events/2025-07-23-hwc-europe

Homebrew Website Club Europe/London was an IndieWeb meetup on Zoom held on 2025-07-23.

• Archived from: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2025-07-23-hwc-europe

Participants

• capjamesg
• Joe Crawford
• zacharykai - https://zacharykai.net/
• Thomas Vander Wal
• Ross A. Baker https://rossabaker.com/
• Mike Kupietz
• benji
• Tantek Çelik
• Fractalkitty
• ... add names

Notes

• Welcome to HWC!
• Comic-Con this week - Joe Crawford is attending - https://comiccon2025.sched.com/?searchstring=accessibility some on a11y that may be compelling.
• Congrats to Manny's daughter on her graduation from High School

What's new on people's websites?

• Joe Crawford made a page with some of the interactive web things he's made https://artlung.com/toys/ (it accepts webmentions!) and looking to add more, maybe ones users could log into.
  • Also made https://lab.artlung.com/comics-a11y/ which lists approaches to the topic of making a comic accessible
• Manny
  • Working on navigation / button styles on https://mandarismoore.com
• zacharykai is hosting a HTML Day: Online 2025 event on August 2nd! https://lunaseeker.com/events/htmlday25
  • Also set up a new website on a Virtual Private Server! Only took a month to work out...

• "What does one expect their website to do?" -- a question to inform navigation design
• "Does my website make me smile?"
• My website ought to be useful or fun for myself! "Joy" can be a useful thing joy

• Accessibility on websites: highlight styles for links, skip links
  • James started learning how to use a screen reader this week (macOS VoiceOver)

• Designing things that demo well vs. being actually usable
• Pop throwbacks

• What museum would you want to have?
  • https://jamesg.blog/2025/07/14/museum-of-the-world-wide-web
  • A museum where you can go through time (walk from 1800 to 1200)
  • A museum of the web from the perspective of non-English speakers

• Minitel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax
• Someone who re-made CeeFax:

   ** https://nmsceefax.co.uk/#id=WyJubXMtY2VlZmF4IiwiaW50ZXJuYWwubmF0aGFubWVkaWFzZXJ2aWNlcy5jby51ayIsIi93ZWJzb2NrZXRzL2NlZWZheCJd:page=100 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jan/05/text-appeal-ceefax-recreated-by-20-year-old-northern-irish-man

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air

• Benji, I see three columns on my phone :D

• Variation in technologies by platform; touch events, screen sizes

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/clamp
• clamp(100%, 130%, 65vw)

• You can get a free stack of pancakes at IHOP
• Showing Starbucks points on your website
• https://jamesg.blog/train-station-sandwiches
• Gretchen McCollough https://gretchenmcculloch.com/
  • https://soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/106-is-a-hotdog-a-sandwich-the-problem-with-definitions

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mental-Immunity-Infectious-Mind-Parasites-Search/dp/0063002981
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._W._Woolworth_Company
  • Australian Woolworth's stole the name of the US company, but has never had any relationship to the US version
• VAT tier for sweet vs non sweet?
  • (to quote Scott Pilgrim: "bread makes you fat?!")
• Ice cream that tastes like a sandwich
• Salt & Straw had some savory ice cream flavors: https://www.tastingtable.com/1434752/salt-straw-thanksgiving-ice-cream-2023-new-flavors/
  • Cheesy Potato Casserole
  • Turkey Stuffing & Cranberry Sauce
  • Parker House Rolls with Salted Buttercream

• Ripe figs, blackcurrants
• 8 figs = a lot of deliciousness
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemonade_fruit
  • Also 'invented' in Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach#Peacherines

• /fruit page on your website, that lists fruit that you grow / can grow.

• Sophie's poetry page is back online!
  • https://sohaiku.art/ (data is licensed under Creative Commons)
  • Benji's bot: https://haiku.oom9.xyz
    • https://bsky.app/profile/haiku.oom9.xyz
    • Fedi: @bot@haiku.oom9.xyz

• An's Dry Cleaning https://adcgelato.com/ down the block from Burn All Books (in the neighborhood of San Diego IndieWeb Camp's 2023, 2024 has incredible rotating, often savoury flavours.

• Documenting native plants / flowers / fruits to where you are on your website

• Correct uses for LinkedIn: posting Nature photos.

