Now, May 2026: a letter from Scotland!
This is an update to my now page: a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life
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The letter from James, with various colorful stickers: his website mascot, IndiewebCamp and Microformats.I’ve received a letter all the way from Scotland this week! Let me explain. Some time ago, I was browsing James’ Coffee Blog, as I do quite often. As I was reading Noticing, I noticed (sorry) an Easter egg on the website. I reached out to James to let him know I had discovered it, and was delighted to learn I was the first one to do so (but not the last, I’m sure!). James was kind enough to send me a lovely letter full of stickers, some of which you can see on the right.
I appreciate it a lot. I find it very special that online, we can connect to people we’d never have encountered otherwise, thanks to the power of the human web. Some say the internet is dead, but moments like these show it definitely isn’t. I consider this another triumph for blogging. Receiving a physical letter made it all the more real for me somehow, and it truly made my day.
Adding more IndieWeb to my site
Some of the stickers James sent me are related to the
IndieWeb. The
microformats one I had to look up, to be honest.
Prompted by this search, I’ve now added those to my website as well. As they
also provide my name and profile picture to other websites (via an h-card), that
leads me to the next point.
Namely, I should have some rudimentary support for Webmentions now. This means that I can notify others when I link to them, and vice versa. I’ve decided to do this the “easy way” for the moment—I don’t have the energy for yet another project. I use two hosted services: webmention.io by Aaron Parecki for receiving and EchoFeed by Robb Knight for sending them. I’m very grateful to them for hosting these services. I haven’t tested if it works on my website yet, so here goes nothing!
In addition to that, I’ve been working on a micropub and media endpoint for my website. I’ve got a rough first version working and actually wrote this update on my phone, using Micropublish. I also love using Sparkles by Benji, but it has no support for editing existing posts (yet).
The code of my micropub endpoint is open source, but very much still in alpha for now. There’s no documentation yet, only a name: santoṣa (or, santosha to make it easier to spell).
संतोषादनुत्तमसुखलाभः ॥४२॥
santoṣād-anuttamaḥ-sukha-lābhaḥ ॥42॥
From contentment (santoṣa), the highest happiness is attained.
That name reminds me of its goal: a small system (“only” IndieAuth and Micropub) that provides a simple web editing experience I can be content with. The goal is to be able to write anywhere; to be free to write without having to think about the technical aspects of the website.
I’m planning to continuously improve upon it (thereby perhaps somewhat defeating its purpose of writing more, ironically), because I like this simpler editing experience a lot so far. Especially the media endpoint, which also does automatic resizing and conversion to WebP, is very convenient. Big thanks to Henrique Dias for making it possible: my system is based on his indielib go library, which does most of the heavy lifting.
So, that covers all the technical indieweb aspects for now, I think. Let me know if I’ve missed anything, or what your favourite micropub client is.
Life lately
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A goldfinch eating seeds from a dandelion.This month has been a quiet one, which I appreciated a lot. I’ve spent the extra days off tinkering with the website, getting to know my new camera and relaxing. The first roll of film is finished, once I’ve finished the second roll, I’ll send them to the lab for development. Fingers crossed!
I fear June will be a busier month, so I’m enjoying this peace while it lasts. Even the local wildlife is cooperating with this restful mood: I could see a couple of storks lazily circling the skies above me, with the occasional barn swallow flitting past. M. also spotted a goldfinch in our garden for the first time! Unfortunately, I was still fast asleep at that moment.
Reading
It has been a great month for offline reading as well:
- I’ve finished When There Are Wolves Again, by E.J. Swift: highly, highly recommended. My review.
- I’m halfway through the last book of The Farseer Trilogy.
- I’m making steady progress in Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, by Edwin Bryant. I’m at the fabled chapter 10 now—I’m curious to see what it’ll be like.
Today’s my mother’s birthday, and I’ve heard my brother has made cake. Have a wonderful weekend!
