{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@pablo",
        "url": "https://social.lifeofpablo.com/@pablo",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.lifeofpablo.com/@pablo/110204697361898294",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I just posted a blog/letter  about having to step away from an important person in my life. </p><p><a href=\"https://lifeofpablo.com/blog/a-letter-bad-decision-that-lead-to-a-broken-heart\"><span>https://</span><span>lifeofpablo.com/blog/a-letter-</span><span>bad-decision-that-lead-to-a-broken-heart</span></a></p><p><a href=\"https://social.lifeofpablo.com/tags/heartbreak\">#<span>heartbreak</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lifeofpablo.com/tags/blog\">#<span>blog</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lifeofpablo.com/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lifeofpablo.com/tags/letter\">#<span>letter</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lifeofpablo.com/tags/sad\">#<span>sad</span></a> <a href=\"https://social.lifeofpablo.com/tags/decisions\">#<span>decisions</span></a></p>",
        "text": "I just posted a blog/letter  about having to step away from an important person in my life. https://lifeofpablo.com/blog/a-letter-bad-decision-that-lead-to-a-broken-heart#heartbreak #blog #indieweb #letter #sad #decisions"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-15T20:23:50+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36571980",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@jasono",
        "url": "https://hachyderm.io/@jasono",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://hachyderm.io/@jasono/110202968277185033",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I just posted my sourdough making process online: <a href=\"https://jasono.co/stuff/sourdough/\"><span>https://</span><span>jasono.co/stuff/sourdough/</span><span></span></a></p><p>After teaching 3 people now and trying to write it up each time I thought it was worth writing it down once and for all. Now I need to decide whether that's enough or whether to go full <a href=\"https://hachyderm.io/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> and make it pretty and add timers and videos and animations and generally over-invest in it</p>",
        "text": "I just posted my sourdough making process online: https://jasono.co/stuff/sourdough/After teaching 3 people now and trying to write it up each time I thought it was worth writing it down once and for all. Now I need to decide whether that's enough or whether to go full #indieweb and make it pretty and add timers and videos and animations and generally over-invest in it"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-15T13:04:07+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36564223",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@chrisburnell",
        "url": "https://fediverse.repc.co/@chrisburnell",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://fediverse.repc.co/@chrisburnell/110202853971595422",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Off the back of another *excellent* Eleventy Meetup yesterday, I thought I'd shamefully shout out a project of mine which uses eleventy-fetch to cache Webmentions:</p><p><a href=\"https://www.npmjs.com/package/@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentions\"><span>https://www.</span><span>npmjs.com/package/@chrisburnel</span><span>l/eleventy-cache-webmentions</span></a></p><p>And wrote a shorter guide to implementing it here:</p><p><a href=\"https://chrisburnell.com/article/webmention-eleventy-setup/\"><span>https://</span><span>chrisburnell.com/article/webme</span><span>ntion-eleventy-setup/</span></a></p><p>Always looking for feedback or improvements to explanations, language, code quality, performance, the whole lot.<br /><a href=\"https://fediverse.repc.co/tags/11ty\">#<span>11ty</span></a> <a href=\"https://fediverse.repc.co/tags/eleventy\">#<span>eleventy</span></a> <a href=\"https://fediverse.repc.co/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Off the back of another *excellent* Eleventy Meetup yesterday, I thought I'd shamefully shout out a project of mine which uses eleventy-fetch to cache Webmentions:https://www.npmjs.com/package/@chrisburnell/eleventy-cache-webmentionsAnd wrote a shorter guide to implementing it here:https://chrisburnell.com/article/webmention-eleventy-setup/Always looking for feedback or improvements to explanations, language, code quality, performance, the whole lot.\n#11ty #eleventy #indieweb"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-15T12:35:02+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36564224",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://axbom.me/objects/36e6a83f-2cf2-4bfd-92c6-216e7f5e1a59",
    "content": {
