Nostr notes by Jan Miksovsky

My brother’s outdoor products company, humangear, is ...

2026-10-24T02:13:39Z

My brother’s outdoor products company, humangear, is introducing a new hydration bottle that’s quite nice. A prominent backpacking YouTuber named Darwin interviewed him about the project: https://youtu.be/1-Ox6dW-yqE

The discussion touches on the curiously long history of the Nalgene bottle, which escaped from science labs into widespread use as a water bottle — a role it was never designed for and for which, in hindsight, it’s a mediocre fit.

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Sort things More about ...

2026-09-09T16:59:31Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Sort things

More about Tree.sort builtin function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/tree/sort
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/sort-things.html

#documentation #ssg #staticsite

Reading a rave review of #WebOrigami by @npub1cve…344k was a ...

2026-09-04T18:38:04Z

Reading a rave review of #WebOrigami by Stephan Max (npub1cve…344k) was a wonderful way to start the day: https://stephanmax.com/migrating-from-astro-to-web-origami/

> I love Web Origami and I am very happy to be part of its community. The fun in working inside the engine room of my website is reinstated, thanks to Web Origami’s strong mental model and its excellent API. I cannot wait to use it in future projects!

> I had massive support from the small but smart and *super* helpful community

❤️

I've been working on Origami Projector, a Glitch-like app for ...

2026-08-28T17:31:12Z

I've been working on Origami Projector, a Glitch-like app for editing your site https://jan.miksovsky.com/posts/2026/08-28-origami-projector

I've missed [@glitchdotcom](https://mastodon.social/@glitchdotcom ) ever since its shutdown last year — but believe much of its value can be reembodied, and possibly improved upon, in an app.

#staticsite #blogging

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Retrieve network resources ...

2026-08-17T18:34:59Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Retrieve network resources using URLs

More about URLs in Origami expressions: https://weborigami.org/language/expressions#urls
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/retrieve-network-resources-using-urls.html

#programming

This week's #WebOrigami comic: How paths find files More ...

2026-08-10T15:59:52Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: How paths find files

More about Scope in Origami expressions: https://weborigami.org/language/scope.html
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/how-paths-find-files.html

#programming

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Extract specific files from a ...

2026-08-03T15:37:14Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Extract specific files from a site

More about Tree.mask builtin function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/tree/mask
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/extract-specific-files-from-a-site.html

#shell #programming #staticsite

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Bundle stylesheets More about ...

2026-07-29T17:56:20Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Bundle stylesheets

More about Tree.deepText builtin function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/tree/deeptext
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/bundle-stylesheets.html

#blogging #css #staticsite

I've posted a video about how you can build a site from ...

2026-07-28T19:57:40Z

I've posted a video about how you can build a site from scratch in any #programming language you like without the need for an off-the-shelf static site generator (#ssg): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t3BN3Z-TkE&t=1147s

This compares using an SSG like #Astro or #Eleventy (#11ty) to build a blog with building the same blog in #Python, #JavaScript, or even a language like #Zig. I'm designing #WebOrigami to be the most concise and clearest language for this purpose — but you can use any language you like.

I had fun experimenting with an expression of map-based trees in ...

2026-07-25T17:33:46Z

I had fun experimenting with an expression of map-based trees in #Zig https://jan.miksovsky.com/posts/2026/06-24-map-based-trees-in-zig

Working on an analogy for comparing forms of programmatic ...

2026-07-24T21:00:34Z

Working on an analogy for comparing forms of programmatic evaluation:

• **Eager evaluation:** Grab-and-Go sandwich. Made ahead of time, ready the instant you want it. Startup costs; work may be thrown away.
• **Lazy evaluation:** Subway sandwich. Made when you ask for it. Less waste, but your progress is blocked while you wait.
• **Async evaluation:** Doordash sandwich. Submit your order, wait for it to arrive. You can do something else while you wait, but the wait might be long.

