Carpet Bomberz Inc.

Tag: blogging

  • Operation Crossroads

    yesterday was teh “Trinity” test,… we’ve gone way past that one now

    So CogDogBlog in the truest most generous sense took my posting from yesterday and started asking questions and got some answers. And now I can verify I do, I DO have the ActivityPub plug-in. Believe it or not. I had bumped into the settings once, partially set them up. But still no joy it wasn’t “just working” for me. So in honor of our predecessors who invented the Atomic Bomb, I will start code-naming each one of these attempts similarly to that used by US Army/Air Force/Atomic Energy Commission circa 1946.

    Today’s attempt is to step-wise follow Alan’s ActivityBlog run-down from a few days ago (here: https://cogdogblog.com/2026/01/free-bonuses-wordpress-activitypub-plugin/) and narrow down what/why things are happening.

    Here now should be an oEmbed of the @cosocial.ca Toot from 3hrs. ago today on Alan’s ActivityPub stream.

    Alan is @cogdog

    @pfefferle Is @activitypub.blog available on all WP.com blogs?

    I tried it early on a few free WP.com blogs I use for experimenting, and it is active on all of mine, not via a plugin, just under the settings.

    Do all WP.com free users have this? What about those with a hosted domain?

    Wordpress dashboard menu showing the selection of Settings on left with a red arrow towards the submenu of 10 items, pointing to ActivityPub.
    January 8, 2026, 4:16 pm 0 boosts 2 favorites

    Boo-yah!
    Well Hot Dog, we have a weiner!
    This is now working for some reason. Folks what you see above is a full-on oEmbed of Alan’s Toot showing where the ActivityPub setting is on WordPress (all of them,… free, .com or .org). The only thing I did differently was to add a “header image” to one of the tabs in the settings. Could it be that simple? Did I do anything else different? Dunno. But one good turn deserves another. If that was the first test (we’ll call it Able). The next one will be Baker, same as Operation Crossroads.

    Here now should be Alan’s demonstration link and ActivityPub oEmbed of Andy Rush’s Christmas message example from Alan’s same blog entry re: Activity Pub:

    Andy Rush

    The biggest fireplace I’ve ever had. Merry Christmas everyone!

    A fireplace video on the wall from a projector and Christmas tree with colorful lights.
    December 25, 2025, 1:19 am 1 boosts 3 favorites


    Garsh!
    It worked the 2nd time too!

    I think without jinxing it, I will say ActivityPub works for ME.

    And it can work for You TOO!

    If you have WordPress.com, or WordPress.org or you’re just a free tier participant in either group,… You HAVE the power. ActivityPub is just a slightly bend, configure, fill out the form fields, enable the things. And you now are hosting your own Federated Identity, ActivityPub socialz node of your own.

    No ifs, ands or buts. Although, it is hosted on WordPress.com,… so they could knock me off this platform. But I OWNS my own domain. So take that!

    All of us together Alan, Andy and me,… there’s nothing we can’t do! 👍

    Me with Alan’s blog entry re:ActivityPub on hte left and on the right-side my ActivityPub settings on WordPress.com

  • Dave Winer’s survey of ActivityPub

    I think this is working. I don’t use WordPress as a means of originating longer form posts on ActivityPub. But I am certain I do have this hooked up correctly as it cross-posts to ActivityPub in past and likely will do it now. But I’ve never tried writing a block of text sufficiently long to override the limits of the Mastodon host where my mastodon account lives. Time now to go for a drive, shall we?!

    Okay as I recall I bump into the 500 char. limit but not very often. So if doing a cross-post from WP to Mastodon.online allows me the freedom to write EVEryThInG completely without concision or self-editing, I’m all for that. And maybe a featured image or two. Turns out Dave only got 4 responses to his Google Survey, but I wasn’t sure if he meant cross-posting where you have money to pay for the ACTUAL Activity Pub plug-in or the base level connection you get with the **free** WP.com account. ‘Cuz that’s what I’ve got. Free as in beer, but I have to allow WP to insert adverts into my postings. And they very well may do that here if I type long enough. But that’s worthy of testing and again, I’m all about measuring things and road-testing them too.

    If it is the case I can override the char. limit by using WordPress.com to cross-post without the Pay For ActivityPub plug-in you can bet I will post a lot more from this here WP.com account that’s for sure. Now I notice that WP.com allows me to pre-view this post in various sundry pre-viewers like a.)Desktop b.)Tablet and c.)Mobile. But now there’s also Email? and Fediverse too? But when I try Fediverse preview it gives me this sad uninformative error:

    And I “feel like” this may be due to the fact I’m on the free WP.com plan and am not using the pay-for ActivityPub plug-in. And I think NOW, my word count is well over the limit of my chosen Mastodon host. (1000+ chars.)