#indiewebcamp 2013-05-20

2013-05-20 UTC
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tantek.com
edited /sign-in-use-cases (+133) "allow minor edits to drafts, link to what comments you should implement first, specific subsection and page"
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tantek
aaronpk - leaving notes for you to read is a subset of potential edits
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tantek
editors do that all the time
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tantek
[Ed.: fix this]
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tantek
you could also choose to make only the question sections editable
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aaronpk
(oops)
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aaronpk
yes, that would make sense! I wonder what the easiest path to that is for me
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tantek
aaronpk: Remind me what was the use case for displaying "view this post on twitter" etc links?
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tantek
Trying to inform my presentation design accordingly.
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pdurbin
so people can reply via twitter?
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tantek
pdurbin: Ah perhaps that is a good short term usecase until I have implemented a "reply" webaction/button that does that for them.
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aaronpk
yes, to be able to reply to the tweet, as well as to see the conversation happening on twitter
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tantek
Ooh: "view this conversation on twitter" is more compelling than "view this post on twitter"
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aaronpk
good point!
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tantek
Especially for reply posts!
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tantek
I think we should document the use cases for anything we add to our indieweb UI designs
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pdurbin
tantek: they'd have to be logged in to the twitter web interface for that web action to work, right? or could it open the twitter app on android, for example?
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tantek
pdurbin: By using tweet action endpoint URLs (what they errantly call Twitter Web Intents) it takes care of login flow for them.
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aaronpk
i have no idea what those do on mobile... are the clever enough to launch teh native app, or do they just do the same thing as on the web?
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pdurbin
tantek: yeah but I never log in to stuff like twitter via a browser on mobile. just apps
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aaronpk
the reason i'm logged in to twitter in my phone's browser is because of indieauth :)
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pdurbin
huh. maybe I'm just weird but I don't log into anything from my phone's browser. not google and I don't use facebook
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aaronpk
do you have an android phone?
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pdurbin
I guess all the tracking just weirds me out
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pdurbin
yeah, android
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aaronpk
that's why :) I find sites tend to behave worse on android than on iphone
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aaronpk
especially when you get to the login screens
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pdurbin
no, it's a privacy thing for me
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aaronpk
it's intentional?
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pdurbin
sure. I never worry about clearing all cookies. I don't try to keep them around on mobile
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pdurbin
anyway, carry on. don't mind me :)
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tantek
And yes I think on mobile it might provide the option to use a native app somehow.
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pdurbin
when I click a Twitter link from my phone I'm asked if I want to open it in the app, which I typicaly do. and reply from the app. or favorite or whatever
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tantek
pdurbin: That's pretty cool
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pdurbin
bottom line for me is that links to twitter seems like a good idea
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tantek
Yeah, I felt the same way, but just wanted to get a better understanding of why so I could work that into the design if where he links go on posts (and the respective microcopy as well)
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tantek
pdurbin: I agree re: all the tracking just weirds me out
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tantek
Have you tried out the Collision add-on from Mozilla that shows a visualization of how sites are colluding to track you via 3rd party cookies?
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tantek
Sorry, the Collusion add-on
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pdurbin
I have. it's interesting
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pdurbin
with Google I finally gave up and just stay logged in all the time. to multiple accounts even. so I can easily get to mail/calendar/plus
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pdurbin
for a long time I had separate profiles in Firefox. the normal non-logged in one, and then different profiles that are logged in to various services
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pdurbin
and I would spend the bulk of my time in the non-logged in profile
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tantek
One advantage of doing everything from your own site is that ideally your site can handle logging in (if necessary) on the server side and then you should never have to login client side (except maybe to do account maintenance).
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tantek
An indieweb setup would be an excellent step towards using sites without being tracked across the web.
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pdurbin
dunno if indieweb can get me off Google Calendar, which I find so useful :)
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aaronpk
google calendar is hard to beat :)
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aaronpk
interesting change in the facebook API: "Publishing a Checkin object is deprecated in favor of creating an Open Graph story with a location attached. You can also create a Post with a location attached using the 'publish_steam' extended permission."
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tantek
Wow that is fascinating aaronpk ! Especially per the conversation we had at that previous party at Jillian's! (Which party was that? When was that? I think we never wikified the combo)
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tantek
Amazingly I don't use google calendar
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aaronpk
tantek: that was google i/o last year at Jillian's! a lot of that discussion ended up here: http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2012/10/22/1/creating-content-on-the-indie-web
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aaronpk
how do I indicate the language of a note?
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aaronpk
although this could get complicated.. this one is both english and german http://aaronparecki.com/replies/2012/11/16/2/mobx
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aaronpk
this is still my favorite tweet from #realtimeconf https://twitter.com/zeeg/status/261182241793769472
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@zeeg
Pretty sure the guy talking about OAuth at #krtconf has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. http://t.co/fcBB8Vny
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bret
Are we predicting a RIP tumbler yet?