• Bloomscrolling!
• Wrensday

Example: https://mastodon.social/tags/bloomscrolling

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superb_fairywren

• "infrogluencer" - Tantek

• Crowd-sourced reporting of fruit harvesting time
• A real-time farmer's almanac

• https://research.google/blog/android-earthquake-alerts-a-global-system-for-early-warning/
• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.arduino.sciencejournal&hl=en_GB

• There are so many places with high-quality mangos
  • flavour profiles of fruit have wide variety across time
  • reminds me of Bottle Shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_Shock

• Worth mentioning is the upcoming HTML Day events on August 2: https://html.energy/
  • zacharykai has added the current event instances to https://events.indieweb.org/
  • and he's hosting event online in honour of the day:
    • https://events.indieweb.org/2025/08/-online-html-day-2025-oceania-time--8S17TBvWBd91
    • https://events.indieweb.org/2025/08/-online-html-day-2025-european-time--AbMLbeU17Mda

• Carnival prompt: Favourite breakfast food!

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyctinasty
  • "nyctinasty is the circadian rhythm-based nastic movement of higher plants in response to the onset of darkness, or a plant "sleeping"

• The feeling of searching for the right word for a blog post and finding a new-to-you word!
• https://toground.link/nyctinasty-of-chicory/
  • Word I learned about from Keenan -- https://zacharykai.net/notes/syzygy
  • Another phrase I heard about -- https://zacharykai.net/notes/silknspiders

• Woolworth Lunch Counters in San Francisco - https://www.mashed.com/814684/the-untold-truth-of-woolworths-lunch-counters/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO
• A website styled like an automat?
  • Automat history - https://www.untappedcities.com/automats-cafeterias-nyc/ with pictures

• Flash code from back in the day not being in source code
• WordPress -- having code locally and on the server but maybe not in source code

• "LOCKSS": Lots of copies keeps stuff safe

• Building on top of the things you have already made

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
  • "Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%--AI tooling slowed developers down."

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-Learning/dp/1732265178

• If search gets bad, it makes you slower at doing the task you want to do.

• https://artsweb.cal.bham.ac.uk/NStanden/impchina/guttingabook.htm
  • The Silk Road course - https://artsweb.cal.bham.ac.uk/NStanden/silkroads/silkreading.html
• https://screencraft.org/blog/what-is-script-coverage/

• deshittification search: https://udm14.com/?utm_campaign=wp_thetechfriend&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
• No maps or videos!
• https://www.theverge.com/news/613907/google-search-ai-overviews-avoid-udm14

• Profanity and CoPilot
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/55630

• Hosting a website for an art community
  • Ghost
  • https://craftcms.com/
  • Static HTML
  • https://cheap.urls.loan/

• https://ledgergurus.com/is-candy-taxable/

• Collaboration on the web (forking/remixing)
  • Beaker Browser / dat protocol
  • Remixing on glitch
  • Forking on GitHub, CodePen
  • Tumblr for remixing/sharing/adding comments to boosted posts

• Export a web page as a single file: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/singlefile/mpiodijhokgodhhofbcjdecpffjipkle?hl=en&pli=1
• SingleFile github: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile (also available for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-file/ ) Kupietz uses this practically every day.

• Reblogging

• "S" book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/S-J-J-Abrams/dp/0857864777
  • Lots of content in the marginalia
  • JJ Abrams co-creation book that is a fictional account of the Ship of Thesus, which has two characters writing marginalia back and forth to each other across different times. It has a lot of included artifacts.

• Choose your own adventure websites
  • Maybe:

   * https://blamensir.neocities.org/
   * https://anthology.rhizome.org/
   * http://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru/

• Is there a Tumblr culture encyclopedia?

• https://jamesg.blog/tumblr -- to come.

• Start with a page, rather than trying to build a complex system.

• https://www.benji.dog/articles/i-like-turtles/embed

• "I already have all your microformats" ("you can buy them back for a low price")

• Some old kupietz tumblogs:

   https://heroesorvillains.tumblr.com/ - documenting the people & places involved in the global conspiracy to destroy my life, if there was a massive global to destroy my life
   https://submersiblesounds.tumblr.com/ - random collection of songs I wanted to save
   https://attacklobstersgo.tumblr.com/ - art & images
   https://literatelobstersareliterate.tumblr.com/ - general interesting words

• https://octothorp.es/~/turtle
  • https://octothorp.es/docs#backlinks
  • https://octothorp.es/domains
  • https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tumblelog
    • a term that precedes tumblr by ~ 2 years

• https://www.tumblr.com/xtroor/776534787363143680/all-roads-unfortunately-lead-back-to-tumblr

• "are you vulnerable enough?" on the web

• "there's always a bug"

• The wonders of Tumblr

• "wait a second, I forgot where my site is"

• ... add notes