Read Indieweb Plugin Version 3.4.2 Released by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (david.shanske.com)
The Indieweb plugin was updated with an icon refresh. This used some of the same code updated in Syndication Links earlier this week. It also added a Mastodon field to the user profile and added a way of displaying that as a Mastodon icon in the profile links on the page.
Acquired Heritage Poplin Long-sleeved Shirt, Navy Gingham, medium (SI2ZBP-35-52) (Orvis)

Our Heritage Poplin Shirt is washed to softness for a lightweight and versatile summer style.

Say hello to your new summertime go-to button-down—lightweight and breathable, this 4-oz., 2-ply cotton Heritage Poplin Shirt feels just right for the warmer months. The bright colors—and relaxed look—are ideal for the season, but the shirt layers easily under a sports jacket or summer-weight sweater for those times you want to dress things up a bit. We heavily washed the shirt for extreme softness and cut it so the hem falls right at your pants' front pockets—perfect for wearing it untucked when you please. We also trimmed the body for a true active fit. Button-down collar, one patch pocket, two-button adjustable cuffs, center back box pleat with locker loop. Pure cotton. Washable. Imported.
Sizes M(38-40), L(42-44), XL(46-48), XXL(50-52).

  • Lightweight, breathable 4-oz., 2-ply cotton poplin
  • Layers easily under a sports jacket or summer-weight sweater
  • Heavily washed for extreme softness
  • Hem falls right at your pants' front pockets—perfect for wearing untucked
  • True, trimmed-down Active Fit
  • Button-down collar and one patch pocket
  • Two-button adjustable cuffs
  • Center back box pleat with locker loop
Christmas gift
Acquired Foul Weather Lined Sweater, blue, medium (SI14SF-XX-52) (Orvis)

Our windproof and water-repelling Foul Weather Sweater incorporates a lined body and a fleece-lined collar. Combine those features with draft-eliminating rib-knit trim on the cuffs and waist, and you've got effective assurance against nasty weather. Detailed with cotton twill shoulder patches, side-seam pockets with microfleece lining, and contrast grosgrain inside the collar. Printed lining. Shell: pure wool. Lining: polyester. Washable. Imported.
Sizes S(34-36), M(38-40), L(42-44), XL(46-48), XXL(50-52).

  • Wears like a sweater, works like a jacket
  • Windproof, water repelling, and warm
  • Draft-eliminating rib-knit trim on the cuffs and waist
  • Fleece-lined collar
  • Detailed with cotton twill shoulder patches
  • Side-seam pockets lined with warm microfleece
  • Printed lining
Christmas present
Watched Born Again (2007) from Netflix

Born and raised in an Evangelical Christian family, director Markie Hancock struggled through her childhood to find the line between her family and her religion, between her duties to God and Jesus and her responsibilities to her parents and herself. Fervent in her beliefs, she thought she would pursue a religious calling until the true nature of her sexuality and her need to express her own doubts brought her into a final confrontation with her upbringing. This is the story of that confrontation and what was won and what was lost.

movie poster for Born Again featuring a black and white photo of a prototypical white family from the 60's in front of a christmas tree

I’m glad this exists, but would not watch it again.

It is interesting to note that this was made in 2007 and presaged the political turmoil of the 2016 election. It also goes a long way to explore some of the political divisions within the country during the decade or more after it was made.

Rating: ★★½

Watched Generation Wealth (2018) from Netflix

Directed by Lauren Greenfield. With Lauren Greenfield, Portia Antonia Alexis, Limo Bob, George W. Bush. A documentary that investigates the pathologies that have created the richest society the world has ever seen.

A heart breaking view of our lives and their excesses.

Rating ★★★½

Replied to The future of the web, isn't the web by Terence Eden (shkspr.mobi)
My friends, and former employers, at the Government Digital Service have written a spectacularly good blog post "Making GOV.UK more than a website". In it, they describe how adding Schema.org markup to their website has allowed search engines to extract semantic content and display it to a user. For...
This reminds me of Drew McLellan’s talk from 2006 Can Your Website be Your API? or Jeremy Keith’s slightly more recent talk The Spirit Of The Web from 2012 which I’d listened to recently.

I like the idea of experimenting into some of these new areas, but I’m worried about who owns some of these gateways and how they treat the data–both from the perspective of the site owners as well as from the users who are encouraged to access data through them. How do our power structures change based these new modalities? Is it responsible?

Watched The Two Popes (2019)

Directed by Fernando Meirelles. With Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce, Juan Minujín, Luis Gnecco. Behind Vatican walls, the conservative Pope Benedict and the liberal future Pope Francis must find common ground to forge a new path for the Catholic Church.

The Two Popes walking in a garden

Holy crap this was an awesome movie. Some great, powerful filmm aking in many parts.

My favorite though, by far, was watching the two popes in the closing credits as they watched the Argentina v. Germany soccer match. What great heart this scene had!

Rating: ★★★★½

Watched Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) from Netflix

Directed by Rian Johnson. With Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher. Rey develops her newly discovered abilities with the guidance of Luke Skywalker, who is unsettled by the strength of her powers. Meanwhile, the Resistance prepares for battle with the First Order.