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aaronpk
oh yes
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bret
Anyone here a JS guru? trying to decipher some JS in order to create a pingback.me parser
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aaronpk
I would not consider myself a JS guru, although I have been known to write javascript
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bret
but I am not seeing where exactly where it pulls in the data
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bret
all I can figure out pulling in data to my JS via XMLHttpRequest
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aaronpk
right now I am writing php (shh, don't tell!)
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bret
oh, cause its not in vogue to write php?
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aaronpk
somethign like that
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aaronpk
all the cool kids use javascript or ruby or clojure or something
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bret
whatever that noise is
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aaronpk
yea I can't even keep up with it
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aaronpk
i'm getting old, i'm totally going to turn into one of those guys that says "back in my day..."
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aaronpk
wait, erlang is aging?
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bret
just wait for it (1:54)
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aaronpk
omg wtf. can't tell if 2013 or 1980
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aaronpk
will watch when I get home and have audio
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bret
"omg its one of those ruby hipsters"
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bret
I ran into the same problems this guy is talking about: http://mwunsch.tumblr.com/post/50588412660/on-google I need G+ to have authorship over my search results?
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aaronpk
umm that's a long post
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aaronpk
what specifically?
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bret
In order to associate with a websites search results, google requires a G+ account
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aaronpk
ah yea
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bret
also, it turns out you need G+ if you want to use google as a genaric openid provider for your domain
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bret
generic*
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aaronpk
that I didn't know
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aaronpk
for the google search result thing it kind of makes sense though
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bret
Why cant I associate it with my non G+ google account?
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aaronpk
what account where?
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bret
i have had a gmail since 04 or 05
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aaronpk
cause there is no web presence for your gmail account
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bret
i have a google account, with a non-active G+
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bret
i dont want my web presence on G+
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bret
i want it on my domian
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aaronpk
there should be a minimal G+ account option where you upload a pic, set your name, and set your URL to your own domain
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bret
i would be okay with that
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bret
i'm not okay with people trying to add me and stuff like that
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bret
on G+ specifically
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aaronpk
oh yea I recently accidentally turned aaron@parecki.com into a G+ account, now people are adding me all the time
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bret
Thats exactly what I dont want
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aaronpk
my actual G+ account is aaron.parecki@gmail.com
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bret
its like, even having a facebook account that yo dont use, people start talking to you on it and doing things on your behalf
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bret
the one protest, as far as I can see, against those services, is not to use them
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aaronpk
but the benefits usually outweight the cost
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bret
i can see that true for many, but myself its been opposite since quitting
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aaronpk
oh really?
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bret
its been great to get off of facebook
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aaronpk
huh... I've recently gotten back onto facebook since so freaking many people are there
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bret
i have a theory its a generational wave thing... college and high school kids started out as the primary user base and now its going up in use with older people
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bret
my facebook went nearly silent around 09... very few people were using it that I actually cared about hearing from
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aaronpk
that's about when I stopped using it too
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aaronpk
maybe 08
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bret
im a weird grad student though, we tend to stay in the same building anyway and send way to many emails to each other
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aaronpk
and because I stopped using it, increasingly the people I met in real life I would not friend on facebook, contributing further to the lack of interest of the people in my facbeook network
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bret
plus it turned out to be a huge tupperware party
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bret
in the end
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bret
you know, the whole Douglas rushkoff analogy that facebook exploits our social interactions the same way a tupperware party does?
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bret
its opportunistic, and creates illusions in order to ecourage sharing and liking for the benafit of those who are there to do buisness with the data
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bret
right? I mean, thats why we are here, to find ways around that whole situation
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bret
or at least a way I can email friends pictures or have them posted if they are interested and remember I exist :p
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aaronpk
one thing at a time ;)
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bret
*spazzes out*
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pdurbin
cynical is the word I often think of when I think of facebook
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pdurbin
"Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does." -- http://www.rushkoff.com/blog/2013/2/25/cnn-unlike-why-im-leaving-facebook.html
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pdurbin
I don't think I've seen this...
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pdurbin
bret: thanks
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@toddbarnard
@amberdemure Dunno, but technically, Yahoo now owns all your cartoons - including rights to sell 'em and give you nothing. #OwnYourData
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tantek
aaronpk for indicating the language of a post (or anything marked up with HTML), use the 'lang' attribute
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tantek
e.g. lang=de
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tantek
really getting tired of venue griefers/abusers/overmergers on Foursquare
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tantek
indie venues and indie checkin is getting to be more and more of an itch
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barnabywalters
tantek: overmergers? what is that?
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Loqi
that is also what you
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tantek
thanks Loqi that was helpful, not.
