Dan Q

Year: 2018

JS Oxford Indieweb presentation – Polytechnic

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JS Oxford Indieweb presentation by Garrett Coakley (polytechnic.co.uk)

Last night I attended the always excellent JS Oxford, and as well as having my mind expanded by both Jo and Ruth’s talks (Lemmings make an excellent analogy for multi-threading, who knew!), I gave a brief talk on the Indieweb movement.
If you’ve not heard of Indieweb movement before, it’s a pu…

Last night I attended the always excellent JS Oxford, and as well as having my mind expanded by both Jo and Ruth’s talks (Lemmings make an excellent analogy for multi-threading, who knew!), I gave a brief talk on the Indieweb movement.

If you’ve not heard of Indieweb movement before, it’s a push to encourage people to claim their own bit of the web, for their identity and content, free from corporate platforms. It’s not about abandoning those platforms, but ensuring that you have control of your content if something goes wrong.

From the Indieweb site:

Your content is yours

When you post something on the web, it should belong to you, not a corporation. Too many companies have gone out of business and lost all of their users’ data. By joining the IndieWeb, your content stays yours and in your control.

You are better connected

Your articles and status messages can go to all services, not just one, allowing you to engage with everyone. Even replies and likes on other services can come back to your site so they’re all in one place.

I’ve been interested in the Indieweb for a while, after attending IndieWebCamp Brighton in 2016, and I’ve been slowly implementing Indieweb features on here ever since.

So far I’ve added rel="me" attributes to allow distributed verification, and to enable Indieauth support, h-card to establish identity, and h-entry for information discovery. Behind the scenes I’m looking at webmentions (Thanks to Perch’s first class support), and there’s the ever-eternal photo management thing I keep picking up and then running away from.

The great thing about the Indieweb is that you can implement as much or as little as you want, and it always gives you something to work on. It doesn’t matter where you start. The act of getting your own domain is the first step on a longer journey.

To that end I’m interested in organising an IndieWebCamp Oxford this year. If this sounds like something that interests you, then come find me in the Digital Oxford Slack, or on Twitter.

I’m so excited to see that there are others in Oxford who care about IndieWeb things! I’ve honestly fantasised myself about running an IndieWebCamp or Homebrew Website Club here, but let’s face it: that fantasy is more one of a world in which I had the free time for such a venture. So imagine my delight when somebody else offers to do the hard work!

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Rab the Giant versus the Witch of the Waterfall

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Rab the Giant versus the Witch of the Waterfall (firesidefiction.com)

Once upon a time there was a giant called Rab who lived in Glasgow and almost no one came to his door to kill him anymore. He had lived there since the time before legend, long before there even was a Glasgow, when giants and witches and kings and fairies and goblins fought, loved, and tricked their way across the land. It was a time when you had to live on your wits and you could only survive by being clever enough to escape from the traps and tricks that you‘ll have heard about in other fairy stories. It was a time of hotheads and feuds but luckily for him Rab was a more thoughtful person who managed to survive, more by avoiding than outwitting or fighting. So it was that he kept living in Glasgow right up to the present day.

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Beautiful, fabulous modern-day fairytale.

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Dan Q found GLW6CMKQ 16th Century Pub (Central London)

This checkin to GLW6CMKQ 16th Century Pub (Central London) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A lovely little place. Reminds me of a similarly-old (and well-hidden) pub in Oxford. Bit early in the morning for me to stop for a drink, but enjoyed the visit anyway. Answers to follow.

Dan, outside a pub, holding a GPS receiver.

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Dan Q found GLW6CHW0 It’s Not Easy Being a Purple Whatever

This checkin to GLW6CHW0 It's Not Easy Being a Purple Whatever reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Maximum stealth mode required for this one! An easy find, but a hard retrieval and an especially challenging return! (Just about within my reach; if Red is of the same design then I’m afraid I think it’s missing.)

Love the customised log scroll. Oh, and Gonzo is clearly a Gonzo.

Dan Q found GLW69ZCE SFGE#1-UCL

This checkin to GLW69ZCE SFGE#1-UCL reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The hard part wasn’t finding the cache this evening but getting to it in a stealthy way! I sat on a kerb nearby for some time and retrieved and returned the cache during periods during which the nearby security guard was distracted with passing revellers. Phew! TFTC.

Tim Ferriss is wrong — no, maybe he’s right!

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Tim Ferriss is wrong — no, maybe he’s right! (changingminds.org)

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There is an American principle that success is more about what you are making than what you are worth, and even less about being able to stop working. This is a brilliant cultural driver for a strong economy as it celebrates working billionaires. In Britain, the dream is more about making money then cashing in and going to sit on a beach somewhere. Maybe there is also a third way where, when you no longer worry about where the next meal is coming from or you family is reasonably secure, you then turn down the money-making drive to ‘maintenance’ mode, ease off on stress, and put your energies into what you like rather than what you must.

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Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Dan Q performed maintenance for GCD6A6 The Trout Trek

This checkin to GCD6A6 The Trout Trek reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Cache container replaced with a new, hardier one. Salvageable cache contents transferred over (safety specs, golf tee, eraser, mini tambourine). Added new logbook (including laminated copy of names and dates of every finder so far in the cache’s 15½-year history), pencils, and silica gel (to try to help keep the damp out). Added new tradables including rhino toy, “magic eye” playing cards, unactivated travel bug, ready-to-hide “bison tube”-style geocache, toy shed, metal puzzle.

I’ll be updating the cache description later today to bring it in line with features now available on this site that weren’t even the cache was first hidden (e.g waypoints) and to acknowledge the original CO.

Also: did since litter picking around the GZ including removing the latern battery spotted recently by another cacher.

This 15½ year-old cache is back in health!

Dan Q found GLW5EFV2 Thames Path – Gatehampton Trail 3

This checkin to GLW5EFV2 Thames Path - Gatehampton Trail 3 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Attending a birthday party in a garden not 250m from this cache, I couldn’t help but excuse myself for five minutes in order to come out and log this cache. Nice hiding place! TFTC.