Archive of posts from 2023/03 📝

I am presently writing this blog post in a train, with my large suitcase by my side encroaching on the leg room available to me (indeed, as if I hadn't spent enough time with little leg room on seats after flying). Conversations are happening in the background. I have my headphones in, listening to a song by Leah Kate that was recommended by Spotify. It's not the best song, but I'm happy. I was able to play piano for an hour or so at the train station while I waited, something about which I have been thinking for at least a week.

IndieWeb Utils v0.7.2 is out. In this release, we introduce utilities to help you work with Really Simple Discovery and Trackbacks. The additions to the library were inspired by this week's Homebrew Website Club London / Europe meetup. One discussion point was how arXiv supports receiving Trackbacks, an old standard used to notify one site that you have linked to another. Given arXiv's support of Trackbacks -- and its application as a way to build community around research papers -- I decided to add a few helper functions to IndieWeb Utils.

Within my first day or two of arriving in San Francisco, I saw Cruise driverless cars on the road. The cars are allowed to drive during the day with a driver at the helm. After 10:30pm the cars can drive in autonomous mode without a driver. I forgot that driverless cars were allowed on the streets here. Later, a friend asked whether I wanted to take a ride in a driverless car.

During this trip to San Francisco, I have visited many coffee shops. One of the coffee shops at the top of my mental list of places to go was Blue Bottle Coffee. On my most recent trip there -- during which time I had a delicious coffee -- I felt down. People were talking in the background, but the environment felt cold. Some people came in and picked up a pre-made coffee and left the store. It was relatively quiet. There were no opportunities to chat with new people.