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Loqi
you're welcome
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barnabywalters
Loqi just shut up, okay ;)
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Loqi
dude
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tantek
barnabywalters it's where people take two distinct venues and merge them into one because they have some mistaken idea of what a "venue" is
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tantek
which ends up redirect both previous unique URLs to one of them
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barnabywalters
tantek: ah, okay
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tantek
and it effectively destroys your history at checking into either
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tantek
because after that, you don't know which it was
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barnabywalters
seriously? that’s crap
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tantek
super annoying
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tantek
or they move your venue to the middle of the pacific ocean
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tantek
and then close it
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tantek
these are things that happen
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tantek
it's like wiki vandalism but worse because there is no history and no accountability
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tantek
you have to file support requests to undo such actions
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barnabywalters
being able to create indieweb venues which safely share information would be a real achievement
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tantek
well sharing such info would be based on social trust
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tantek
I'd only share venues with people who I knew had similar ideas of how venues should work
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tantek
and if other people wanted to do other things with venues, they could
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aaronpk
yea seriously indieweb checkins getting more and more itchy for me too
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aaronpk
that reminds me, I really need to download my foursquare data again before more venues get merged/renamed/moved
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aaronpk
"We promise not to screw it up." - marissa mayer
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tantek
aaronpk, citation? (that's pretty hilarious, and inevitably Tumblr gif-meme-worthy)
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tantek
aaronpk, re: indieweb checkins getting more itchy - I know right? If it weren't for being distracted with this pesky reply / federated comments thing ;)
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tantek
(it's not like we're fixing 10 year-old neglected distributed social web problems or anything ;) )
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aaronpk
ironically if you google that phrase you get a zillion articles that came out an hour ago
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aaronpk
i love that the phrase is even in the URLs
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Loqi
woot!
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tantek
oh dear
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aaronpk
yes... need to finish my comment thingy then can switch to checkins
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aaronpk
I made some progress yesterday on displaying comments below my notes
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tantek
aaronpk - awesome!
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tantek
I'm still working on displaying rel syndication/in-reply-to links, and then reply context
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tantek
I feel like receiving webmentions and displaying comments is going to be more work
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tantek
if I can get to the point of *sending* webmentions I may park my reply/comments efforts for now and move onto another post type (like checkins)
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aaronpk
ah! you're taking the same implementation path as me!
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barnabywalters
same here :)
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tantek
aaronpk - indeed! except I may procastinate on receiving webmentions / displaying others' comments until indiewebcamp 2013
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tantek
I feel like I may need a bunch of in-person help on that
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barnabywalters
I’m revamping my persistence, then can get on with doing exciting stuff like displaying comments and self-hosting venues
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tantek
aaronpk - btw now that you have code to only show some posts to folks that are indieauth logged in, should be easy to expand that to show checkins to only those (or a subset of those) as well.
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tantek
that's likely what I'm going to do (only show checkins to an indieauth whitelist)
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aaronpk
I'm still not receiving webmentions yet, so as soon as I do I will be able to help people through it :)
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aaronpk
showing checkins to a whitelist is probably a good idea
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tantek
aaronpk - I thought you received webmentions and put them in a queue for looking at later?
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tantek
my primary reason for implementing checkins on my own site is personal data fidelity, but POSSE to Foursquare is a must as well
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aaronpk
yes, but that's in pingback.me, not in p3k
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tantek
oh ok
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aaronpk
so, I wrote it in Ruby for pingback.me, now have to do it in PHP
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aaronpk
although IndieNews is written in PHP so I've already done most of the work in that codebase
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tantek
speaking of which, I saw you added links from /Falcon to /IndieNews, but: http://indiewebcamp.com/IndieNews
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tantek
is IndieNews open source?
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tantek.com
edited /wiki/ (+24) "/* Suggestions */ What Links Here"
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tantek.com
created /IndieNews (+412) "stub (because I'm impatient ;)"
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tantek.com
created /Hacker_News (+208) "stub"
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tantek
aaronpk - now that I've written those stubs, my request to you for the wiki: http://indiewebcamp.com/wiki/#What_Links_Here
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aaronpk
good idea, was just thinking about that yesterday!
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tantek.com
edited /wiki/ (+22) "/* What Links Here */ more specific location"
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tantek.com
edited /wiki/ (+0) "/* What Links Here */ sentence cap"
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tantek
thanks! would be quite helpful
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aaronpk
done! there is also a "related changes" link which is interesting
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aaronpk
hmm let me delete the cache
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aaronpk
sudo rm -rf * <-- that seems safe
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tantek
I never understand the utility of related changes
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tantek
*understood
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aaronpk
I've never looked at it before
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tantek
maybe tommorris has a clue as to how to use the "related changes" link
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tantek
otherwise I'd say leave it out
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tantek
until there's a use-case / known utility
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aaronpk
if it shows me what pages have changed that link to/from this page, that might be cool
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tantek
maybe?
