weblog
- Pika.Page by the awesome people who make fun things at Good Enough
- Scribbles by Vincent Ritter, who makes some really cool projects that you should check out.
- Gibber or Gibberish is the app - The idea of it being like text messages really is an interesting concept.
Sorry for any noise in my RSS feed as of lately. I have been pulling in posts from Weblog and Obsidian Publish to my Micro.blog site as a way to make everything in one place again. I want to say I am done with having random posts in random places but this is something I can not guarantee myself.
Status.lol App
Since I’ve been trying to post more photos to some.pics, I found that even with the shortcut, it was a bit cumbersome. I had to then log into the website to add a description to it, or I was just uploading it directly to the app. However, as I was updating a status on status.lol the other day through the status.lol app made by the amazing Joanna, I was reminded that you can upload pictures to some.pics through there as well. I can’t believe I had forgotten this.
So, what a nice and useful app for the iPhone, which allows you to update your status on status.lol, add some pictures to some.pics, and not to mention, if you are trying to find some neat people as part of the omg.lol community, there is a directory button in there as well that you can search and navigate to their omg.lol page.
I have been uploading my pictures for the last couple of days through the app, and I really do find it that much easier to do so. My only feature request now is that for anyone else who has a picture uploaded, I wish I could click on their username and have it take me to their some.pics gallery or maybe their omg.lol page. I guess that is where it is hard to know what I would really want to do, as neither of those options allow me to say, “Hey, really cool picture,” unless I found my way to their social.lol account as well. It isn’t that it isn’t possible, but just not as easy quite yet. Unlike, on the status.lol side of things, if they post it to Mastodon (i.e., social.lol), you can click on it and reply there.
I wonder if there will be some connection at some point to have your some.pics be easily shared to social.lol? I would guess the only issue there is the description for some.pics is typically alt text vs. a description or some caption you might add, or at least that is what I have been using it for. Not sure what everyone else is doing, as it just says you need a description, but I typically have it describe the picture vs. just posting the picture as part of a description.
Paste.lol Notes
I have not actually used paste.lol all that much on but really it is a Pastebin for those of you who know what that is. I did use it already at one point to save a json to rss script file that I created with other help I found online for a specific use on my Micro.blog consumption. More on that script another time.
The other day, I was reminded me the other day about past.lol and as always because someone took the great omg.lol creation and then added to it by creating a web app where you can write (like I am now) and save them directly to Pastbin. The app can be found at write.omg.lol.
Depending on what you want to use paste.lol for maybe it would not be that useful but for writing like I am right now, I can write in Markdown, quickly view it using the eyes in the upper right hand corner and save it to Pastbin as I go along. Obviously, in the end I am going to copy this over to my weblog.lol but you could just leave this as a single page of notes on your past bin site that I will do as well just to see how it works as well. Remember if anything you can create fun pictures in paste.lol like below:
{
U ___ u __ __ ____ _ U ___ u _
\/"_ \U|' \/ '|U /"___|u |"| \/"_ \/ |"|
| | | \| |\/| |\| | _ U | | u | | | U | | u
.-,_| |_| || | | | | |_| | \| |/_.-,_| |_| |\| |/__
\_)-\___/ |_| |_| \_____ |_____\_)-\___/ |_____|
\\ <<,-,,-. _)(|(") // \\ \\ // \\
(__) (./ \.) (__)__" (_")("_) (__) (_")("_)
}
I will have to see if this really fits into more of a process for me going forward but I do like that it is another little app that can serve a purpose in the overall omg.lol suite of applications. I wonder if I should actually call it the omg.lol toolbox or maybe the omg.lol swiss army knife of online programs. I will keep workshopping it.
weblog firehose?
The now.garden feature on omg.lol has me wondering how many people are utilizing the weblog service. I ponder whether there could be a directory or a “find my feed” feature, similar to what Adam has assembled for other services (e.g., some.pics, status.lol, now.garden). While it’s possible to search and find people by usernames, taking it a step further with a page organized by titles and/or an RSS feed to subscribe to would be beneficial. Now that I think about it, such a feature probably exists, and I just haven’t discovered it yet.
I was going to just include this as part of my earlier post about the now page when I talked about the now.garden but then I realized it probably should be it’s own thought.