        "html": "Given all the controversy around Substack (again) I just want to promote the idea of self-hosting your own blog/newsletter using Ghost.<br /><br />This allows you to set up your newsletter very much in the same way as Substack, with different tiers and a connection to Stripe. And it\u2019s all yours, on your own domain, and without having to associate with bad actors.<br /><br />While I myself don\u2019t do paid tiers (I want all my content available openly), I have shared my way of setting up a VPS running Ghost within this blog post:<br /><br /><a href=\"https://axbom.com/indieweb/\">https://axbom.com/indieweb/</a><br /><br />If I gauge enough interest I\u2019m considering writing a post about only running a Substack alternative using Ghost..<br /><br /><a href=\"https://axbom.me/tag/indieweb\">#Indieweb</a> <a href=\"https://axbom.me/tag/substack\">#Substack</a>",
        "text": "Given all the controversy around Substack (again) I just want to promote the idea of self-hosting your own blog/newsletter using Ghost.\n\nThis allows you to set up your newsletter very much in the same way as Substack, with different tiers and a connection to Stripe. And it\u2019s all yours, on your own domain, and without having to associate with bad actors.\n\nWhile I myself don\u2019t do paid tiers (I want all my content available openly), I have shared my way of setting up a VPS running Ghost within this blog post:\n\nhttps://axbom.com/indieweb/\n\nIf I gauge enough interest I\u2019m considering writing a post about only running a Substack alternative using Ghost..\n\n#Indieweb #Substack"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-15T07:56:12+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36561295",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

fluffy rambles: Goodbye, Twitter third-party login

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "fluffy",
        "url": "http://beesbuzz.biz/",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/9807-Goodbye-Twitter-third-party-login",
    "published": "2023-04-14T15:58:10-07:00",
    "content": {
        "html": "<a href=\"http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/?id=9807&amp;tag=twitter\">#twitter</a><a href=\"http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/?id=9807&amp;tag=indieweb\">#indieweb</a><a href=\"http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/?id=9807&amp;tag=indieauth\">#indieauth</a><a href=\"http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/?id=9807&amp;tag=internet\">#internet</a>",
        "text": "#twitter#indieweb#indieauth#internet"
    },
    "name": "fluffy rambles: Goodbye, Twitter third-party login",
    "post-type": "article",
    "_id": "36556199",
    "_source": "3782",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@fluffy",
        "url": "https://plush.city/@fluffy",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://plush.city/@fluffy/110199646682870015",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>fluffy rambles: Goodbye, Twitter third-party login <a href=\"https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/9807-Goodbye-Twitter-third-party-login\"><span>https://</span><span>beesbuzz.biz/blog/9807-Goodbye</span><span>-Twitter-third-party-login</span></a> <a href=\"https://plush.city/tags/FluffyRambles\">#<span>FluffyRambles</span></a> <a href=\"https://plush.city/tags/Indieauth\">#<span>Indieauth</span></a> <a href=\"https://plush.city/tags/Indieweb\">#<span>Indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://plush.city/tags/Internet\">#<span>Internet</span></a> <a href=\"https://plush.city/tags/Twitter\">#<span>Twitter</span></a></p>",
        "text": "fluffy rambles: Goodbye, Twitter third-party login https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/9807-Goodbye-Twitter-third-party-login #FluffyRambles #Indieauth #Indieweb #Internet #Twitter"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T22:59:23+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36555345",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@villasbc",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/@villasbc",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@villasbc/110199496586926171",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>What would be the <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/Fediverse\">#<span>Fediverse</span></a> friendly platform to put my reviews? After years of donating my reviews to GMaps, I want ownership of this without having to go too deep on <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> technology.</p>",
        "text": "What would be the #Fediverse friendly platform to put my reviews? After years of donating my reviews to GMaps, I want ownership of this without having to go too deep on #IndieWeb technology."
