Notices by Simon Repp (freebliss@post.lurk.org)

Faircamp 2.0 is now feature complete. (~˘▽˘)~

In the next days I'll be resolving a handful of remaining minor blockers, then I'll start gradually rolling out beta test packages.

Last feature to have landed today was 2.0's slightly revised tags customization system and its integration in the desktop application (https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp/commit/283a84df29533658f77ac3888d4279105c0ba54f, pictured).

Yay! \o/

#faircamp

Today I bought faircamp.org :) – the website and everything will be gradually moving there for the 2.0 release over the next weeks and months! \o/

This is for one a signal of commitment and that I intend for faircamp to be around in the long term (I've been at it for 5 years already :)), but also, it'd be nice to co-own and co-operate the domain with the community at some point in the future, hence also the gradual move away from my own domain.

#faircamp

The #faircamp website has offically moved to https://faircamp.org (so much for "gradually over the next weeks and months" haha¹ ( ^◡^)).

If I messed anything up (redirects, package download availability, etc.) please let me know, any pointers in that regard are very much appreciated! :)

¹ This single-evening-migration has been brought to you by static™ site™ technology™. ;)

«I’m not really sure how to deal with this part of my life appropriately. I have apologized to a few people individually, but it’s not a scalable solution and with many people I have no business re-opening wounds to salve my own conscience. I can offer a general apology, and I will. I’ve never found the right moment to say it, but now will do: I apologise, sincerely, to everyone who I have harmed with verbal abuse and with hateful and problematic rhetoric. If you have had a bad experience or experiences with me, and there’s anything you want from me that can help you heal from that experience – a personal apology, for example – please reach out to me and ask.»

https://drewdevault.com/blog/Addressing-harassment/

I only ever witnessed Drew from a distance online, so it's ultimately not my call to validate him. I will say though that the picture he paints - both in the best and the worst - is true to what I've seen and read from him over the years. I like to believe that people can change, and as such, I have a ton of respect for what he has written in this post. Being an asshole is cheap and easy (and in my own ways I've not always been my best self either), but writing something like that ... really takes a different kind of person. I wish him all the best.

I completely missed that someone forked zed, taking out all the videoconferencing, telemetry, AI service integrations, etc. https://codeberg.org/GramEditor/gram didn't try it yet, but ... hell yeah! ＼ʕ◕ᴥ◕＼ʔ

Time to introduce my last new project for this year:

«Zeroform» ... is a tool for generating minimalistic, self-hostable forms, with a twist: It can generate both static (html/css/js) and/or dynamic (php augmented) online forms.

My main motivation for zeroform is to create tooling that helps me gather more precise feedback while designing and developing (especially) #faircamp and #hyper8, and to do this in a way that reflects the values of those projects: Independence, simplicity, minimalism, freedom from maintenance, absence of tracking, etc.

Basically you start with a thought, put it down as a plaintext blueprint of the form/questionnaire/doodle/survey you have in mind, zeroform turns it into finished code and design, you can upload it, use it as long as its useful/needed, and then you can just delete it.

Think of it as your own google forms, without bigtech, without dependence on any infrastructure besides the cheapest of hosting plans, commissioned and decommisioned in a mere minute.

I'm now one week into the project, since today I'm developing in the open at https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/zeroform, and I will put it to use in the next days already! I have roughly one more week reserved until the end of the year for making this usable for the general public - I'll announce when it's ready. ʕ◜0ᴥ0ʔ

10 months. 342 commits. Dearest people of the Fediverse, may I present:

Hyper 8 Video System _ 1.0 _ – A static site generator for video publishing
https://simonrepp.com/hyper8/

For screenshots, videos and written notes on everything that happened in these last releases, check out the rich release pages for 1.0 (https://simonrepp.com/hyper8/changes/1.0.0/) and its equally feature-packed predecessors at https://simonrepp.com/hyper8/changes/

These major developments in 2025 were made possible through a project grant from https://netidee.at, an open source funding programme by the austrian https://www.internetstiftung.at/ – thank you so much for supporting this work and enabling tools that benefit independent artists, communities and organisations worldwide!

I would also like to say a huge thank you to all of you out there already running your own Hyper 8 sites, testing, reporting, contributing, donating, giving feedback and being just all-out positive and supportive on this journey, it really means a lot to me and makes a big difference!

For this latest release, special shout-out to @branpos, @arnauld, @evilpeacock, @lminiero & @jpburstrom for helping out on these last meters!