Now Page
It probably took me too long, but I finally managed to put together a “now” page on omg.lol. At this point, it’s pretty basic, and I might work on it a bit more here and there. One thing I’m interested in, because I’ve known about this “now” page concept in the past, is whether I will update it after today. I could see myself doing this work now and then forgetting I had a page like that, never returning to it a week or two later. However, there’s a setting in your “now” page that can nudge you every so many days. I picked 7 to keep it consistent, so we’ll see if that spurs me to update it next week.
Another interesting feature specific to omg.lol users is the “now garden.” Everyone on omg.lol who has a “now” page and checks the box to make it visible in the garden shows up there. It’s sorted by the most recent update, which is nice because then you can click around if you’re curious to see how other people have created theirs or if you’re wondering what people are up to… NOW.
If you are wondering what a Now Page is and got to the end check out this omg.lol now page reference that also links to the origination of a now page for even more information.
Some.Pics
I didn’t really spend any time today diving into more stuff on Weblog.lol, but I did look closer at some.pics as I had a picture I took this morning on an early morning run. So, I did find a shortcut that you can download if you would like something like that, thanks to Maique. The one nice thing I found is that although it says that pictures are not shared publicly without a description, that really means as of this point, it will not show up in some.pics main feed or your own some.pics feed. However, you can still use that markdown code to put on your own site.
I do want to preface this by saying that before you go crazy uploading a ton of photos or even screenshots, do read the Community Guidelines and especially what the service isn’t.
Final note as I kept diving into some.pics is that I could put it on my omg.lol page at the bottom with the following script:
{
<script src="https://some.pics/by/ericmwalk.js?count=1&alt"></script>
}
There might be more that you can do with it, but it does fit what I would want at the bottom of my omg.lol page. Now that I have somewhat updated that page and taken a closer look at some.pics, I wonder if I should, at some point, take a closer look at the “now” page. 🤔
Posts with Images
In reading more chatter online, it seems like people are really checking out all of these newer indie blogging software which is great and each is on its own journey of what they doing. I think the one thing for weblog that people seem to run across as a downfall is getting images here because you really need to find another place to put them if you want more than a one-off. Through the OMG.lol suite of products, you can use some.pics and honestly, it would probably work fine for one-off photos or if you were not planning on posting a ton of photos to the site. However, if you wanted to post say the picture from a trip or more than just one you might find it more difficult than other platforms where you can just drop them all in and away you go. I believe in this case you can upload them all but might then take a little back and forth to get the links to your post. Here is a photo that I uploaded a while back and it works fine as you can see using some.pics
The more I think about it someone has probably created a shortcut to make this even simpler.
With all of that said, I am going to take some guesses that more might be in store to somehow make it easier at some point in the weblog app but you have to be ok waiting for that which for me is fine because right now I am just sending the photos to my micro.blog account for the ones I have posted on this site so far. The only exception is the one above. Others I have heard use bunny.net or other services to have photos hosted somewhere and then just link them in here. I could see that as being a nice option as then you can probably organize and find them if you ever want to use one again. That is sometimes the downside I have found with Micro.blog because I like to use a picture I had or if I am cleaning up things I am not sure how to easily find the picture to delete it or replace it so then it just gets lost out there not attached to any post. I am guessing this could be an issue with some of the other services I mentioned the other day and might be the same for some.pics but I shouldn’t say that too fast as I know it wants to have you put a description so maybe you can find it that way.
ChatGPT and Theme Support
I still like the work that I did late last week on the theme of this site, but I kept thinking I didn’t have the colors right, as what I really wanted was something closer to the Dracula styling. Now, one could go through and change everything that I have done or snagged from others to get this looking like it is today. Or, I took the HTML template and put it in ChatGPT and asked it to update my theme in the Dracula style, and about 10 seconds later, what you are looking at now is the result. It would have most likely taken me much longer to get to the same result. I would have changed some things, checked it, and then repeated the process over and over, making sure that I got everything.
