A year ago I tried learning ActivityPub, and more or less failed. I was confounded by a spec that was so abstract I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Turns out I was missing some key things.

I have written a guide to learning about ActivityPub that I wish existed a year ago when I first set out to learn how to write social media servers that conform to the spec:

https://tinysubversions.com/notes/reading-activitypub/

I've posted it a little early because I'm excited but here is my reading and analysis of RFC-1, the very first official Request for Comments document and an important piece of internet history.

https://write.as/365-rfcs/rfc-1

I'm doing one of these a day for a year. You can follow along at @365-rfcs. I'll only be posting the really noteworthy ones on this account.

A while back I built a site that converts RSS feeds to ActivityPub actors that you can subscribe to from Mastodon and other ActivityPub-compliant social networks: https://bots.tinysubversions.com/convert/

I've now also published the source code: https://github.com/dariusk/activtypub-to-rss

NOTE: I guess Typora has a MacOS beta which never came up in any of my searches for Markdown composers. I just loaded it up and this is actually even better (it has the nav stuff I wanted)

I am pleased to announce that after several years I have finally found a MacOS native Markdown composer that mostly works for me: iA Writer. https://ia.net/writer

The only major thing it's missing is header-based navigation for composing very large documents. For short to medium length blog posts though, it's everything I need.

Okay so, recipe. Cut the napa cabbage lengthwise, coat it in oil and salt and pepper. Grill each piece for 3 minutes on each side. Chop up into little pieces. Make a Cole slaw style sauce (many recipes available online but I like mayo + mustard + apple cider vinegar in equal proportions) and mix it all together. Incredible on its own or as a condiment on sandwiches

At the advice of my farmers market I'm attempting grilled napa cabbage

Idea: a machine you put in a public place, and people can put money in it and it dispenses synthesizers in return. I call it: Vendy Carlos

Here's a photo of the meetup. I asked everyone to become invisible and they obliged. Love the fediverse

I'm at a fediverse meetup in Olympia, Washington and it is neat to meet people from lots of different servers!

I'm at Portland Radical Pride (a cop and corp free alternative to Pride). My friend set up this art table!

just saw an "IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY NOW" sign and like... wow that's the mildest thing you could possibly ask for. "WE WOULD LIKE CONGRESS TO INQUIRE INTO WHETHER IMPEACHMENT SHOULD HAPPEN BUT IF THEY DETERMINE IMPEACHMENT TO BE IMPRACTICAL OR INACTIONABLE THAT IS OKAY"

I gave a short (15 min) talk at CSVConf last month about federated social media, trust, and how we can better define community boundaries. In particular, I discuss the importance of local-only content that never federates, and the ability to tag other servers as "trusted" and federate things only to those servers. That last idea is something I call "neighborhoods".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxBu5Tktm1g

Non-youtube direct mp4 here: https://tinysubversions.com/talks/csv-conf-2019/video.mp4

Re: Pride & Prejudice, because it's so dialogue heavy, even though the novel is written in the 3rd person, a lot of it in the form of 1st/2nd person, like:

“With the officers!” cried Lydia. “I wonder my aunt did not tell us of that.”

“Dining out,” said Mrs. Bennet, “that is very unlucky.”

“Can I have the carriage?” said Jane.

“No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to rain; and then you must stay all night.”