Lo! A philomath's field notes & yearnings
Micro.blog’s photo challenge for today is love.
We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give. — Ursula Le Guin
I love using GeneratePress (Premium + GenerateBlocks) for WordPress projects. I’m still relatively new to everything but after using Divi, I’m blown away by how versatile developer Tom Usborne’s products can be in replacing traditional page builders. It also works surprisingly well on an iPad. With the block editor gaining more traction, the future of WordPress development seems different to me. My ship for learning tons of code and hand building custom web pages has sailed. It never docked. But that’s okay. The people I build for are friends and small business owners and GeneratePress will get the job done perfectly.
But I’m keeping Among the Stones in Sami Keijonen’s theme Simppeli, for a long time probably. Like the name suggests, it’s simple and I love the bold headings, typefaces, and lack of a dropdown menu. It’s not for everyone, but it is for me.
In early iterations of Among the Stones, I tinkered much more than I wrote, usually without much knowledge on how to do it. So I would switch from Raam Dev’s Independent Publisher (a very good blog theme) to a thousand others, searching in vain for that desired look. Then switch back, change some things, become restless again, then go hunting on GitHub and WordPress’s themes directory once more. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I hated it.
Lately, I’ve tried to focus on writing more. I’ve used the space to journal, to link and comment on things around the internet, and to share photos and some ideas.
Now, and especially after seeing a nice blog redesign, I have a list of changes I want to make to the design of Among the Stones, all within a child theme of Simppeli.
Here’s the thing though. I’m trying to prioritize offline time after my classes, so some of this might get done, and others might not. I’ve sat down to finish up a shortcut or dive into a problem only to be pleasantly pulled away by a walk in the woods, or one of the unread books sitting on my nightstand. Most of these unfinished tasks are small tweaks, such as highlighting the tagline of the blog to break up the black and white. I also added a vertical line of the same faint yellow #fff9c0 to block quotes to better differentiate quotes. So here they are, to be done or not.
Really the only thing I must figure out quickly is securing the blog with SSL. My knowledge of the backend is admittedly pretty shaky. I found my first host, Media Temple, through Mike Rockwell’s Initial Charge. I’ve since switched to a Digital Ocean droplet and this means the command line. I go to make a password on the droplet and it fails. Every time I’ve sat down to figure it out, my eyes glaze over and my short attention span (or undiagnosed ADHD) forces me to get up and go outside or read something about autochthonous forests or the history of emissaries.
Automatic dark mode on iOS13 is something special. I have it set to sunset to sunrise. Most of the apps I use have a dark mode that defaults to the system now. And the web can also take advantage of @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark. I have a snippet that I’ve pieced together but it’s incomplete.
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
body {
background-color: #333333;
color: white;}
p {color: white}
a:link {color:#ffffff;}
a:visited {color:#ffffff;}
a:hover {color:#ffffff;}
a:active {color:#ffffff}
h1 {color:#ffffff;}
h2 {color:#ffffff;}
h3 {color:#ffffff;}
h4 {color:#ffffff;}
li {color:#ffffff;}
tr {color:#ffffff;}
#respond #commentform textarea {
background-color: #404040;}
#respond #commentform .text,
#respond #commentform textarea {
color: #ffffff !important;}
}
}
The metadata below the post and the typeface color with highlights don’t switch, so I haven’t implemented it yet. Until then, the white background at midnight is a little jarring.
It’s proverbial low-hanging fruit but the search bar that appears in About and Archives is rounded, where every other text field is square. I want to change this to make it more consistent.
Simppeli doesn’t come with a great archive, so I’ve used short codes for recent posts and months with a search bar. I’d like to include post dates after recent posts’ titles, a smaller month and year view like kottke.org: use years and months in a line, include most-used tags with the number of posts next to them in a simple comma-separated list. I’m not a fan of tag clouds with each larger or smaller tags.
Alongside some aesthetic changes, I’d like to take advantage of more automation so I don’t have to fiddle inside the dashboard after publishing. I have not fully harnessed the power and time-saving capabilities of Shortcuts in my writing workflow. I have a ton of things to figure out to make more customized Publish to WordPress shortcut for markdown editors like iA Writer, my text editor of choice on iOS/iPadOS. I think most of this requires regular expressions, again, something akin to hieroglyphics.
iA Writer is also a very simple text editor app. With its main competitors, Ulysses and Drafts, moving to subscription price, iA Writer has intentionally stayed one price. I think I paid 4.99 USD for it in 2016 or 2017, but now it is 29.99. Only you can decide if it is worth it, but the amount of updates and ease of use suggests it might be for writers looking for just a blank page.
