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This is the full archive for 2019
Options should NOT have additional properties
San Francisco
· SVG Translate · programming · Webpack · CSS · Symfony · Encore ·
I'm getting this error when compiling SVG Translate's assets with Webpack:
error in ./assets/app.less
Module build failed (from ./node_modules/mini-css-extract-plugin/dist/loader.js):
ModuleBuildError: Module build failed (from ./node_modules/css-loader/dist/cjs.js):
ValidationError: CSS Loader Invalid Options
options should NOT have additional properties
It's come about due to trying to upgrade to css-loader version 2.1.
If I comment out all the assets in webpack.config.js, the error goes away, and comes back when I only include assets/app.less (I didn't try to narrow it down to any other files; one example should be enough).
It sounds like the options for css-loader have changed. If I dump the config for that module, I get this:
console.log(module.exports.module.rules[1].use);
[
'./svgtranslate/node_modules/mini-css-extract-plugin/dist/loader.js',
{
loader: 'css-loader',
options: { minimize: true, sourceMap: false, importLoaders: 0 }
}
]
It seems that minimize and sourceMap are not valid options; the first was removed in version 1.0.0 (which I guess SVG Translate wasn't using), and I'm not sure about the second. I'm not sure where they're coming from, I guess some Encore config somewhere; certainly it's not in SVG Translate's config.
What if I just delete them?
delete module.exports.module.rules[1].use[1].options.minimize;
delete module.exports.module.rules[1].use[1].options.sourceMap;
Nope, no good; same error. Oh, of course: because that's being done after the loader is being used. What if the css-loader is configured manually, earlier?
.configureCssLoader(function ( options ) {
delete options.minimize;
delete options.sourceMap;
return options;
} )
Yup! That works. Does it work when all the other asset files are uncommented? No:
error in ./node_modules/oojs-ui/dist/oojs-ui-wikimediaui.css
Module build failed (from ./node_modules/mini-css-extract-plugin/dist/loader.js):
ModuleParseError: Module parse failed: Maximum call stack size exceeded
You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type.
RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded
If we switch to an already minified version of node_modules/oojs-ui/dist/oojs-ui-wikimediaui.css? Yes!!
So maybe things are okay now? This feels like a reasonably ugly fix, but if it works then I'm happy for now.
The result is here: https://github.com/wikimedia/svgtranslate/pull/45
S85
· status updates ·
"only two Australian coins — the holey dollar and dump coins — have had their legal tender status removed." —An obscure coin law let a shop refuse service to an Adelaide mum
S87
· status updates ·
Right, for about the 4th time in the last few years, I've nuked my WordPress site and replaced it with a peculiar MediaWiki install. We'll see how long it lasts this time (till I get bored).
S90
· status updates ·
Cargo gets a nice shout-out at around 1:08:00 in http://betweenthebrackets.libsyn.com/episode-25-denny-vrandei
S91
· status updates ·
Lunch time at the Musical Offering and Café on Bancroft Way in Berkeley. geo:37.8684,-122.26071
I don't like mocking
San Francisco
When starting out on adding something new to a project that one is not intimately familiar with (or even on one with which one is), the first thing is to write the description of some small test. Just a sentence or two about what is to be tested and why the expected results are what they are. The test doesn't have to do much, or even be very unique, but it should start from nothing and build up whatever is required. For this reason, I often find integration tests to be much easier to write and to keep within the conceptual model of the system.
The thing with mocked components is that they assume you know enough about what those components do to construct their output manually, and often that's not the case. So, I resort to the full real components quite often in tests, with the only downside being the speed of tests.S93
· status updates ·
The PD-heirs template on Commons is useful when you're uploading deceased relatives' photos and things.
S94
· status updates ·
I think SVG Translate is nearly actually functional. All the bits are working, I just need to tidy up.
S96
· status updates ·
I've been watching the sun set against the bay bridge. Nice to breath a bit and slow down.
S98
· status updates ·
Why do so many photo storage systems not have a facility to store the timezone in which a photo was taken?! Makes for annoying workarounds when trying to list photos in date order.
