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by JamesWith support for locations finished, I was able to add support for checkins in a couple of hours this morning. You can only post a checkin via micropub, but you can edit them like any other post locally.
There's three remaining "tidbits" to be completed before I can mark location/checkin support is complete:Β use the sent published date time in the micropub request as the posts' published datetime, store/display the syndication urls in the post meta, and confirm microformat my location data. This is what they look like β checkin is from January 2nd :-)An example checkin post with a photo -
Weekly Roundup #1
Along with my regular status posts, I'm going to try to make a weekly roundup post for Tanzawa. As this is more of an experiment at this time,Β I'm putting them in the "Articles",Β but I may add a weekly stream just for these posts.Locations
I build and launched the ability to associate a location with an entry. Initially I had planned on limiting locations to check ins and statuses, but decided against building in an artificial limitation.
Location support is baked into the Tanzawa micropub endpoint as well as the RSS feeds. Posts that have a location associated with them will display the location after the author's name in the posts' byline. RSS feeds will append the location name ( or coordinates where there isn't an address) to the end of the post.A status post in Tanzawa Layout Cleanup
While adding the map to the public post views, I also I did some cleanup. I had originally planned on having a 3 column layout for Tanzawa: left navigation, middle content, right meta. But having it split into 3 columns felt unnatural. I removed the meta-data from the third column, though it still exists.
I also cleaned up the footer so it's stuck of the page without extending the view port beyond the natural max. Practically speaking it means that you'd always get a scrollbar even if the content length didn't warrant it. Ironic given that the footer text reads "Made with care". This text is also now styled to reduce emphasis.
Posts that belong to multiple streams will have their streams highlighted on the left. There's also a new "Home" link that takes you to the top of the site.Misc Issues
The CSS and Javascript required to run Tanzawa is now getting sufficiently complex where I should look into a proper deploy solution. My main server is the smallest droplet available at Digital Ocean, and 1GB of memory just isn't enough to run postcss when I made a lot of template changes without causing the server to swap and basically bring it down until the build completes.
The CSS and Javascript build processes are currently separate commands run with npm. CSS (tailwind) is controlled by postcss, while Javascript is controlled with webpack. I need to integrate the css build into webpack. Doing so would allow me to reduce the number of commands run on each deploy and create unique filenames for each build. Saving each filename as a hash would allow me to never worry about caching old assets. -
by JamesWorking a bit on how to integrate location information into a post. Right now I've got the location name appearing in the byline. Some day, I imagine this will be a link to search page that'll show you all posts within a given radius of that area.
Initially I had planned to have the map display on the right hand side of the post, in the "meta" column. But that felt like it's separate from the post. Moving down into the footer and increasing it's size a bit has helped it feel a bit more "at home".Integrating location into detail page -
by JamesSorted how locations will display on a post publicly today. I really like the automatic zoom as your mouse gets closer to the center.
Zoom animation -
by JamesI've settled in on the final mapping UI for Tanzawa and I'm super pleased with how it's turned out.
I realized that because addresses vary so much by country displaying ta full street address as you'd expect to see them on a letter is a) a huge problem all unto itself and b)Β far too much information to display.
Instead I opted to show the information that you really care about: city / state (prefecture), and country. It updates whenever your marker moves. The reset button lets your location to the initial value, allowing you to undo miss-clicks. The remove button lets you remove a location from a post entirely.
I also no longer set an initial marker in the map and zoomed out by about half. It's still centered on the Tanzawa mountains by default.Selecting a location for a post in Tanzawa -
10 Years Since 3/11
by JamesToday marks 10 years since 3/11, the great earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku that resulted in tens of thousands dead or missing and even more displaced from the nuclear accident in Fukushima. 3/11 was one of those days that I'll never forget and I still vividly remember.
A few months prior to 3/11 I had gotten married my wife in Japan and my parents were coming to meet her family for the first time. They had a direct flight from Houston, Texas, which is about 13 hours and were scheduled to land around 4pm on March 11th, 2011. I was riding the Narita Express to meet them at the airport and chatting with my old Japanese teacher in US on Messenger about horrible the earthquake was in New Zealand a couple weeks prior.
Initially when the train started shaking I had thought it was the usual movement of the train, people move around to get disembark quicker or driver's coming in a bit hot and has to brake a harder than usual. When it felt like the train had a very real possibility of tipping (it wasn't close, in retrospect) is when I realized this was something different.
The trains immediately shutdown and Shinagawa station was a madhouse. The engineers (I'm guessing) on a business trip on the train had the right idea, they immediately went to the nearest hotel and booked room. I wish I had done that.
My parents were still in the air, so I had no way to contact them. Apparently they circled Tokyo for a few, before re-fueling at Yokota airbase, before continuing on to Osaka β landing in the wrong part of the country.
After the earthquake you couldn't make a telephone call in Japan. All the circuits were busy all the time. But the internet and Twitter worked great. I had my laptop and a 3G modem with me. Using my US number on Skype, I could use US telephone circuits, which weren't overloaded, and contact other family in the US to let them know what was happening and that I was fine.
We found a hotel that'd let us stay in their lobby. We eventually left to go find food, but everything was sold out everywhere. The only place we found with food was a Yoshinoya with a long and slow moving line. After waiting for what felt like 30 minutes and making little progress we noticed that, despite this line not moving, people seemed to be coming and going. We were in the line for take-out. Eating in we could get service almost immediately. Due to the high volume of customers they were rationing beef β which they made sure we'd be ok with before we ordered.
After eating we returned to the hotel to stay the night on hard marble floors with a bunch of other stranded people. The morning it felt almost oddly normal. A couple of backpackers asked if we knew where the nearest hostel was, but we were of no use. We found a different hotel that was serving nice warm breakfast with the type of service that makes you feel like everything's gonna be all right.
My parents managed to find their way to the Shinkansen and made it to Shinyokohama. We attempted to ride the Tokaido-line to Yokohama but it was after seeing 3 trains come bursting at the seams packed with people, we looked for alternative routes to meet my parents. Funny enough, we also rode the Shinkansen to Shinyokohama. It was still standing room only, but at least you could breath. And the journey was only 7 or 8 minutes.
What I experienced on 3/11 pales in comparison to those that lost their lives and saw their homes and loved ones vanish before their eyes. 10 years later and while things look like they've rebuilt, they'll never be the same.
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Checkin to Starbucks
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by JamesManaged to get reverse geocoding (looking up the address from for a given coordinate) working when you click the map. I've also hooked up the remove location button to...remove the location.
The address updating when the point moves.
There's two last tweaks I need to make:Β 1) I'd like a reset button to reset your location form to it's initial state; 2) The address form is going to be hidden entirely and the values will be displayed as a single line of text below the map to emphasize that the address is "just meta". -
The Point of Mapping
by JamesWhen I think about what I want in a map on a blog, my needs are fairly basic: posts that have a location should show a map with an indicator where the post was made and if I'm unsure of the coordinates (a guarantee) , I should to be able to search and find it on a map.
If the location too new or uncommon, it may not show up. In that scenario finding the location on the map and selecting in manually isn't large ask.
While maps are a an important point of many posts:Β that new coffee shop I checked in at, the location of that cool bridge in a photo I shared, or that time status I posted looking out the window of the shinkansen β they're not central or even wanted in most posts.
Sharing a thought, a checkin, or a photo is the point.
One day there might be public facing features where maps play a prominent role and are the point of a post. But until then the big maps will be reserved for when you're authoring a post and can use the extra space to pan and zoom, and on the public side, they'll be smaller and out of the way β they're not the point.
