Mandaris

Good morning, it is October 28th, 2024.

It is another wonderful Monday.

So once again, just trying to get the podcast up and going again.

So last week I did just a real quick thing about, hey, why don’t I just start doing something.

And one of the things about starting something is the first step is hard and easy at the same time because it’s just your first step when you’re starting off a new hobby.

On one hand, it’s something new, but on the other hand, it’s something new.

So depending on how you approach that situation, it can be daunting but exciting at the same time.

So what we’re trying to, what I’m trying to do is the second step of making it more consistent.

So here we are, it’s Monday, I’ve had a very, very busy weekend, but I don’t know what I want to talk about for today.

But there are some things that do bubble up in my mind.

First and foremost, I just finished a new upgrade to a plugin that I’m working on called Stoot, which is a static, well, it is sort of a static embed of a Mastodon post.

So what would happen is if you were a user of micro.blog, which uses Hugo, you can tell it, hey, I want this new short code or new plugin, and the plugin installs a short code that allows you to pick out a Mastodon post and well, actually, you have to have a Mastodon post in mind when you take the server instance and the ID for that post, and then it puts it on your website and it’s supposed to make it look nice.

One of the things about it is like I found this code from someone else, and it’s very nice code, but it’s kind of, I didn’t understand how all of it worked.

Thankfully, it’s really easy, it’s much easier to understand once you like do a diagram of it and step through it.

So the problem is that if you have a URL in your Mastodon post, Mastodon will find the URL and it will try to make it look nice on Mastodon.

And this looks great on Mastodon, but what happens is since I’m taking that Mastodon information and putting it into my micro.blog instance, it can look kind of funky.

And I didn’t include all the styling that might be involved with having this embed.

So what would happen is someone else would see it and they’re like, I don’t understand how this works, or they, it would look kind of weird, especially if you had a post that had an image and a URL to that image, so it would show up twice.

So I made some changes so that it would not do that if you give it the specifications.

And I pushed that up this morning and I wrote a blog post that’s supposed to be scheduled to go out at 9 a.m., which leads me to my second point.

I have a newsletter that goes out and it has one person subscribed and that one person is me.

And it’s basically me checking like, okay, well, did all of the posts come in and what do they look like for as far as the newsletter is concerned?

I’ve been kind of spot-checking my reading.

I’m a little narcissistic when I do look at my website quite a bit and I check it out and I’m like, okay, well, does it look good on my phone?

As a writer of the internet, you want to be your first editor.

Well, I don’t think you want to be your first editor, but you definitely want to be your first reader.

You don’t want to, you know, put something out there and like you don’t like to read.

So it’s part of the process, if you will.

Anyway, the only things I have on the docket thus far is continuing to do more posts like this.

And I have an idea to create a plugin that contains all of the different, can I cut this space out here, cuts out all of the, not cut out, but includes all of the different shortcodes that are included with different themes.

I feel that as someone who switches around a lot to not check out the competition, but quote check out the competition to see what other things are happening with the micro.blog themes, it’s difficult sometimes because my writing itself, I use shortcodes, which to sum up what a shortcode is, it is a pattern that you put in your markdown files or in your post.

And what will happen is the theme that you’re using will take that post or that pattern and it will expand it to be further HTML elements.

And different themes have different shortcodes, which can in essence lock you into a certain kind of theme.

So for example, in the theme that I was creating called Lab Room, I have multiple shortcodes related to, one is related to the table of contents and another is labeled for the RSVP.

So if I wanted to say, oh, I’m going to some place to do yada, yada, yada.

And if you go to another theme, for example, Sumo or tongue tight, if you go to Sumo or cards, they don’t have that shortcode.

So what will happen is those posts won’t render and you’re like, oh, well, why is my page not working?

So my hope is that if I just include the basics of the different shortcodes, so what I would do is it’s just the shortcode and not the, not, not the, not the, I’m trying to think of it, the shortcode and not the CSS, it should work.

And what will happen is the end user will be like, oh, hey, this isn’t working properly or, well, it should work, but it’s just not rendering the way that you want.

A lot of these shortcodes are just expansions and I don’t think they change a lot of the core functionality, but it would be nice to have.

And we all want our stuff to look nice, but we also want it to work first.

So form following function.

So that’s what I have on the docket for this week.

Anyway, if you want to do anything, you want to talk to me about, hey, what, what, what do you want to, what you would like to hear in this particular Micro Monday, feel free to contact me at all of my information on the site or wherever you got this podcast from and you have a great day.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.