A fun romp to rewatch from time to time.

Rating: ★★★½

Read Retroactive continuity (Wikipedia)
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which established facts in a fictional work are adjusted, ignored, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which breaks continuity with the former.
I’ve known of the concept for a long time, but I’ve only seen this word for the first time today.
Replied to How to send a Webmention in comments? by Paul JacobsonPaul Jacobson (Paul Jacobson)
I’ve had Webmentions enabled on this site for some time now. Sending a Webmention is pretty straightforward thanks to plugins like Webmention for WordPress and Semantic-Linkbacks. The question is how to send Webmentions in comments when someone replies to one of my posts?
Okay, this gives a lot more context!

It looks like you’re 90% of the way there. I suspect the last piece you’re missing are the proper microformats either in your theme or in the_body of your specific reply. I suspect you know what microformats are Paul, but for context and the benefit of others reading, they’re bits of metadata added into HTML as classes that provide computers additional information about what is in your post and what each part represents.

For implementing Webmention with WordPress, the Semantic Linkbacks plugin has a built in parser that looks at the microformats of the incoming webmentions and uses that data to decide what to display in your comments section. The first part it looks for is an h-card which is a microformats version of a business card that generally includes the post author’s name, photo/avatar, and URL. This is how the system determines the avatar and name to use.

The second part it’s looking for in the received webmention is an h-entry (or hentry in the older microformats v1 specification). This defines the broader body of the comment that it will display. And the last big part that the parser is looking for is what kind of response was sent. Was it a simple reply, like, a bookmark, a read, a listen, etc.? If it can’t figure out what the specific reply may have been it defaults to a simple “mention” which is the response that you’re seeing in your example Paul. 

The positive part of this system is that WordPress already has some reasonable support for microformats v1 built into core and many themes even extend on it relatively well. Sadly, WordPress doesn’t support microformats v2, which would make it a far better IndieWeb friendly platform. Fortunately most themes have h-card or hcard along with the related microformats that go on the names, URLs, and avatars. Unfortunately they don’t have the microformats that indicate the response types. 

To fix this many people IndieWeb-ifying a site use a theme with strong Microformats v2 mark up like SemPress (or one of its children) and they’re doing it in combination with the Post Kinds plugin which adds the microformats to the response to indicate the proper type. Post Kinds, a dramatic expansion of the idea of Post Formats by the way, also has a built in parser which kindly provides a reply context for your posts as well.

A screenshot of a reply context (highlighted in yellow) which indicates the post is about a favorite of Huffduffer which includes a blockquote from the Huffduffer site to show what the site is about. My commentary about the favorite appears beneath the reply context.

If you’re not using (or don’t want to use) Post Kinds you can manually add the required mark up in your posts to indicate the type. Most of these are documented on the IndieWeb wiki, here’s an example for a typical “reply“:

<div class="h-entry">
    <a href="http://example.com/note123" class="u-in-reply-to">Some note with a point</a>
    <div class="p-name p-content">Good point! Now what is the next thing we should do?</div>
</div>

In this example the important microformats are the u-in-reply-to and the p-name p-content. Generally most WordPress themes will add either h-entry (or hentry) in the theme, so you just need the u-in-reply-to piece.

Again, most people get around the need to add these microformats by using Post Kinds plugin while others use a version of the old core Press This bookmark functionality that was adopted for use as IndieWeb Press This. IndieWeb Press this bookmarklet will take a page you want to reply to, like, or bookmark, then create a post with the requisite microformats, and finally allow you to write your reply and publish pretty quickly.

Yet another method to get around some of the required microformats is to publish using a Micropub client in combination with the WordPress Micropub plugin.

The upshot is that once you’ve arranged the basic pieces, your publishing process proceeds apace as before.

And of course, to be even more upfront, I’ll mention that some of the replies I’ve sent to Paul in the past (and you can see this in the example screenshot he includes) mistakenly include my reply context to his post in them. This is a result of my having overwritten some theme changes in my site that once upgraded my lowly mf1 hentry to the better mf2 h-entry. As a result the parser inside the Semantic Linkbacks plugin falls back to parsing as microformats version 1 and includes the context instead of stripping it out and just sending only the piece that is the intended reply. The reply that should have shown up on Paul’s post was the portion he outlined in red. I’ll try to fix this again shortly.

For those looking to help spread the ideas and functionality of the IndieWeb within WordPress, we’d all love help to:

  • Improve WordPress’ core support for Microformats version 2
  • Better support for Microformats v2 in more Themes

I and others have documented some other subtleties and resources for microformats with respect to WordPresss and themes on the IndieWeb wiki which should be of help for those of a variety of development levels. Obviously we still have a way to go towards making all this more intuitive, obvious, and user friendly, but we’re getting there day by day. Any extra help and feedback is always helpful. 

If you’ve got questions, need help, or have suggestions, feel free to hop into the IndieWeb WordPress chat and we can try to get you up to speed.