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The amount of old repositories I’m deleting from my Github account is making me think how often I start new projects and never complete them. I really need to change that.

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What Is The IndieWeb And Why We Need It

Facebook, Twitter, Google plus – all places that help you to publish easily – and for free – on the web.

But guess what, the web is already free – or at least it should be – and many people’s only notion of publishing on the web is through one of these, or other, third party silos. It doesn’t have to be this way.

And it shouldn’t be this way.

Where are we now?

In the beginning there was the web. This completely revolutionised publishing and gave everyone a chance to have their voice heard. 25 years on and that is still the case. Only now we have these monolithic silos that have made publishing even easier, and for free (zero cost).

The problem with free though, is that it comes at a price. All of these companies that offer you the opportunity to publish and get your thoughts out there, are doing so to serve their real customers – their partners and investors. You see, every piece of information you pass into these silos, whether knowingly or not, is used to help profile you and your friends. This profiling and tracking goes on to help make you more susceptible to targetted advertising – the core business model of most modern-day tech “startups”.

Imagine a world where everyone’s thoughts and opinions are only published through one of the current “Ministries of Truth”, where the publisher only shows what it wants to show; hiding what it wants to hide as it “currates your timeline”.

We desperately need many more independent avenues of information and points of view from people, not corporations, if we are ever going to get a chance at a more free on open world online.

The Indieweb

The Indieweb is an initiative; a community, with the aim of publishing on ones own website and taking back control over the content that they publish.

Everyone who has access to the web has the potential – and it’s not as hard as it may seem – to get started publishing with you in control. The Indieweb isn’t about jumping through hoops to publish in a particular way either – the whole point is to do it your way and under your terms.

You should be able to publish and present your content in exactly the way that you want to. This post is about introducing you to the concept of the Indieweb – to the concept of your being in control of your own writing and publishing.

To get started on your path to online writing freedom, head over to the Indieweb site now for advice.

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Normally, with Laravel (@laravelphp on Twitter), if you create a model and use the “-m” or “–migration” flag to create the accompanying migration, it will pluralize the table.

So for example “User” model will use a “users” table; “Vehicle” model will use a “vehicles” table.

I just discovered however, that if you create a “Data” model, the table will also be created as “data” – not “datas”. It makes complete sense as datas isn’t a word.

I love using this framework.

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Implementing Jams

Jams were a type of content popularized by the website This is my jam.

This is my jam has since gone into read-only archive mode. This is such a great way of closing a website — especially one whose content is mostly community-created.

I started to use the site at the end of last year to start saving songs that stood out to me at a particular time.

Thanks to This is my jam for making me an archive of my own. This means I haven’t lost all of my data with them just because they have closed doors.

I still love the idea of saving individual “jams” though, so I have implemented it on my own site as of today. I have also pulled my old jams into my site. Going forwards I look forward to documenting any new and/or forgotten gems that I hear in the future. They will all be found on my Jams page.