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tantek
don't iknow
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tantek
*know
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tantek.com
edited /Falcon (+1491) "/* Working On */ add Itching section of things bugging me but I'm not yet explicitly working on implementing, to at least collect them, in rough order of annoyance (most first)"
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tantek
somehow itches seem less annoying when a) shared publicly, and then b) documented so you know you can refind them and won't forget about them.
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tantek
I'm actually really curious what others' itches are (in terms of annoyances that they want to address by adding features to their own indieweb content posting/hosting solutions)
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tantek
figured I'd post a few of my own first.
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aaronpk
good thinking, nice to have a public "backlog"
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aaronparecki.com
edited /User:Aaronparecki.com () "(-865) move content to [[p3k]]"
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aaronpk
proposal for new page: [[reply-context]] since we seem to be talking about it a bunch
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barnabywalters
aaronpk: +1
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tantek
do it
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aaronparecki.com
edited /p3k (+1425) "add "working on" and "itching""
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aaronparecki.com
created /reply-context (+651) "created stub page with some example screenshots"
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aaronpk
barnabywalters: I included a screenshot of your site there too
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@HKoren
If you're concerned about your blogging platform being acquired/modified
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Loqi
you're not using @wordpress (.org) #ownyourdata #rememberposterous
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tantek
Nicely done aaronpk!
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tantek
Also - that's the first I've seen of one of my notes showing up as reply context on another's reply post!
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barnabywalters
tantek: oh cool, I didn’t realise you hadn’t seen it
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tantek
Very cool barnabywalters. Was there anything special you had to do to get the info about my post or did it "just work"?
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barnabywalters
tantek: it just worked :)
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barnabywalters
woo microformats
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aaronpk
microformats++
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Loqi
microformats has 1 karma
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tantek
barnabywalters: Awesome!!
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tantek
Do you have any kind of a post-info preview tool that will show you what taproot will find/show about a post you're replying to?
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aaronpk
that's a good idea
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barnabywalters
tantek: you mean for me before I post or for others as a “what will my content look like if barnaby replies to it”?
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aaronpk
when you post
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barnabywalters
that would be a much more user friendly and useful microformats validator than php-mf2
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aaronpk
p3k just has a "reply url" field, and I don't see what php-mf2 was able to pull out from the site until after it's published
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barnabywalters
I don’t yet either
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aaronpk
although it wouldn't be a stretch for me to add a little preview above in this interface: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronpk/8680139838/
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tantek
barnabywalters: Both/either
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barnabywalters
tantek: I don’t have either yet, will probably build public one first then maybe integrate it into my posting UI
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tantek
The latter would be especially useful for encouraging people to add h-entry + h-card to their blog templates.
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aaronpk
oh interesting point
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aaronpk
a public preview where you can go put in a URL and see how it will look on my site?
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barnabywalters
aaronpk: yeah
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tantek
It answers the "how do I benefit from this work?" question about adding h-entry
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aaronpk
i like it
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barnabywalters
like using a php-mf2 web frontend to validate µf, but focused on a use case
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barnabywalters
and not requiring people to understand JSON serialisation
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aaronpk
is adding that to the "itching" section
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aaronparecki.com
edited /p3k (+417) "/* Itching */"
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tantek.com
edited /p3k (+734) "/* Public preview of h-entry parsing */ equivalent to blog specific preview in traditional comment UIs"
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barnabywalters
u-syndication is the generally accepted µf2 classname for syndicated copies, right?
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aaronpk
i think that's what we settled on, yes
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aaronpk
I should have that markup on my posts now
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Loqi
I agree
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barnabywalters
I’m just importing all my notes into the new system, and taking the opportunity to refine my schema and clear up some of the cruft that’s accumulated over the last year or so
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tantek
u-syndication is for a link to a syndicated copy
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tantek
aaronpk - re: not screwing it up - here's the original source (apparently) http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/50902274591/im-delighted-to-announce-that-weve-reached-an
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tantek
(bummer of a slug)
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barnabywalters
im delight to announce that weve not screw up tumblr
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tantek
delighted-announce-reached-agreement-acquire-tumblr would have been better
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tantek
simple stop-word filtering would fix some of that (drop the "im" "to" "that" "weve" "an")
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tantek
this is interesting: "We will operate Tumblr independently"
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tantek
almost the same wording used when Y! acquired Flickr
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tantek
also interesting: "… an amazing place to follow the world’s creators"
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tantek
if that's true
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tantek
Tumblr is ripe for recruiting people over to the indieweb.
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tantek
s/people/creators
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Loqi
tantek meant to say: Tumblr is ripe for recruiting creators over to the indieweb.
