I’m drinking a bottle of home brew English Strong Ale I made back in 2011!  This is really very good, and yes, strong.  I hope I have some more left over.

Setting up another Wordpress blog caused me to examine features which visitors use and ignore here.  The big one is the Share buttons that get placed at the bottom of each post.  I don’t think anyone has used those since I restarted blogging.  I think I might either turn them all off or just leave the email one.

Anyone seeing a lot of use of these?

… can I keep it?

It’s a sorta selfdogfood directory called Indieseek.xyz.  I hope this will encourage others to try their hands at small directories or search engines of the fun web, the Independent Web.

More from the source in a bit.

Special thanks to:

Kicks Condor - for the discussions on directories, discovery, advice and encouragement.

Chris Aldrich - for the early encouragement to keep experimenting (complete with cow picture.)

Like: Blog discovery for the future?

There is a great discussion going on there with Dave Winer, Don Park and others including Greg McVerry and Kicks Condor.

This is the kind of discussion that needs to be done and this is the group to do it.  Frankly it makes my brain hurt, but in a good way.

Gah!  I’m in a bit of a quandary about seeding this directory project:  how much is enough to start out with and how much further seeding just adds noise?

I have raided my bookmarks, read laters, memory, etc. and have come up with about 300 links which, on the face of it, seems pitiful for a general web directory if I built it circa 1998 - 2003.  But times are different now, those old directories where trying to be comprehensive: Dmoz had over 4 million listings and in the end it was a pittance compared to the ever expanding size of the web.

I’m not trying to be comprehensive, just a place where one might find useful or interesting things off the beaten path, and find them quickly.

My past experience in niche directories is of limited help here.  Back in the day of static HTML sites, those sites were not huge, I could poke around and get a good feel for the value of the site rather quickly.  Today, everything is blogs or sites built on platforms.  There could be hundreds of posts and pages.  Compounding that so many blogs are abandoned.  Yes a blog abandoned in 2014 may still have some very useful articles but that is not something I can dig out in a reasonable amount of time.

All this is to say, I feel like I am forcing it.  I am now just digging up links just to fill categories not because they are special.  And that means quality starts to slip in favor of quantity.

A web directory never should quit growing, but I think I’m near the point where I need to open it up for submissions of links by the public while I also continue to add listings at a slower and more measured pace as I find things.  Things need to grow organically.

Which means I need to get cracking on finishing up help pages and UI tweaks for a launch.

Any thoughts?

Like: Large Majorities Dislike Political Correctness - The Atlantic

What a person is saying, the meaning, the intent, is far more important than how they say it.

This is how Wordpress plays “Joy Whack a Mole”:

Me: Yay, I made a neat new logo.  Happyhappyjoyjoy.  (Tries to install it on Wordpress.)

Sempress Theme:  I insist that your logo be 50px X 50px.

Me: Are you daft?  Do you know how tiny 50 X 50 is?  That’s almost as small as a favicon. it looks silly.

Sempress Theme: Muhahaha!

Listening: Illinois Street Lounge | SomaFM

Classic bachelor pad.  Got the Lava Lamp going.  😎

Watching: Murders at Barlume - MHz Choice

Light, comedic Italian mystery.  As a mystery sort of so-so, but I like the characters.  Acting is good.

Like: Framasoft ~ Portal Homepage

• A network dedicated to globally promoting “free” and particularly free software.
• Many services and innovative projects freely put at the disposal of the general public.
• A community of volunteers supported by a public interest association.
• An invitation to build together a world of sharing and cooperation.

The Framasoft’s goal is to offer, mainly online, a set of concrete and practical tools to facilitate adoption:

• of free software (directory, USB sticks, installer…);
• of free cultural creations (blog, translation, publishing house…);
• of free services (more than 30 free services in the project De-google-ify Internet).

Presented as a “gateway to the Free World”, the network Framasoft wants to position itself as a bridge between the librarian community and the general public.

Despite my earlier protestations, I am working on a web directory project on a different domain.  It’s not a big deal but there is work to do, like: seed the directory with a starter set of links.  I mean you go to a directory to find web pages or websites and it better have something for you to find or you will never come back.

Yeah, so I’ve got this used web crawler/indexer, that would be me, who is an old, slow and cranky, old git, but  works cheap. The slacker likes taking a nap during working hours. This could take awhile.

Plus I’ve got to edit CSS font sizes which I’ve never done, and write help pages that explain what the heck I’m trying to do.

All of which is to say, I’ve got to cut back on blogging here for awhile and just get this directory ready for launch.

Thanks.

Signed, Me.

Bookmark: dokuwiki [DokuWiki]

Another wiki server script.  Doku looks to be even bigger than PmWiki as far as plugins.

This one seems more about formatting writing in HTML rather than markup.

Pros:

No database needed. Files are stored as plain txt, which means they are forever.

Low server overhead.

Bookmark: PmWiki | PmWiki / PmWiki

This is an interesting script. I have not installed it or tried it, just browsed through the instructions.

Things that caught my eye:

There is no mention of mySQL or any database needed.  I like that.  Flat files can be good.  All you seem to need is PHP.

You can install this on your home computer if you want a truly private wiki.  Or you can install on web server.

Has a plugin type system so you can extend it.