#programming

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Create a blog roll More about ...

2026-07-13T14:40:25Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Create a blog roll

More about Reading in an OPML file and transforming it to HTML: https://weborigami.org/builtins/origami/xmlParse.html
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/create-a-blog-roll.html

#indieweb #blogging

This announcement by @npub1e02…7m30 is really exciting: ...

2026-07-10T18:54:00Z

This announcement by Dave Winer ☕️ (npub1e02…7m30) is really exciting: http://scripting.com/2026/07/10/161133.html

I've been hoping for years that someone would build a new social networking platform on RSS and other standards. When I looked into ActivityPub and Mastodon, I was surprised how incredibly complicated it all is.

I'm hoping Dave & co. can make something simpler. I don't see any discussion of moderation yet, and that's arguably the harder problem, but rss.chat is already an impressive step.

Having fun using the updated #WebOrigami screenshot extension to ...

2026-06-16T15:00:10Z

Having fun using the updated #WebOrigami screenshot extension to capture PDFs of web pages, wrote a tiny Origami program that crawls a live site and archives all its HTML pages as a corresponding tree of PDF files 😃

https://github.com/WebOrigami/extensions/tree/main/screenshot

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Making your complete site ...

2026-06-15T16:54:02Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Making your complete site content public

More about JSON Keys protocol: https://weborigami.org/async-tree/jsonKeys.html
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/making-your-complete-site-content-public.html

#web #openweb #staticsite

The protocol is simple and independent of the Web Origami project.
Everyone benefits from an open web!

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Table of contents for a ...

2026-05-25T21:38:45Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Table of contents for a document

More about Origami.mdOutline builtin function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/origami/mdoutline
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/table-of-contents-for-a-document.html

#documentation #staticsite

RE: https://typo.social/@eWalthert/116616610714391279 Such an ...

2026-05-23T04:29:13Z

RE: https://typo.social/@eWalthert/116616610714391279

Such an interesting exercise! I rarely see concerts and could initially only recall a few, but all day long my wife and I kept thinking of more. Sometimes we’d recall a venue first, then the act we’d seen there. Final tally (including solo backed by band) was a few dozen. Favorites:

The Grateful Dead
Yes
Sting
Santana
Pat Metheny
The Sundays
Sade
Ravi Shankar
Everything but the Girl
Hitsujibungaku

quoting
note1pjk…uh6c

Introduce yourself with 10 bands you’ve seen live: (in order of appearance)

Satrox
Rage Against The Machines
Mouse on Mars
Laub ( AGF : poemproducer (npub102f…6qsu))
Bodenständig 2000
Air
Architecture In Helsinki
Animal Collective
Beach House
Penguin Café

(I’m taking the word band literally, no single acts supported by a band)

https://hub.uckermark.social/@maxheadroom/116616359288820688

During a week of off-trail #backpacking in Utah's Grand ...

2026-05-15T14:16:12Z

During a week of off-trail #backpacking in Utah's Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument last week, a fellow hiker captured a great shot of me at sunset

My daughter saw it and said, "That looks like a social media profile banner".

Oh, good idea

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Cache slow resources More ...

2026-04-27T15:33:04Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Cache slow resources

More about Origami's Tree.cache builtin: https://weborigami.org/builtins/tree/cache
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/cache-slow-resources.html

#programming #staticsite

I've been enjoying this series of science videos from NIMS, ...

2026-04-26T22:12:33Z

I've been enjoying this series of science videos from NIMS, the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science

1. The series has the wonderful title "A message to future scientists" — they're for kids 😃
2. They feature experiments that are simple enough you'd think they'd be ubiquitous but, to me at least, many are new (how come I'd never seen a demo of a Halbach array before?!?)

Just tried the bottle experiment and was delighted it worked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahmr91iWE50

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Rewriting nested function ...

