My Mastodon Bookmarks — a Blogroll of Things Worth Reading

from vasilis

Today I made another clock.

☞ https://vasilis.nl/clocks/shop/07/

from bobmonsour

Here's how I made this social media image.

https://bobmonsour.com/blog/deconstructing-these-auto-generated-og-images/

from bobmonsour

Yes, I've been using AI. Here's what I've done so far.

https://bobmonsour.com/blog/how-ive-been-using-ai/

from zeldman

Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 26 (Tahoe) ship with a built-in on-device LLM, but it’s locked behind Swift APIs with no terminal or HTTP access out of the box. apfel is a Swift binary that breaks it open, exposing the model as a CLI tool, an OpenAI-compatible HTTP server, and an interactive chat session. Private, secure, on your device only, with no token costs.

https://apfel.franzai.com/

from malarkey

👉 I got tired of correcting machines, so I gave them five rules

https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/i-got-tired-of-correcting-machines-so-i-gave-them-five-rules

from metin

Want to move from US-based apps and services to Europe-based ones?

Useful links…

https://european-alternatives.eu

https://euroalternative.co

https://www.switch-to.eu/en

https://www.goeuropean.org

https://eutechmap.com/map

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/%F0%9F%87%AA%F0%9F%87%BA-european-alternatives-to-american-apps.46070

https://www.privacytools.io

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools

https://eurotechguide.com

https://switching.software

https://codeberg.org/ADHDefy/delightful-creative-tools

Big freeware / open source list:
https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/3tPYpALSRBVZ5od-0YfEKp+l

LinkedIn alternative:
https://ponos-job.eu

#EU #europe #tech #tips #FOSS

from coywolf

TinyStart is a fast, minimalist launcher for macOS by @nileane that focuses on the essentials: opening apps, folders, links, and search engines.

https://coywolf.com/news/productivity/tinystart-is-the-spotlight-search-alternative-ive-always-wanted/

#Productivity #MacOS

from nfd

@operationpuppet I'm on 11ty (Build Awesome) currently and have no plans to switch.

I recently discovered this simple new static site generator that seems great for people who don't need all the Build Awesome complexity. https://hypertemplates.net

from hamatti

Last night, @tlohde nerdsniped me with a great Eleventy question while I was on the train on my way home and I couldn't resist to figure it out.

The question was: is it possible to write a Markdown post, mark its content as sections and then split those sections up in the layout?

Yes! My approach is to use a special split marker and a custom filter.

https://hamatti.org/posts/markdown-content-split-to-sections-in-eleventy-and-nunjucks/

#Eleventy #11ty

from bobmonsour

Alex Preston, author

https://alexhmpreston.com/

#11ty @11ty

from nileane

it's been about a month since I uninstalled Logi Options+ from my mac, I've been using BetterMouse instead https://better-mouse.com (thank you so much whoever first recommended it to me), and oh my god I should have done this way sooner

from robhawkes

Terrain data is already live, and wind roses are coming soon once I've tidied a few things up and done some more testing.

And even more features and updates are being worked on… 👀

Check the map out for yourself here:

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com

from rudy

there's a certain day of the week every year, that allows you to calculate the day of the week for any date that year -- in your head!

for 3 years out of four, it's January 3
in the fourth, in leap year, it's January 4

so for 2026, this day, called Doomsday, is Saturday

The Doomsday Algorithm
https://rudy.ca/doomsday.html

the easiest part of the Doomsday algorithm is the even months

all of these Doomsdays are Saturdays in 2026 --

April (4th month) 4th
June (6th month) 6th
August (8th month) 8th
October (10th month) 10th
December (12th month) 12th

the other months are fairly easy too, and pretty soon you will be able to do any date this year

check out the 2026 Doomsday calendar below

you can also extend this to other years and even centuries, but it's a bit trickier

the Doomsday Algorithm was originally devised by John Horton Conway, a famous mathematician, who died of COVID in 2020

from Gurggles

Witchcraft.😮

from debcha

I got to introduce someone to the greatest website of all time yesterday:

https://www.mcmaster.com

[If you’ve never had occasion to use it: just go to that link, pick something, repeat. Or look around where you live or work for something that’s broken and needs replacing and look for that part. Or think about something you might want to make.]

from angiebaby

Some funny to cleanse your timeline.

from bastianallgeier

OMG this is so good: https://colorpalette.pro/ Almost as if Teenage Engineering builds a color palette builder. 🥰

from jon

@Gargron

I totally missed this and just found it in in the repo: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/36075

If you only knew how much this excites me as an SEO and someone that loves structured data. 🙌

from rustybrick

Google's @johnmu PSA: Verify your cloud host for images, videos, etc with Search Console - he explained how https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-cloud-host-40363.html