Under construction blogs
This comment at the bottom of this post made me laugh:
It's always the way of the indieweb that one's site is somewhat out of order, but it's also the fun of it, and something of a relief to get away from the overly-managed and always-corporately-polished social media sites.(I wanted to post this on my Infodisiac.com blog, but that blog it is out of order at the moment, so I’ll upload it as html page). Feel free to comment at my post on Facebook.
S102
· status updates ·
I suspect posting on one's own site would be fine if we all did it and remembered what RSS was.
Chair on the lawn
University of Western Australia
S103
· status updates ·
The internet is crazy and full of sad stuff at the moment. I'm just going to hide for a bit I think, and watch the ants climbing a piece of bark as the sun goes down. Time to breathe.
S104
· status updates ·
When the code makes sense, the world makes sense. But bloody hell, when it doesn't — things really do feel shit.
S105
· status updates ·
I'm attempting, for what seems like the 32nd time, to print an A5 PDF to bindable A3 signatures. Might be on to something this time though.
S106
· status updates ·
Yaron Koren interviewed me last week on his Between The Brackets podcast: http://betweenthebrackets.libsyn.com/episode-29-sam-wilson
S107
· status updates ·
Oh M.G. I fixed a problem with my scanner and suddenly I can scan and describe and upload and drink whisky, all at once!
S108
· status updates ·
I managed to fix my Lets Encrypt bug that's been pestering my logs for the last few weeks. Wasn't hard at all—I'd not realised that the Apache-detecting system of the letsencrypt tool is so clever these days!
Up the Swan River
Crawley
· boats · Swan River · travel ·
A day out on the boat, going from the Crawley boat ramp up to Mandoon for lunch, and back again.
-
-
River aerator near Guildford
S110
· status updates ·
It's Saturday and lazy and sunny and the few chores are done so I'm going to watch another All The Stations over lunch.
Nearly holiday time
Fremantle
Only one more day of work till a week off (thanks to Easter and Anzac day). That's a nice thing. I'm attempting to get some SVG Translate bugs finished off (I mean... finish off fixing them) and hopefully get up a patch I've got nearly done for TemplateWizard's tests. That latter will probably not happen, because I'm bamboozled by the job-runner not running all jobs, which means that the test's templatedata isn't available to the subsequent testing code. Not sure why.
S111
· status updates ·
The book I'm reading has a character called 'Em' and my first impulse was to wonder why she was named after a typographic unit of length.
Freo street arts' festival
Fremantle
· Fremantle · South Terrace · festivals · woodworking ·
It's another wonderful sunny-but-cool Easter in Fremantle, and the street arts' festival is in full swing. This morning we saw Yosuke Ikeda's terrific mime show Rhythm,[1] and the tail end of a terrifying acrobatic act climbing 10 metres up a tower of chairs. I could barely watch. Certainly didn't watch the sword-swallower on the way back through South Terrace (other than to see a young chap through the crowd who collapsed on the ground in a feint).
Home now, and the sun is past the meridian, putting my workshop doors into the shade and meaning I can go and finish varnishing them. I started the other day, but was rained off.S112
People say that you should post things on the internet in places (like Medium) in which more people are likely to read them, but I just want to put these notes out there into the aether and don't really care if no one reads them. It's nice to post, and doing so publicly helps with thinking, I find.
I'd much rather have my words on my own site.S113
· status updates ·
Did someone called Lynne Truss really write Rumblings from the Rafters? That's great!
Cat Whispurr
Fremantle
· Fremantle · cafés · GraphViz · MediaWiki · cats ·
I'm having a look at the new cat café in Fremantle. The coffee's okay and there are cats for sure, behind a big glass wall at the end. There are even power points at every booth (with USB sockets). It all feels a bit new and unsure of itself, but that's okay. This stretch of shops is pretty wonky and Hampton Road outside is not very inviting, but in here feels pretty spacious and calm (although maybe too spacious in a way, or the walls are too white or something). Anyway, it's a nice place to sit. If I'd realised before I sat down, I would've sat at the table near the cat-wall.