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tantek
Perhaps it's time to take a deeper dive on studying Tumblr's UI niceties and seeing waht we can incorporate into our indieweb solutions.
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tantek
s/waht/what
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Loqi
tantek meant to say: Perhaps it's time to take a deeper dive on studying Tumblr's UI niceties and seeing what we can incorporate into our indieweb solutions.
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barnabywalters
tantek: good plan
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aaronpk
simple posting UI, "reblogging" seems to be popular and made very easy,
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aaronpk
a lot of what people like is things around the community
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barnabywalters
question: I’m wanting to move my geo information (both lat/long and address info) out of machine tags and into the note structure. I want to maintain microformats semantics, but I’m not sure where to put it all
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barnabywalters
initial thoughts are that h-adr encompasses h-geo but has a nasty name
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barnabywalters
note.adr.geo.longitude
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barnabywalters
h-card has both adr and top-level street-address, etc
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barnabywalters
or, just put it all under geo
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barnabywalters
so note.geo.longitude, note.geo.street-address
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barnabywalters
other thing to consider is where to put venue information when I have first-class venues
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aaronpk
agreed that lat/lng aren't always part of an address. it's entirely possible to have a lat/lng and no address info
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barnabywalters
currently everything’s under the geo namespace in my machine tags, so I’m tempted just to keep that
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barnabywalters
hm, looks like tommorris is just keeping it in the HTML http://tommorris.org/posts/8184.json
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barnabywalters
I think I’ll go everything flat under note.geo, then worry about venue when I actually implement it
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tantek
barnabywalters - venues are h-cards, pure and simple, and they can have address components and lat/long/altitude at the top level
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tantek
for notes/posts - h-entry
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tantek
and for that I'm leaning towards generalizing the h-event p-location property to h-entry as well
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tantek
which allows a flat string, which you can then further substructure with an embedded h-adr or h-geo (or both)
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barnabywalters
ah, p-location is only to be found on event
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barnabywalters
that’s probably better for my usage than geo
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tantek
is having a hard time finding stuff in IRC logs that he didn't have time to wikify at the time that he wants to wikify now, like discussion of use-cases for rel=syndication links
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tantek
barnabywalters - yeah, we discussed generalizing p-location in IRC previously
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tantek
but as with above complaint, I have no way of easily finding it
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barnabywalters
sure, I’ll be marking up venues as h-cards, right now more concerned about how to represent that information in the nodes
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barnabywalters
s/nodes/notes
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Loqi
barnabywalters meant to say: sure, I’ll be marking up venues as h-cards, right now more concerned about how to represent that information in the notes
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barnabywalters
preferably without duplicating too much information
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tantek
huh, maybe we discussed rel syndication use cases when Loqi was gone?
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Loqi
is done
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tantek
so it's not in the logs?
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barnabywalters
I have trouble finding anything in the IRC logs
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tantek
barnabywalters - start with how you want to present the information, and we can figureout the markup after that
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aaronpk
I've been prety good about back-importing logs when loqi leaves
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tantek
Loqi, search the logs for me
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aaronpk
maybe I should build an actual search instead of just relying on google
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tantek
oh and colloquy's find/search is totally broken
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aaronpk
if colloquy saves logs as text files you can just use grep
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barnabywalters
aaronpk: how about something like !wikify which adds a marker to the log entry?
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barnabywalters
in the log list view
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aaronpk
heh, could work
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barnabywalters
so when talking we can just go !wikify, then immediately see which days conversations need wikifying on the IRC log list
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barnabywalters
not sure how you would mark it wikified
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tantek.com
edited /p3k (-12) "rm notoc because I want to link to sections here conveniently via the TOC"
(view diff)
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tantek
I think there's a lot more potential to "preview my reply" than just h-entry validation
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tantek
I've added some thoughts about it here (which is where the info was so far)
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tantek
I'm especially interested in everyone's opinion on a possible "cross-blog reply preview protocol"
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tantek.com
edited /p3k (+8) "/* Public preview of h-entry parsing */ *preview*"
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barnabywalters
tantek: how do you mean?
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barnabywalters
tantek: ah, interesting
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tantek
while writing a reply (on my own site), when I'm done writing it (or maybe even during), I want to see a preview of *BOTH* what it will look like on my site (WYSIWYG) *and* what it will look like on the original post (that I'm replying to), once my site sends a webmention to it
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tantek
for example, the comment syndication destination may decide to shorten my comment (for editorial / space reasons) and so I may want to craft my reply accordingly.
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barnabywalters
hm, seems like a good plan. Easy to implement too, just a <link> with a @rel and an agreed-on placeholder
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tantek
seeing a preview of that abbreviation would be useful
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tantek
well I'm not sure it's that easy though it might be
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tantek
it feels more like a webaction endpoint URL
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aaronpk
very true! considering I already do that with Twitter since they publish their rules/limits
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tantek
i.e. and endpoint for submitting a URL and getting back preview HTML (to either embed/nest, or iframe maybe)
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tantek
*an endpoint
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tantek
I'm thinking of syndication links as a short term substitute for actual web action buttons.