It utilizes iOS’s Files so you can see and move around your text files (not so with the two aforementioned apps). For organization, you can use Folders and hashtags. Hashtags are also used for titles H1-H6 in markdown. For instance, this section has three hashtags ###, a space, then the title Hashtags. To use iA Writer’s organizational hashtags, leave out the space. They will appear on the Library view at the bottom in alphabetical order. When you preview a filed with the keyboard shortcut ⌘+R, these do not appear.
What I’d like to do is add a few actions in Shortcuts to recognize these organizational hashtags (probably located at the bottom of a page) and use them as tags to be included in WordPress’s publish action, without them appearing in the finished post at the bottom of the page inside the body.
I like highlighting physical books and PDFs. I also like the look of them in posts to draw attention more than bold type. iA Writer recently added == as a way to bracket and highlight text inside the app rather than using HTML <mark> and </mark>. Unfortunately, WordPress does not recognize this. I need a few actions to find these, replace the beginning equals signs with the first HTML tag and the ending equals signs with the second.
If I use photos in posts, I run a shortcut that resizes and compresses it, uploads it to WordPress, and gives me a markdown URL, such as . Theoretically captions go in the brackets, like any text that will turn into a link. While WordPress recognizes links, it does not render properly for captions. This means I have to go in to each publisher post, add the media manually and use HTML if I want to link to an image source that isn’t mine in the captions text box in the media library. It takes time and can be cumbersome from a phone or tablet, which is where I write.
I try to avoid footnotes, but for some posts, they could be helpful but I haven’t found a WordPress plugin or other solution that correctly emulates how markdown and iA Writer adds footnotes, which is simply [^text here] that automatically numbers them down at the bottom of a list. If you have any suggestions, let me know.
This one’s a bit meta and nerdy, but maybe I’ll find some solutions to these from someone reading this. The next post will be about Galician elections coming up on 12 July.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) wrapped up yesterday. This year’s was pretty different. With the coronavirus pandemic unabated, the whole conference was moved online and made more accessible and streamable for all, providing safety and convenience to regular attendees as well as enthusiasts who have never made the trip to San Francisco or San Jose.
As I’ve written elsewhere, I no longer desire the latest and greatest hardware, so iPhone events don’t interest me greatly. While iPhone prices have risen (excluding the new very affordable and cool iPhone SE 2), Apple has extended the shelf life of older iPhones by continuing to support them with iOS updates. I was never one to upgrade every year, but that didn’t stop me from wanting shiny new things. As I’ve adjusted to a lower salary (but improved quality of life), secondhand iPhones with a home button and an older but functional iPad totally work for me. This is a testament to how well Apple supports these devices and it’s commendable.
But I’m still a software geek at heart and enjoy seeing what the company and the dedicated iOS developers around the world bring to the operating systems, iOS and iPadOS, every year. I’ll write something more about the things I’m most looking forward to, but today I wanted to write something about software keyboards.
It’s not a particularly flashy topic. Anglophones have typically taken for granted that our language dominated the internet, which means technology is much more accessible to us than others. Before smartphones, my friends and I quickly learned to type with T9 as we relied on the system to understand which words we wanted to use depending on the combination of numbers we pressed, rather than press 2 thrice for the letter c. For speakers of other languages, this might not have been the case.
When the iPhone was revealed all those years ago, it did not feature a hardware keyboard with buttons like the once-popular Blackberrys had. This allowed the iPhone to have a larger screen, since it could hide the keyboard when it wasn’t necessary. It also allowed for different keyboard layouts. Most of us primarily input information into our iOS devices through typing. If we’re quick or careless, we rely (heavily) on autocorrect and keyboard suggestions. Some of us have reduced or even stopped traditional computers with hardware keyboards in place of phone and tablet screens.
Having a good keyboard with its own dictionary and intelligent suggestions is an important and often overlooked technology. And while there are apps that we can download to add keyboards for other languages like N’ko or that provide certain functions like Gboard, nothing beats having a default, system-wide keyboard built into the OS.
