Monkinetic Weblog

4 years ago, as #Covid19 was just beginning to crest across the world, I started a new postiion as Senior Python Engineer at YouGov. I enjoyed my work immensely and got to help build some truly interesting things (more on that later 😁).

Sadly, Aug 01, 2024 was my last day at YouGov. I worked with the great people in the Research Platforms department for 4 years, helping to build and improve the systems that connect our amazing Panel to the research surveys that guide many organizations' product and political decision-making.

I worked with a great crew and especially want to say thank you to Allan Crooks and Clayton Butler, and the teams they led, for their leadership, and their inspiration adn guidance.

There are too many other folks to list, but I hope they know how much I enjoyed working together to do good things.

So now I'm looking for a new position focusing on #python #webservices #backendsystems, and/or #dataengineering. In addition to getting deep into technical solutions, I really enjoy working across teams to fully understand use cases, stakeholders' pain points, and help define solutions that have the best ROI possible.

Check out my resumé at https://monkinetic.blog/resume.

Fedi/Mastodon programmers... with the #MastodonAPI, and given a url to a post on any instance (assuming I have access to the toot from my account), how might I get my instance to fetch it and give me a "local" ID that is suitable for passing as the "inReplyToID" in a toot payload?

Wondering if I need to:

• perform a search (https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/search/)
• find the relevant status in the results
• use the ID for the status

Would that be the "local" ID?

#MastodonAPI #fediverse #programming #blogging #indieweb

Dammit I started a branch on Goldfrog to play with the #micropub api, and now that it's in pieces on the editor floor, I have 3 more features I want to add #indieweb #blogging

(One is adding the ability for a note or post here to be a reply to another post on Mastodon.)

TFW you're teetering on the edge between using the #microformats library to find h-cards and their properties and writing an entirely new wrapper to make finding #webmention comments "easy"

I might be hitting the wall on my Jekyll-inspired storage system for #goldfrog. GoldFrog uses Jekyll-style markdown posts as the "system of record", but read into SQLite for serving/searching content #webmention activity add a new type of data that I haven't figured out how to store yet.

Back to a nerd topic: implemented some of the #webmention server in my blog software this evening, and rearchitected the storage layer with an interface to make testing easier #golang

There a LOT of error cases when writing a #webmention server implementation #indieweb #goldfrog

Repaired some stuff in #goldfrog around #webmention handling on weird responses (hello amzn redirects)

I know I've done a good job integrating my social media posting into my site when I want to reply to my own posts #indieweb #posse

Obviously I need to add media uploading to my syndication code #indieweb #goldfrog

http://monkinetic.blog/2020/02/22/txt-fd6090d

I added an edit button for Notes on this site and it's like #twitter only awesome #indieweb

wanting to be able to post from my phone has me learning about css grid and flexbox, so there's that #css #webdevelopment

I've started messing around a bit with javascript-enhanced UIs for #goldfrog. Rather than use all of JQuery, I decided on a small subset of Jquery's functionality as implemented by Sprint.JS.

1. I only load the JS for me, since I'm logged in.
2. It's only used on the home page to power the new switchable post form, and
3. It powers a character-counter for the note UI.

Here's the new posting UI:

(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)

I'm trying to implement some basic progressive enhancement - the forms work as is without javascript, but the switcher and the counter are niceties for me, the author.

(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)

Evidence of the first Webmention GoldFrog has sent for a post on this site.

Horst just recently implemented Webmentions on his site, so I'm happy to be able to give him a link!

On sharing and owning your content https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/02/11/sharing-and-owning-content #indieweb #blogging

Jacky Alciné is an active member of the #indieweb and #activitypub communities, and a web developer working out of Oakland.

Imma make this clear: I'm not building software for developers.

I'm working to building tools for people.

You shouldn't have to know to maintain and secure a server to have your own independent identity online. You shouldn't need to know what libsodium or similar library to be secure online.

That's my objective.

https://playvicious.social/@jalcine/101366378320531511

I really like a good #codeascraft comparison. From DeployHQ, via Zeldman:

Woodworkers and web developers have this in common:

Visit a professional woodshop and ask a master carpenter what her favourite tool is. You may find it’s not a tool in the traditional sense, but a “jig” she built. In woodworking, jigs are patterns or templates built to make repeatable tasks more efficient and outcomes more consistent. Building a one-off bookcase may not warrant building a jig. But, if you’re building three or four of the same bookcase, it’s likely worth building a jig first, then using that jig to build the bookcases.

Our jig consists of a small command line application which integrates publicly accessible API’s from these service providers

Taking the time to make the tools to help do the work is the best thing to do, and knowing when to take that time is an important part of an engineer's maturing process (see #yakshaving, Code As Craft)

Yesterday I imported 7800+ tweets into Goldfrog, my blog/cms, as part of owning my own content. Tweets (or Notes) will be published on monkinetic.blog and be syndicated to Twitter. See my archive page (20 years worth), blue are posts and pink are notes

http://monkinetic.blog/archive

If you follow me on social media - Twitter or Mastodon - you may have seen lots of nonsense posts go by recently...

(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)

I've been working on improving my POSSE features here, which meant not only composing my posts and notes locally, and then publishing them to Twitter et al, but also being able to track where they "landed" (ids and links) and make it easy for users to find my content on the syndicated site.

So I dug back into my syndication code, rewrote it several times, learned some things about goroutines, learned how not to do some things with goroutines, and settled on a way that worked. With luck, this post and any other that is also published on Twitter or Mastodon will have links to those sites along with the post, and (at least for Twitter right now) have links to reply, favorite, or retweet the post.

As Dave used to be fond of saying:

Still digging!

Chris Aldrich wrote a blog post about manually adding Webmentions for links to his posts from sites that are not themselves Webmention-enabled.

This reminded me that I'd like to add a "I linked to you" feature for the post detail page in #goldfrog for this site. (Goldfrog does support Webmentions, so Chris should get an automatic link from this post :))