📰 Blog

Gluon.photos will also bring through any accessibility description text to the image if they exist. Each image is clickable and goes to the original URL. There is also a small avatar, which is linked to the author's website. Images show in a random order.

I worked on a small itch I wanted to scratch, called Gluon.photos. It's a short photo wall of the current Micro.blog Photo Discover feed. Unfortunately I can't page through the feed, so we're roughly up to 38 pictures for now until I keep a history of the feed somehow (or add paging).

Enjoy ✌️❤️

I'll be making fundamental changes to Gluon. That means I probably won't reply to any existing support requests (for bugs & changes) as everything will change. I will do my best to cover those points though.

Made a quick update to the Gluon App server that handles push notifications. Push notifications should come through a little quicker now.

I'm really sorry for missing push notifications in Gluon. They should have all come through now. Looks like the push service server crashed. I apologise if you got a lot of notifications! It was broken since the 7th of May! No one told me 😅

Finishing up the release for the new iOS app for Micro.blog. Working on Micropub and XML-RPC, and trying to get through it.

Talking about shoutouts.lol and the theme section, as I'm not really happy with it. Any ideas on what I should do? I certainly have some ideas. Adding support for more image formats.

Then I move from Bunny DNS back to Cloudflare for shoutouts.

And it's Micro.camp time this weekend! Check the link for details.

Recorded Monday, 15th of May 2023.

Links

• Micro.blog
• shoutouts.lol
• shoutouts update blog
• Micro.camp

I talk about Micro.blog and getting it ready for the 3.0 and what remains.

Thoughts on digital "social" media and my decision to close Mastodon and not going down the route of hosting it. Writing for my self for "therapy".

Exploring the idea of having a central place for everything, like update blogs, newsletters and more.

Then randomly I talk about moving back to Overcast for my podcast needs, and supporting some new podcasts I've been enjoying over the years. That pretty much sums it up.

What should I do about Sublime Ads? I don't know...

Links

• Micro.blog
• shoutouts.lol
• Buttondown Email
• Sublime Ads
• Sublime Ads blog post about closing registration

Ads in Gluon should be disabled now... so hopefully they should just disappear. I've got a small TestFlight update that removes them fully.

Today I've closed registration to Sublime Ads. This won't affect anyone currently registered on the service.

This has been a hard decision to make, however I think, for now, this is for the best. I'd love to give more TLC to Sublime Ads, but I've been fighting internally with it.

Saying that, I've had tremendous feedback on it... but I have not pushed it in the direction I originally intended for it. Not to mention that everything just gets blocked by those ad blockers these days.

I also find myself in a small technical debt corner and wish I had the time and energy to make everything right. It doesn't require much effort, but it's going to be tedious if I want to grow it to its original vision. At this moment, and seeing where it's at financially, I cannot justify it.

So I find myself here...

If you've previously registered, your account will remain active. Payments have been cancelled and you will be able to continue to use Sublime Ads without issue, for now.

Sublime Ads is also incredibly niche... but I have more fun with more consumer focused products, like shoutouts.lol.

If someone would like to buy it from me, without the customer data, please get in touch – I'd be open to discuss it. I think it certainly has a good life in it, given some marketing.

I am still unsure how I will manage the service going forwards. My current plan is to keep it running for existing customers, and if you're interested, just let me know and I can see what I can do. I might rewrite it all from scratch, and launch it as a new product, but I am unsure right now.

Working on Sublime Ads has taught me a lot, and that is always the most important for me – not the money.

Feel free to email if you have questions or concerns.

The thing I love about shoutouts.lol is that it's pretty much a complete product. Except some very minor extras, I'd say it's complete. Does exactly, minus theme sharing, what I wanted it to do. Now it's up to customers.

If it's worth anything: Timeline Sync on Micro.blog has been discussed at length for some time now internally, we know what needs doing to make it happen across the app, web and api at the same time. However it will take time. New app first. Go from there ✌️❤️

Next up, working on XML-RPC posting for the new Micro.blog app. That will transition to Micropub based sites too, which naturally will include IndieAuth.

Really happy to get the share extension into the new Micro.blog app. It's available now on Test Flight for iOS. The beauty is that we could re-use most of the code. Once we ship for iOS, I will also make this available for Android users. This release also fixes an issue with blank views ✌️

Looks like there are issues with DNS again for several of my services. It's intermittent and not all endpoints are affected and I just need to wait it out. I've contacted Bunny.net.

• Gluon status page
• shoutouts.lol status page
• Sublime Ads status page

5AM, so back to bed.

A quick video demonstrating the toolbar options in the Micro.blog Share Extension (for the 3.0 iOS Beta). Gonna be internally testing the extension this week and hope to get this out soon.

There are a few intermittent DNS issues with the shoutouts.lol zone. Hopefully will resolve itself. Will monitor in the AM and provide an update. Sorry if this affects you.

Deployed some tweaks to shoutouts.lol today. Mainly around themes, which I just announced.

I've added the ability to bring in your own stylesheet for the main Themes page preview. Super useful if you want to see what it looks like on your actual site.

I am happy to announce my first little plugin for Micro.blog, which allows you to embed your shoutouts straight into your site, may it be in the actual theme or on a page or post.

It's super easy to get started, and all you have to do is install it from here: micro.blog/account/plugins/view/92.

You will also need a shoutouts.lol account, so you can get your special embed code from the Embeds page.

The next thing you need to do is actually figure out where you want to put it.

Instructions are in the plugin Read Me to get you started. For the actual repo, you can find that here.

If you want to see a real example, head on over to my social microblog and have a look in the footer.

shoutouts.lol now supports the ability to create multiple themes. This has been on the drawing board since its inception, but wanted to keep it for another time. That time is now.

Having different themes allows you to create a Theme for that one-off website or page you have, without affecting your other embeds.

For example, I have a main default theme on my own website in the footer... but I also have another site, where I want to have it slightly different and bring across styles that I specified, without having to open up the sites code and change the stylesheet. Just let shoutouts handle that for you.

It's super simple and intuitive, with easy controls to copy your embed code and a simple preview window (which loads it in an iFrame).

This feature is labeled as "Preview" for now as I'm still making changes and am gathering feedback on ways to improve it (I have ideas, but so do you).

In the long term, I want to also add the ability to share your theme with other people. Because that'll be cool.

Hope you like it and thanks for using shoutouts! (and if you're not... ahem: Sign up)

I've got a small update out for my Status++ app (if you're using updown.io).

• Fixes a crashing bug when tapping on a check.
• Changes things around with grabbing, and setting, Webhooks. This is due to the app using a deprecated API endpoint.

Thanks everyone for using it so far ✌️

A little bit more progress on adding theme support to shoutouts.lol. Quick video: You can see random coloured loading indicators, because it's nice. Click to copy the embed url. I reckon this will work well, depending how you style your site, or just how you feel on the day.

Good progress with the Micro.blog Share Extension on iOS today (for the new app). Still much to do!

Last week I tweaked the header navigation in Sublime Ads. Looks nice! Will probably use this idea elsewhere.

If you're using Status, my "this app is taking forever to build" for updown.io, and you got an email about using a deprecated API, then that's on me. I'm in touch with Adrien to solve this and move the app over to the new API endpoints for webhooks.

Further progress with getting support for multiple themes into shoutouts.lol. I've been working on getting a preview to load, via an iframe, which uses the theme options you set. Pretty happy that it works.