You'll note that said URL is very different from the officially published (and entirely useless to any real person as far as I can tell) Guides (ex: "The best things to do in Paris" - https://guides.apple.com/?lsp=9902&pg=10753559041452954389) in that at least some of the data is encoded directly into the URL.
I should have recognized it as base64 immediately but... I didn't.
You:
Can you tell me what type of encoding the following URL is using?
The URL you provided appears to be using percent encoding (also known as URL encoding).
In percent encoding, special characters are replaced with a percent sign (%) followed by two hexadecimal digits that represent the ASCII code of the character. For example:
The space character (`) is represented as%20`.
The slash character (/) is represented as %2F.
In the URL you provided, you can see encoded characters such as %2F, %2C, and %3D. This encoding is commonly used in URLs to ensure that all characters conform to the standard URL format and can be safely transmitted over the internet.
You:
Are you able to decode it?
ChatGPT:
Sure, I can help you decode the URL. Here's the decoded version of the URL you provided:
In this decoded URL, spaces and other special characters that were percent-encoded are now displayed in their original form. The string following ug= is still encoded and appears to be in base64 format. If you need further decoding of that part, it would require additional processing to decode the base64 string.
Would you like me to proceed with decoding the base64 portion of the URL as well?
You:
Yes please.
ChatGPT:
Sure, I'll decode the base64 portion of the URL for you. The base64 encoded string is:
It looks like there was an issue with the decoding process. I'll retry the decoding process properly.
Let me proceed with decoding the base64 string now.
ChatGPT:
The decoded base64 string appears to be a structured data representation, possibly in a binary or protocol buffer format. Here's a partial interpretation of the decoded content:
Columbia Area Essentials
46900 E O'Rear Rd, Columbia, MO 65202, United States
Wild Haven Nature Area
62249 RT-161, Montgomery City, MO 63361, United States
Red's Gas
35495 Peabody Rd, Columbia, MO 65202, United States
Bioreactor Landfill Scale
41818 W Worley St, Columbia, MO 65203, United States
Columbia Public Schools
Big Burr Starry Sky Parking
4109 E Stewart Rd, Columbia, MO 65203, United States
Cherry Hill Gadweebo
Cartwright Circuit
This suggests that the encoded data is a list of locations, likely with additional metadata such as coordinates or identifiers. However, there are non-printable characters and other binary data interspersed, which indicate this is not a straightforward text encoding but rather a structured format requiring specific decoding logic, likely a protobuf or similar serialization format.
2022-10-01 13:40:46 --> extratone (extratone@localhost) has joined #extratone
2022-10-01 13:40:46 -- Channel #extratone: 1 nick (1 op, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 0 normals)
2022-10-01 13:40:48 -- Channel created on Sat, 01 Oct 2022 13:40:46
2022-10-01 13:41:01 @extratone This is a sample Weechat log message.
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Riches I heed not, nor man's empty gain,
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone High King of Heaven, my victory won,
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone May I reach Heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
2022-10-01 13:41:16 @extratone Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.
I finally finished my guide on participating in The Tildeverse from an iPhone using Blink Shell. I hope it’s useful to somebody out there. If you can think of any way it could be more useful and/or have any questions for me, town mail is probably the best place to send them (extratone@tilde.town, I believe.) You can also view the guide on town if you’re the sort who’d rather never leave hehe.
Perhaps the most useful bit of the guide are the included commands required to configure WeeChat as I have:
/set weechat.look.prefix_align_max 9
/bar hide bufflist
/bar hide fset
/bar hide title
/bar hide nicklist
/set weechat.look.buffer_time_format "%M"
I owe a big thanks to m455 for pretty much singlehandedly saving my day as far as making chat usable in portrait mode on The Phone. Not that I particularly care about viewership, but Writeas’ backend says the guide has already garnered nearly 100 views, which is a pretty big deal for a few hours-new post on The Psalms.
Some other interesting, town-related links I’ve found from bbj/town chat:
I also discovered ttm.sh, Town’s image-sharing service. I plan to use it instead of taking up too much space by continuing to fill up my own /images folder.
Hey, Town. So I’ve determined that we definitely will not be embedding any media in these posts... at least until the day comes when I feel compelled to revise the CSS I’ve injected into this poor little CMS. I’ve got a few potentially interesting things to share.
Posting with the Write.as CLI… Running on Tilde.Town
I somehow managed to install the Writeas-CLI on Tilde.Town itself so I thought I’d create the most absurd walkthrough possible and demonstrate the “workflow.”
The magic of indexme on Town
I’m fairly new to command line tools, yes (going on 4 years I suppose,) but I think it’s absolutely astonishing that I had to come to the Small Web to find a tool like Town’s indexme. If you’ve got a directory of files without a landing page (index.html,) indexme will create said page for you. I’m going to use my /zines directory as an example, here. I wanted to create my own little archive of the Tilde.Town zine - mainly just to remind me to read all of the issues, cover to cover - but authoring my own index.html page for said directory felt somewhat imperial. Instead, all I had to do was navigate to the directory over ssh and run indexme. Immediately, an index was created.
