V Buckenham has declared that this is the year of the blog. I suppose I shall answer the call. It must be so.
I used to blog with shocking regularity -- at my peak (or my lowest point?) I was writing 2-3 posts a week. I can't imagine doing that now. But maybe I can commit to a 2-3 posts "every now and then"?
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As long as we're strolling down memory lane: my most loyal readers may recall this blog used to have comments and a personal Twitter feed in the sidebar. I'm not bringing comments back, but I've gone ahead and added a personal Bluesky feed widget that displays a few of my most recent posts in the sidebar -- just like it's 2010. (If you're reading this on mobile, you'll have to switch to the desktop version to see the sidebar.)
Figuring out how to add a Bluesky feed widget was surprisingly complicated to figure out, but then very simple to execute. Useless google searches would have you believe that you have to sign-up for a weird widget scam service with a fake free plan, and the official Bluesky website only offers tools for embedding an individual post as a widget.
But if you can paste HTML, then you too can have a free and easy Bluesky feed widget on your website or Blogger or Wordpress or whatever. Here's my very authoritative guide:
- Go to bsky-embed by Vincent Will (https://github.com/Vincenius/bsky-embed) and read the instructions to make sure I'm not scamming you.
- Copy the HTML on that page. It will embed some JS that polls the public Bluesky API for you. It will look something like this:
<script async="" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bsky-embed/dist/bsky-embed.es.js" type="module"></script> <bsky-embed limit="5" mode="dark" username="vincentwill.com"> </bsky-embed> - Paste the HTML snippet into your website / Blogger layout "HTML/Javascript" block / Wordpress "Custom HTML" block. Save your changes and make sure the demo works.
- Change the username to your Bluesky username. For example, mine is "radiatoryang.bsky.social" -- whatever is after the "@".
- Customize the other parameters or styling. If you read the GitHub instructions from step 1, you'll see that you can display posts for a certain tag or feed, or even override the CSS styles to match your website better.
And you're done! See? That wasn't so hard.
***
"But I heard Bluesky is uncool." Yeah, on its worst days, it's like a slightly better version of Threads.
But hey at least people are posting a bunch of porn, art, and occasional weird shit -- which definitely helps when Bluesky has a genuine blue sky day.
Best of all, unlike Twitter now, you can actually post links and people will see your links and even click on your links!
I argue it's acceptable and tolerable, and these days maybe that's enough.
if you’re worried bluesky isn’t cool enough or something… don’t worry, you were on twitter, you’ve been deeply uncool for like a decade already, why stop now
— Robert Yang (@radiatoryang.bsky.social) Oct 25, 2024 at 7:21 PM
After all, if you're 30 or older and you're reading a blog, then you may have to consider the possibility that you don't actually have any coolness left to preserve. You might as well just join Bluesky and give up.
A bunch of us are here and we're posting. As if it's 2025... The fuckin' year of the blog!!
