Weekly Webpage Workshop #2
by Bradley Gannon
Dear ~club:
Did you enjoy creating a custom 404 page? I didn't end up with a lot of
time this week, so I threw mine together a bit hastily. Still, I
managed to embed a video of someone playing (or perhaps simulating) a
perfect game of Snake. I had hoped that maybe I could implement an
actual self-playing Snake game in JavaScript, but for now this will do.
My hope is that someone who stumbles upon it may at least briefly be
amused by the pleasing motion of the pixelated reptile.
Many of you did a much better job than me. Thanks to the work of
~benharri and ~deepend, I was able to pull a list of ~clubbers who
created a "404.html" in their "~/public_html" using `find` and check
them all out for myself. Some of you are quite talented with CSS
(whether by craftsmanship or theft), and I congratulate you on your
efforts.
Here's a list of the 404 pages I found, if you'd care to check them out
for yourself, in alphabetical order by username. Well done all:
- [benharri](https://tilde.club/~benharri/404.html)
- [bradley](https://tilde.club/~bradley/404.html)
- [bvh](https://tilde.club/~bvh/404.html)
- [deepend](https://tilde.club/~deepend/404.html)
- [gikiski](https://tilde.club/~gikiski/404.html)
- [inchingfwd](https://tilde.club/~inchingfwd/404.html)
- [jcjordyn120[(https://tilde.club/~jcjordyn120/404.html)
- [micah](https://tilde.club/~micah/404.html)
- [mpnordland](https://tilde.club/~mpnordland/404.html)
- [rarguello](https://tilde.club/~rarguello/404.html)
- [schussat](https://tilde.club/~schussat/404.html)
If you don't see your 404 page on the list, feel free to leave a reply.
----------
That's enough about the past. Following the success and surprisingly
high turnout of last week's inaugural WWW, I think an increase in
challenge complexity is in order. My aim is to mostly present relatively
simple workshop objectives, but occasionally I'd like to throw in a
thinker. You may find that this week's is one of those.
Wikipedia is perhaps the greatest project of good will on the web. If
you want to know about it, chances are that Wikipedia has some
information about it. Unfortunately, many of you have likely been
interrupted while browsing this digital oracle by an increasingly
obtrusive plea for money. (Incidentally, I encourage all of you who are
able to donate what you can to this outstanding resource.) It's obvious
that Wikipedia lives and dies on donations from its users, but what if
we could improve Wikipedia's financial situation from the other end, by
reducing operating costs?
Well, we can't. At least, not meaningfully. But we sure can pretend.
This holiday season (read: this week), I implore you to...
**Adopt a Wikipedia page**
What does this mean? You see, dear reader:
> Every contribution to the English Wikipedia has been licensed for
> re-use, including commercial, for-profit websites. Republication is
> not necessarily a breach of copyright, so long as the appropriate
> licenses are complied with.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Things_...
Therefore, rehosting of Wikipedia content is allowed, provided that it's
done correctly. (Read the rest of that linked page for details.) If we
each adopt a Wikipedia page (that is, host it in our ~club directories),
then we will be helping Wikipedia out by reducing the load on their
servers (marginally) and helping them stay afloat. It's a holiday
miracle!
Two suggestions on how to do this, if you're not sure where to start:
1. Consider using your favorite modern web browser's "Save Page"
feature, which will do some of the parsing and link re-jiggering
for you. It will also probably put the image assets in a neat
little sidecar folder for you, like a dog bringing in the paper.
2. When doing so, also consider appending "&printable=yes" to your
page's URL to get a simpler, less-styled version that might look
a little more like what we want on ~club. Up to you.
**Important note:** please don't use this silly email as a way to
attempt to justify breaking license terms or the ~club server. Keep your
resource footprint low (try to stay under 1 MB of disk, I'd say), don't
make anybody mad, do your research, and play nice. I am not a lawyer.
Go to work, ~club. The future of open knowledge depends on you, or
whatever. Oh, and choose your page wisely.
Bradley
2 days, 14 hours
Tilde.Club Updates! Suggestions welcome!
by deepend
Hello everyone!
First off.. Hope you are all doing well and Happy Holidays!
Has been great to see tilde.club come alive again and we hope we can continue to provide a service that people will enjoy and use.
On that note I would like to find out what the community would like to see tilde.club become.
Reply to this topic with ANY suggestions of additional services or improvements we can be making to the tilde.club experience.
Please note:
SSH login now requires key. Password authentication has been turned off. Stop by IRC or shoot a mail to root(a)tilde.club if you need help getting back in now that password auth is disabled for SSH.
Thanks everyone!
1 week, 1 day
Weekly Webpage Workshop #1
by Bradley Gannon
Hello, ~clubbers:
Welcome to the first-ever Weekly Webpage Workshop. I've seen many a
complaint amongst you that you don't know what to put on your shiny new
~club webpages. The gleaming white blankness can be intimidating, so I've
decided to at least *try* to change that by sending out what you might
call "HTML writing prompts" each week. If you like, try implementing the
idea yourself, and then share and discuss your attempt in this thread.
Next week, I'll try to put together a participation summary for your
enjoyment.
So, onward we march to the first prompt:
**Make a custom 404 page.**
We all know 404 pages. `HTTP 404 Not Found` is the tumbleweed-filled
wasteland that meets any traveller of the Internet unfortunate enough to
follow a dead link (or mistype a URL). Most web servers don't bother
replacing the bland default 404 page that ships with their server binary,
and a good fraction don't even have such pages. Instead, they just tell
the web server to redirect 404s back to the homepage, or something boring
like that.
A few server admins have the creativity and lightness of heart to take a
page that normally creates frustration or disappointment and make it at
least a little fun. Take [Google](https://http://google.com/404) and
[Slack](https://slack.com/404) as examples. (Many more examples exist;
these are just the ones that came to my mind immediately.) Your task,
should you choose to accept it, is to build such a page for yourself and
host it somewhere on your ~tilde.
Maybe consider putting a neat `.gif` or video on your 404 page, or perhaps
a meaningless aphorism. Make it simple or grand, detailed or unpolished.
It's up to you.
As far as I'm aware, there's no way to make your 404 page show up as the
actual 404 page for your ~tilde without help from ~ben or ~deepend. I'll
say that getting your 404 page set up on tilde.club will be extra credit.
Fly, you fools! And have fun,
Bradley
1 week, 1 day
Prompt #13: How are you?
by Jon Bell
That’s the prompt this time. How are you?
I’m in the southern hemisphere, so I’m still getting used to the idea that December is a really hot month. It’s enjoyable, but … strange. I’m drawing comics again! I’m really excited about it.
Which reminds me, if you’ve kicked off a new project, don’t hesitate to share a link or just talk about how you’re excited!
1 week, 4 days
Story Time!
by Hazel Snider
Let's make a silly little story together. Everyone will add one
sentence, each on a new line, until it feels like it finishes well, at
which point one should write END on a line after the last sentence.
1 week, 5 days
Mail working?
by sincarne＠tilde.club
Hello! I don't seem to have got any mail since last week. Am I already out
of the club? Anyone else? Will anyone even hear me?
A
1 week, 5 days
Re: Welcome to the "tildeclub" mailing list
by Sam Goldfield
Thanks for adding me to the mailing list. I don't know if this is reaching
anyone else, or if I was added by accident (I created ~tea on tildeclub).
Who are you?
>
I'm Sam. If you enjoy vaguely technical thoughts punctuated with a lot of
football support, please follow my twitter: https://twitter.com/samgdf
Cheers,
Sam
1 week, 5 days