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T22:21:13+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36555346",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@fredc",
        "url": "https://mastodon.online/@fredc",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.online/@fredc/110198053126517029",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I decided to track the podcast episodes I listed on my microblog. First, I requested my data from Spotify. They can only provide last year\u2019s data. Next, I cleaned that up a bit and uploaded it today.</p><p><a href=\"https://www.frederickcalica.com/kind/listen/\"><span>https://www.</span><span>frederickcalica.com/kind/liste</span><span>n/</span></a></p><p><a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "I decided to track the podcast episodes I listed on my microblog. First, I requested my data from Spotify. They can only provide last year\u2019s data. Next, I cleaned that up a bit and uploaded it today.https://www.frederickcalica.com/kind/listen/#IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T16:14:07+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36548669",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@techlifeweb",
        "url": "https://indieweb.social/@techlifeweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://indieweb.social/@techlifeweb/110198016559053792",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Usually my u-syndication links back to Mastodon (when I bother to create them) are blank but I'm trying a new thing where I put in the text \"Reply on Mastodon\". Why not, right? <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> (<a href=\"https://techlifeweb.com/blog/2023/2023-04-14-post-1550/\"><span>https://</span><span>techlifeweb.com/blog/2023/2023</span><span>-04-14-post-1550/</span></a>)</p>",
        "text": "Usually my u-syndication links back to Mastodon (when I bother to create them) are blank but I'm trying a new thing where I put in the text \"Reply on Mastodon\". Why not, right? #indieweb (https://techlifeweb.com/blog/2023/2023-04-14-post-1550/)"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T16:04:49+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36548670",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

Manton Reece www.manton.org

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "Manton Reece",
        "url": "https://www.manton.org/",
        "photo": "https://micro.blog/manton/avatar.jpg"
    },
    "url": "https://www.manton.org/2023/04/14/we-redesigned-the.html",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>We redesigned the Micro.blog home page this year and it\u2019s so much better. Yet I still wonder if we\u2019re telling the complete story about what Micro.blog can do. Full blogs. Social network. ActivityPub. Podcast hosting. Newsletters. Tweet import. Hugo. Cross-posting. More open APIs than any platform.</p>",
        "text": "We redesigned the Micro.blog home page this year and it\u2019s so much better. Yet I still wonder if we\u2019re telling the complete story about what Micro.blog can do. Full blogs. Social network. ActivityPub. Podcast hosting. Newsletters. Tweet import. Hugo. Cross-posting. More open APIs than any platform."
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T09:34:17-05:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36545208",
    "_source": "12",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@sia",
        "url": "https://front-end.social/@sia",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://front-end.social/@sia/110197253141159075",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Reminder - THE Eleventy Meetup is today! Come join the <a href=\"https://front-end.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> web with two talks on integrating social features into your <a href=\"https://front-end.social/tags/11ty\">#<span>11ty</span></a> <a href=\"https://front-end.social/tags/eleventy\">#<span>eleventy</span></a> website!</p><p><a href=\"https://11tymeetup.dev/\"><span>https://</span><span>11tymeetup.dev/</span><span></span></a></p>",
        "text": "Reminder - THE Eleventy Meetup is today! Come join the #IndieWeb web with two talks on integrating social features into your #11ty #eleventy website!https://11tymeetup.dev/"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T12:50:40+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36542963",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@samwilson",
        "url": "https://wikis.world/@samwilson",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://wikis.world/@samwilson/110194763568132134",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I tagged a post as <a href=\"https://wikis.world/tags/Spanish\">#<span>Spanish</span></a> just now, but shouldn't that be <a href=\"https://wikis.world/tags/Espa%C3%B1ol\">#<span>Espa\u00f1ol</span></a>? If only there were a way to add Wikidata items to tags! :-P (He says, having built such a feature in Twyne last year, only to find it sort of annoyingly restrictive.) <a href=\"https://twyne.readthedocs.io/en/stable/tags.html\"><span>https://</span><span>twyne.readthedocs.io/en/stable</span><span>/tags.html</span></a> <a href=\"https://wikis.world/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "I tagged a post as #Spanish just now, but shouldn't that be #Espa\u00f1ol? If only there were a way to add Wikidata items to tags! :-P (He says, having built such a feature in Twyne last year, only to find it sort of annoyingly restrictive.) https://twyne.readthedocs.io/en/stable/tags.html #indieweb"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-14T02:17:33+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36534903",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@keithjgrant",