Drafts 31
Drafts 31.0 has released including some interface updates and integration with Notion. Except for the grand margin reductions, I’m not feeling what I’ve seen so far all that much, but that’s to be expected - any abrupt changes to one’s living environment lead one to feel wary. Regarding the Notion integration, I am also afraid - my own Notion experience would suggest that Drafts is too powerful of a source for Notion content, but whatever.
Telegram on the cover of WIRED
“Message Received: How Telegram became the anti-Facebook - and a haven for extremists, a hive of misinformation, and the perfect platform for plotting insurrection.”
I can’t even begin to comment on this one, to be honest, but for context - I did just recently-ish write a big ole Post entitled “I Trust Telegram.”
Wow... So sorry about that first take, town. It looks like this is going to be a zero-media blog, which will probably be really good for me, actually.
Maybe just a timestamp for a title, how about that? (Btw, all my timestamps are in DavodTime,™ which is not actually trademarked.)
Hello again, Town. Since I last posted here, I’ve actually engaged in the forum, written a wee bit at the end of Town Graffiti, and even engaged some with Town Chat. I’ve also updated my page quite extensively with all sorts of local links. A Mastodon friend called my App Store reviews index a “really cool idea,” but it actually reflects an inexcusable level of negligence, on my part.
As always, I’m working on far too many things at once, and I definitely do not want This Post to become another one. Perhaps I should ban hyperlinks in the future? I don’t know... here’s a hyperlink to where you can respond: p̯e̶ḝ̴̸̡̢̦͖̺̐͟͢͞͞.
So, so many years have passed since the last time I spent any extended periods sitting in an IRC chat. I’m sure you’ve heard that a billion times, but - unlike most other modern chat settings, imo - I think TildeTown is one of the few places where IRC genuinely makes sense over any other protocol. In my in-progress guide to using Blink Shell with Tilde.Town, I described WeeChat’s “onboarding process” (forgive me) as dubitable (see below.)
The IRC client TildeTown uses is called WeeChat and - especially if it’s been as long for you as it had been for me - you might find (as I did) learning the ropes to be a bit dubitable. I’ve duplicated the full User Guide for your consideration. I got stuck at the concept of switching buffers, so my Big Pro hint is to start off running /buffer 1 followed by help.
open to doubt or suspicion; “the candidate’s doubtful past”; “he has a dubious record indeed”; “what one found uncertain the other found dubious or downright false”; “it was more than dubitable whether the friend was as influential as she thought”- Karen Horney
Synonyms
doubtful
dubious
in question
Similar to
questionable
Related
doubt
dubiousness
doubtfulness
question
doubt
dubiousness
doubtfulness
question
axiomatic
Adjective
evident without proof or argument; “an axiomatic truth”; “we hold these truths to be self-evident”
Synonyms
self-evident
taken for granted
Similar to
obvious
Related
axiom
38.934019--92.387974-02212022-064247
02212022-220005
Before removing the images from this post and re-uploading it, I added the primer for my work-in-progress Public Domain-equivalent content license (which is both every bit as much of a joke as it seems and yet also intended for actual use,) a dedicated root directory for the full ed manual, and another for a duplicate of the WriteFreely for iOS app’s documentation.
You might have noticed - I also overwrote the CSS for this blog completely with a direct copy-and-paste from The Psalms’ CSS. Feel free to publicly berate me regarding this decision, as always.
I’ve been working more with Blink Shell and have discovered that it basically maintains a persistent local directory of my whole Tilde site in the Files app, which is exciting! This means I can easily upload images and videos from my iPhone 12 Pro Max using the process outlined in this short video tutorial:
…I believe my Text Fucking career began somewhere around the 7th grade, at 13-14 years old. It was my second or third time flunking MS02 - the Microsoft Office II course - taken on fairly outdated school desktop machines in the 2007-2008 era, all running Windows XP. Because of some inexplicable ability to simply do what I was told, I would spend class periods trying to create the largest possible text file in Notepad by copying and pasting huge, exponentially-growing globs. Eventually, I did crash a machine at least once. Though it could very well be simply the self-exaggerated recollection of preteendom, I even remember crashing the school server with one of those files.
I was delighted by Drafts developer Greg when he shared a Zalgotext Drafts Action in response to a request on Twitter earlier this afternoon.
This shortcut creates a reminder on a list set at install at a time in the future specified at install including a timestamp in DavodTime, a URL captured from the clipboard, and the last image saved. I have it set to be triggered on the Triple tap Back Tap setting.
Steps
An Ask For Input action prompts for the reminder title.
A duration of your choosing is added to the current time with an Adjust Date action.
I’ve finally got things figured out, I think. I’ve been interacting with you entirely from my iPhone 12 Pro Max (name: Jorts.) I’m not sure if this blog supports markdown… Hope so! I like to tell people it saved my life.
oh yeah! I know it’s on my main page, but here’s my contact info just in case:
