markjgsmith

2023/08/18 #

• It's the 3rd day using the new notes feature. I think I'm finding it useful, though it's been a very busy few days so difficult to evaluate. The ease of posting is the big draw for me. I don't need to worry about a title or a url or keeping the length down. I just create a new markdown file and start writting.

  There were several issues:

  • Markdown and ejs not rendering
  • Incorrect day items ordering on main page
  • Incorrect day items ordering on archive pages
  • Daily auto-merge of new items via PR
  • Combine links, blog, podcast, newsletter, notes auto-merge workflows
  • Duplicate code paths in all plugins
  • Fix links auto posts to Twitter
  • Setup notes auto posts to Twitter
  • Setup links auto posts to Mastodon
  • Setup notes auto posts to Mastodon

  At the minute all website updates are done via git, which is a little clunky. Eventually I'll have a better way, but I want it to always be possible to do via git. You'll always be able tobat least use git.

  Hopefully there will be an API, web interface, maybe even a mobile and desktop app. That's a long way off though. I'm concentrating on getting it as smooth as possible with git.

  I'm undecided on whether I like using titles in posts. I have to figure out the flow that feels comfortable. I want to be able to start writing without friction, and if a post is develiping into something substantial, have a way to easily convert it into a blog post.

  One thing that would make posting via git a lot easier is to use something like the iOS Shortcuts app to create empty markdown files with uuid and date added to the file's frontmatter section. Unfortunately I have a major mental block with the Shortcuts app, I literally cant even do basic things, I find it so unintuitive, so that feels a long way off. #

• I'm still undecided about using titles in notes posts. On the one hand they look a little odd with the bullet points, but I quite like the visual seperation of each note with a bullet. On the other hand, without any titles at all, the whole notes turns into a wall of text. I should probably not worry about it too much. Short notes like this one don't need one, but the previous note ended up becoming quite long and perhaps a title such as 'Notes, day 3' would have been good. #

• It's friday today, and that means another newsletter deadline is looming. Some weeks by this stage I have all sorts of themes and ideas. Thehose weeks are great, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's not a slog, in fact it's quite fun, feels like riding a bike downhill. This is not one of those week's. I've got basically nothing, feels like I have to hand in some homework tomorrow that I haven't started. Not quite as fun.

  I find that in these uphill climb weeks, the best course of action is to force myself to just start compiling the list of podcasts. I start by copying across the saved episode titles to the newsletter template. Usually as I'm doing that a theme emerges. I then do the same for the links. And try to come up with a title. It's not rocket science.

  I already compiled the list earlier this morning. Nothing really jumped out at me. I'm also a bit distracted by the new notes feature, that's what I'm thinking about. So I might just make that the theme. It's a bit self indulgeant, but I don't create new major features all that often, plus it's probably the most honest thing to do, after all that is what's predominantly on my mind.

  Sometimes it's best to not fight the tides. #

• Notes origin story

  I was just listening to the latest What Bitcoin Did podcast episode. It's an interview with Doomberg, a bloke that appears to put his voice through a modifier of some type. I guess he's a bit paranoid about privacy. I think he's the front of some sort of bitcoin policy advocat group. Interesting interview. Anyway right at the end they talk about Twitter, or X as it's now called.

  He speaks about his decision to stop posting on X because of the way the platform has been discriminating against Substack, and other X competitors. The Doomberg (collective?) have a popular Substack newsletter. I wasn't aware that the situation was that bad. That's not good. I've got a Substack too! Nowhere near as popular, but still, it feels gross to be contributing to a platform that is trying to hurt me.

  He has decided to only post on Substack, newsletters but also on their Notes app. It totally hadn't occurred to me that Substack had a Notes app as I was creating my latest feature. I did hear about Substack Notes when it was released, but I didn't look at it much. It didn't really catch my attention. I don't know what it is exactly.

  For me the idea of a Notes app goes back much further. When I first started my career in tech, for the first 10 years or so I kept notebooks. Propper ringbound paper notebooks. Everyday I would write down the date at the top of a new page and write a todo list. I'd port the previous days unfinished todos, get rid of unneeded items, and add a few new items. As I went about my day, below the todos I'd write notes. Notes about stuff I was doing, or things I was planning, meetings I'd have etc. I ended up with many many of these notebooks, which I kept in boxes ordered by year. It was quite a collection.

  Anyway, all that to say that when I created my recent Notes feature, I had those notebooks in mind. I also took inspiration from others online that work in the open. Absolutely nothing to do with Substack at all. I like Substack, I hope their Notes app is successful. #

• I finally found this week's newsletter title. For a second there I nearly wrote the title, but I just remembered these notes will get published about 12 hours before the newsletter. I don't want to ruin the suprise :) #

Today’s links:

• 🚀 New Post: Testing auto posts to social media - Short test post to make sure that I’ve setup auto posts to social media correctly. markjgsmith.com #

• Open Circuits - Cory Doctorow writes about his recent trip to Defcon, the famous hacker conference in Las Vegas. Sounds like a cool conference, though personally I think I'd be too worried about getting hacked to enjoy myself. He mentions a cool new book about the tiny electronics that power the computers of the modern world. What's cool is that the book, which is educational, reframes these marvelous tiny inventions, highlighting them as beautiful art. I love this. Take something that seems boring and show why it's actually amazing. It's maker culture at it's best. pluralistic.net #