Are you waiting for something during eternal Caturday?
Oh! Dang! Many thanks to Kristof for pointing out a glaring oversight in my recent updates to make the IndieWeb Webring πΈοΈπ more deterministic:
https://kiko.io/notes/2024/The-fun-of-randomness-in-a-Webring/
I forgot to give the “random site” feature its own link!
It’s back! You can now visit πΈοΈπ.ws/random to go to a random active site on the ring.
It’s also linked on the landing page of the webring.
For best results, add it to your bookmarks! ππΈοΈππ²
The Level Up is a LOOSELY video game-themed indie improv showcase! Come and see some of the freshest talent in the New York indie improv scene!
I’ll be playing in with Philip and the rest of the Level Up!
Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!!
Magnet Theater
254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.)
New York City, NY 10001
Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/58638/
“Starting August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will start displaying an interstitial page for a percentage of existing links notifying your users that the link will no longer be supported after August 25th, 2025 prior to navigating to the original target page.”
Are you washing up during eternal Caturday?
Do you watch the horror films and shows? Don’t forget to vote in the Fangoria #ChainsawAwards
Happy belated birthday to these two goofs. (During eternal Caturday)
The Level Up is a LOOSELY video game-themed indie improv showcase! Come and see some of the freshest talent in the New York indie improv scene!
I’ll be playing in with Philip and the rest of the Level Up!
Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!!
Magnet Theater
254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.)
New York City, NY 10001
Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/58568
Had a (fireball) blast running Joel and Andy of the Silver Linings Playback Podcast through some loosey goosey Dungeons & Dragons as we discussed the loosey goosey 2000 film adaptation Dungeons & Dragons.
Are you a member of the πΈοΈπ IndieWeb Webring? Perhaps one of many who noticed that the "previous" and "next" links were actually going to random active member sites in the ring?
I'm pleased to announce that the "next" and "previous" links between webring member sites should now be, more or less, deterministic! For example, if you visit gRegor's site, scroll to the webring links at the bottom, and click "next", you'll be taken to a site like mine! (at this moment, it is mine!) From my site, if you click the "previous" link, you'll be taken back to gRegor's site! This should m-
Well, uh, yeah, good spot. At a high level, the update works like this:
Each active member site gets a pseudo-random "sorting" number. For a given site, the "next" site is the one with the next highest sorting order, and the "previous" is the one with the next lowest.
When you click on a "next" or "previous" webring link from a member site, your browser tells* the webring where you're coming from with a "referrer" header. If the webring recognizes the referer as an active member site, it'll look up the next - or previous - site in the ring to redirect you.
Way to stay sharp! Referrer headers can leak potentially sensitive information, so over time browsers have added ways to restrict how and when referrer headers are sent between sites.
Most of the time, the webring will only see the referring URL up to the first slash after the domain. For folks whose site on the webring has a path component, the webring won't be able to match it against most referrers.
It's also possible that your site is configured to not send referrer headers at all - in that case, the webring has nothing to go on to figure out that the visitor came from your site.
If the webring can't figure out where a visitor came from, they'll just get directed to a random active site.
Well, it's no worse than before!
There is! Or... was. The first version of the webring included unique identifiers in the webring "next" and "previous" links for each member site. These unique IDs would have made it straightforward to figure out where a visitor is coming from.
Yeah, I removed that feature last year. π
The emoji-based IDs were hard to manage, added messy unintended meaning, and made it easy to mess up the webring links (or spoof someone else's) when copy-pasting!
You bet! You can find today's updates to the code here on my git hosting.
I'm not sure! I feel like this update has the webring in a pretty good place. It's simple enough that I understand it and it works. I might look into some updates for the directory or the site layout, or help surface more information about member sites, like whether they advertise RSS feeds.
Okay that's it, for now! Thanks for reading, imaginary interlocutor! As always, feel free to reply to this post on your own site, or feel free to drop me a line in the #indieweb chat (Iβm schmarty
there)!