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tantek
In particular just a twitter icon and "View on Twitter" for notes
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aaronpk
I think it's a good short-term solution
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aaronpk
especially because of the challenge of mobile -- anything we do with web action buttons most likely will have to be re-considered for mobile
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tantek
or "View conversation on Twitter" for replies
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tantek
Right
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tantek
Thought twitter's tweet action endpoints seem to work pretty well on mobile
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tantek
*though
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tantek
Seems like a good short term step before I figure out actual webaction buttons below my notes
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aaronpk
agreed, and also even after we have webaction buttons I will probably keep the link to the twitter.com version there
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aaronpk
because "view conversation on twitter" will still be relevant
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@eschnou
@julien51 Oui, je revinedrai vers toi quand on aura du PuSH + mf2 dans #indieweb :-)
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aaronpk
UGH massive flickr redesign
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aaronpk
not a big fan of this trend in photo-tiles
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reidab
overlays on everything!
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sandeepshetty
tantek: thoughts on SQLite as a means to avoid DBA Tax?
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sandeepshetty
so you prefer using files and dealing with locking, etc.?
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reidab
SQLite is surprisingly capable
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reidab
I think we're still using it for calagator in production :P
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reidab
it's terrible for write-heavy applications though
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sandeepshetty
reidab: seems like a good fit read heavy blogs
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tantek
any database is terrible for reliability
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tantek
databases are all a pain to maintain, and more fragile than the file system
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sandeepshetty
tantek: how so?
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tantek
so for any content you care about it, don't put the primary copy in a database
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tantek
all databases have dba tax
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tantek
it's yet another space of things
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tantek
everyone deals with a file system already
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sandeepshetty
tantek: could you explain your concept of dba tax? I've tried searching but haven't found any detials
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tantek
yeah - the hassle of setting up a database, doing tables, altering tables, exporting, importing etc.
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tantek
all *extra crap* (thus tax) compared to "just" using the file system
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tantek
nevermind all the username/login crap that is database specific
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sandeepshetty
you have none of that in SQLite and the ones you so have are common with file based approaches
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tantek
doesn't matter if they're "in common" - it's yet another space of stuff
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tantek
one space of stuff is easier to maintain / keep track of than two spaces of stuff
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tantek
it's really that simple
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reidab
sandeepshetty: you still have the table-altering complication, i suppose
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tantek
and evidence shows this as well
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sandeepshetty
reidab: you have that with a document based approach as well
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tantek
people lose things (and have them corrupted) in databases all the time
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tantek
far more often than in file systems
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sandeepshetty
tantek: SQLite is one file that can be in the same space as the rest of your site
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tantek
because databases always require extra "magic" for backups etc.
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tantek
that "one file" is still uninspectable etc.
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tantek
as opposed to simple HTML you can always look at in a browser
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tantek
now if you want to try building a database-like API on top of an HTML file, that could be interesting
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tantek
and frankly, with HTML+microformats + a microformats parser, we already *have* a database like API that gives you data back from HTML
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sandeepshetty
Not really when you think about things like listing, pagination, doing aggregations (counts)
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aaronpk
i've been making interesting progress on filesystem as an API for p3k
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tantek
sandeepshetty , none of those have anything to do with storage format (HTML vs. magic database format), that statement is totally wrong.
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aaronpk
`ls -1 content/articles/*/*/*.md` goes a long way
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reidab
you can do all of those databasey things over files, using something like map/reduce
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reidab
but it's not there by default
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tantek
databases are essentially dead for anything but caching/performance needs for high volume sites.
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aaronpk
and then yea a map/reduce thing build my home page and tag listings, and is easily extendible to other collections
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sandeepshetty
tantek: The database API on top of regular html files will need to provide for stuff like that..
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tantek
sandeepshetty - so build that instead of using sqlite with a magic file format
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tantek
magic file format = fragile
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tantek
whereas HTML = many tools can read/write
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tantek
including a simple text editor
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reidab
all file formats are magic
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tantek
reidab - no, anything based on plain text is inspectable
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tantek
random binary formats are not
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reidab
you still need tools to inspect it
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tantek
no you don't, just a text editor
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tantek
view source - it built the web
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reidab
that's a tool
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tantek
right, it's not like looking at in raw binary sure
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reidab
overall, I agree with you
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tantek
but the fact that it's a well documented format that supported by *numerous* tools (1:1 like text editors, and higher level tools) makes it much more robust/reliable
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tantek
as opposed to magic database formats which typically *only* work with one implementation
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tantek
same problem with proprietary binary formats in general
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tantek
not a good place to store data
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sandeepshetty
map/reduce is not always an option on shared hosting...
