Manton Reece
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  • I tweaked the margins and layout of my book 30 Days, submitting another print order. If it looks good when it arrives, next step is to get the final draft of Indie Microblogging ready for printing.

    → 10:21 AM, Jul 6
  • First time at Cosmic Coffee, in south Austin after selling a car at Carvana. Great outdoor space. ☕️

    → 9:25 AM, Jul 6
  • Finished reading: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd 📚

    → 11:55 PM, Jul 5
  • This week’s Micro Monday features @cliffordbeshers! He talks with @jean about posting photos to Micro.blog and more.

    → 8:25 AM, Jul 5
  • Importing check-ins from Ohai

    I’ve used a few apps over the years for location check-ins. Gowalla, Foursquare, and Ohai, which was built on the App.net API. The Gowalla data was lost after they were acquired by Facebook. I’ve continued to use Foursquare and have imported many of those check-ins to my location site manton.coffee.

    I have about a year of data from Ohai, from around 2013-2014. Before App.net shut down, I exported the data. I wanted to dust it off and import it into Micro.blog.

    The data is stored in the App.net “messages” JSON. In some cases, there is annotation data that includes the location information such as place name for the check-in and latitude/longitude.

    Here’s an example of one of the check-ins, cleaned up slightly to remove fields I don’t care about:

    {
      "annotations": [
        {
          "type": "net.app.ohai.location",
          "value": {
            "address": "11521 N Fm 620",
            "country_code": "us",
            "latitude": 30.45419,
            "locality": "Austin",
            "longitude": -97.8271,
            "name": "Starbucks",
            "postcode": "78726",
            "region": "TX"
          }
        }
      ],
      "created_at": "2013-11-11T14:44:25Z",
      "id": "1922259",
      "source": {
        "client_id": "nymmngm43jnYP2FQ4pCvXjBpT3YyfNDa",
        "link": "http://ohaiapp.net/",
        "name": "Ohai"
      },
      "text": "Working after tacos. Hoping to get some coding done with an early start to the week."
    }
    

    I had originally used Ohai as a sort of private check-in journal, not intending it to be public in the way that Foursquare check-ins often are. But I’ve found that after nearly 10 years, semi-private data like this can usually be public without the same kind of privacy considerations that I would have worried about at the time it was first written.

    So how do we get this data into Micro.blog? Micro.blog can import from a bunch of platforms, but it doesn’t make sense to add support for this file format directly to Micro.blog. It’s not something that most people would need. I wrote a custom script to handle this for my check-ins blog.

    In the script, we’ll iterate over each message and look for the ones posted from Ohai, ignoring everything else. For some reason — maybe because I was offline or because of limitations in the App.net places database — not all of my messages included location information, but I still want to record the post and date because it included text I wrote about the check-in. If there is location information, we’ll pass that to Micro.blog too.

    Here’s the script. If you want to customize it for your own use, make sure to set the app token and blog URL.

    Micro.blog uses the Micropub API for creating posts. When there’s location information, we’ll pass a checkin field to store that with Micro.blog. We can then access that data from a Micro.blog theme, for example to show a map. See my book chapter on Micropub for details on the JSON format.

    I had a lot of fun going through this old data and migrating it to Micro.blog so that it can be preserved. Eventually I want to have a Micro.blog-based client solution for new check-ins, starting with Sunlit for iOS, so that I don’t need to keep depending on Foursquare.

    → 7:53 AM, Jul 5
  • Helping @cheesemaker test early game builds on Playdate. First crash. So fun to see games come to life on this little device.

    → 10:34 AM, Jul 3
  • Quiet morning at the start of the July 4th weekend. Took some of the downtime to wrap up an update to Micro.blog for macOS, with improved Day One export (thanks @otaviocc!) and a minor bug fix.

    → 10:59 AM, Jul 2
  • I wonder if the way Apple forces developers to agree to updated terms of service is actually legal. Agree to terms, ship app. Then later, we can’t even update our existing apps outside of the App Store (using Gatekeeper) until agreeing to the latest terms. Apps held hostage.