        "url": "https://front-end.social/@keithjgrant",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://front-end.social/@keithjgrant/110193169281170101",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I'm toying with the idea of splitting my <a href=\"https://front-end.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> notes off my main site/repository and hosting them separately on a subdomain.</p><p>Has anybody else taken this approach? Is it worth the up-front overhead of copying/basically building a second site to house them?</p>",
        "text": "I'm toying with the idea of splitting my #IndieWeb notes off my main site/repository and hosting them separately on a subdomain.Has anybody else taken this approach? Is it worth the up-front overhead of copying/basically building a second site to house them?"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-13T19:32:06+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36530133",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@jackie",
        "url": "https://social.linux.pizza/@jackie",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.linux.pizza/@jackie/110189741022792586",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>New Blog Post! Resources to find cool indie sites <a href=\"https://social.linux.pizza/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> </p><p><a href=\"https://jackie.technologists.cloud/posts/cool-indie-sites/\"><span>https://</span><span>jackie.technologists.cloud/pos</span><span>ts/cool-indie-sites/</span></a></p>",
        "text": "New Blog Post! Resources to find cool indie sites #indieweb https://jackie.technologists.cloud/posts/cool-indie-sites/"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-13T05:00:15+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36512479",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

Marty McGuire martymcgui.re

IndieWeb dev note: Microsub isn't a general-purpose storage API

{
    "type": "entry",
    "published": "2023-04-12T22:21:26-0400",
    "url": "https://martymcgui.re/2023/04/12/indieweb-dev-note-microsub-isnt-a-general-purpose-storage-api/",
    "category": [
        "IndieWeb",
        "micropub",
        "Microsub",
        "YouTube",
        "feed",
        "RSS"
    ],
    "name": "IndieWeb dev note: Microsub isn't a general-purpose storage API",
    "content": {
        "text": "This is probably relevant only to very few people and likely only for myself the next time I think up an idea along these lines.\n\n  Obligatory background\n  \n\nI'm a heavy daily user of IndieWeb-style social readers. For my setup, I run my own copy of Aaron Parecki's Aperture, a backend service which manages my subscriptions, fetches feeds, and organizes everything into \"channels\". On my reading devices, I use an app like Aaron Parecki's Monocle, which talks to Aperture to fetch and display my channels and the entries for each, mark things as read, and more.\nThese tools speak a protocol called Microsub, which defines a simple HTTP protocol for all those things Monocle does. It specifies how a client can ask a server for channels, list entries in a channel, mark things as read, delete things, add new subscriptions, and so on.\nOne bonus feature that Aperture has, but that is not part of the Microsub (with an \"s\") spec, is that in addition to subscribing to feeds, you can also push content into channels, using a different protocol called Micropub, Though they are off by one letter, they do very different things! Micropub (with a \"p\") is a specification for authoring tools to help you make posts to your personal site, with extensions that also allow for searching posts, updating content, and much more. In Aperture's case, Micropub support is quite minimal - it can be used to push a new entry into a channel, and that's it. It's designed for systems that might not have a public feed, or that create events in real time.\nOkay but what's the problem?\nI use Aperture to follow some YouTube channels, so I don't have to visit the distraction-heavy YouTube app to see when my favorite channels update. This is possible because every YouTube channel has an RSS feed! What matters is that a good feed reader can take the URL for a YouTube channel (like the one for IndieWebCamp on YouTube) and parse the page to find its feed (in this case, https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCco4TTt7ikz9xnB35HrD5gQ).\n\n  YouTube also provides feeds for playlists, and maybe more! It's a fun way to pull content, and they even support \n  push notifications for these feeds via a standard called WebSub\n  .