2026-04-20T15:08:56Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Rewriting nested function calls

More about Origami pipe operator: https://weborigami.org/language/expressions#pipe-operator
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/rewriting-nested-function-calls.html

#staticsite #programming

FWIW there's a (stale?) JS proposal for a pipe operator: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator

It’s a treat to read such a well-written overview of ...

2026-04-18T02:10:46Z

It’s a treat to read such a well-written overview of #WebOrigami!

https://vale.rocks/posts/web-origami

I recall that Vale (npub1fs6…tlr3) completely got the idea the first time he saw it, and he’s done great things with it ever since.

I think Origami’s the best way to make your site, but don’t just take my word for it — read Vale’s post!

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Group pages More about ...

2026-04-13T16:14:04Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Group pages

More about Tree.groupBy builtin function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/tree/groupby
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/group-pages.html

#static #staticsite #smallweb

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Serve anything More about ...

2026-04-06T15:47:34Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Serve anything

More about Origami's serve command: https://weborigami.org/builtins/dev/serve
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/serve-anything.html

#static #staticsite #smallweb

This week's #WebOrigami comic: File extensions More about ...

2026-03-23T16:03:26Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: File extensions

More about Working with file types in Origami: https://weborigami.org/language/filetypes
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/file-extensions.html

#programming #templates

Code is more expressive than configuration: comparing a sample ...

2026-03-19T15:55:02Z

Code is more expressive than configuration: comparing a sample blog in #WebOrigami and #Eleventy

https://jan.miksovsky.com/posts/2026/03-19-code-is-more-expressive-than-configuration

Third post of four comparing creating the same #blog in two different #ssg systems. Both require code — which kind of code do you want to write?

#coding #programming #blogging #11ty

Code is more coherent than configuration: comparing a sample blog ...

2026-03-18T16:04:33Z

Code is more coherent than configuration: comparing a sample blog in #WebOrigami and #Eleventy

https://jan.miksovsky.com/posts/2026/03-18-code-is-more-coherent-than-configuration

Second post in a series comparing creating the same #blog in two different #ssg systems, in which we compare approximating your desired site with a folder structure vs describing your desired site in text

#blogging #11ty

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Coding in your terminal More ...

2026-03-16T16:07:48Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Coding in your terminal

More about The ori command-line interface: https://weborigami.org/cli/
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/coding-in-your-terminal.html

Using ori in a VS Code JavaScript Debug Terminal lets you set breakpoints, inspect variables, and step through code you start from a terminal!

#javascript #programming

I now know a number of people who are enthusiastically vibecoding ...

2026-03-14T01:20:29Z

I now know a number of people who are enthusiastically vibecoding apps

Still waiting for one of them to realize: “None of the people that should want my app are even aware it exists! Could it be that the hard part of this business was actually… marketing and business development?”

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jimniels/116197448348633013 This is ...

2026-03-10T16:56:56Z

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jimniels/116197448348633013

This is a nice use of #WebOrigami to liberate photos from #Instagram and create a personal #smallweb site!

I was so disappointed when IG deprecated their Basic Display API last year because we can't have nice things, but (for now) they still let users export their own data

Origami is great for this sort of fetch-and-transform task
nostr:note1rmjmxq0reyyl8tdcfzd45rmfknldlxxk0c8l3kd0nr424llzv5mq84xequ

This week's #WebOrigami comic: What are slugs More about ...

2026-03-09T15:43:18Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: What are slugs

More about Origami.slug() function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/origami/slug
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/what-are-slugs.html

Fun etymolgy: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/24/whats-in-a-slug/

#staticsite #indieweb #smallweb #blogging

Who else would use a shared #JavaScript library for #Electron ...

2026-03-05T23:55:33Z

Who else would use a shared #JavaScript library for #Electron apps to create an deploy #Netlify sites?

https://jan.miksovsky.com/posts/2026/03-05-netlify-dialog-library

#staticsite #ssg

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Maps transform bulk content ...