I'm attempting to continue some work on the GraphViz extension: making it not upload generated graphs as wiki files. It's nearly there. I'm hoping some people will critique my patch though.Girrawheen library
Girrawheen
· libraries ·
I went to visit my brother at work at Girrawheen library, in the northern suburbs of Perth. It feels like quite a way from Fremantle, but it was easy enough to get there on public transport. On the way I grabbed a few missing photos for Wikidata items such as the Hamilton Street bridge (currently non-existant as a new one is being built) and Leederville railway station.
Suburban libraries are great. I wish I had more time to spend two hours commuting each way to get to all in the metro area, because there's something quiet and focused about these spaces.
Upgrading my server
Fremantle
· VPS · Digital Ocean · servers · system administration ·
The last day or two I've been upgrading my VPS to Debian Stretch, which hopefully I can carry on using until June 2022. Mainly because, when I upgrade these things, I like to reconfigure how I do things and check into the latest ideas of how it should all be done. Of course, usually that means some sort of orchestration, but I'm doing things rather manually — still, there is plenty that I can do that is better than how I did it when I last set up this server (about three years ago).
I'm going to post a general how-to of what I do for this, but right now there's a few more bits and pieces that need to be taken care of. At least this website is functioning correctly now. I hope.
(Oh yes, and it's Star Wars day, so perhaps it's a good day for pretending to be a sysadmin?)S114
· status updates ·
It seems that my recent woes with books failing to display correctly on my Kobo are down to bad font support. Even selecting what is supposedly a built-in font makes the book fail to show, and the device hang indefinitely when trying to open a book.
Switching back to the default font fixes everything.
Wikimedia Hackathon 2019
Prague
· Wikimedia · hackathons · Prague ·
Post-hackathon coding
Český Krumlov
· PageForms · Czechia · Wikimedia Hackathon · MediaWiki ·
I'm in Český Krumlov, south of Prague a few hours. I'm trying to add a new field type to the PageForms MediaWiki extension; never done that before. It's a reasonably easy-to-understand system I think, although I suspect I've done something wrong somewhere. I want to add better date- and date-time widgets, to not use jQuery UI and instead stick with the built-in OOUI widgets. I've got a first draft working (although it's currently turning OOUI on for all inputs, which is silly). I do wonder if it would be better to not add a new type, but just add a ooui=yes to the existing ones. Actually, that's much better. I'm about to get on a train though, so it'll have to wait.
More Hall papers
Fremantle
· archives · documents · Hall family · notes ·
Yesterday I received from my dad the following copies of transcripts:
- archiveswiki:Letter from W.S. Hall to his sister Sarah Bracher, c.1863
- The Murray District of Western Australia by Ronald Richards 1978, pp.260–262 re James Anderton Hall getting lost in the bush
- Conversation with Alan Wilson, Joan Salom, and Margaret Wilson, 1993-05-02 (17 pages)
- Conversation with Judith Hall, Constance Berryman, Margaret Wilson, and Joan Salom, 1977-01-20 (20 pages)
- archiveswiki:C.B. Berryman 1983 (10 pages)
- archiveswiki:C.B. Berryman family history (6 pages)
- Interview with Joan Salom, 1978-10-13, with notes by Judith Hall (18 pages)
- wikisource:Account of the schooner Ethel being caught in a cyclone (4 pages)
- Part of H.M. Wilson's talk on opening of Cossack Museum (pages 7–11 only)
Cossack day 2
Cossack
· Pilbara ·
-
Myrtle the turtle -
North West Mercantile Store -
Dig Down -
Bakehouse
The cemetery:
-
Hall family -
Muramats -
Edward Leighton -
Dora E. Snook
2019-06-14
Fremantle
· WMAU · Wikimedia · travel ·
Heading to the airport soon, to fly to Sydney for the WMAU Community Conference. I'm looking forward to meeting new people, and finding out more about what's going on around the country. It's pretty rare that we all get together — it's never happened since I've been involved in Wikimedia stuff. Australia's a bit too big, really.
