoDox tweeted this in response to me asking if there was some way to integrate the keyboard's LEDs with e.g. HomeKit... ultimately, I want to control the keyboard lighting the same way I control the Philips Hue lamp on my desk.

Something to hack on someday.

(via @ErgoDoxEZ on twitter)

These look delicious. Time to buy a waffle iron!

Ingredients for 8 waffles

• 1 cup raw oats, blended into flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup 2% cottage cheese
• 3 eggs + 2 egg whites, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 can (15oz) pumpkin purée (or baked sweet potato)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon (optional, but recommended)
• Spray olive oil

Steps

1. Fire up the waffle iron.
2. In a high powered blender or food processor, oats and blend until you create flour. Set in a bowl and mix with baking powder.
3. Add cottage cheese to the blender and blend until it becomes soft, creamy and smooth with little to no curds. Add it to the bowl with the flour along with the eggs. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix together until the batter is thick, yet still runny. Note: if you’d like to make pancakes instead, simply add in another egg white and/or add tablespoons of almond milk until the batter is slightly more runny.
4. Add the batter to the waffle iron and cook until your desired readiness, about 3 to 6 minutes. If you’re making these for weekly meal prep, allow the waffles to completely cool before wrapping them in plastic wrap and placing them in the freezer.
5. Enjoy with fresh berries and your choice of syrup or agave.

(via Fit Men Cook)

You don’t “succeed” because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them.

-- Tim Ferriss, Tribe of Mentors

Important article by Cory Doctorow about "adversarial interoperability" - the concept of building a system that interoperates with an existing system for the purposes of competing with it—what it is, why it matters, and what's happened to it.

In short: alt. took over from Usenet in a way that federated social networks are struggling to take over from facebook and twitter.

(via... I can't remember; EFF's newsletter, probably)

Short video about Dustin's writing process: he does a shit-ton of outlining on cards ahead of time, which I think is what Joe wanted me to see an example of.

(via Joe Nassise)

"What’s your advice for aspiring writers?"

Keep writing, and don't walk away when you're discouraged. Finish your projects.

I still feel like an aspiring writer. I'm self-published. No one shook my hand and told me I'd make a most excellent author, and that's a scary thing. I took a leap.

I spent years toying around with unfinished manuscripts. You know what got me out of that rut? I decided enough was enough, and I committed to a publish date. Even now that I've published my writing, I still use pre-orders not just as a marketing tool, but to force myself to finish my projects. Maybe it's the former journalist in me, but I need deadlines.

So, try giving yourself a deadline. But don't make it a soft deadline in your head. Commit to sending your work somewhere: to a beta reader, a friend, a book agent or online to Smashwords or Amazon Direct Publishing.

Try writing novellas instead of the great American novel to start out. Finish a shorter piece, and you'll figure out some of the formula for finishing a longer one. You'll also prove to yourself that you can finish it.

Then comes the hardest part. You have to set it free.

Good luck!

I came across this person when searching for my own author name. At least in terms of pronunciation, they're awfully similar. 😂 Anyway, I really like her advice, quoted above.

There's no good reason I should build my own site generator, instead of just using Jekyll (as I am at the time of writing this post.)

No good reason, other than I want to, other than I miss software development and, more specifically, have never really done a big software …

A favourite post from one of my favourite tech bloggers, Scott Hanselman. I keep this in mind when trying to decide how the URLs on this IndieWeb site should work.

Critical hub for learning about tools and services that respect / protect your online privacy.

SBI is a home for generating new knowledge and understandings of how Indigenous nations and communities are impacted by gender and sexual violence, and how they may continue to work towards healing and freedom from such violence.

I saw this site linked to somewhere, and wanted to bookmark it for future investigation. I feel woefully ignorant of indigenous issues (and intimidated by the thought of countenancing them, let's be honest). At least let me not ignore resources when they're dropped in my lap.

My man Antony Johnston's take on organizational techniques that work for him. I want to get more organized, seems a good time to read this old article again.

Perennial favourite from one of my heroes, Antony Johnston. One of many exhortations to "write more, more often" that I am trying to actually live.

This is basically my go-to site for learning F#. Full of good explanations of concepts, and worked examples.

IndieWeb supernerd Aaron shared this post on Micro.blog the other day, and, having just bought Hue bulbs, I definitely want to dig into this. He has a focus on doing home automation while staying off "the cloud", which is totally my jam.

(via @aaronpk on Micro.blog)

(...interesting how he does permalinks to status posts like that! 🤔)

I asked this question a while back—if I ever get back to playing with my Librem laptop, it's worth keeping an eye on this.

Dang, I was quite compelled by Walker's various podcast appearances. You just can't trust anyone these days. 😏

Well. The fact is, science is hard, uncertainty is the only thing that's certain... and you have to be willing to stay sceptical without checking out entirely.

Honestly, that last might be the hardest thing of all.

All it really means to me is, best to keep experimenting to figure out what sort of sleep schedule suits me.

(via Mark Manson's newsletter)

Awesome tool for finding special characters (and their related encodings/code points/etc.) or even taking an unfamiliar character and finding out what the heck it is.

Sweet (though non-SSL 😜) utility for easily creating tables in a variety of formats (Markdown being the one I'm interested in).

I used it to create the table in this post, by copying the table off of the website, pasting it into a Numbers document, exporting that to CSV, and loading the CSV into this tool. Worked pretty well.