    → 10:41 AM, Jul 2
  • Did not finish: Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. I’ve been reading some older fantasy books that I had missed. I’m 3/4 of the way through this and keep hoping it starts to work for me, but now giving up. 📚

    → 10:06 AM, Jul 2
  • Finished reading: Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. It had been years since I read any books by Kay. I had almost forgotten how beautiful his writing is. 📚

    → 5:59 PM, Jul 1
  • I extracted the design I use on manton.org into a new Micro.blog theme called Alpine. It’s like Marfa, but with a smaller header and settings for changing the color of the “Also on Micro.blog” button.

    → 2:15 PM, Jul 1
  • “I am very aware that the original concept must do something worthwhile creatively or all the hard work to follow will be wasted.” — Mary Blair

    → 10:05 AM, Jul 1
  • After I made the Font Awesome plug-in, I recorded a video about using it, including how Micro.blog themes work. There was a caching bug in the video, so wanted to re-record it after fixing it… But I don’t have time, so posting the video anyway! Enjoy, it’s on YouTube here.

    → 1:28 PM, Jun 30
  • Mission: Impossible 1-6

    Last week we re-watched all the Mission: Impossible movies. 4, 5, 6, then 1, 2, 3. I think 4 is my favorite, but I can’t tell if my opinion is being influenced because I’m a Brad Bird fan.

    Mission: Impossible 1 holds up. 2 is just a little over-the-top with the slow motion action scenes and doves, almost like a parody. 3 has the best villain, but is dark. 5 and 6 are really solid.

    The most fun is knowing which stunts Tom Cruise actually performed. That guy is crazy.

    Rewatching the full series so far, I also feel like there’s something important missing in between 3 and 4. Would’ve liked to see a 3.5 movie in there that covers Ethan Hunt’s marriage and its unraveling.

    → 10:12 AM, Jun 30
  • Spurs trade Dejounte to the Hawks. Starting to wonder if they know what they’re doing. At some point we need a stable roster to root for. 🏀

    → 4:43 PM, Jun 29
  • Upgraded a server this morning, hoping to get to the bottom of some flakiness. The load balancer does a great job of smoothing these things over so they aren’t noticed, but would rather everything run smoothly without intervention.

    → 11:04 AM, Jun 29
  • This hearing with Cassidy Hutchinson is extraordinary. Someone very close to Mark Meadows and the former president who is telling us what happened behind the scenes. 🇺🇸

    → 12:43 PM, Jun 28
  • I made a Micro.blog plug-in that loads Font Awesome in your blog, so it’s easier to add icons to blog posts or to use them in theme templates.

    → 10:58 AM, Jun 28
  • There’s another new episode of Micro Monday, this week featuring @annahavron! She talks with @jean about analog office tools, writing, and Micro.blog.

    → 12:15 PM, Jun 27
  • Had some fun with Micro.blog themes and created a new one for those “link in bio”-style sites. It has a custom home page with links to other platforms, but because it’s Micro.blog it can still have a full blog underneath. It’s called Gateway. Demo here: links.manton.org

    → 9:20 AM, Jun 27
  • Brenham courthouse from yesterday’s short road trip. Built in 1939. Would be fun to visit all 254 county courthouses in Texas.

    → 10:02 AM, Jun 26
  • Interesting case about eminent domain for a high-speed train between Dallas and Houston. I don’t get why people fight these rail projects. The cows will be fine and the costs aren’t going to matter decades from now.

    → 8:53 AM, Jun 26
  • Published episode 519 of @coreint. We talk more about MarsEdit moving to the new web view, balancing native and web development, and a discussion in the WordPress community about open source obligations.

    → 9:54 PM, Jun 25
  • Crossing the Brazos River where San Felipe de Austin was located in the 1820s, part of Stephen F. Austin’s colony.

    → 3:22 PM, Jun 25
  • Micro.blog plug-ins can have a settings screen to change config parameters. I’ve added a new field type “color” that I’m hoping will be useful to customize the design of more themes. Modern web browsers provide a color picker for these. (Example config for this screenshot.)

    Color config screenshot
    → 4:45 PM, Jun 24
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