If you add the calendar plugin you get one page per day.  You could do a diary or daily journal with that.

Seems to be a very high powered wiki.

Bookmark: WikidPad - wiki notebook for Windows/Linux/Mac OS

This installed just fine on Win 10.  The instructions for Linux and Mac look more complicated.  I have to say this is pretty damn cool.  I would call this more of a wiki notebook, “pad” sounds too small.  You can make some extensive, many pages of, notes on this just like a notebook.  With the WikiWord linking this could be a great project notebook.

I also think this could make an interesting personal journal.

Free. I could see this as a way to learn the gist of wiki usage prior to installing one on a web account.

The negative is no cloud storage, no sync between computers.

Findx - a privacy-by-default search engine. No logging. No tracking. Transparent algorithms. Hosted in Europe. Users like you help shape the results.

Currently in beta.  I literally found out about this 15 minutes ago so I have not had time to really look it over.  Based in Denmark, Findex is an open source fork of Gigablast.  Hopefully they will improve on Gigablast’s algo.  Good news on the decentralized search front!

A mini-celebration of the cult film has some funny and brilliant sentences about Clint Eastwood and his fellow heroes destined for a Nazi castle in the Alps

This sounds like a fun read about one of my all time favorite World War II movies.

FYI: I have a favorite World War II movie list, in case you are interested.

Like: Andrew Keen: How to fix the future | NEXT Conference

This is quite good.  I cannot really disagree with anything Keen says.  He speaks about regulation, but I think it is going to take both regulation and breaking up the Internet monopolies together to get the job done. IMHO.

Source: Adam Tinworth.

Like: Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the

TBL is fighting back against the silos. w00t!  Good article. This is pretty neat.

Bookmark: Home | Solid

(From the Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Inrupt.)

Solid empowers users and organizations to separate their data from the applications that use it. It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time. It opens brand new avenues for creativity, problem-solving, and commerce.

This was also posted to /en/indieweb.

Bookmark: Inrupt

It’s time to reset the balance of power on the web and reignite its true potential.

When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web, it was intended for everyone. The excitement and creativity of its early days were driven from the notion that we can all participate - and the impact was world-changing.

But the web has shifted from its original promise - and it’s time to make a change.

Article by Fast Company:

This week, Berners-Lee will launch, Inrupt, a startup that he has been building, in stealth mode, for the past nine months. Backed by Glasswing Ventures, its mission is to turbocharge a broader movement afoot, among developers around the world, to decentralize the web and take back power from the forces that have profited from centralizing it. In other words, it’s game on for Facebook, Google, Amazon.

Bookmark: the federation - a statistics hub

The Federation refers to a global social network composed of nodes that talk to each other. Each of them is an installation of software which supports one of the federated social web protocols.

Mastodon seems to be the most mature script offering.  The others are in various states of development and adoption as social platforms.  What is interesting are the scripts that are moving beyond being mere copies of either Facebook or Twitter and adding their own features.

Like: bellingcat - the home of online investigations

These are the folks that identified one of the suspects in the attempted Skripal assassinations as a senior GRU officer.

Bellingcat uses open source and social media investigation to investigate a variety of subjects, from Mexican drug lords to conflicts being fought across the world. Bellingcat brings together contributors who specialise in open source and social media investigation, and creates guides and case studies so others may learn to do the same.

Vivaldi 2.0 is out!  This is a major update and I like it.  You can see all the details at the link below.

For me the big added feature is encrypted sync.  This means my Vivaldi browsing history, bookmarks, setup, logins, can be shared with Vivaldi on my other computers.  I really like that.

It also opens the way for Vivaldi to release an Android version of the browser, so you can share all that stuff from your desktop.  I use Firefox on Android right now but I’d really prefer to use Vivaldi, so I’m hoping this means an Android version is to be released soon.

Adventure in Upgrading:

I did have an adventure in trying to upgrade to Vivaldi 2.0 on Win 10.  The installer kept failing.  I tried a lot of things like disabling my anti-virus to no avail.  Finally, I uninstalled my old version of Vivaldi - still failed.  Now I’m really worried because I am stuck totally without my go to browser.  I tried one last time and on the Windows installation wizard I clicked on Advanced.  This lead me to a dropdown set for “Install for One User”  I clicked on that and changed it to “Install for all users” which changes the file path as to where Vivaldi is installed.  Success!  Vivaldi 2.0 installed, all my settings are there.  Very happy.

I’m not sure what was causing the problem, but this is Windows and Windows gets weird.  Similar things used to happen back in the old Opera days too so no big deal.

via Vivaldi 2.0 – Your browser matters | Vivaldi Browser

“Out of ammunition. God Save the King.”

Last radio message heard, Arnhem Bridge, 20 September 1944, just before British Forces were over run.

Yesterday, I bought a new Essential Phone from Amazon for US $335.  I guess it boils down to two things:

1. I couldn’t pass up that price for a phone with more horsepower and a bigger screen than my Nokia 6.1.
2. More important, Essential Phone is one of the compatible platforms listed by the /e/ Foundation’s new OS.  I have no intention of playing around with beta’s, but having an Essential phone means I’m ready once /e/ gets released in a stable 1.0 version.  That is important to me and should give me a year head start, in 2019, before /e/ comes out with a phone from an OEM with /e/ pre installed, in 2020.