#googlesearchconsole #googleseo #seo

from bagder

Just noticed this site exists:

https://justuse.org/curl/

from grigs

Our former colleague @paulhebert launched a new daily word puzzle game with a twist. It is a lot of fun and a beautiful, well-built web app. Definitely worth checking out! https://tiledwords.com/

from TheBulletin

Are you interested in how web sites can identify and track you via your browser? Try this handy tool from the @eff

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

from kottke

Fun logic puzzle game called Clues by Sam. “Your goal is to figure out who is criminal and who is innocent.” https://cluesbysam.com

from belldotbz

Don’t worry if someone else has written about stuff before. Don’t even worry if you have written about stuff before.

2019: https://piccalil.li/blog/two-simple-methods-to-vertically-and-horizontally-center-content-with-css/
2025: https://piccalil.li/blog/another-article-about-centering-in-css/

from rachelandrew

Between the time we launched the original Learn CSS course on web.dev and today, container queries landed in browsers and became Baseline Widely available! It was high time for an update, and we were lucky enough to have the team at OddBird work with us on it. Enjoy 9 new modules! https://web.dev/blog/learn-css-refresh

from simonrjones

@koalie I still have a Flickr Pro account but don’t use it enough. Self hosting would be great, if it was simple.

I see Flickr Foundation has a “data lifeboat” tool that helps you export photos. http://datalifeboat.flickr.org/

from jensimmons

You can use line-height units (`lh and 'rlh`) in your designs to better tie layout to your typography. Including using them as paragraph margins (instead of `em`) to easily establish much better vertical rhythm. These units are supported in all browsers today!

https://webkit.org/blog/16831/line-height-units/

from underlap

New blog post: Blogging in markdown

https://underlap.org/blogging-in-markdown/

#eleventy #markdown #CodeOSS

from Myriam

Quick tip straight from my #SMXLondon deck: check if Google recognizes your company logo or if at the very least, it can read what's written.

Head on over to: https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/drag-and-drop
Drop your logo in there.
See what happens!

I'm talking about this on Sep 19th!

from timbray

Hmmm, worth a closer look.

https://github.com/craigbuckler/staticsearch

from piccalilli

A revisit of the Every Layout sidebar with :has() and selector performance

Heydon Pickering takes a fresh look the Every Layout Sidebar layout, 6 years on, to see if modern CSS selectors can improve it.

https://piccalil.li/blog/a-revisit-of-the-every-layout-sidebar-with-has-and-selector-performance/

from urlyman

My thanks to Sven – https://mathstodon.xyz/@SvenGeier/114819445178105464 – for reconnecting me with this which I saw a while ago but had been unable to rediscover.

I now know, courtesy of a post on @RichardJMurphy’s blog – https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/03/26/from-centre-right-to-hard-left/ – that it was a letter to The New Statesman in 2023

#ukpol

from sil

Neat little CSS trick for changing the theme of a page in a pretty way, inspired by @kevinpowell: https://www.kryogenix.org/code/browser/theme-transition.html

from kottke

Star Wars Lofi, chill music from a galaxy far, far away to work & study to. Available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and vinyl. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL148kCvXk8pA9rHNmK_fjitW24vdLZE21

from jippi

from mattwilcox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8

He was on to something

from ChrisPirillo

Remember when solari boards (split-flap displays) were all the rage? Did you always want one? Well, now you get one - and it'll even pull in some of the latest tech headlines for you, too.

Images don't do my FLAPATRON justice, though - you've gotta hear the tile-flipping sound for yourself.

I 'vibe coded' it in HTML with Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (before they put me in usage jail) live last night and it's up in arcade now.

https://pirillo.com/arcade/flipatron.html

#ai #tech #software #webdev #vibecoding #rss

from scott

My personal portfolio website is now built with @11ty ...I appreciate this is long overdue given that I began development on my #11ty starter theme about 2 years ago 😬

What do you think?

https://scott.ee

from kottke

A selection of gorgeous woodblock prints from Hasui Kawase, whose naturalistic yet dreamlike style influenced Studio Ghibli & Hayao Miyazaki. https://kottke.org/25/05/view-of-azalea-garden-from-mt-fuji-hasui-kawase

from simon

I'm glad somebody out there is brave enough to push back against the "personal ChatGPT usage is terrible for the environment" message https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about

"If you want to prompt ChatGPT 40 times, you can just stop your shower 1 second early."

"If I choose not to take a flight to Europe, I save 3,500,000 ChatGPT searches. this is like stopping more than 7 people from searching ChatGPT for their entire lives."