Manton.org: Last Week


With the writers strike ending, wonder how soon we can expect a return of SNL. No need to film anything in advance and I'm imagining all these comedians have a backlog of ideas.

2023-09-25


Skimming through more of this interview with me that was posted yesterday, really happy with how it turned out! Except the part in the middle where I forget @vincent's name and you can see my brain turn to mush in realtime. We're just human here at Micro.blog HQ. 🙂

2023-09-25


When we first added ActivityPub support to Micro.blog years ago, I used the phrase "Mastodon-compatible" because I was worried that "ActivityPub" would be confusing for normal people. It now seems time to adopt "fediverse" as a term throughout our UI instead. Curious how Threads will handle this.

2023-09-25


For day 26 of the photo challenge: beverage. My go-to coffee when at home, cold brew with oat milk. Getting started for the day with Micro.blog timeline catch-up and code pull requests. ☕️

2023-09-26


Impressed with Olivia Rodrigo's album GUTS. Good stuff. 🎶

2023-09-26


Looking forward to macOS Sonoma, but decided to hold off with the install until next week, after we've shipped Micro.blog 3.2.1 for iOS. Don't want to risk any last-minute Xcode build problems.

2023-09-26


Why am I watching another Republican debate? It’s chaotic, awkward… Just kind of a mess. Maybe this should be like the State of the Union format so Biden gets a few minutes to respond at the end. 🇺🇸

2023-09-27


Our sleepy dog kept me company today during podcast recording. Lots of dog snoring, which may or may not be picked up on the microphone. Preferable to the usual barking, though. A quiet day with no package deliveries.

2023-09-28


A couple interesting bits in the letter about Epic Games layoffs: six months of severance pay, and Project Liberty continues:

We've been taking steps to reduce our legal expenses, but are continuing the fight against Apple and Google distribution monopolies and taxes, so the metaverse can thrive and bring opportunity to Epic and all other developers.

It has now been two years since Fortnite was banned from the App Store. The legal fight didn't pan out, but I still believe side-loading is inevitable. Maybe next year when the EU's Digital Markets Act goes into affect.

2023-09-28


Micro.blog 3.2.1 for iOS

We've updated Micro.blog for iOS to version 3.2.1 with some additional improvements. One change you'll notice right away is that the formatting toolbar now has more traditional "b" for bold / "i" for italic buttons. In previous versions I thought that showing the Markdown syntax on the button titles would help educate people on how Micro.blog worked, but it just created more confusion. I like the simpler buttons.

For Micro.blog Premium subscribers, you'll also see a new audio icon for attaching an MP3 (or any file) to a blog post.

Full release notes:

  • Updated new post toolbar to use b, i, and link icons.
  • Added audio attach icon to new post for Micro.blog Premium subscribers.
  • Added new notifications pane when receiving new mentions.
  • Added link to Indie Microblogging book and Markdown reference in help.
  • Fixed remembering last selected blog when using multiple blogs.
  • Fixed scrolling to allow more room for accessibility text on photos.
  • Improved some minor layout and styles in other parts of the app.

Enjoy!

2023-09-29


If anyone has doubts about Threads supporting ActivityPub, listen to Mark Zuckerberg on Decoder. Some of what Mark says is almost IndieWeb-esq at times! I still believe Facebook has done a lot of harm to society, but they are clearly hoping to be more open with Threads and that's a good thing.

2023-09-29


Losing my mind trying to get fetch or axios or superagent or anything in React Native to not follow redirects. About to give up and write my own Obj-C or Swift networking bridge.

2023-09-29


This is a cool look at old icons from Rogue Amoeba. Fission probably needs an update but overall it’s a really nice set. That bottle for Audio Hijack is still one of my favorites.

2023-09-30


Nice post by Remy Sharp about intercepting broken links and redirecting them to the Internet Archive. Reminds me of the Micro.blog Premium feature (see video on YouTube) where we archive a copy of any web page you link to. I’d love to do more with this.

2023-09-30


Manton Reece @manton