1.0 is now out for all platforms and is accompanied by a new, video-augmented tutorial, completely overhauled documentation and more available packages than ever – Enjoy!

#hyper8

@steter It sounds to me as though you're building and trying to preview the site on (as you mention) a server, i.e. not the computer you're sitting at? In that case you either need to build (or move the resulting build) to your server's publicly served directory (might be /var/www/ but depends on your server). Then the site is available at your server's public ip or address. Or, for the preview to be accessible from outside the server you need to pass (e.g.) "--ip 0.0.0.0", then your site is probably available through http://[server ip/address]:8080/ (see the console output for the actual port)

I didn't yet sing the praises for Debian 13 (which already runs on all my devices since shortly after the release): It's beautiful. It just works. I couldn't ask for more! Very very thankful to everyone making Debian possible, year by year. Cheers you lovely people! <3

Delightful observation I keep making (exponentially more often?) in the last years:

Copy-pasting and adapting from my own (hand-written, if you will) software corpus is a _huge, reciprocal productivity boost_.

[x] I constantly build on and expand my own repertoire
[x] I understand (or at least once understood :)) everything I reuse
[x] Re-used code can have issues but I have full trust that it was written with best intent, to the best of my ability
[x] Reused code is improved/refined with each iteration
[x] Improved code goes around to be re-integrated with the source eventually
[x] I learn tremendously in the process
[x] I don't need to pay anyone for this
[x] No new datacenters need to be built for this
[x] This gets better every year

ʕ◜0ᴥ0ʔ

Podcasters rejoice: #faircamp 1.3 is out!

Video walk-through of the highlights: https://simonrepp.com/video/faircamp/1-3-podcasts-and-more/

New to faircamp? Visit https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/

What started with a music-minded design approach now opens up to the world of narrative, episodic and long-form content, allowing you to publish your podcast(s) using fast, maintenance free static site technology. \o/

(Almost) everything new in a nutshell:
Podcast RSS & Atom feeds, Support for linking to timecodes/tracks, Playback speed controls, new volume slider, new raster-based procedural covers, Integration of missing images in track list and browse/search, new --preview-ip flag, many apple-specific fixes, Portuguese (european) translations, and much more – see the changelog: https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp/src/branch/main/CHANGELOG.md#1-3

This big new development was made possible through an NGI0 grant by @nlnet, funded by the european commission's @EC_NGI initiative – thank you so much!

Also many thanks to all helping hands, this time especially @sknob, @strk, lnicola, @syndicate, @meljoann, @oliver, @controlfreak, @keefmarshall, invadeuse, @greenman, @apfel, N4ta, @didier, @torstentorsten, @elx, @Vac, Patricio Maripani and Patrik Wallström - if you were also directly involved in the adventure and I somehow missed you (so much going on oof! •ᴗ•), apologies and please feel included! <3

@jwildeboer That it does ("--build - Directly builds the site without starting the editor"), deployment needs a separate, explicit flag. :)

@jwildeboer Awesome, and thanks for sharing! It's exactly as you describe - build directory contains the complete website and can be uploaded by any means. The built-in deployment works via rsync (and it generally works) but wrapping rsync through GUIs is always a bit of an adventure haha, so that area will eventually need some serious technical redesign of some sort. :)

Fashionably late, here's my second¹ big announcement for 2025:

Did you see the «Hyper 8 Video System» (https://simonrepp.com/hyper8), a static site generator for *video* that I beta-released last May?

Last summer I applied for a https://netidee.at grant - an open source funding programme by the austrian Internet Foundation - to ensure further #hyper8 development, and to my great delight, the application was accepted!

Hence, all throughout 2025 I'll be able to work part-time on turning Hyper 8 from a pretty solid beta into a full-featured production tool!

The plan in a nutshell: Initially I'll work on critical features like subtitle support, RSS/Podcast integration, video embedding and built-in FTP deployment, midway I'll put additional focus on layout, accessibility and design, and in the grand finale Hyper 8 will be published as a proper desktop application – emphasis though that *right now* you can already use the Hyper 8 graphical user interface! The desktop application is just the missing glue to make this easier to access for everyone.

I'll provide regular updates here on the fediverse, via newsletter (https://simonrepp.com/newsletter/) and I'll occasionally blog about this in german at https://www.netidee.at/hyper-8-video-system too.