A beach out the window
South Australia
We're just passing near the beach in South Australia where YF Camp was held in 2003:
Nice bugs
Fremantle
It's very hard to focus sometimes. But then a bug report comes along, makes sense, and a path forward is clear. It's a nice feeling, especially on a Friday afternoon.
Wikignoming
Fremantle
Bellvue Terrace
Fremantle
I've been scanning more FSPS photos, and this place in Bellvue Terrace caught my eye:
It's how I imagine Fremantle, when it's warm and quiet and I figure out how not to worry about all the other crap in life.
Back to WordPress
Fremantle
Rdquo, ldquo
Fremantle
MediaLoader extension
Fremantle
There's a new MediaWiki extension that's just been published: MediaLoader. It looks like it's supposed to load media items such as images, videos, etc. on demand. I haven't been able to get it to actually work (there's some strange Composer loading stuff going on in its code) but I think it works by displaying a click-able bit of text such as 'Load example.jpg' (not actually a link) that, when clicked, turns into the image or whatever. All it's doing for me right now is turning into the raw wikitext, but maybe there's something I'm missing.
I guess the idea is to not download/display the image if its not wanted by the user?
Anyway, it's new, and it's always nice to see a new extension being made. Huzza!
Take photos of things that are soon to go
Fremantle
First and last drop
Fremantle
Fremantle Bowling Club
Fremantle
· Wikimedia Commons · Fremantle · Fremantle Bowling Club · Fremantle Workers' Club ·
I tried to write about last night at the bowling club, but the WordPress app ate my words without saving a draft. I'd had too much beer (and then mulled wine) for the words to have been any good anyway, so no matter.
I've started uploading a few photos to Commons, firstly of the Substation building:
And then of the bowling club.
It's not a particularly interesting building, and none of the members I spoke to seemed very worried at its demise. The new clubhouse will be bigger and better and generally sounds more exciting.
It was lovely hanging out with the people there, and hearing their stories about the history of the club.
Putting photos in folders
Fremantle
I'm printing index sheets for the FSPS photos, so that each streets' group of photos (e.g. Ainslie Road) in the archive folders is divided by a set of A4 colour-printed pages with thumbnails of the photos. These don't actually have each photo's URLs or filenames, which I've been a bit disappointed about, but it does have the URL of the street's page. That is enough to get pretty close to an individual photo, and I think it's good enough. If I were starting this project again I might do things a bit differently, but I'm far enough in now to want to maintain consistency.
I do want to sort out a better URL rewrite for page IDs. At the moment I am including page ID URLs such as https://archives.org.au/Special:Redirect/page/1100 but this would be neater as https://archives.org.au/P1100 (which would prohibit having wiki pages at that URL, but I think that's okay).Timber shingles
Fremantle
Backing up (my) Commons files
Fremantle
I'm experimenting with an idea of treating the Commons copies of my photos as the 'master' copy, and not keeping them online anywhere else (e.g. Flickr). This involves uploading to Commons and then keeping a local copy in sync — because I don't want to lose any photos if they get deleted from Commons.
I'm using Digikam locally, and have two collections configured: one scratch-pad one, for sorting out photos that are just off the camera; and one backup one, which lets me browse photos I've got on Commons.
I download from Commons with the following backup.sh script, which goes through all of my contributions and exports XML for every page I've worked on, and every file for which I'm the first author (i.e. I uploaded it).
#!/bin/bash
BACKUP_DIR=$(cd "$(dirname $0)"; pwd -P)
mwcli export:contribs \
--config="$BACKUP_DIR/config.yml" \
--wiki=commons \
--user=samwilson \
--dest="$BACKUP_DIR" \
--only-author
The mwcli script is at github.com/samwilson/mwcli.
