• Response to GNUstep: Open-source, Object-oriented, Cross-platform Development Environment

    GNUstep is a mature Framework, suited both for advanced GUI desktop applications as well as server applications. The framework closely follows Apple's Cocoa APIs and is portable to a variety of platforms and architectures.
    Reading this comment really brought back memories of being an Objective-C developer in the early MacOS X days. One thing I lamented in those days was that whatever I wrote was stuck on the Mac and GNUstep gave me hope that it didn't need to be.

    High school me used to think how cool Objective-C and Cocoa was and how it was the future. And thanks to the iPhone, for a long time I was right.

    But the web won the war for Cross-platform development and most days I'm glad it did.
  • Response to Advent of Bloggers 2021

    For the last week or two, I have been thinking whether there is a December blogging series I could take on, similar to how Advent of Code publishes a new coding challenge every day throughout Advent.

    From now up until December 24th, I hope to write a blog post every day about a blog that I find interesting.
    Fantastic idea. Looking forward to the Advent James!
  • Response to Riding a Solar-Powered Electric Bike 6,900 Miles Across America | Cascade Bicycle Club

    Sushil Reddy, founder of the SunPedal project, is using his legs and the sun to prove that solar power and electric bikes are viable solutions for reducing fossil fuel use and helping to solve the climate crisis.
    What a cool bike and a cool project. Hopefully they finish it safely. 🙏🏻

    Wonder what it’s like with a powered front wheel too.
  • Response to Bahn2GPX

    For me, the best option to travel long distances within Germany is to take the train.
    ...
    That’s why I created a little tool (Bahn2GPX) that knows all stations in Germany. Via the command line, I can specify all stations and at the end the tool gives me a GPX file with the route.
    Oh that is too cool. You're giving me ideas about expanding the trips functionality in Tanzawa...
  • Response to Andrés Cárdenas [kandr3s]

    That's good news on the "custom permalinks" front, right? 🤞
    Yes. Custom urls are a core requirement for plugins and a “redirects” plugin could very well be one way to implement custom permalinks ( I’m not  convinced urls matter for most posts these days, so I’m not sure if it’s a core feature).
  • Response to Tanzawa testing

    I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions, James.
    I wish I had the technical knowledge to accomplish these things and help with Tanzawa development, but I know only enough HTML, CSS and Javascript to build simple websites.

    - Is there a way to use iframes (embed media) with the editor?
    - On my current local installation Tanzawa Replies do not seem to work.
    - Flag emojis do not seem to show up in the streams sidebar
    - Manually editing post dates.
    - Options to enable/disable Maps & Trips?
    Thanks for the reply. I'll keep this reply public so it acts as "documentation" if other people are searching around about Tanzawa and wondering similar things. 

    I'll dive in to answering your questions.

    > Is there a way to use iframes (embed media) with the editor?

    Not at the moment. Tanzawa is using Trix as its editor, so there is probably a way, but I haven't researched it at all. The main reason for not even allowing video uploading is that processing is quite time/cpu intensive. Processing video needs to be done in the background, which requires background tasks and Tanzawa doesn't support (yet) in an effort to keep the system simple.

    > On my current local installation Tanzawa Replies do not seem to work.

    This happens sometimes. Tanzawa's code for pulling out metadata for replies / bookmarks isn't quite as robust as I'd like. If you can share the URL with me I'd be happy to take a look.

    >  Flag emojis do not seem to show up in the streams sidebar

    Yes – I ran into this on my site as well. It seems to be an issue with the Django admin converting the character automatically (or something of that nature). I created my Japan stream via the Django console by typing in the python code directly.

    $ python3 apps/manage.py shell
    >>> from streams.models import MStream
    >>> MStream.objects.create(icon="🇯🇵", slug="japan-2", name="Japan 2")
    <MStream: Japan 2>
    >>> exit()

    As slug is a unique field, if you want to update an existing stream, you can do it by first selecting it, setting the value, and saving.

