/reader

Yesterday I put up a form asking for the addresses of people who have WordPress sites that have the ActivityPub feature turned on. Only got four responses so far. But it's good to see what people are doing. For example Evan Prodroumou is using it, and his Mastodon posts are blog posts. I smiled when I saw this. Nicely done. Loop closed. #

The feed validator operated by the W3C is kind of frozen in time, and imho has a very odd perspective on things. So I tried using ChatGPT as a feed validator, and it was totally up to the job. #

Hello this is just a test. I'm creating a new post which will then be cross-posted to Daveverse site. Both Scripting News and daveverse should show up in the blogroll on scripting.com. #

Of the web#

• I've been using the term of the web, starting in a piece I wrote last Monday. Now it's time to explain more about what it means because I used the term in the context of Pocket Casts in an earlier post. #
• For a piece of software, being of the web means that it is built to share data with other apps, ones that receive data as input, as a feed reader consumes feeds, or generate output for other apps, e.g. software used to publish feeds. Or competitive apps, that do roughly the same thing another app does, and want to be able to receive the user's data, or better, share the users' data so they can use both apps (we shouldn't settle for less than this, imho). #
• Of the web means you're signed on to letting users move data wherever it makes sense to them to. #
• These days people use the term "web" to mean basically something you can view in a web browser. But that does not mean it is of the web. If Bluesky for example were of the web, it would mean you could add a feature to it without rewriting the whole thing. #
• This fantastic web is what the silos destroyed, starting with Twitter in 2006. They made the software simpler to use because all the feed reader developers were trying to wall off this part of the web for themselves. Going to WordCamp was invigorating for me, because the people I met there were very much of the web as far as I could tell. And they were young enough to not have been part of the initial web, they've never had the experience of plug and play between apps. I want desperately to develop a small web playground for us to explore all the possibilities. #
• There's a reason the web is called the web. Visualize what it's capable of doing as a web. It's not just a word, it's concept, a very important one. #
• PS: I looked around the web for illustrations of a spider's web but they're all too orderly too symetric. The point of a web in real life, the kind that spiders make, is they are chaotic and ad hoc. Like the web we make on the internet. #

This weekend, however, has seen something new emerging from the post-completion lull.

When I won my copy of the Roland Cloud TB-303 plugin, I said that it gave me the option of messing about in the DAW and transferring patterns to hardware later. That's exactly what I've done.

Having focused on the LM Drum recently, I just started playing with a couple of instances of the 303 and Ableton's core 909 kit — getting back to the techno basics. Something quickly formed and I put a quick loop on Bluesky.

This evening saw the start of the transition to hardware. While it doesn't have the exact same sound, I'm really liking it and have added some extra elements.

It's still in the development phase but definitely heading in the right direction.

I don't know if this will see the light of day before the end of the year. Maybe I'll keep working on more tracks ready for a release in January.

• iOS Icon Gallery: 18,531 requests.
• macOS Icon Gallery 10,565 requests.

“That many requests and it serves a 404? Damn Jim, you better fix that quick!”

Nah, I’m good.

Why fix it? I have very little faith that the people who I want most to respect what’s in that file are not going to do so.

So for now, I’m good serving a 404 for robots.txt.

Change my mind.

Reply via: Email · Mastodon · Bluesky

 

Try Grid Paper

I’ve been getting into drawing dungeons on isomorphic grids. It’s fun but I was a little frustrated with the process of sourcing and printing out graph paper with an isomorphic grid on it. You have two bad options, basically:

1. Download a low-res JPG you found on Google Image search where the grid sizes are wonky and it has a giant URL on it. I needed something clean and simple.
2. Buy grid paper on Amazon in bulk. Now I’m thinking about centimeters vs. inches, cost, color, paper size, style, and quantity before I draw a single dungeon. I needed something ad hoc and with less commitment.

After 15 minutes of getting frustrated I said “I can build this.” And so I did using HTML, CSS, and the tiniest bit of JavaScript. And because it’s a webpage… why limit myself to one kind of grid? I’m able to support ~7 grids types using different kinds of background gradients:

• Grids
• Dot Grids
• Isomorphic Grids
• Isomorphic Dot Grids
• Dual Hex Grids
• Perspective Grids
• Two-Point Perspective Grids

Feeling good about this little tool. The quality can be a bit blurry but background gradients and printers are weird. It’d be nice to make it crisper and I might put some effort at the task (use SVG patterns?)… but at less than 5kb and a couple of nights worth of work, I’m happy with the result. It “made the rounds” as they say on the socials and seems to be a common issue other people experience, so I’ll call that a success.

A song I’m loving (one that was on repeat in my house growing up):

I woke up under the weather, which isn’t abnormal for a parent of a four-year-old, but I still find myself wanting to write to you. It feels good to want to write to you. It’s foggy out the window, the time of morning where dozens of seagulls start flying across the sky to their next place. My daughter just performed a check-up on me with her trusty doctor bag before heading out the door for a scooter ride around the neighborhood with dada.