The reason I want the Commons copy to be canonical is that it makes for centralised metadata, a single place to edit and add links to related material. It's annoying to have to keep metadata in sync between Commons, Flickr, and possibly a local copy of things too.DDD Perth 2019
Fremantle
On Saturday, August 3rd 2019 I went to my second DDD Perth conference. This is an annual one-day event that seems to bill itself as being something different from the usual tech conference and to be more accessible to people who might not normally go to these things. Which, I reckon, is pretty great; it feels like a more friendly place (even though I am the sort of person who usually goes to these sorts of things, I often don't really feel like I belong). There is something of a corporate vibe, though, which sort of mars the 'community' aspect — although that's where the low price of the tickets comes from, so I shouldn't complain!
The welcome to country was done by Nick Abraham, who gave an interesting talk. I liked the lists that he rattled off the names of families he's part of and places they're from.
All of the presentations that I went to were interesting, but the two that have stuck with me were about CSS Grid (Amy Kapernick), and WebAuthn (Ben Lowry). I want to experiment with both in my personal projects. Don't suppose I'll do so, though. (Too many fun things to explore; not enough time.)
I'm very glad that the Perth developer community is able to support this sort of event these days.
A Tuesday morning
Fremantle
The internet seems to be full of bad news at the moment, so I'm ignoring it and focussing on some nice little code projects that are calming and friendly and only slightly maniacally frustrating.
SVG Translate tickets are petering out; version 0.10.3 is just out with some login fixes and language updates.
This morning I'm working on adding a 'messages exist' notification icon to the PageTriage toolbar.
And I think I've cracked the search-debouncing for my Embed Wikimedia plugin, so might be able to move on with the metadata- and appearance-improving stuff that I've been trying to do for weeks.
Piwigo default theme
Fremantle
I found what I think is a little bug in Piwigo, and made a fix.
[Update:] And an hour later it was merged!Mermaid graphs for Genealogy
Fremantle
Cycle to Perth
Fremantle
· Mapping · Cycling · Perth ·
I cycled to Perth yesterday, mainly as a way to stop thinking about things. I didn't really think there would be any OSM mapping to be done on such a popular route, and there wouldn't have been if it weren't for the roadworks along the freeway
which forced me to cross over the overpass and ride through the streets of South Perth. The official detour ended and I could have crossed back, but I carried on... through non-cyclepaths and large detours around intersections.
I looked at the map, and it did actually look like there was a whole path along the golf course that wasn't on the map, but actually it was added a month ago and OSMand hasn't updated yet.
But it was interesting to see the new timber shingles being put on the Old Mill.
A few random other photos:
Mr Curly
Fremantle
· Wikisource · punctuation ·
Ingredion’s wiki
Fremantle
Read permissions in MediaWiki
Fremantle
Cuppashack revisited
Fremantle
Cuppashack at the Hamilton Hill shops is still going, all these years later. That's nice. It feels better inside now too, and the garden has grown. Good to see a café not fail.
S115
· status updates ·
This thing is called steam ale. And goat ale. And it's organic. A good thing, is this thing.
Piwigo a security risk
Fremantle
· Piwigo · photos · security ·
Is Piwigo a security risk? There's been another vulnerability reported, and it's got me worried. I've turned off my photos site for the time being, till I've figured it out some more.
Maybe I should carry on shifting things to Commons and this collection of wikis. I do like having the option of storing things like timezone.
WikiClubWest at Riff
Perth
I feel like I managed to get quite a bit done at this evening's meetup. I uploaded a dump of the main WMAU wiki to the Internet Archive, and fiddled some more with the events system on that wiki. It's satisfying to get it working better. I added the MsUpload extension to make it easier to upload files, but didn't get time to sort out the attendance-tracking thing that we want to add (optionally) to events.
Climate rally
Fremantle
I'm on my way to the climate crisis rally in Perth, somewhat annoyed I didn't bring my computer because I want to work on getting WhoWroteThat onto the AFO. I guess this is meant to be a strike though. I suspect that not flying all over the world every year would be a more useful act on my behalf. I'm feeling good about the Wikimedia meetups in Perth at the moment because they're local and actually feel more productive than meeting in person in far away places.
I also want my computer on this train so that I can improve the mobile display of the Item metadata table on ArchivesWiki.