\n\nBut! (of course there's a but!) YouTube's feeds encode some useful information, like the URL for a video's thumbnail image, and the description for the video, using an extension of RSS called Media RSS. This isn't recognized by Aperture, and it also isn't recognized by my go-to feed munging service Granary. As a result, while I can see when a new video is posted by the channels I follow, they... don't look like much!\nScreenshot of feed reader Monocle showing YouTube videos. Each entry includes the title and URL of the channel, the title of the video, and when it was posted. And that's it.All I can see is that a given channel posted a video, and the title of the video.\nOkay can we get to the point?\nI'd like to fix this, and my first (wrong) thought was: since Aperture already has these not-very-good entries, maybe I can make an automated system that:\nacts like a Microsub client to fetch each entry from my YouTube Subscriptions channel\n  look at each to see if it's missing information like the thumbnail\n  for each entry with missing info, look up that info directly from YouTube, maybe via their API\n  somehow update the entry with this info.\nAgain, this is ... the wrong mental model. But why? The docs for Aperture, the Microsub backend, gives us a hint when it covers how to write Microsub clients.\n\n  Aperture has implemented the following actions in the Microsub spec:\n  \nGET action=timeline - retrieve the list of items in a channel\n    \nPOST action=timeline - mark entries as read, or remove an entry from a channel\n    \nPOST action=search - search for a new feed to add\n    \nGET action=preview - preview a feed before following it\n    \nGET action=follow - retrieve the list of feeds followed in a channel\n    \nPOST action=follow - follow a new feed in a channel\n    \nPOST action=unfollow - unfollow a feed in a channel (existing items from that feed are left in the channel, like IRC/Slack)\n    \nGET action=channels - retrieve the list of channels for a user\n    \nPOST action=channels - create, update, and delete channels, or set the order of the channels\n  \n\n  Nowhere in that list is the ability to update or even create entries. Those things are outside the scope of the spec. The spec is intentionally narrow in describing how clients can manage channels, subscriptions, and mark read or delete entries pulled from those subscriptions. That's it! And that's good!\n  \n    \n\n\nRemembering that the \"write API\" I was thinking of was actually Micropub (with a \"p\"), I took a look at the source for Aperture that handles Micropub requests and it does refreshingly few things. It allows creating new entries from a Micropub payload, and it supports uploading media that would go along with a payload. That's it. And that's good!\nAt this point, I thought I could still continue down my wrong-idea road. The automated system would:\nact as a Microsub (with an \"s\") client to fetch each entry from my YouTube Subscriptions channel\n  look at each to see if it's missing information like the thumbnail\n  for each entry with missing info, look up that info directly from YouTube, maybe via their API\n  use Microsub to delete the original entry\n  use Micropub (with a \"p\") to create a new entry with all the new details\nThis approach... should work! However, it certainly felt like I was working against the grain.\nI brought this up in the IndieWeb dev chat, where Aaron and Ryan cleared things up. Microsub is intentionally simple, and adding general operations to let clients treat the server like a general data store is way out of scope. Similarly, while Aperture supports some of Micropub, that's a choice specific to Aperture.\nHave we learned anything?\nThe general consensus was that entries should get into a Microsub server like Aperture via feeds. And if the feeds I'm looking at don't have the content I want, I should make a feed that does! I should be able to make a proxy service that:\naccepts a URL for a YouTube channel or playlist feed,\n  fetches the feed,\n  extracts everything I want from each entry, including thumbnails, and maybe even uses the YouTube API to get info like video length,\n  rewrites that in a feed format that Aperture likes better. Probably just HTML with microformats2 to make an h-feed\n\nFor each of my YouTube subscriptions, I'll swap out the YouTube RSS for the new proxied feed - something that the Microsub API is intended to let me automate.\nOne thing I mentioned in the chat discussion I linked above: I default to thinking of feed services like this proxy as \"public infrastructure\" by default - something that has to be on the public web, with all the maintenance and security issues that go along with that.\nHowever, as I self-host my own Aperture instance, I can set up this proxy on the same server and ensure that it only accepts local requests. Fewer public endpoints, fewer problems.\n\n  Anyway, maybe I'll get that done and posted about in the near future, but today I just wanted to get these thoughts out of my head and close some tabs!",
