Sci-Fi book recommendations

A few weeks ago, I posted the following message on the Fediverse:

I’m looking for book recommendations.

I am interested in Sci-Fi, with great world building. Possibly a series, something I could enjoy for a few books.

To give you some examples, I really enjoyed The Expanse, and The Dresden Files for example. I like the universe built by William Gibson (e.g Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Peripheral), but I find him very hard to read in English.

https://fedi.jeremy.hu/@jeremy/statuses/01GXKX3PGWEFTMKS2ZNDNB8KMB

I didn’t expect many replies. Boy was I wrong! I woke up the next day to close to 40 replies, with multiple recommendations!

I now have enough reading material to last me for the rest of the year, and more! As a thank you to every one of you who commented, here is the full list of the recommendations I received.

(more…) “Sci-Fi book recommendations”

On Repeat Today: Believe In Yourself, Marc Rebillet

More electro, funk, and hip-hop for me today with Marc Rebillet. Enjoy!

Here is the full set, for when you’re done with this track and want more :)

My WordPress story

WordPress is turning 20 this week. WordPress is such a big part of my life, I must join in and celebrate.

(more…) “My WordPress story”

Nostr: Verify your name on your WordPress site

There is a lot of talk about decentralized networks these days. Twitter’s ongoing implosion probably contributes a lot to that.

I’ve talked about the Fediverse on this blog in the past few months, and like many others, I created a Bluesky account to give the AT protocol a try.

I wanted to give Nostr a try as well, and signed up for an account. I still have a lot of reading to do on the topic. I am not sure I’m fully onboard with “another decentralized protocol” (yes, another standard), especially one that seems to tie in closely with cryptocurrencies, but I wanted to take a closer look at it anyway to make up my own mind.

One of the first things I wanted to do was to verify my account. I am @[email protected] and @[email protected] on the Fediverse, I am @jeremy.hu on Bluesky, it made sense for me to be [email protected] on Nostr.

The verification process is detailed on this page. While ActivityPub (and thus everyone on the Fediverse) relies on Webfinger, Nostr decided to go with its own NIP-05. When I saw that, my first reaction was to wonder why they didn’t go with something that already existed, but again…

xkcd: Standards

I consequently created a WordPress plugin (also available in the WordPress.org plugin directory) to add the necessary .well-known entry point to my own site:

https://jeremy.hu/.well-known/nostr.json

Feel free to use the plugin if you need it too!

Props to @pfefferle for his work on the Webfinger plugin. It sped things up a lot to look at how Webfinger did things to create my own .well-known response. :)

WordPress: how to add a default title to your posts

This came up on the Fediverse: @[email protected] wanted to automatically add titles to the posts on his microblog.

This automation would have to be compatible with all the editors, including the mobile app.

(more…) “WordPress: how to add a default title to your posts”

GitHub GraphQL API: search for more than 1,000 Pull Requests

GitHub’s API is really handy when you want to get stats about one of your repositories. Its GraphQL API in particular is really powerful. I’ve shown how it could be used to fetch project information in my GitHub Actions tutorial.

While working on another project, I ran into a limitation that had me scratch my head for quite a bit. I wanted to share my workaround for anyone who may run into this problem in the future.

(more…) “GitHub GraphQL API: search for more than 1,000 Pull Requests”

On Repeat Today: Nova, Burial & Four Tet

Another British DJ today. If you like Bonobo, or Massive Attack to some extent, you’re going to love Burial!

Goldorak, 2021

Grendizer may not have been a worldwide phenomenon, but it was super popular in France when I was a kid. I watched a lot of the episodes, and I have fond memories of it. So when I saw this Goldorak graphic novel in my local library, I had to check it out!

It didn’t disappoint! The artwork is beautiful, the colors are perfect. The plot is very much in line with the original TV show; it’s a sequel of the show, with the same characters, and of course Actarus and the team.

Check it out if you get the chance!

The case for native handling of Fediverse actions

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new feature we added to the Jetpack plugin: a “Share to Mastodon” button.

Nice, right? Mastodon is getting more and more popular, and it makes sense to let your readers easily share your content with their community of friends, wherever that community may live.

Here is the thing though: Mastodon is just one service among many, a software used to host a decentralized social network. That network, also known as the Fediverse, isn’t just a group of Mastodon servers: it’s a federated network of hundreds of servers. Each one of those servers may pick their own software, among the dozens of solutions currently available to interact with the federated network.

That diversity is a very important concept for the overall idea of a Fediverse. It allows for a wide variety of communities to thrive. Different software can cater to different interests, integrating features needed by each community. If video is your media of choice, a video platform can be born. If your community wants to communicate by sharing pictures, a new Instagram can rise. If you prefer to be part of a smaller community, software with adapted moderation tools can be built.

Ideally, I would have wanted to develop a “Share to the Fediverse” button and not a “Share to Mastodon” button; that would have been useful to more people.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on what you’re looking for), each Fediverse service is different, and each one comes with a different feature set.

Some, like Mastodon, include a fully-fledged web interface. This is why it is possible to implement a “Share to Mastodon” button. Its interface includes a /share route that allows you to pre-fill a message input from.

Others, like GoToSocial (that’s the service I personally use) are mostly headless services; the only way to compose your toots is to use a third-party client like Tusky, elk.zone, or Semaphore.

That stops us from easily implementing a “Share to Fediverse” button, since there is no single common way to post something to the Fediverse.

What if such an option existed?

Read more “The case for native handling of Fediverse actions”

On Repeat Today: Smoke Miash, Timewarp inc

Here is a nice 8 minutes of downtempo for your Friday afternoon. Enjoy!