Some pre-dinner testing. That was correctly recognized as a new item.

Here's what I'm doing. I want to get all my blog posts together in one place. I still want to use Electric Drummer to write stuff for scripting.com, there's a whole system built around it being where it is. But, I want all the posts on scripting to also appear on the daveverse site, so that they first version of my discourse module can be simple to create, debug and use. So I've got the first half working, I've got a script that hooks in via WebSockets to FeedLand and is notified every time Scripting News updates. It mirrors the updates to a site on WordPress (for testing) and once it works, I'll have it send the stuff to Daveverse. That part remains to be done. Not sure if it'll be a desktop app or a server-based app. But now I need a break. ;-)

One more before lunch.

The hits keep comin! ;-)

As promised here is another test post. I will now add another sentence to the post...

You will probably see a series of test posts here, as the day goes on.

Good morning. I like how things are going in FeedLand and WordLand today. The dots are starting to connect.

A short podcast about Sarah Kendzior, Johnny Cash and Bluesky.

I've added the NetNewsWire blog to my blogroll.

The big news is that there are now docs for source:markdown. The goal is to have a writer-friendly standard for text on the net that's as useful as the one for audio was. We've never had that for RSS. As with everything in RSS-land, cooperation among the different vendors was never its strong point. I hope to change that, and plan to build a network for written text as open and powerful as the one that developed for podcasting.

Fixed a longstanding performance bug on the scripting.com home page. Sometimes it'd just sit there for five seconds. Really embarrassing. It might feel faster now. Still diggin!

New developer notes for source:markdown. Report problems here.

As part of the process I reviewed the developer notes I posted in 2022. I see why there was confusion, it was so early in the process. I'm replacing those developer notes with new ones, that's based on more practical experience.

An example feed that has lots of source namespace elements.

Today I'm going to work on re-shaping the docs for source:markdown because it seems to becoming a thing that people are supporting in their feeds and in their feed consumer apps. We're going to have discuss how it's supported, on both ends. What goes into a source:markdown element, and what does not, and how should readers use it. I will assume the role of benevolent dictator, as I did with RSS 2.0, with a bit more of an understanding of what's important. See Rule #1 in Rules for Standards-makers. "The only reason we have open formats and protocols is so our software can interoperate." And the Rule of Users: "People choose to interop because it helps them find new users. If you have no users to offer, there won't be much interest in interop."

BTW, if you have a question about source:markdown, or want to raise an issue, this is the place to do it.

Scripting News' feed now supports source:markdown.

Now that Cory Doctorow has put enshitified into our vocabulary, I find myself looking for evidence of it in AI, and finding it everywhere. There is a common thread. Amazon Alexa has a really nasty habit of finishing a song by asking me if I want to listen to some other version of it. I'm sure that seems like a nice friendly thing to the product people at Amazon, but please -- I'm grooving on the energy of the song, and the last thing I'm thinking about is some asshole robot interfering with my train of thought with a question so stupid only a machine could think of it. Okay I think that qualifies for enshitification right there. Can we have a rule that AI bots must by defalt behave like a computer. I, your human overlord, the one who is paying the bills, will ask the questions. And you will not speak until you are spoken to.

Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was going to write a short post about how I never thought about how good Credence Clearwater is, until Andrew Hickey did a whole longish episode on them. The story isn't that interesting, but the music is great, lots of fun. Never realized it. Right now I'm listening to Born on the Bayou, lovin it.

I figured since I'm out there asking everyone (nicely I hope) to add source:markdown to their feeds, it kind of sucks that my own feed didn't support it. Now it does. I've started a thread on GitHub to report problems, and I can see that there will be some. If your feed reader prefers markdown, you will see the problems right off, I think.

Good morning sports fans!

WordLand is one of the few products that works hard to make sure that it has effective competition. It lays out a welcome mat for competitors. That's what DemoLand is all about. I think I finished it today, have to do another review, maybe two, before making it public. It is the opposite of a product that's meant to dominate. It's more like MacWrite, to fill a niche as an invitation to others to come play. Remember in the web, all parts are replaceable.

WordLand is one of the few products that works hard to make sure that it has effective competition. My goal is Working Together. That means, here, laying out a welcome mat for WordLand's competitors.

Screen shot of DemoLand a new thing I'm doing that shows a developer how to hook up to WordPress using the same server I'm using for WordLand. If they do that, our products will work on the same data, in Markdown of course. The user will get to use two different editors to work on the text. This is important because in the social network I'm imagining every part is replaceable. It takes work to make that real, but I have done the work. In this network the user will have choice of writing tools. Unlike products like Substack, for example, where you're forced to use their editor.

I need to have my posts from scripting.com flow through the Daveverse site, because the WordPress view of my writing is becoming more important. Not surprising, I've been reaching out to that world for a while now, and there have been real responses. I find myself copy/pasting again, and I have to start viewing every one of those as a bug to fix.

Google tries to speak for me. Here's what it does. Reading a friend's email, I click the Reply button, and withouth me asking, it writes a reply for me. Thus, if I want to speak for myself first I have to delete the message it created in my name. I don't yet have words to d...

The kind of email I like to get. From Manton: "Just wanted to let you know that I added source:markdown to all Micro.blog-hosted RSS feeds by default this week. You can see it in my feed." That's one nice lookin RSS feed. He added: "NetNewsWire support was the last nudge I needed to add this." The Power of Brent. It's good to stay on Brent's good side. ;-)

The previous post appeared on my daveverse blog which is something I'm especially proud of because it's the result of a fantastic collaboration between my codebase and Matt's codebase. Could not have happened without the wpcom api. That single bit of software imho is going to spark a rebirth of web applications and with that, the blogosphere. That is, if I have my way. Now one thing I still have to fix is the problem of posts appearing in more than one place without copy/paste. Have not conquered that yet.

Stephanie Booth asks about yesterday's post about dynamic OPML in Pocket Casts. I responded with a few comments, and a promise to write a post to show how this works in FeedLand, which already has the feature, but unfortunately is not a podcast client.

​AI changed the basic capabilities of computers. Some technologies will do fine in the new world, like SQL databases. But the stuff we do — that's going to change radically. Will anything be left? No one knows, imho. Best thing we can do is keep going on the path we were on, and look for ways to involve AI tech in a way that will bring the power of AI to writers.