I have been finding more and more little uses for ChatGPT lately, so I have just kept it open in a tab on my computer. I was using it to help flesh out some ideas and thoughts at work, and I felt like it really helped out. So, two weeks ago, I decided to pay for a month of the Plus version to see what else the 4.0 can do for me compared to 3.5. I don’t know if I have really used the Plus version to the fullest yet, but I am still just getting warmed up to more uses. I want to test out the GPTs that you can create. I created one the day I signed up for the service, but honestly, I have not spent much time with it or even using it, except for answering the questions during the setup and then maybe one or two right after that.
I hope to spend some more time overall with ChatGPT before my month is up, so I can figure out if I want to keep the paid version for longer. I think most of what I have been doing today could just be done on the free version, except for some of the images I have created, but really, those are only for fun and not a necessity.
Setup with Working Copy
So I tried to make a post yesterday and had no idea why I didn’t see it, figuring it would show up eventually. This morning, when I still didn’t see it, it dawned on me. I didn’t put the .md at the end of it, so the file was never picked up and posted. 🤦♂️
It’s a good thing to remember that adding .md is a better way to create a draft than putting “draft” in the top section, at least if you are using GitHub. Because I found out, even if you put “draft” at the top of your file, it might not show up on your main post pages. But when you do searches, especially for tags, you will find the file.
Yesterday’s entry and this one are all coming from my phone. I installed Working Copy which I connect to GitHub. With this setup, it’s quite nice. It gives me a time that I can actually create a post like this one right here offline and then push it when I’m ready. Seeing how I am sitting at a swim meet typing this out and waiting for my daughter to swim which will be in another hour.
My only issue with Working Copy is that on my phone it is not giving me predictive text or correcting my bad spelling that is happening due to me typing on this phone. Not the end of the world but a little annoying, but I also know why it makes sense to not have it correct or give suggestions as normally people would use this app to write code. Maybe I will start drafting this in a different text editor and then just use Working Copy to post.
I know this is only day 4, but I think the more I mess around with weblogs, the more I seem to like it.
Spending time with Weblog
I have spent way more time than I would like to admit messing around with weblog.lol today. However, I am pleased with the overall result as I have a working website with an updated theme that I am happy with in the direction it is taking. I jokingly say working because for the life of me, the box below I cannot get to format right, no matter what I do. However, if you look at it now, it probably looks good enough that no one will be the wiser on how much effort I spent tinkering with it.
Reflecting back, I realized that since I haven’t really touched this site since a year ago, I had some very old configurations and knowledge of what was going on (not that I really had the right knowledge to begin with). So, some of my time today was spent watching a very helpful video Adam (the creator of weblog.lol and omg.lol) put together earlier last year, as well as diving into some webpage source codes. Only to then find out some very nice people have their weblog.lol sites like mine on GitHub with it open to view the configuration files. I’m not sure if those people meant to have them as public projects on GitHub, so I will not link directly to them, but I do appreciate that they did, as I could get some ideas of how things were done by doing that. I am not really sure if I will end up closing mine off and making it private, as I am not sure if there is anything here that should be closed off. However, if I do, I will make sure to link to a copy of my template and configuration files, as those are the things really helpful if you are a noob like me when it comes to weblog and honestly CSS.
If you are wondering what is next with this site, it is still to be determined, but I have enjoyed my time diving into it and flexing my brain in a way I normally don’t on a day-to-day basis. Maybe I will try to post something on here every day for February and see how that goes.
Digging back in to the configurations and setting of Weblog.lol allowed me to find out that you can have titleless posts now. Kind of nice for someone that is used to having so many of those on Micro.blog.
Beginning Again - Weblogs
It works, but how does this work again?
With all of the new fun blogging tools that have been coming out lately, I have been wanting to try every single one of them, and I am probably still missing some of them. However, here are the ones that caught my eye, and I have tried two of them, and I know the other one would be amazing too:
However, as I had been trying some of these and almost pulled the trigger to try the other one, I thought to myself. I still have this amazing weblog.lol site that I have not touched for a year that I should get back to. If anything, just to see what it is all about and what has changed, so maybe that is what I will do instead of diving too much further into the three listed above. In fact, as I was messaging Barry Hess who helped create Pika.Page briefly about this exact topic, I found his response just refreshing when I said I am not sure I can fully switch to another platform:
Not a problem! If you have something that fits the bill, of course, we’d love to have you along for the ride. But don’t force it!