I live in Galicia. It’s one of the few historical nations and regions inside Spain. I go to the bank and I’m able to request the ATM’s language in various languages, including English, before I make a transaction. If I go to Eroski, a Basque supermarket chain found all over Spain, most of the products are labeled in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Basque.
But when I try to add a Galician keyboard to practice writing (and learn spelling and where to place accents via autocorrect), it’s missing. It’s time for Apple to add a Galician keyboard.
Galician, or galego, has a legitimate need for its own keyboard on iOS/iPadOS (from here on, just iOS). Adding it would further Apple’s mission of connecting more people together using its devices and service in a language that a few million people speak and feel comfortable in using.
The Galician-speaking community in Galicia, around Spain, and worldwide is sizable. With around 2.4 to 3 million first- and second-language speakers, Galician has a deep history, intertwined with the broader history of Castile/Spain. From the late 12th to the 14th century for example, Galician-Portuguese (then a single unified language) was almost exclusively the language of lyrical poetry in Christian Iberia.
It is a co-official language of the autonomous community of Galicia, used in schools and universities, at home, in gaarden, churches, amongst political party members, at sea, on television channels and radio stations, in newspapers, and in town halls. It a language with a rich lyrical tradition dating back to the 13th-century. And it is a language with speakers dedicated to preserving it, and thereby, their culture, in spite of the more historically dominant Spanish language.
There are also significant numbers of Galicians living in other parts of Spain and around the world, especially in the Americas and other European countries, due to a history of emigration in the mid-20th century.
While related to Portuguese, Galician is a separate language with different orthographic norms officially administered by the Real Academia Galega. Simply, Galicians care deeply about their language and culture and strive to valorize it in myriad ways.
During the fascist regime of Franco, who ruled the country from the civil war in the late 30s to 1975, Galician and other regional languages like Catalan and Basque were suppressed. And even before, Galician was thought of as a backward, rural language for farmers, lower in value than the “urban, sophisticated castellano”.
But this is changing. There are countless people, social movements, social media campaigns, and organizations dedicated to the preservation, use, and advancement of Galician. There is a desire for a Duolingo course to learn Galician. Some quick searches in in English, Spanish, or Galician will prove this. In short, many people learn, speak, and write in Galician. Those of us who don’t, want to.
Apple providing a native, system-level software keyboard with autocorrect and suggestions would deepen its commitment to fostering creativity, education, and productivity for Galician speakers. This would have enormous benefits for different groups of people; younger generations of digitally native Galician speakers, neofalantes (people who did not grow up speaking Galician but choose to learn and speak it for various reasons), immigrants such as myself who wish to learn it to better communicate, and of course older Galician speakers who rely so much on Apple’s intuitive ecosystem to stay in touch with family.
What I’m writing isn’t anything new. I haven’t necessarily seen anything in English but I first saw the website Queremos Galego years ago. The last post is from the days of iOS 8. On Twitter, Galician triple jumper Ana Peleteiro is just one of many to lament the fact that they must either use a Spanish or Portuguese keyboard when they write, both of which are insufficient given orthographic and vocabulary differences between the three related Romance languages.
I find it very sad to have to put the keyboard in Portuguese to be able to type in Galician on my iPhone. I think Galicians should be more proud of our language and give it much more use. — Ana Peleteiro
There have a few Change.org petitions that get passed around the internet. While it is true that iOS users can add Galician (Galego) to a list of Preferred Language Order in Settings > General > Language & Region, they cannot change their iPhone language to Galician nor can they add a keyboard to write properly in Galician.
So where does Apple fit into this? Simply, they can help people write in Galician on their devices by adding a systemwide keyboard. This would eliminate the need for lower-quality third-party keyboards. Then, Galician speakers and learners could use it everywhere, with correct spelling, autocorrect, suggestions, etc. Catalan, another regional language of Spain, has its own keyboard. Why not Galician?
Millions of people use iOS everyday. With the current global pandemic and during the quarantine, we rely on our iPhones and iPads even more. This is of course anecdotal but from my own perspective, younger Spaniards prefer iPhones to Android. My sister-in-law is a university student in Madrid and the vast majority of her friends have or want iPhones.
Presupposing that Apple cannot include every language keyboard (even though I think they should try), I’ve listed a few languages that, according to various census data pulled from Wikipedia, have fewer speakers than Galician. Some of these figures include L2 (second-language) speakers.
