Good morning.
Creating the custom PHP session save path seems to have done the trick, a session survived untouched overnight on my phone so that's one in the win column.
Anyway, must get rid of a pile of cardboard at the tip before work.
I may have underestimated slightly, it wasn't so much a pile of cardboard, more a mountain. Life in lockdown, eh? Things that we wouldn't previously think twice about jumping in the car to go and get have to be ordered online which means a lot of packaging.
The first lockdown began in England on 23rd March last year so we're rapidly approaching almost a full year of "not normal". Yes, we had a break during the summer but even then there was (or should have been) an abundance of caution. Non-essential retailers are not allowed to open and you seriously have to wonder what the retail landscape and experience is going to be like once the threat of Covid is reduced.
And that's what it's going to have to be, an experience.
There will, no doubt, be a bounce back effect once everyone is allowed out again, we saw it last year, still I can't help but feel that retail will have changed forever. Long established high street brands are disappearing and many smaller retailers won't survive. The number and variety of retail premises available, combined with the enforced habit of shopping online, will further shift the balance of power. It's been firmly in favour of the Amazon's of this world for a while but the impact of the past year cannot be underestimated.
So we're back to the experience. Many retailers will only survive by making themselves stand out, offering more than just shelves of goods, becoming a destination rather than merely a retailer – a micro version of the shopping mall macro.
@colinwalker i don't mind it. I've been ordering most stuff online for years. Mostly because I live like a 40 minute drive from anything but grocery stores, and I'd rather spend my time on other things than driving and shopping
@hjertnes @colinwalker I agree with this, especially shopping malls which I believe will fade away after this is over, and I believe we're already starting too before due to online taking over.
The previous post may well have been the first time I have ever intentionally typed an em dash. I usually just use hyphens for everything. It's incredibly lazy and ungrammatical but something I've always done, in part, because it's so much easier to type.
I was never taught the difference between hyphens and the types of dash, and never really made a point of learning when to use each post-school. I vow to do better.
Inspired by James' work on Tanzawa I decided to include avatars for webmentions. It's something I've been on the fence about for a while but have finally opted to include.
It helps to break up the block of text made by multiple comments and is in keeping with the indieweb and social landscapes.
If no avatar is found then a circle with the first letter of the given name will be displayed.
I've still got to add an <object> tag to display a default icon if the found image URL no longer works and then make some dark mode adjustments but it's nearly there.
Note: Yes, I'm going to remove the duplicate mention. I spoofed it for testing.
That moment when you find a bunch of people on micro.blog that you were certain you already followed, wonder what happened and then start to doubt yourself and that you ever followed them in the first place.
