It's Eric Woodward (dotcom)

I have a problem with #blogging .

For a long time, I assumed that it was a time issue - I felt like I either didn’t have the time to do anything cool (which would give me something to blog about), or I felt like I didn’t have the time to blog about the few cool things that I did accomplish.

Then, when I did have some time, there would always be other reasons that I couldn’t write: I’d have issues with my blogging software (and wind up spend time either diagnosing it, fixing it, or looking for a replacement), or I’d get distracted updating the servers, or by a family issue, or any number of 100 other things.

But what makes it worse is my other problem: every few weeks, I’ll go on a tear where I get hyper-focused on a single topic or idea, and spend a large amount of my free time either researching it, attempting my hand at it, or both. And then, after a few weeks, I’ll inevitably move on to some other topic (something Les Orchard calls “Serial Enthusiasm”), and I won’t take the time to document what I learned / accomplished during said tear.

But… no more.

This post represents the first in (what I hope will be) a series of journal entries about the various things that I’ve done and/or learned about in the few months/years/lives, in hopes of doing my own small part to develop the web. In addition to posting new items here, I also plan to (eventually) import most of my entries from my on-again-off-again Known instance (aka just in case something bad happens to it). I’ve got a few other ideas, too, but we’ll see how industrious I am.

And, in order to break my blogging curse, this will not be called a blog, but rather a journal, and it will live at ItsEricWoodward.com/journal/.

So, I hope you enjoy my new journal, and if you’re already here, I say “Thanks for stopping by, feel free to take a look around, but please don’t let the cats out.” ☺

In case you hadn’t heard by now, I’ve decided to leave AT&T. After nearly 18 years with the company, July 30 will be my last day.

I have my reasons for leaving, and I may go into them once I am no longer bound by the company’s Social Media policy, but for the time being, I’ll have to remain mum about it (unless you know me in #meatspace , in which case, contact me elsewhere for details).

Due to the (relatively) generous severance and benefits package I’ll be receiving, I shouldn’t have to scramble to find a replacement job career too quickly. As such, I plan on taking a couple of weeks’ “sabbatical” during which I can spend some quality time with my family and (hopefully) get some of my side projects finished.

All that to say: When I woke up this morning, I was struck by how surreal it is that, after nearly 18 years working for the same company, at the same location, and seeing many of the same people every day, I only have a week left.

Inspired by both this toot and my recent dabblings in the Fediverse, I just wanted to take a moment and collect some thoughts about what I would like to see next in the #SocialMedia / #web space.

• I like the idea of using a hub-and-spoke model, where each actual edge device (phone / tablet / etc.) connects to some kind of always-on server (either a cheap virtual machine or a home-based server), which would be run by a tech-enabling friend, like BBSes used to be.
• All content creation and such would occur on the edge device, probably via a progressive web app hosted on the hub (to enable #offline creating), and which would connect to its hub when convenient to upload any newly created content.
  • Here, “content” means basically anything that you can create on a social media site - text, photos, replies, whatnot.
• The content would be marked up with IndieWeb microformats-2 tags, enabling easy consumption / sharing.
• Since the content creation / editing would occur on the spoke devices, the hub would be used primarily for caching and speedy connectivity (to prevent issues with asymmetric connection speeds that would prevent direct sharing between the edge devices).
• The hub would collect incoming messages for the user and cache them until the user’s device can connect to the hub to pull them down into their edge device(s).
• The hub would also support webmentions (both in and out), webfinger, and any other useful protocols (ActivityPub, to enable more clients?).
• Ideally, each user of this kind of system would have a subdomain of their own (https://eric.example.com), which has their public info, profile pic, and public posts, and which could serve as a Web sign-in endpoint via the presence of an h-card (listing their OAuth2-compatible accounts).

I freely admit that this idea still has some issues, since it is both incredibly hand-wavy and would still require tech-smart gatekeepers to run the hubs, but eventually even that second issue could be mitigated somewhat by turning the software into a single-click install option for a Pi or similar device (or pre-installed on such a device, with a plug-and-play setup of some kind, or pre-built images for VPS hosting).

I’m open to thoughts / suggestions / comments.

I tend to use Atom when I’m working on code, but given the choice, I prefer to use more basic text editors when I’m just making / re-reading notes (something I do alot).

In my laptop’s previous life, it had a runaway memory issue with #gedit that made it impossible to use, but since upgrading to #Ubuntu 18.04, I haven’t had any troubles with it, so it’s been my default text editor once again.

Unfortunately, one issue I’ve continued to run into is that, no matter how many times I adjust the editor settings in the GUI (for tab size, auto-indent, and use-spaces-for-tabs-goddammit), those changes are lost on reboot.

So, this time, rather than making the same futile changes in the application, I decided to use (what I think are) the commands to permanently change those settings.

If you’re having the same problems, type this in your shell of choice (ENTER after each one):

> gsettings set org.gnome.gedit.preferences.editor tabs-size 2
> gsettings set org.gnome.gedit.preferences.editor auto-indent true
> gsettings set org.gnome.gedit.preferences.editor insert-spaces true

I’ve rebooted the machine since I put these commands in, and so far, so good. Of course, this may change by the next LTS release, but these settings should keep my happy for the next couple of years, at least (and I’m posting it here primarily as a #NoteToMyFutureSelf ).

TL;DR - I made a game and got it published, so I made an app to help people play the game, and published that, too.

ICYMI, the card game I designed and ran a Kickstarter for was finally published a few months ago.

<gratuitous-plug> It’s called Mythic Wars: Clash of the Gods, and it’s available now at many fine gaming stores, or directly from either the Excalibre Games website or Amazon! </gratuitous-plug>

I had alot of fun designing and playtesting the game, and I’m quite pleased with the finished product. While I admit that I found the entire Kickstarting and publishing process to be somewhat less fun (and quite eye-opening), overall, the fact that I can now hold my game in my hands (and see it for sale at my friendly local game store) makes me enormously happy.

Since I am a code monkey by trade (and a web developer by choice), I wanted to complement the game’s publication with the release of a simple, searchable database of all of the cards available for it. Taking inspiration from the Gatherer, the official database for Magic: the Gathering cards (the best example of such an application that I’m aware of), I mocked up something over the course of weekend, tweaked it over the course of a couple more weekends, and soon, The Codex Mythica was born.

It’s my first publicly-available Node / Express application, so the code’s kinda ugly, but I think it has some neat features, like a responsive layout designed to work well on different screens and devices, and a category-based searching / filtering system for sorting and selecting cards (along with the obligatory word search functionality). Plus, each card has links to both its art and to the Wikipedia entry for the its subject (or the Lovecraft wiki entry, in the case of some of the Outer Gods and their minions).

It also (finally) gave me an excuse to share something on GitHub! You can find it at https://github.com/ItsEricWoodward/codex-mythica

<gratuitous-plug> So, if you like games about gatherings of mages, ascended beings, or worlds where war is crafted, check out Mythic Wars: Clash of the Gods, available now at many fine gaming stores, or directly from either the Excalibre Games website or Amazon! </gratuitous-plug>

(Sorry, I’m contractually obligated to get in one more of those.)

Anyways, if you have any suggestions for The Codex Mythica, feel free to open an issue on GitHub or drop me a line (I can’t guarantee I’ll implement it, but I always appreciate the suggestions).