Life has been tenderizing me and I’m thinking about love, as I often do. Do you let love in when it’s available? Do you allow care to seep past your protectors and be truly felt? I’ve been asking myself these questions as I notice love permeating the places that once didn’t know how to truly welcome it; when my spine tingles with warmth while my daughter checked my ears and blood pressure with her little tools, while my body registered her precise actions and her widened eyes filled with care, it’s a gift to get to answer “yes”. It’s a gift to notice when love is available, and to let it in.

I am longing to double down on my love practice — on the reality that it’s the practice I want to orient toward most while also being the most tender practice to let ripen as widely as it’s asking to. There are so many layers that can get in the way, often at no fault of our own; it feels like an act of maturation to be willing to sift through those layers with intention and reverence.

I want to share some ways I’m sifting, some practices to let love and care in and out amid the rising darkness, alongside the descent toward winter, right in the middle of the murky unfolding of life:

— Say yes to bids for care… even when they come in the form of play. Notice how the hairs on your arms raise when you feel yourself being cared for in the smallest of ways. Let the noticing signal to your body: this is for me. I get to have this. It’s real.

— Ask yourself, what is my rage on behalf of? When I move closer to the center of my answer, how might I also be moving closer to love?

— Let saying sorry be a practice of love instead of a deepening of shame. Let yourself have the grace for not always getting it right, and let this truth not be a place of punishment but a place of learning, of recognition, of coming into fuller congruence with yourself and those you love.

— Follow the breadcrumbs of your longings. Let what you want point you toward what you love. Let what you love direct you toward what you need next. Let your needs be symbols of what you care about instead of signs of your too-muchness.

— When you feel stuck in your own head, your own story, your own neuroses, your own spiraling… turn outward and ask how you can help. Helping helps us see more clearly. Helping helps us come out of the hole we might fall into from time to time. Helping embeds us in something bigger than ourselves. Helping is medicine.

— Be in the practice of receiving compliments, admiration, gifts, and praise with more openheartedness. Trust that the practice of receiving won’t inflate your sense of self when you see it as a practice of intimacy; trust that the practice of receiving is actually never only about you, but is also about letting others engage in their own practice of generosity and love, too.

— Sit with these words from bell hooks: “To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.”

— Get to know the birds that frequent your yard/neighborhood/ecosystem. See them as part of your family, as part of your belonging.

— Let others see you in whatever ways they need to, while not letting their gaze of you shape your own gaze of yourself.

— Extend your gifts outward; let what you have to offer reach the hearts and bodies and minds of those who need them; see the sharing of your gifts not as a way of bolstering your own ego, but as a way of more deeply connecting you to the wider world through generosity, through care, through love.

— Make soup. Make extra. Text someone you know is holding a lot and ask if you can drop off a batch on their porch. Maybe add some herbs or flowers or a homemade card to leave with the soup. See it all as loving.

— Take your time. Follow your pace. Stay with yourself.

— Be tender when you notice yourself coming up against the ways you’ve learned to keep love out, the ways you’ve learned to be skeptical, the ways your hurt has shaped what you let in. Let this noticing feel more like gentle permission than ripping off a bandaid that might still be needed in some ways. Let this noticing inform your longings; let it be a place to return to when you’re wanting to remember.

— Feel the way your grief for the world’s hurts is a direct pathway toward your love for the world. Feel the way your grief is inherently tethered to what you love. Feel the way your grief is a map of love, a stamp of love, a longing for love, a missing of love, a remembrance of love. Feel the way staying in close contact with your grief is just another way of letting more love in, and then more, and then more.

— Look for love everywhere and watch how it shows up in unexpected ways when you’re open to seeing it.

— Trust there is a never-ending capacity for love’s presence… that there can never be too much of it… that the more it’s allowed, the more it extends outward… that the more it extends outward, the more we can be mirrors of it for one another… that the more we can be mirrors for love, the worse anything but love looks… that the worse anything but love looks, the more power love has.

— Let loving be so small, quiet, and subtle: letting yourself mean it when you say thank you. Asking for help as a symbol of intimacy. Saying keep the change to a small business. Seeing someone’s dignity. Letting someone merge in front of you. Withholding judgment. Staying curious. Helping a neighbor. An extra long hug. Stirring the soup. Tidying your home as an act of care instead of a chore. Reaching out to say hello. Standing humbly in a forest. Looking up at the stars. Sharing what’s stirring in your heart. Writing a poem. Calling representatives. Softening your shoulders. Giving yourself a massage behind your ears. A genuine smile. Allowing sadness. The willingness to be wrong. Singing. Crying. Dreaming. Imagining something brighter than you see. Let it all be love. Let it all be love. Let it all be love.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ Currently reading this stirring new collection

△ Can confirm, watching this film will rearrange your heart

△ Healing is making us mean

△ The way this essay brought so many tears (The New Yorker)

△ A mystical ornithology

△ “When I used to focus on the worries, everybody was ahead of me.”

△ An existential guide to making friends

△ California November with my loves and the moon

With care,
Lisa

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