        "html": "<p>This is probably relevant only to very few people and likely only for myself the next time I think up an idea along these lines.</p>\n<h2>\n  Obligatory background\n  <br /></h2>\n<p>I'm a heavy daily user of IndieWeb-style <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/social_reader\">social readers</a>. For my setup, I run my own copy of <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Aperture\">Aaron Parecki's Aperture</a>, a backend service which manages my subscriptions, fetches feeds, and organizes everything into \"channels\". On my reading devices, I use an app like <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Monocle\">Aaron Parecki's Monocle</a>, which talks to Aperture to fetch and display my channels and the entries for each, mark things as read, and more.</p>\n<p>These tools speak a protocol called <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec\">Microsub</a>, which defines a simple HTTP protocol for all those things Monocle does. It specifies how a client can ask a server for channels, list entries in a channel, mark things as read, delete things, add new subscriptions, and so on.</p>\n<p>One bonus feature that Aperture has, but that is not part of the Microsub (with an \"s\") spec, is that in addition to subscribing to feeds, you can also <i>push</i> content into channels, using a different protocol called <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Micropub\">Micropub</a>, Though they are off by one letter, they do very different things! Micropub (with a \"p\") is a specification for <i>authoring tools</i> to help you make posts to your personal site, with extensions that also allow for searching posts, updating content, and much more. In Aperture's case, Micro<i>pub</i> support is quite minimal - it can be used to push a new entry into a channel, and that's it. It's designed for systems that might not have a public feed, or that create events in real time.</p>\n<h2>Okay but what's the problem?</h2>\n<p>I use Aperture to follow some YouTube channels, so I don't have to visit the distraction-heavy YouTube app to see when my favorite channels update. This is possible because every YouTube channel has an RSS feed! What matters is that a good feed reader can take the URL for a YouTube channel (like the one for <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@Indiewebcamp\">IndieWebCamp on YouTube</a>) and parse the page to find its feed (in this case, https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCco4TTt7ikz9xnB35HrD5gQ).</p>\n<p>\n  YouTube also provides feeds for playlists, and maybe more! It's a fun way to pull content, and they even support \n  <a href=\"https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/guides/push_notifications\"><i>push notifications</i> for these feeds via a standard called WebSub</a>\n  .\n</p>\n<p>But! (of course there's a but!) YouTube's feeds encode some useful information, like the URL for a video's thumbnail image, and the description for the video, using an extension of RSS called <a href=\"https://www.rssboard.org/media-rss\">Media RSS</a>. This isn't recognized by Aperture, and it also isn't recognized by my go-to feed munging service <a href=\"https://granary.io/\">Granary</a>. As a result, while I can see when a new video is posted by the channels I follow, they... don't look like much!</p>\n<img src=\"https://media.martymcgui.re/57/47/6a/6d/f300474512cbeebf97a287d55e09310ceba47822479ef15c6f7a3f49.png\" alt=\"\" />Screenshot of feed reader Monocle showing YouTube videos. Each entry includes the title and URL of the channel, the title of the video, and when it was posted. And that's it.<p>All I can see is that a given channel posted a video, and the title of the video.</p>\n<h2>Okay can we get to the point?</h2>\n<p>I'd like to fix this, and my first (wrong) thought was: since Aperture already has these not-very-good entries, maybe I can make an automated system that:</p>\n<ul><li>acts like a Microsub client to fetch each entry from my YouTube Subscriptions channel</li>\n  <li>look at each to see if it's missing information like the thumbnail</li>\n  <li>for each entry with missing info, look up that info directly from YouTube, maybe via their API</li>\n  <li>somehow update the entry with this info.</li>\n</ul><p>Again, this is ... the wrong mental model. But why? The <a href=\"https://aperture.p3k.io/docs\">docs for Aperture,</a> the Microsub backend, gives us a hint when it covers how to write Microsub clients.</p>\n<blockquote>\n  <p>Aperture has implemented the following actions in the <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec\">Microsub spec</a>:</p>\n  <ul><li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Timelines\">GET action=timeline</a> - retrieve the list of items in a channel</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Timelines\">POST action=timeline</a> - mark entries as read, or remove an entry from a channel</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Search\">POST action=search</a> - search for a new feed to add</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Preview\">GET action=preview</a> - preview a feed before following it</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Following\">GET action=follow</a> - retrieve the list of feeds followed in a channel</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Following\">POST action=follow</a> - follow a new feed in a channel</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Unfollowing\">POST action=unfollow</a> - unfollow a feed in a channel (existing items from that feed are left in the channel, like IRC/Slack)</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Channels_2\">GET action=channels</a> - retrieve the list of channels for a user</li>\n    <li>\n<a href=\"https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Channels_2\">POST action=channels</a> - create, update, and delete channels, or set the order of the channels</li>\n  </ul></blockquote>\n<p>\n  Nowhere in that list is the ability to update or even create entries. <i>Those things are outside the scope of the spec.