Halo
South Perth
· cafes ·
Now at Halo Espresso. There's lots missing from #OpenStreetMap around here. :-)
Grumpy twits
Fremantle
Army Jetty changes
Rottnest
Heading back to the Settlement now, and I've stopped at the army jetty to have a look at it now that the unsafe concrete decking has been demolished. It's a bit boring now, just a groyne, but good that it's not going to squash anyone I guess!
Beach
Rottnest
I've had to give up on my camera because it's battery has died. So I'm stuck with the phone. Although, there's something good too about being able to describe photos as soon as I take them, rather than waiting and maybe forgetting why I took them.
Like this strange rusty buoy thing on the beach, but probably this is a bad photo and shouldn't be used.
3 legs
Fremantle
Swim
Rottnest
I stopped at the shop and got milk, so had to hurry back with it. Otherwise I would have tried to get some photos of the building works that are going on at the hotel. Or had a beer. Or both.
I got back and went for the most refreshing swim. It's hardly a hot day, but four hours of walking made it pretty easy to throw myself in with no hesitating.An economy to live in
Fremantle
(Re Morrison responds to Greta Thunberg by warning children against 'needless' climate anxiety: Australian PM says debate replete with disinformation and he wants to give children confidence they will have ‘an economy to live in’.)Morrison: Don’t worry kids, you’ll still have an economy to live in. It’ll be a shit economy where you scrabble in the dust for meagre resources while the rich hunt you for sport from their floating pleasure ships. But it will still be an economy.
MediaWiki blog
I hope this becomes a thing: http://mediawiki.blog/ (heard about via Semantic MediaWiki Live Stream on Youtube).
Timezone
Fremantle
Curly quotes are good
Fremantle
· Wikisource · punctuation · quotation marks ·
The curly-quotes discussion has ended, and in favour of using them (consistently within a work)! The MoS has been updated to:
Use a consistent style of quotation marks ("straight" or “curly”) within a given work. It is recommended to use "straight" quotes in works where there are a large number of contributing editors, since consistent use of “curly” quotes may be difficult to achieve.
S117
· status updates ·
I've been entering some OSM POIs this evening. Seems like a good way to crawl pubs: only go to the ones that aren't in OSM yet.
Generated readme for wmwcli
Fremantle
· mwcli · documentation · MediaWiki ·
I've added a script to mwcli that adds all of the CLI documentation to the README.
It was easier than I'd thought it was going to be, to get access to thw command definitions. Most of the patch is dealing with formatting, and there's some more of that to do. I also added a CI check to ensure that the documentation always matches what's in the code. It helps to highlight missing i18n messages as well.
Personal wiki
Fremantle
· Hacker News · re-posts ·
In Do you use a personal 'knowledge base'?, metalliqaz said on 2019-10-02
I have started using a personal mediawiki instance with Cargo for semantic data. I realized that I wanted to have full control of my data, so I didn't like the idea of going all-in with Notion or something similar. I'm a heavy user of wikipedia so mediawiki just "feels" natural. Installing it is a huge pain.
I am finding that the system works well enough, once you get VisualEditor working. However the main problem is the habit of capturing my thoughts and work products. It's a tough habit to get in to.
Ultimately I want the wiki to be just one piece of a larger system that automatically organizes all my articles, files, mail, posts, etc. The idea being that I can work with whatever tool is easiest for any particular situation, and still be able to cross-reference all the information in a way that is useful and easy to search. We'll see if I ever get there.
Embed Wikimedia 0.2.0
Fremantle
· WordPress · block-editor ·
I've released another beta version of Embed Wikimedia, with support for three blocks for the WordPress block-editor (Commons, Wikipedia, and Wikidata). There's still work to be done on their interfaces, but before tackling that I want to sort out support for captions from Structured Data on Commons. There's a few other bugs too (and I'm sure I'll write more before I'm done).
The annoying thing about blocks, I'm finding, is that I still write a fair bit with the Android WordPress editor, and so still do old-fashioned embeds where they're just a bare URL on its own line. I feel like the blocks get away from that simplicity (although, internally, so far they're exactly the same functionality).Cossack buildings from the north-east
Fremantle
· Cossack · photos · archives · H.M. Wilson Archives ·
I've just uploaded this new (to me) photo of Cossack to Commons:
.png)
Micro.blog podcast with Adam Tinworth
Fremantle
· micro.blog · indieweb · Adam Tinworth · podcasts · websites ·
Another interesting podcast about indieweb things and why it's a good idea to have your own website and : 70: Adam Tinworth aka @adders ():
And this too: The IndieWeb Movement: Owning Your Data and Being the Change You Want to See in the Web (also ).Adam Tinworth was a journalist for two decades. He started blogging in 2001, “a transformational moment” for him. He now works as a consultant and trainer in digital journalism, social media and content strategy, teaching classes such as Social Media & Audience Engagement for Editorial.
Exactitude in wiki data modelling
Fremantle
· Cargo · Semantic MediaWiki · MediaWiki · Wikibase ·
There's a new page on MediaWiki.org called Managing data in MediaWiki. It compares the Wikibase, Semantic MediaWiki, and Cargo extensions. All three of these extensions are about managing the metadata of wiki pages or of concepts represented by those pages.
The thing I love about MediaWiki is that one can give in to the impulse to progressively, gradually, move towards being exact in the representation of data. Each of the above extensions help massively with this, but it's still pretty easy to get confused about how to do it.Piwigo on Android
Fremantle
· Piwigo · Android · software ·
I've recently started using the Piwigo app (for Android). It's getting good! Version 1.0.0 has just been released, and it has the thing that I've been wanting for ages: the ability to select multiple photos at once, to upload. Hoorah or what?
So I've got to get serious about organising my photo collection now, and make sure a) everything is in my Piwigo; and b) each photo is there only once. I might see if I can help with preventing duplicates at upload time.New location for Apache PHP config
Fremantle
· PHP · Apache · servers · system administration ·
Under PHP 5, I used to put custom PHP configuration in a file such as /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/99-foobar.ini and it'd be automatically included by the main php.ini (after most others, thanks to the 99).
/etc/php/7.2/mods-available/foobar.ini and enable it with phpenmod foobar. I guess there's no priority-setting with this system?
S118
· trains ·
I am railing: Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city, 13 November 2019, BBC News:
"A lot of people laugh at it being a silly hobby, but it's a wonderful hobby," he said.
The scenery and structures are his forte, rather than the locomotives and tracks. "I find beauty in what everyone else sees as ugly - rugged skyscrapers, beaten-up warehouses, things that are very run down."
Copying templates between wikis
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
· mwcli · templates · MediaWiki · syncronization ·
There's been a fair bit of discussion at the Tech Conf in the last couple of days about how to share MediaWiki templates between wikis. I usually do this via a list such as the templates page on this wiki, which has a pre-populated link to Special:Export. This is a manual export process, and the resultant file is manually imported into the other wikis where the templates are wanted.
This works fine, but I could make it easier. For example, it'd be nice if the process was automatic.
I also have a little script called mwcli, which I've been slowly adding features to this year. One of them is the ability to upload text files to a wiki, including with live-watching for file changes. I need to add a thing for downloading a set of pages. This would mean that it'd be easy to pull a bunch of templates and modules, work on them locally, and push them up to multiple wikis — all from the local machine, and for users who aren't admins. (Maybe that last point is a un-feature, I don't know.)
Another missing piece of this puzzle is how to define the groups of pages/templates/modules. I think an on-wiki JSON manifest page would be good, but probably I'll just use a local flat text list for now.
S119
· status updates ·
Great afternoon working on Wikisource badges and figuring out Discourse stuff in MediaWiki.
TechConf last day
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
· TechConf · Atlanta · USA ·
It's the morning of the last day of TechConf, and the rain and mist seems to have come in. Not that it's really experienced, inside here in the over-heated rooms — but it's nice to look out at the damp autumnal trees.
I'm trying to go over notes from yesterday about Discourse, and a few different Wikisource things: the plain sister template and how to make it use alternative Wikidata items (via the main one); and adding badges to the header template (I'll wait till I'm back in Australia for that one, I think). As part of editing those templates, I'm also working on the page-upload part of mwcli, which is now working but still needs some robustifying.
For some annoying reason, I am managing to always wake up early here, which is great from the point of view of having a few hours every morning to catch up with work and code, but does rather leave me brain-dead by mid-afternoon. There are so many amazing people to talk to as well.
I've been looking at the bus schedule for getting to the airport tomorrow. Everyone says American cities have crap public transport, but it doesn't seem so awful. Will take nearly two hours to get there I think, but that's okay.
Signing off for a bit
In SYD
Sydney
· Sydney · airports · travelling · eslint ·
I am at Sydney airport, with a crashing headache (from, I hope, dehydration only) and a couple of hours to while away before my next flight. I feel like I've just been through a very very long night: from watching sunset at about 5PM in Atlanta, it's now mid-morning the 'next' day — 27 hours later. Actually, that sounds wrong, surely it's not that long; but timezone arithmetic is hard at the best of times, and right now my brain is not experiencing the best.
I'm attempting to look at what I was thinking was a small coding-style patch on a MediaWiki extension, but it's turning into something bigger so I might give it up.
And so much for thinking that I would be offline for very long.S123
· status updates ·
I need to merge the 'status update' and 'blog post' datatypes of this wiki onto one generic 'post' thing, I think. And add a 'repost' aspect to it. And 'photo' probably, although that already mostly works fine.
Wall done (mostly)
Fremantle
Flickr's future
Fremantle
· Flickr · photography · archiving · Wikimedia Commons · Wikimedia ·
The CEO of FLickr, Don MacAskill, sent out an email to all Flickr users a few days ago, talking about how they need more paying customers to make the service sustainable. I thought it was a reasonably honest-sounding email, admitting the trouble of hosting billions of photos, but but some bits of the internet took it as either a) Flickr being greedy and wanting to get rid of more free-tier users; or b) another death knell, and a good reason to do whatever's possible to get photos off Flickr.
I use Flickr a bit, because it's an easy way to share photos with family. In doing so, people I know sometimes end up using it and I would rather they did that instead of using Google Photos or Facebook because it's got better a metadata system and keeps the full original files. It'd certainly be better if everyone used open source software and self-hosted their stuff, but if that's not going to happen then I'd rather people used Flickr. The other thing I use it for is as a staging ground for photos I want to put on Wikimedia Commons.
There's a bit of a discussion happening on Commons about whether it's worth bulk-importing public open-licensed photos from Flickr. I sort of think it's a good idea, but also suspect that there's tens of thousands of poor quality photos and near-duplicate shots. It'd create ever more of a backlog of undescribed things on Commons, which'd be annoying.
These days, I'm finding more and more that there's a distinction in photos I take, broadly in two categories: photos of people and places that are dear to me, which serve as memories and that I want to look back over periodically; and photos of places and objects that strike me as more generally interesting. The former group I add very personal captions to (offline), and they're much more like private journal entries; the latter I try to get onto Commons because I hope that they are useful to other people and crucially I want them to be open to being described by anyone. I don't often want the same photo to be in both categories.
Diagrams service
Fremantle
· MediaWiki · Graphviz · diagrams · wikis · programming ·
OSM printing in Fremantle
Fremantle
So it turns out that the Map and Chart shop in Freo does print Openstreetmap maps to order. It seems like they can do any A-size paper and any scale, on nice paper with borders and legends and titles.
I'm going to get one of Rottnest! (As soon as I've had one more bash at it in Josm, to catch any obvious errors.)Cloud chambers
Fremantle
Last year I went to the Exploratorium and was fascinated by the cloud chamber. It's a terrifically lowtech-looking machine that shows you the paths of cosmic rays as they pass through the building. They're also called scintillators.
I don't know if they're related (I'm no physicist) but this random number generator sounds pretty cool, and reminded me of the joy I had watching the cloud chamber.