2026-03-02T16:42:20Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Maps transform bulk content

More about Tree.map builtin function: https://weborigami.org/builtins/tree/map
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/maps-transform-bulk-content.html

#blogging #static #smallweb

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Serve a site More about ...

2026-02-16T20:31:57Z

This week's #WebOrigami comic: Serve a site

More about Origami serve command: https://weborigami.org/builtins/dev/serve
HTML comic: https://weborigami.org/comics/serve-a-site.html

#static #smallweb #devtools #javascript

You should rent first! It will scratch the itch and you'll ...

2025-11-27T20:05:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…3ymu
_________________________

You should rent first! It will scratch the itch and you'll learn a ton about what matters to you.

Telling: one of these most common phrases you will hear from RV owners is: "In our first RV..."

Tip: if you're writing a template function, one useful aspect ...

2025-10-31T21:34:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…6hlm
_________________________

Tip: if you're writing a template function, one useful aspect of JS templates is buried in MDN docs: "For any particular tagged template literal expression, the tag function will always be called with the exact same literal array, no matter how many times the literal is evaluated."

Your template function can use this aspect to cache work across calls, so that it only has to process the strings for a given template expression once.

I wrote an article for the inaugural issue of Good Internet ...

2025-05-29T17:28:24Z

I wrote an article for the inaugural issue of Good Internet magazine by alexandra (npub1n7p…gcy6) et al!

I describe a conceptual model for thinking about the construction of sites, and in particular thinking about what you’re going to start with and how you’re going to transform that into the final site: https://goodinternetmagazine.com/site-creation-as-content-transformation/

If you’re thinking about starting or rewriting a #smallweb #indieweb #blogging site, this is for you.

YouTube buries its coolest feature, navigating a video via its ...

2025-04-08T15:48:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…m9q2
_________________________

YouTube buries its coolest feature, navigating a video via its text transcript: video details pane → `⋯` button → Show transcript. Scan transcription to find the useful content, click to navigate to jump there.

A lifesaver in long tutorial videos where you just want the answer

The PCT is one of the premier National Scenic Trails and so gets ...

2025-04-06T17:31:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…xduu
_________________________

The PCT is one of the premier National Scenic Trails and so gets far more help and attention than other trails. And yet even the PCT will be in bad shape this year and much worse for the administration's remaining years.

What's bad for the PCT will be worse for other trails. Lesser-known National Scenic Trails, like the Pacific Northwest Trail, will be a disaster. Everyday trails on national forest, national park, designated wilderness Areas, etc., could quickly become unhikeable. ☹️

I really like this idea of avoiding breakpoints: less arbitrary ...

2025-02-15T20:07:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…fxhf
_________________________

I really like this idea of avoiding breakpoints: less arbitrary — and also avoids jarring visual transitions at the breakpoints.

The every-layout article mentions a technique I’d also arrived at to establish gutters based on screen width while imposing a font-relative min and max: `clamp(1rem, 3vw, 2rem)`

I recently used that to vertical center a content column with margins that smoothly adjust to screen width: https://weborigami.org/language (click the “short motion comic” link)

Henson developed that skit before the Muppets! ...

2024-12-22T18:18:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…scej
_________________________

Henson developed that skit before the Muppets! https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Mah_Na_Mah_Na. You can find older clips on YouTube.

I read this as an example of how an artist might do something for years and then suddenly have it explode; to outsiders it will appear as if the success came easily.

Looking for people to playtest a programming language for making ...

2024-11-20T17:20:23Z

Looking for people to playtest a programming language for making websites https://jan.miksovsky.com/posts/2024/11-20-programming-language-playtest.html

I'd been mulling over what to do for the past two years, but ...

2024-10-19T21:58:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…xcnh
_________________________

I'd been mulling over what to do for the past two years, but the Twitter I remember is gone and I still want no part of what it became.

You're totally right — we should just let it go.

Done.