Read - Reading: Blue Lightning (Shetland Island, #4) by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books)
Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez brings his fiancée home to Fair Isle, a birder's paradise, where strangers are viewed with suspicions and distrust. When a woman's body is discovered at the island's bird observatory, the investigation is hampered by a raging storm that renders the island totally isolated. Jimmy has to find clues the old-fashioned way, and he has to do it quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the chance to strike again.
Read through chapter 16

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Read Wix and Their Dirty Tricks by Matt Mullenweg (Matt Mullenweg)
Wix, the website builder company you may remember from stealing WordPress code and lying about it, has now decided the best way to gain relevance is attacking the open source WordPress community in a bizarre set of ads. They can’t even come up with original concepts for attack ads, and have tried ...
I’ve never been able to recommend people to use Wix simply for the export issue. This should have been one of their first features. Matt does a good job of indicating other reasons not to support them.

I was also a bit surprised to see him actively recommending other projects and platforms. 🙂

Read Learning Log, Mar 2021 by Melanie RichardsMelanie Richards (melanie-richards.com)
Starting an experiment of the month, and succumbing to my curiosity around Python.
I love how the tired old link log idea has been re-framed here as a learning log. I might have to borrow the idea for my digital commonplace book.

I’m also glad to have stumbled across this so serendipitously for its mention of WaniKani for learning 日本語 (Japanese) kanji. I’m not quite sure what to make of their Crabigator yet, but perhaps Jack Jamieson might appreciate this as well.

I’ve been trying to catch up to a fourth grader in a dual immersion program, and I’ve been falling behind lately while working on my Welsh project. I’ve been too (slowly) working on a memory palace of Kanji with a lot more detail and historical information based on Kenneth Henshall’s A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters, which seems to be one of the best texts I’ve seen for raw data. This app looks like it uses mnemonic associations in a different way along with spaced repetition that might allow for better immediate fluency.

Naturally I’m always happy to come across apps purporting to use mnemonics and spaced repetition, though I am still search for something with a more fluent focus for Japanese that is similar to SSiW’s immersion method.

Melanie Richards in on Twitter: “@SunhouseCLG Here’s a couple resources on Webmentions if you’d like to learn more about them: https://t.co/ilaWmEmX1T https://t.co/P8jI1kYfSq”

Read Writing on the web by Khaled Abou Alfa (kaa.bz)
While going through my Twitter archive, I realised several things which are going to greatly inform the way I write on the web in the future: While linklogging is fun, easy and in many ways the fabric that makes up the internet, it’s existence is fleeting. Maybe that link will remain valid for 10 ...
A lot of this resonates with me. On links, it is often the reason I was interested in it in the first place that’s the most important.

The nostalgia factor is very valuable to me, but it also means you need an easy means for not only looking back, but regular reminders to do so.

Owning your stuff: hopefully my stance on this is obvious.

I’m not sure I agree so much with the taxonomy stance. I find it helpful to have it for search and review, the tougher part is doing it consistently with terms that are important to you.

jacky in #indieweb 2021-04-02 ()

Read Social Attention: a modest prototype in shared presence by Matt Webb (Interconnected, a blog by Matt Webb)
My take is that the web could feel warmer and more lively than it is. Visiting a webpage could feel a little more like visiting a park and watching the world go by. Visiting my homepage could feel just a tiny bit like stopping by my home. And so to celebrate my blogging streak reaching one year, this week, I’m adding a proof of concept to my blog, something I’m provisionally calling Social Attention.
You had me at “select text”…

If somebody else selects some text, it’ll be highlighted for you. 

Suddenly social annotation has taken an interesting twist. @Hypothes_is better watch out! 😉
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:03AM

How often have you been on the phone with a friend, trying to describe how to get somewhere online? Okay go to Amazon. Okay type in “whatever”. Okay, it’s the third one down for me…
This is ridiculous!
What if, instead, you both went to the website and then you could just say: follow me. 

There are definitely some great use cases for this.
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:05AM

A status emoji will appear in the top right corner of your browser. If it’s smiling, there are other people on the site right now too. 

This is pretty cool looking. I’ll have to add it as an example to my list: Social Reading User Interface for Discovery.

We definitely need more things like this on the web.

It makes me wish the Reading.am indicator were there without needing to click on it.

I wonder how this sort of activity might be built into social readers as well?
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:13AM

If I’m in a meeting, I should be able to share a link in the chat to a particular post on my blog, then select the paragraph I’m talking about and have it highlighted for everyone. Well, now I can. 

And you could go a few feet farther if you added [fragment](https://indieweb.org/fragmention) support to the site, then the browser would also autoscroll to that part. Then you could add a confetti cannon to the system and have the page rain down confetti when more than three people have highlighted the same section!
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:18AM

I want the patina of fingerprints, the quiet and comfortable background hum of a library. 

A great thing to want on a website! A tiny hint of phatic interaction amongst internet denizens.
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:20AM

What I’d like more of is a social web that sits between these two extremes, something with a small town feel. So you can see people are around, and you can give directions and a friendly nod, but there’s no need to stop and chat, and it’s not in your face. It’s what I’ve talked about before as social peripheral vision (that post is about why it should be build into the OS). 

