CrowderSoup

A website about technology and life.

Introducing PADD
Aaron Crowder

Today I had a few hours to kill with my partner in the ER. She's okay, I promise! It wasn't the way we wanted to spend our Friday, but it gave me time to hack on something I've been toying with for a while. I give you: PADD. Yesterday I shared a screenshot of something else I'm making but the test UI was Star Trek themed. That was kinda based on this lol. Kinda. Padd is a Microsub Reader. The biggest thing this one does over others I've used is save my replies in-line. So I don't forget if I...

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  1. lcars html rendering tool
    A 'lil LCARs HTML rendering utility I made to test the iFraming.

Earlier today I made a caw page that was a coloring page of a raven that you could download to share on your own website.

Building that inspired me to build something...

IndieWeb.ink

This is a screenshoot of a test I did of indieweb.ink. It's a new #IndieWeb tool for creating and remixing photos. You login with your domain, upload a picture you want to share on your site for your visitors to remix (think coloring pages, but really... anything should work!), and then embed the iFrame on your website!

Then your visitors can color on the page, download it, or even click "Publish" to login with their own website and publish it (using micropub) to their site!

I'm not quite ready to launch it (thinking maybe next weekend!), but I'll be sure to share regular updates this week.

Aaron Crowder

I’m building something similar to the original Aaron of IndieWeb as IndieNews and I’m really excited about it. Hoping to have something to share in a couple weeks!

Aaron Crowder
  1. screenshot of quill interface showing syndicate buttons

Spent an hour this morning doing some work on Webstead. Was able to finish implementation of the IndieAuth server, and then for fun updated the syndication targets so I have more control over where each post goes.

Aaron Crowder
  1. screenshot of comment form
    You can leave a comment
  2. screenshot of webmention send form
    You can send a webmention too!
  3. screenshot of webmention login notice
    After you log in with your website first of course

I keep sharing links to my blog, so I figured I’d update my blog to let you leave comments on it too. Now theres native commenting, with a real data model, clean front-end forms, and a simple moderation flow in the admin. Spam is filtered early with Akismet and Turnstile, so my comments aren’t flooded with AI bots.

Aaron Crowder

Crosing all my fingers and toes that this works! I'm really wanting to be able to participate in these communities while keeping my blog as the source of truth for my content.

(if you're wondering what I'm doing, I'm using Brid.gy to take this from my blog and share here)

Aaron Crowder

Looking Forward to 2026
Aaron Crowder

I’m sitting here writing this on the couch of the in-law suite at my girlfriend’s parents’ house in St. George, Utah. Now that is a sentence I never would have guessed I’d be writing last year. Honestly, it’s not even a sentence I think I could have guessed I’d be writing back in April. But here I am. That feels like as good a place as any to pause, look forward, and write down a few goals for 2026. I’m a firm believer that growth without goals is mostly accidental, and I’d like to be a litt...

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