If these languages have been prioritized and given a keyboard, it is because there is a need, a demand, for writing in them. It is because there are users or employees inside Apple who have petitioned for them, spoken up for them. If this is the case, then surely Galician deserves one too.
While I am writing to show a specific absence of a default Galician keyboard, other language communities should support the Apple in Galician effort, just as we should support other communities petitioning for better accessibility and more multilingual keyboards. Basque does not have its own keyboard, for example. And this is only Spain. Wherever there is a sizable language group, we should be pushing for more multilingual accessibility to Apple products. So let’s reach out:
#AppleEnGalego, etc.
Out of nowhere a few days ago, I received an email in Spanish from Couchsurfing, the famous social/homestay website and app once beloved by every shoestring-budget or extroverted traveler. The email title was bookended by two emoji exclamation marks.
❗Couchsurfing necesita tu ayuda❗
On first glance, it looked like a scam, some bad actor impersonating the company. I haven’t received an email from Couchsurfing in ages. In fact, the last non-hosting/surfing confirmation email I got from them was back in 2016 when they introduced a calendar function. The body of the message was a few paragraphs, and in between each were three burnt orange buttons:
Login to support Couchsurfing Login to support Couchsurfing Login to support Couchsurfing
Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the economic downturn, “the sources of funding for Couchsurfing have been depleted”. They reduced their company size, taken pay cuts, are now 100% remote, and also applied for relief funds from the government. The email was notice that they’re now “asking” for a monthly subscription to continue to use the service.
Let’s rewind a bit. Couchsurfing was once the holy grail for all traveling on a shoestring budget interested in meeting locals, trying to escape high Airbnb or hostel prices.
Say you’re not on vacation, just living normal life. You have a couch (or a spare room; or a guest house, in the case of our fantastic hosts in Mérida, Mexico), you advertise that you’re willing to host on your profile. Your profile also lists some basic information, your interests, what countries you’ve lived in and visited, music/movie/book recommendations, and your personal Couchsurfing philosophy. People visiting your area can see your profile and if you’re willing to host (you can also set your status to willing to meet up like I have now, since our house is quite small). They can message you to stay a few days (or more, as sometimes happens when host and guest click well). If you have a traveler’s mindset or are interested in meeting new people from different countries, it’s a great way change up the monotony that comes with working life.
When host and guest part ways, both parties review each other and you can respond to the other’s review. Reviews are big on Couchsurfing obviously. Patricia and I were hanging out at one of our favorite Nouakchott cafés when we received a request from a European guy for a couple days. We both remembered his thesis-length profile, waxing poetic about the traveling lifestyle, the people, the philosophy, oh my, which is not to be ridiculed by itself. But one of his recent hosts mentioned in her review that he ate everything in her fridge and never bothered to buy groceries or cook a shared meal. Hard pass.
When I moved to Nouakchott, I started working full-time and only traveled during school holidays. I still wanted to connect with other English-speakers and offer one of the rooms in my sizable flat. Using Couchsurfing was incredible and allowed me to connect with those making the journey from Morocco to Senegal on bicycle, motorcycle, in a van, hitchhiking, or on public transport. I met a diverse group of people, and I trusted them stay in my house due to the mutual respect that travelers and the Couchsurfing community share with each other. We were all united in seeing and experiencing things that couldn’t be bought. Most of the time, my guests “repaid” my hospitality with their own by doing some grocery shopping or cooking a great meal, or giving more advice on where to go next. Over the years, I did have some peculiar guests, like a Polish monarchist who seemed to be a sex tourist heading to The Gambia or a young French film maker who needed help from his mother and my Mauritanian friend to get him over the border safely. But I also met truly incredible people; An Australian motorcyclist, a Swiss couple on bicycle. Some I have never talked to since, others I have met up with years later on a different continent.
In Latin America, we used Couchsurfing to find hosts and a local perspective on the area. Occasionally it doesn’t always work out. Couchsurfing has a lot of dormant accounts, people who might’ve created one for a trip and then forgot about it. And sometimes there was awkward situations. In Campeche, Mexico, we stayed at a girl’s house while she was visited her family in town. A tropical storm came and made going out impossible. Our host was unable to return home and told us to make ourselves at home and feed her dogs. One of them, a small diva-like breed, was unenthused and went to the bathroom on our bed. But using Couchsurfing in combination with cheap hostels or Airbnb deals was a great way to meet new friends and keep our daily budget as low as possible.