</i> The spec is intentionally narrow in describing how clients can manage channels, subscriptions, and mark read or delete entries pulled from those subscriptions. That's it! And that's good!\n  <i>\n    <br /></i>\n</p>\n<p>Remembering that the \"write API\" I was thinking of was actually Micro<i>pub</i> (with a \"p\"), I took a look at <a href=\"https://github.com/aaronpk/Aperture/blob/main/aperture/app/Http/Controllers/MicropubController.php\">the source for Aperture that handles Micropub requests</a> and it does refreshingly few things. It allows creating new entries from a Micropub payload, and it supports uploading media that would go along with a payload. <i>That's it. </i>And that's good!</p>\n<p>At this point, I thought I could still continue down my wrong-idea road. The automated system would:</p>\n<ul><li>act as a Microsub (with an \"s\") client to fetch each entry from my YouTube Subscriptions channel</li>\n  <li>look at each to see if it's missing information like the thumbnail</li>\n  <li>for each entry with missing info, look up that info directly from YouTube, maybe via their API</li>\n  <li>use Microsub to delete the original entry</li>\n  <li>use Micro<i>pub</i> (with a \"p\") to create a new entry with all the new details</li>\n</ul><p>This approach... should work! However, it certainly felt like I was working against the grain.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2023-04-12#t1681333082265400\">I brought this up in the IndieWeb dev chat</a>, where <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/\">Aaron</a> and <a href=\"https://snarfed.org/\">Ryan</a> cleared things up. Microsub is intentionally simple, and adding general operations to let clients treat the server like a general data store is way out of scope. Similarly, while Aperture supports some of Micro<i>pub</i>, that's a choice specific to Aperture.</p>\n<h2>Have we learned anything?</h2>\n<p>The general consensus was that entries should get into a Microsub server like Aperture via feeds. And if the feeds I'm looking at don't have the content I want, I should make a feed that does! I should be able to make a proxy service that:</p>\n<ul><li>accepts a URL for a YouTube channel or playlist feed,</li>\n  <li>fetches the feed,</li>\n  <li>extracts everything I want from each entry, including thumbnails, and maybe even uses the YouTube API to get info like video length,</li>\n  <li>rewrites that in a feed format that Aperture likes better. Probably just HTML with microformats2 to make an <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/h-feed\">h-feed</a>\n</li>\n</ul><p>For each of my YouTube subscriptions, I'll swap out the YouTube RSS for the new proxied feed - something that the Microsub API <i>is</i> intended to let me automate.</p>\n<p>One thing I mentioned in the chat discussion I linked above: I default to thinking of feed services like this proxy as \"public infrastructure\" by default - something that has to be on the public web, with all the maintenance and security issues that go along with that.</p>\n<p>However, as I self-host my own Aperture instance, I can set up this proxy on the same server and ensure that it only accepts local requests. Fewer public endpoints, fewer problems.</p>\n<p>\n  Anyway, maybe I'll get that done and posted about in the near future, but today I just wanted to get these thoughts out of my head and close some tabs!\n  <br /></p>"
    },
    "author": {
        "type": "card",
        "name": "Marty McGuire",
        "url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
        "photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
    },
    "post-type": "article",
    "_id": "36512207",
    "_source": "175",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@zinzy",
        "url": "https://tech.lgbt/@zinzy",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://tech.lgbt/@zinzy/110186675888769047",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Every couple of days, Youtube serves up an ad that starts with \"what if you could control the web with your mind?\" I never fail to respond with \"do you know... the <a href=\"https://tech.lgbt/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a>?\"</p>",
        "text": "Every couple of days, Youtube serves up an ad that starts with \"what if you could control the web with your mind?\" I never fail to respond with \"do you know... the #IndieWeb?\""
    },
    "published": "2023-04-12T16:00:44+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36499677",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": true
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@fredc",