I love the idea of social peripheral vision online.
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:22AM

streak: New posts for 52 consecutive weeks. 

It’s kind of cool that he’s got a streak counter for his posts.
Annotated on March 28, 2021 at 10:24AM

Read Tweet to Toot: Why I'm moving off Twitter by Leo LaporteLeo Laporte (leo.fm)
It’s just too toxic on Twitter. The continued trolling was hurting our team, our hosts, and our business, so we decided, as a team, to pack up and move out. I don’t know about you, but I always found Twitter mildly disturbing. I won’t miss it (any more than I miss Facebook).
Read Suing Trump Over the Capitol Riot: A Preliminary Assessment (Lawfare)
Under a Reconstruction-era statute, a new lawsuit aims to hold former President Donald Trump and others responsible for the events of Jan. 6. But can it succeed?
A wonderful and fairly deep analysis of the legal ins-and-outs of this situation.
Read California professor put on paid administrative leave after video shows him chastising student who is hard of hearing by Alisha Ebrahimji (CNN)
A tenure-track professor at a California community college is on leave and under investigation after video of him speaking critically to a hard-of-hearing student during an online class made the rounds on social media.
Professors definitely need some training of their own to be more aware of accessibility issues that their students face.
Read Hypothes.is Social (and Private) Annotation by Dan AllossoDan Allosso (danallosso.substack.com)

How I use Hypothesis myself and with my students

Private groups are also my solution to the potential “saturation” problem that many people have asked me about. I DO think that there’s a potential disincentive to students who I’ve asked to annotate a document, if they open it and find hundreds of comments already there. I already face a situation when I post questions for discussion that people answer in a visible way, where some students say their peers have already made the point they were going to make. It’s easier to address this objection, I think, when EVERY LINE of a document isn’t already yellow! 

I’ve run into this issue myself in a few public instances. I look at my annotations as my own “conversation” with a document. Given this, I usually flip the switch to hide all the annotations on the page and annotate for myself. Afterwards I’ll then turn the annotation view back on and see and potentially interact with others if I choose.
Annotated on February 23, 2021 at 10:28PM

Small world of annotation enthusiasts, but hopefully getting bigger! 

I’ve always wished that Hypothes.is had some additional social features built in for discovering and following others, but they do have just enough for those who are diligent.

I’ve written a bit about [how to follow folks and tags using a feed reader](https://boffosocko.com/2019/11/07/following-people-on-hypothesis/).

And if you want some quick links or even an OPML feed of people and material I’m following on Hypothesis: [https://boffosocko.com/about/following/#Hypothesis%20Feeds](https://boffosocko.com/about/following/#Hypothesis%20Feeds)
Annotated on February 23, 2021 at 11:33PM

👋

Annotated on February 23, 2021 at 11:35PM

Listened to Episode 2 - Zines! by This Is Altadena from This is Altadena (Podomatic)

What is a zine? The name "zine" is a shortened version of "fanzine" which is a portmanteau of the word "fan" and "magazine". Most people that think of zines think of punk rock and the punk community, where the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos is more than just a slogan, it's a way of life. In truth, "zines" have been around for centuries, going back to Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet "Common Sense". These homemade publications can be about anything their creators desire - music, art, politics, or something personal. Chloe Cavelier sits down for a conversation with library staffer and resident zine expert Alice Wynne to discuss the past, present and future of zines and Altadena Public Library's very own zine collection. Later Chloe speaks with Bob Lucas Branch manager Diana Wong to discuss Bob's new and improved demonstration garden. Subscribe to This Is Altadena at any and all of the places you get podcasts including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I got a copy of the library’s zine last Friday. This is such a cool project. They’ve reached out to me briefly as a steward of a Little Free Library, but I’ll have to stop in and pick up a few copies to have in my library.
 
I’d like to join the next session to see what I might add to help people bring their zines into online spaces as well. I see a lot of overlap here with some of my work with the IndieWeb.

 

Listened to Episode 1 - The Legacy and Art of Charles White by This is Altadena from This is Altadena (Podomatic)

Welcome to This Is Altadena, a podcast hosted by the Altadena Libraries, celebrating people’s life experiences and stories, and the hidden histories of Altadena, California. In our inaugural episode, we look at the life and times of Altadena legend, artist Charles White. Library staffer Chloe Cavelier sat down with community members Veronica Jones, Keni Arts, and Eugene Hutchins for 3 in-depth conversations about Charles White, his art and legacy, and his ties to our thriving local art community. Then later, our own Aaron Kimbrell chats with resident Teen Librarian Isabelle Briggs about the amazing programs and services offered in the teen department here at the Altadena Library District. For more about Charles White, don't hesitate to reach out to the Altadena Library: https://www.altadenalibrary.org For more about Keni Arts, visit his website: https://keniarts.com

This podcast is simply awesome! It makes me proud to be a resident of Altadena, CA. Can’t wait to see what they continue to come up with.