    $ python3 apps/manage.py shell
    >>> from streams.models import MStream
    >>> stream = MStream.objects.get(slug="japan")
    >>> stream.icon = "🇯🇵"
    >>> stream.save()
    >>> exit()

    > Manually editing post dates.

    Yes - I have an issue on GitHub for this and a WIP branch locally. It's been a while since I looked at the code, but as I recall I was getting bogged down writing the interface for it. After I finish ship plugins, I'll give it another look.

    > Options to enable/disable Maps & Trips?

    There isn't a point and click way to do this. The easiest way for now  modify the base public template in apps/templates/base_public.html. Maybe it makes sense to transition Maps/Trips to plugins in the future...
  • Response to kandr3s [Andrés Cárdenas]

    I installed Tanzawa. It's amazing. Seriously amazing.
    I feel right at home using its UI. I'm loving testing it locally, but there's two things I haven't figure out:
    1. What's the best way to import content from markdown files?
    2. Custom link support.
    Thank you for such kind words, Andrés!

    To answer your questions:

    1. There isn't a direct way to import markdown into Tanzawa. Wordpress would be one way, but you'd likely lose the "post kind" data along the way. The Tanzawa Wordpress import was really designed for moving data from the IndieWeb Plugins to Tanzawa. I also haven't run it since I imported my site in April, so it might be broken.

    Perhaps the best way, although it would require a little programming, would be to convert the posts to microformat and POST it to the micropub endpoint. Something like this would be useful for many people, so if you do go this route, I'd love to be able to direct people your tool.

    2. Custom link support is something I've been thinking about. I think might handle it with a plugin, but I'm not sure. Right now the only way to add a redirect in your nginx or apache configuration. So not simple or scalable.
  • Response to Colin Walker - Oct 29, 2021

    With enough people doing the work we need not be beholden to the gatekeepers and large corporations. The web can, once again, be for the people by the people but we have to give a shit. Therein lies the problem: not enough people seem to give enough of a shit to do anything about it.
    Most people don't care about the web like they don't care about how their car works. But with large influx of users on the internet, there's arguably more people who care about web than ever before, it's just a smaller percentage of over all users. And with the giants penalizing content that's not on the big platforms, it's harder to find and gets lost in the noise.

    Personal websites have always required technical skills of one kind or another. It's "problem" is that while modern tooling is much more capable than that of early web 2.0, it's much more complex. While getting started in a cookiec-cutter fashion is easier than ever (Wordpress etc..), doing something that's truly your own is much more difficult. Hopefully import-maps will help us leave part of this complexity in the past. (DHH wrote a good post about this).
  • Response to Biden Administration Plans Wind Farms Along Nearly the Entire U.S. Coastline

    Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced that her agency will formally begin the process of identifying federal waters to lease to wind developers by 2025.

    “We are working to facilitate a pipeline of projects that will establish confidence for the offshore wind industry,” said Amanda Lefton, director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “At the same time, we want to reduce potential conflicts as much as we can while meeting the administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.”
    That's a whole lot of electricity. I really hope the leases starting in 2025 doesn't make the entire exercise a moot point should the executive change hands after the next election.
  • Response to Trams, Cable Cars, Electric Ferries: How Cities Are Rethinking Transit

    Urban transportation is central to the effort to slow climate change. It can’t be done by just switching to electric cars. Several cities are starting to electrify mass transit.
    It's really great to see how varied the methods of transport they're installing are. The photos are also really great.

    Yokohama trialed some fully electric buses recently, but they found trouble with the hills and battery life. I think it was as these were retrofitted buses using 3-old Nissan Leaf batteries. I hope they switch the fleet over to electric asap though, as the noise and fumes at the bus centers are horrible.

    “It has become a reasonable position to advocate for less space for cars,” said Felix Creutzig, a transportation specialist at the Mercator Research Center in Berlin. “Ten years ago, it was not even allowed to be said. But now you can say it.”

    My favorite quote and I am happy this is becoming the case. Felix, welcome to The War on Cars.
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