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tantek
anyway - I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to lose enough data in random/binary file formats until it's painful enough that you decide to stop using such things for anything you care about
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pdurbin
dunno that I would call the binary format sqlite uses "random"
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aaronpk
sandeepshetty: i'm doing map reduce in php on text files, yes it is
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pdurbin
dunno if I'd say databases are essentially dead either
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sandeepshetty
how long does the map/reduce process run?
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tantek
sandeepshetty - go ahead and try to make it work if you like, and report back on how well your data is doing in a few years.
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sandeepshetty
most shared host will terminate long running scripts
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aaronpk
couple seconds, but i haven't optimized it, no need to yet since it only needs to run when I add new content
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tantek
pdurbin it's random over time - the implementation changes, the format changes typically in lockstep. if you're lucky you may be able to import/export across versions. or different versions of the implementation may corrupt different versions of the file format.
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tantek
hence both semi-random (unpredictable future), and frankly, randomizing
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tantek
also - most such databases tend to be biased/tied to a particular programming language as well - more unnecessary constraints
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sandeepshetty
I've been doing some work on moving my blog from Mysql to json files and came up with an interesting doubly linked list type approach that does most of what I need except aggregations.
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tantek
whereas every language / OS has flat file APIs
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tantek
aggregations can be cached
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pdurbin
don't get me wrong, I love me some plain text, which is why I use http://ikiwiki.info ... it makes great use of the file system
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tantek
databases are fine for rebuildable caches
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tantek
but that's an optimization problem
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tantek
so any design that depends on databases is optimizing prematurely - before you have any idea what the performance characteristics of the system are
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sandeepshetty
Jsut feels like I'm wasting time reinventing the wheel when I could be adding useful features
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tantek
sandeepshetty - depends on how much you care about your data
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tantek
I mean, why not use Tumblr as your backing store?
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pdurbin
tantek: what about nosql databases? essentially dead too?
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reidab
there are always ways to make sure your data is safe, regardless of where your "primary" storage is
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tantek
you'll waste more time (over the long run) maintaining your databases (special backups etc.)
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reidab
you just have to actually care enough to put those measures into place
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tantek
reidab - see aforementioned dba tax
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sandeepshetty
tantek: Because I can't trivially backup or replicate my data from tumblr
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tantek
pdurbin - if it uses a random/magic/binary/implementation-specific file format - it's not safe
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reidab
one-time export script vs. re-writing a bunch of things
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reidab
the one-time script seems less taxy
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tantek
it's not a one-time script
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tantek
it's a remember to do it all the time script
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reidab
it is if my software writes to file at the same time it writes to the database
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tantek
just search the web for people complaining about having to backup their wordpress databases before upgrading
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tantek
it's a tax
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tantek
it's a pain
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tantek
plenty of data/experience on this
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tantek
if you don't think it's a pain, the only way you'll learn it is is by doing it for years
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tantek
so please go ahead - because nothing else will likely convince you
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tantek
this is a pretty long term perspective (having kept data for 10+ years)
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pdurbin
tantek: nah. databases still have their uses. file systems don't deal well with zillions of tiny files
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tantek
(online data)
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tantek
who said anything about zillions of tiny files? (strawman)
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tantek
pdurbin - only pragmatic use databases have is caching
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tantek
for perf reasons - which means only introduce them when you have measurable perf you need to improve
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tantek
use *of databases
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pdurbin
I guess this is #indiewebcamp so the main use cases imagined are personal websites
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aaronpk
exactly :)
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tantek
well of course - what were you thinking the use cases were?
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reidab
I buy the "text files for data safety" argument, but I don't buy the "less work" argument
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aaronpk
I'm seeing how far I can push my site before I introduce a database
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tantek
seriously - this is why nearly every indieweb implementation has left databases behind.
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tantek
reidab - less *tax*
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tantek
= ongoing work added on top of everything you do on a regular (time period) basis
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aaronpk
two uses I have for databases right now: 1) full-text search and 2) geo-search after I launch checkins. In both cases the DBs will be a cache/query store, the data will still be in my .md files
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tantek
it's likely that eventually we'll come up with something resembling a database / storage API on top of an HTML+microformats file
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tantek
and then that "less work" argument will be even more true
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tantek
aaronpk - makes sense
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pdurbin
aaronpk: I'm curious about your full text search. a database and not something like solr or elasticsearch?
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aaronpk
solr and elasticsearch *are* databases
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sandeepshetty
tantek: So I understand this better, what do mean by a storage /database API on top of an HTML file?
