I started working on my theme for Micro.blog in the hopes that it was accessible and could be parsed using schema and microformats. It was spurred by the feeling that I wanted my posts to be shared to as many people as possible. I’m not saying that I’m a literary genius or have something deep or profound to say, but I do have some really cool pictures of my dog as well.

Now years have gone by and I’ve refined and enhanced what I made initially. Post can show previews in bluesky, mastodon, and discord without me constantly worrying about formats. This technical project has been completed (for the most part).

And now, I’m faced with another technical itch.

Corporations are now crawling the World Wide Web in order to get data that they could use to train LLMs. That’s not to say they value the writings of a 40+ year old man from California whose average post size is around 45 words per post more than the thousands of artists and writers available, but having perfectly structured data¹ would be nice. In the grand scheme of things, I’m not significant and not singular as far as data points go. I regularly see people who walk, talk, and dress like. I listen to at least two podcasts that not only have the same views that I have but talk in similar vocal range and cadence².

But what should I do?

I’ve seen articles about editing the robots.txt file that your website serves up to tell the various bots not to use the site for data. This feels like a whack-a-mole solution, and I came across a message that it only stops the companies that have standards. At this point in development, there feels to be a “better to ask for forgiveness, than permission” strategy in place for these corporations to pursue the collection of data. Unless you are rich and/or famous, the information is taken with a middle finger pointed at the EULA.

The summaries of my articles are already distributed/federated to services that I have no control over. This was understood when I set the different systems up and I’m still ok with that to a degree.

But, seriously, what am I going to do?

At the moment, I’m not including any changes to robots.txt, I feel that some of my writing might be important enough to include in the data set for our new robot overlords protectors.

I talk about mental health.

I talk about media.

I talk about inconsequential items and sometimes important things.

And, yes, I do post about my dog as well.

All in the hope that -maybe- someone out there gets it.

I took fLaMEd’s idea of adding my XMPP handle to my about page. It’s part of the omg.log service that I signed up for a while ago.

I’ve got two people that I chat with using it. It reminds me of when I was in high school and instant messaging was the thing to do in my social group. It makes me feel a little nostalgic.

Well, we’re at the end of the month and I did not meet my goal of having a post every day about mental health as I had set out to do. If anything, I probably posted less this month than at other times this year.

Apparently, I need to take the break from posting.

Still, there were a lot of great posts that came from this and would like to thank everyone who wrote or read a blog to think about joining communities like indieweb.org or adding themselves to Blog of the Day.

Blog of the Day is a small project created and maintained by James and Joe. I’ve been seeing them in various IndieWeb meet ups and they seem like pretty cool folks.

What did I get out of this?

My favorite part of this whole experience was seeing posts from other people. The small ones, the long posts. Things that were sitting in a drafts folder and even the posts with a simple “I’m only writing this to continue the streak”. I didn’t read everything but it was cool to see what options were available.

For my own writing, I come away with a feeling a little more confidence about posting links from other sites. People like HeyScottyJ and Leon, pushed me to get over the barrier of feeling like an imposter and that the value of me taking the time to find the links and adding my two cents is important as well. I’m not taking credit, I’m pointing the way.

Will I do it next year?

Yes.

Part of my posts were highlighting the importance of mental health and I do enjoy publishing things on my blog.

I feel that next year, I’ll include the entire blog instead of just a category and I might draft a couple posts in advance so that I can stagger the publication.

I am pretty excited by the upcoming mini conference for Micro.blog and the IndieWeb.

Jean has posted the schedule for this year and we even have a guest speaker!

Here is the schedule for Friday, May 17. (All times are Pacific.) Details on the chat channel and door prizes to come! Follow [@camp](https://micro.blog/camp) for updates. 🏕️

• 11:45 Welcome to Micro Camp and overview of the schedule
• 12:00 Conversation about blogging and social media with Christina Warren (find her on Mastodon and Bluesky)
• 1:30 State of the Micro.blog with Manton, Jean, and Vincent; Q&A
• 3:00 Community happy hour on Zoom and announcement of door prize winners

Unfortunately, I might not be able to attend this year as I’m supposed to be in the office and it lands on the end of a sprint.

I’ve recently read this article by Leon Mika on his MicroBlog. It goes a little bit into the details of where he wants his writing to go. I’ve met people through the Micro.blog and it is notable when I see them post about other blog services that they are trying out.

I’ve been ask why I’m using Scribbles given that I’m here on Micro.blog. Honestly I wish I could say I’ve got a great answer.

Leon starts his piece with honesty and follows it with thoughtful reasons.

I’ve also wondered why others are exploring the multiple solutions to building and maintaining a blog. After having years where there were only a couple of solutions, I don’t fault anyone for wanting to explore and see different options.

Having different blogs to express different aspects of your personality and interest does make sense. And, Leon makes it clear that he’s prioritizing his most important reader, himself. On this point, I really applaud him.

I’m planning on going to Front End Study Hall on April 24, 2024 Noon PST.

The description of the meet up is as follows:

If you're a maven of markup or stylesheet superstar, or a newbie novice with nth-of-type, all are welcome to learn together at Front End Study Hall

The foundation of a flexible, good IndieWeb website is markup (the “M” in HTML!") that doesn’t drive you batty to debug and CSS that works with it to have it look, sound, and interact how you want, whatever device or format the website is displayed on.

Discovered via gRegor Morrill¹.

James has been doing a lot of cool things on his blog. I feel that you should really check him out and everyone else in the IndieWeb WebRing.

I love diagrams and my heart almost jumped out of my chest as he wrote about combining two of my loves: Coffee and Diagrams.

I thought what better way to learn more about using Mermaid than to make a chart that shows how I decide what coffee to drink!

I haven’t really used Mermaid since I included the renderhooks it for the theme that I use for my blog. So, I was excited to have an opportunity to use it.

flowchart TD
    accTitle: How do I brew my coffee
    accDescr: This is a process on how I determine what kind of coffe to drink
    A{Am I brewing coffee at home, or am I on the go?}
    A --> B[Home]
    A --> C[On the Go]
    B --> D[Black]
    C --> E{Am I going to Starbucks}
    E -->|No| D[Black]
    E -->|Yes| G[Water]

How do you make your coffee?