        "url": "https://mastodon.online/@fredc",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.online/@fredc/110186181282366803",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Tweets are not available on Timehop. How sad. \ud83d\ude14 I am still cleaning up my Twitter archive to be reposted on my microblog. <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/Timehop\">#<span>Timehop</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/Twitter\">#<span>Twitter</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Tweets are not available on Timehop. How sad. \ud83d\ude14 I am still cleaning up my Twitter archive to be reposted on my microblog. #Timehop #Twitter #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-12T13:54:57+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36497081",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": true
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@fredc",
        "url": "https://mastodon.online/@fredc",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.online/@fredc/110186059528420862",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Timehop is having issues with Instagram again\u2014login issues. Good thing I already backed up my Instagram posts on Google Photos, which is still accessible by Timehop. And, of course, I also reposted it on my microblog. <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/Timehop\">#<span>Timehop</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/Instagram\">#<span>Instagram</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/GooglePhotos\">#<span>GooglePhotos</span></a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.online/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Timehop is having issues with Instagram again\u2014login issues. Good thing I already backed up my Instagram posts on Google Photos, which is still accessible by Timehop. And, of course, I also reposted it on my microblog. #Timehop #Instagram #GooglePhotos #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-12T13:23:59+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36497082",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": true
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@mikegrindle",
        "url": "https://indieweb.social/@mikegrindle",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://indieweb.social/@mikegrindle/110185549400794164",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>'Your blog doesn\u2019t have to be big and fancy. It doesn\u2019t have to outrank everyone on Google, make money or \u201cconvert leads\u201d to be important. It can be something that exists for its own sake, as your place to express yourself in whatever manner you please.'</p><p>Felt inspired to talk about the small web and personal websites again, so my latest blog post is something of a brain dump on the subject.</p><p><a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/blogging\">#<span>blogging</span></a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/writing\">#<span>writing</span></a> </p><p><a href=\"https://mikegrindle.com/posts/personal-blogging\"><span>https://</span><span>mikegrindle.com/posts/personal</span><span>-blogging</span></a></p>",
        "text": "'Your blog doesn\u2019t have to be big and fancy. It doesn\u2019t have to outrank everyone on Google, make money or \u201cconvert leads\u201d to be important. It can be something that exists for its own sake, as your place to express yourself in whatever manner you please.'Felt inspired to talk about the small web and personal websites again, so my latest blog post is something of a brain dump on the subject.#indieweb #blogging #writing https://mikegrindle.com/posts/personal-blogging"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-12T11:14:16+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36493646",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": true
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@ross",
        "url": "https://axiomeval.social/@ross",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://axiomeval.social/@ross/110184732505391623",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>By the time a few more tech places (just saw the Substack news) add 'notes' and other Indieweb capabilities (of course better if people do it for themselves on their own sites) CorpTech will find itself being dismantled on an ever increasing scale. <a href=\"https://axiomeval.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://axiomeval.social/tags/notes\">#<span>notes</span></a> (<a href=\"https://www.axiomeval.me/posts/20230412-notes-help-dismantle-corptech.html\"><span>https://www.</span><span>axiomeval.me/posts/20230412-no</span><span>tes-help-dismantle-corptech.html</span></a>)</p>",
        "text": "By the time a few more tech places (just saw the Substack news) add 'notes' and other Indieweb capabilities (of course better if people do it for themselves on their own sites) CorpTech will find itself being dismantled on an ever increasing scale. #indieweb #notes (https://www.axiomeval.me/posts/20230412-notes-help-dismantle-corptech.html)"
    },
    "published": "2023-04-12T07:46:31+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "36491011",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": true
}