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pdurbin
aaronpk: you have a broad definition of databases :)
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aaronpk
or perhaps you have a narrow definition :)
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aaronpk
when I say "database" I don't necessarily mean RDBMS
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tantek
sandeepshetty - something where you can get back structured data and potentially write structured data
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sandeepshetty
tantek: can you elaborate maybe with an example?
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tantek.com
edited /Falcon (+7) "/* Storage format */ grammar"
(view diff)
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tantek
sandeepshetty - the phpmf2 api is an example of getting back structured data from an HTML+microformats file
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sandeepshetty
What's the "database" bit of it?
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tantek.com
created /bim (+154) "stub"
(view diff)
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tantek
sandeepshetty - data from structured data - base from multiple instances of similar data - both returned from the API
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aaronpk
uhoh, what's tantek up to now?
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tantek
sandeepshetty - if you want a more concrete example - take a look at the Falcon storage format - based on HTML+microformats: http://indiewebcamp.com/Falcon#Storage_format
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tantek
aaronpk - just bluing a red link. ;)
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aaronpk
checks the new "What Links Here?"
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sandeepshetty
On my file based implementation I started with the same approach to get the most recent posts..
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sandeepshetty
but then moved to a double linked list approach where each post post maintains a next & prev (like the link rel) and I have a head..
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sandeepshetty
so listing and pagination is now trivial...
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aaronpk
interesting, I get my next/prev links because my filenames are sorted in post order, so I just go up and down the array of files
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sandeepshetty
My approach doesn't require the directory listing...
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sandeepshetty
just start at the head and follow the links
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tantek
I prefer not to depend on a linked list structure
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tantek
my posts are simply time sorted
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aaronpk
are you thinking the directory listing is expensive?
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sandeepshetty
so each post maintains a next/prev and also a next/prev per tag
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tantek
in document order and then in bim order
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tantek
I never do any directory listings
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tantek
every directory path is computed
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tantek
(in Falcon that is)
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sandeepshetty
aaronpk: yeah it doesn't feel right especially when there are no post in the current day, month year and you have to keep searching for the head
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aaronpk
tantek: how do you know what posts are on your home page? and how do you know what is the next/prev post given a single post page?
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tantek
aaronpk - I start from today and read the most recent N posts
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aaronpk
how do you do that without a directory listing of files?
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sandeepshetty
tantek: that requires backtracking till you find a post to start with..
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tantek
when I "read" a post on a page I read the entire bim that it is in so looking at the previous element and next element is trivial. edges are handled by loading the previous/next bim respectively.
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aaronpk
oh wait... you don't store one file per post
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tantek
bingo
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tantek
sandeepshetty - what backtracking?
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tantek
accessing my most recent post is big O(1)
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tantek
good luck doing that with a database
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tantek
because everything is stored computationally indexed by date
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aaronpk
sandeepshetty: `ls -1 content/articles/*/*/*.md` is basically what my code does to build the list of all posts
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tantek
I don't do any ls
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sandeepshetty
tantek: sorry wrong term.. how do you find the post to show on your homepage..
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sandeepshetty
wait I need to understand bim's first.
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tantek
sandeepshetty see above - I start from today and read the most recent N posts
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tantek
all my access to find the file to open is pure math
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tantek
zero directory listing
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aaronpk
that relies on you storing multiple posts in a single file
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tantek
math from the post permalink at that
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tantek
aaronpk - indeed - I picked a manageable time period for an indieweb site
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tantek
I did have to invent my own calendar, but hey, while you're at it, you know...
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sandeepshetty
tantek: you still have to seek in the bim file right?
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tantek
it's not my fault months are historically screwed up mathematically
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tantek
sandeepshetty - no seeking, I load the entire bim file and access via XPath - it's in the docs: http://indiewebcamp.com/Falcon#Storage_format
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sandeepshetty
Which is essentially a seek right? loading all the data (similar to ls -l) and then picking what you need
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tantek
sandeepshetty - no - you can't say "is essentially" about anything like that without understanding exactly what the pieces are doing from a CS perspective.
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tantek
you could say XPath is a sort of standard query API
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tantek
what it "is essentially" doing you can't say unless you want to go dive into the specific implementation code and figure it out
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sandeepshetty
Just saying that it has to go over the bim file to get what it needs and trying to figure out how that is o(1)
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tantek
it doesn't have to "go over" the bim file other than loading/parsing it
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tantek
typical DOM parsers index all the IDs for immediate access
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Loqi
INDEX ALL THE IDS http://loqi.me/7JL
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sandeepshetty
By "go over" I meant loading/parsing it which mean 0(n) right?
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tantek
no because the size / count is effectively limited by the size of a bim - 61 days
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tantek
and typical posting behavior is no more than a few (even one?) post a day.
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tantek
so finding the right bim is O(1) (purely computational), and then there's always a small limited number (k) of things in any particular bim, thus once again, O(1).