Since leaving Nouakchott and finishing our trip in South America, I hadn’t thought too much of Couchsurfing. I did message a few people around Ourense before we moved here but only one responded back and we never met up. Hence my surprise to hear from them, and how they’re struggling so much under the weight of reduced global travel.
But my empathy for them has somewhat diminished. First, I received this email in June. According to the email:
As of May 14, 2020, we are asking for member contributions of $2.39 per month, or $14.29 per year if paid upfront, to keep Couchsurfing alive. This member contribution is required to access the Couchsurfing website and mobile applications.
I was informed of this decision almost three weeks after it occurred. That’s a bad look. What’s interesting is it seems the English-speaking portion of the community might have received this email on 14 May. At least the blog post that is a translated copy of the email I received was posted on 14 May.
I have a verified profile, which means I paid 10 dollars or so a few years ago, uploaded my government ID, and had my phone and address authenticated. I did this to gain unlimited Couchsurfing request but also for the community. As you can imagine, there are scammers who have taken advantage of the goodwill system. There have also been of sexual harassment and rape on the Couchsurfing platform. Becoming verified to me was a symbol of trust that I am who I say I am.
With a verified profile, Couchsurfing gifted me a year free. But Patricia, for instance, does not have a verified profile. This means she is locked out of her account. She could not message or request anyone. From glancing at the reddit and Twitter conversations, many people were furious at their data being held hostage and the messages they might have had with old hosts and guests that they can no longer access or use. Perhaps they never swapped phone numbers or Facebook/Instagram accounts. This could be the only way they stayed in touch with certain friends.
On 20 May, after much negative feedback, I’m sure, Couchsurfing posted another blog post:
We hear you. You’re disappointed that we did not communicate more about the financial state of the organization as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic earlier. For that, we apologize. Sincerely. Genuinely. From our hearts. We are sorry. We are humbled by the outpouring of voices. You have shown us the depth of your passion for Couchsurfing, for the community, and for the friends you have made here.
After, they address twenty-one concerns that have been raised about the decision to change the business model and ethos of Couchsurfing.
No, they didn’t mean to hold your data hostage and you can request a copy or deletion of it by sending an email. The venture capitalist money of the early 10s dried up by 2015. I’ve linked to the post so I won’t add any more.
I’m not totally opposed to paying for Couchsurfing. But there is a lot of bad feelings in the community after this badly orchestrated, seemingly spontaneous decision during a pandemic to start charging.
I would be in favor of something like this
This probably doesn’t provide Couchsurfing with enough financial support, but I’m sure there are other options to allow the bulk of users to get the benefit with minimal financial investments. Yes, the coronavirus has hit the traveling community hard. But after we start living the “new normal” globally, we simultaneously must rethink our consumption and travel habits. That means less planes and more trains, visiting places closer to home, and not wastefully staying in high-priced exclusive hotels or Airbnbs. While many will want to socially distance themselves from others, preferring private stays, the young internationalist crowd will crave deeper connections with the people whose cities and countries we are visiting. Even if Couchsurfing only exists as a meetup app for coffee, there is still benefit to keeping the spirit alive.
While I’m not sure what I will do after my year of Couchsurfing expires, I know that it was a great catalyst for meaningful friendships, great experiences, and a humble perspective that influenced my life and the philosophies I want to live by. For that, whatever happens with Couchsurfing, I’ll be grateful.
After Ramadan, I promised my significant other I would participate in a detox with her. We eat very well, gracias a ella, and almost vegan, aside from very infrequent eggs from the neighbors (and if I break down at the market and buy semi-curado cheese). But we were both interested in cleansing.
The detox consists of a week of planned breakfast juices, a quinoa or rice salad mixed with veggies, and a soup with puréed greens. From 7 pm to 11 am the body fasts, and we drink water or a tea between meals.
But for me, the absolute hardest part has been relinquishing my beloved morning coffee. For the first few days, I had a day-long caffeine headache. And while I desperately wanted to make myself a cup, I know that the purpose of the detox for me is taking a much-needed break. I was stubborn and didn’t give up coffee like many do for Ramadan.
But yesterday, the headache was gone and even though I’m a little more lethargic, I felt good. Indeed, the meals are delicious. So even though I was less enthusiastic about detoxing than her, I’ve come to enjoy the self-discipline somewhat.