I’ve updated my rss chat server on my Raspberry Pi: John’s Pi chat. A new feature is adding a menu of commands to the menubar. I followed the instructions. Just for fun I decided to edit the example in drummer rather than locally. This lead to a mistake where I used the link button to add a link 🔗, rather than a url attribute, with the suitcase button . Anyway easy to fix. I made the outline public and used that in the config. Using Drummer for the first time in a long while reminded me of the scripts menu which, in my mind links to  today a type="link" node opens its url in a new tab; other types get their behaviours later.  Other types sounds interesting.

Read The Devils Footprints by John Burnside ★★★★☆

I am unsure how much to ‘believe’ of the main character’s narrative. He claims a childhood murder and the insanity of running away from his wife and life with a 14 year old girl who he thinks might be his daughter. The nasty side of a Scottish small town. Queasy, uncomfortable & involving with lovely prose.

Like the visit from the angel, or that moment of terror before cock-crow, a flicker of light revealed how, mostly, we are creatures of chance – how, when the devil has work to do, he makes it look like an accident, at least to begin with, in order to lure us further into his trap, protesting mildly, if at all, but willing accomplices at the last.

and

I would come to where I was then: the dusk of a winter’s morning on the streets and the houses, dusk on the point, the starlight above the firth a perfect echo to the night boats coming in, and someone watching it all from an upper room, a man who might as easily have been someone else but, as it happened, was me: a quiet, solitary man in a world lit by new snow, leaning towards the window and touching the dark, empty pane, to feel the cool of something other than the night, remembering his fingers through the glass.

rss chat is now simper to set up  so I gave it a wee go on local host. So far I’ve just run it from my downloads folder.  The instructions worked but I am a node-no-nothing so I tripped a couple of times. 

First I didn’t npm install so nothing worked.

I tried to set up SMTP using SendGrid, but I lost the will to live half way through. Got an API key but

Message failed: 550 The from address does not match a verified Sender Identity. Mail cannot be sent until this error is resolved. Visit https://sendgrid.com/docs/for-developers/sending-email/sender-identity/ to see the Sender Identity requirements

So I just copied the magicString from the terminal and constructed my own url:
http://localhost:1420/userconfirms?emailConfirmCode=ysugstk4yc

Which did the trick.

Ofcouse a localhost oneperson social network is not much use 😉 but interesting none the less.

Read: Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen ★★★ 📚

Viva who works for corrupt philanthropists & her Eccentric millionaire partner take on said philanthropists, corrupt politicians & MAGA activists to stupid for the proud boys. Heavy satire, fun but feels a bit forced.