A thousand thanks to netidee for making this possible! <3

¹ The first was: https://post.lurk.org/@freebliss/113804889509469187

@benpate Adjacent question: Any particular reason you picked ogg as container (and I presume then, Vorbis as codec?) for the second streaming format? Or respectively, the root of my question is also: Why not Opus? (unless you're putting opus in an ogg container, i that case I'd be curious about the container choice! :))

@benpate I highly recommend Opus these days because it offers the best compression/quality ratio at pretty much all bitrates¹ ², and at the same time it's also supported in almost all browsers.

Exceptions are: IE (<0.5% market share) with no support at all, and Safari/iOS up to 17.3 (~4.5% market share) only supports opus in a CAF container, hence a fallback is required for these.

Faircamp currently provides streaming assets as Opus 96 kbit/s [-codec:a libopus -b:a 96k] with MP3 VBR V5 (120-150kbit/s) [-codec:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 5] as a fallback, respectively as Opus 48kbit/s [-codec:a libopus -b:a 48k] and MP3 VBR V7 (80-120kbit/s) [-codec:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 7] with the "frugal" option.

As the market share for iOS17.3 shrinks further I'll see if opus-only (in a WEBM container) is supported everywhere and go that road eventually.

¹ "In listening tests around 64 kbit/s, Opus shows superior quality compared to HE-AAC codecs (...) In listening tests around 96 kbit/s, Opus shows slightly superior quality compared to AAC and significantly better quality compared to Vorbis and MP3." – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)#Quality_comparison_and_low-latency_performance

² https://opus-codec.org/comparison/ has some studies linked like e.g. https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm - note that in the meantime opus 1.1 supposedly increased quality even further, this is not yet reflected in these tests.

I have two big announcements for 2025 - today's is all about #faircamp!

The response to the 1.0 release annoucement was incredible, way beyond what I had imagined, and I'm still glowing with excitement. (⌒‿⌒) Given this amazing response - for which I would like to say a huge thank you to all of you! - the @nlnet foundation has extended my current @NGIZero grant, meaning that there will be more big developments following in the wake of 1.0! To name two of them already: Podcast support and track-level metadata (such as lyrics, transcripts, cover art) are coming in the next months! \o/

And now, to add some icing to the cake, 2025's first Faircamp release – 1.1!

Introducing opt-in Open Graph metadata (with support from @berdandy), M3U playlists for artists, catalog-wide and artist-level tag rewrite options (thanks @mahlon for facilitating this), process exit codes for failure/success (thanks @audiodude for the suggestion), multiple essential fixes and improvements (thanks to contributions from @sunny and reports by @axwax and @samae), as well as the introduction of japanese translations (ありがとう @dev!) and updates to french, swedish and norwegian (thank you Élie, Filip and Matias!).

1.1 waits for you at https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/

And that is all ... until I'm back with the second big announcement in a few days. ( ＾◡＾)

Hey Wien Bubble: Ich such eine kleine Wohung (~30-50m²) weil ich bis April umziehen muss. Falls jemand von euch was weiss/hört freu ich mich über Tipps! (˶′◡‵˶)

After 6 months and about 333 commits I proudly present:

Faircamp 1.0 – A static site generator for audio producers
https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/

To recap the highlights of the past months and learn what's new in the final 1.0 release, check out the blog post: https://simonrepp.com/posts/faircamp-1.0/

Development of version 1.0 was made possible through the amazing support, funding and expertise of the @NGIZero programme and coalition, led by the @nlnet foundation and financed by the European Commission's @EC_NGI initiative – thank you so much for giving me and everyone benefitting from a better Faircamp this incredible opportunity!

Also, many thanks to all faircampers, contributors, testers, translators, bloggers, podcasters and encouraging voices for supporting this journey - for the final 1.0 release specifically to @branpos for release candidate testing, @n00q for bugreporting/testing, @limebar for the external artist page feature inspiration and @Vac for their diligent translation work.

Along with this release I've published multiple new documentation resources - from an official Linux/macOS/Windows tutorial to a 1.0 migration guide, from an overhauled reference manual to a beginner's guide to publishing faircamp (or any!) static sites - check out the website and recent posts in the #faircamp hashtag to discover them!

That's all!

Today Faircamp 0.23.0 was released - the last release before 1.0! ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶

What's #faircamp? Check out https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/

What's new: All site layouts now fully adapt to RTL (right-to-left) languages, another dozen of accessibility improvements were added, the docked and embed players now make much better use of limited space, MP3 transcoding now writes more broadly supported ID3v2.3 tags (thanks @berdandy for the PR), a few font-related improvements were made (thanks @thurti for the contributions and @fennifith for a prior PR/research supporting this), russian translations were added (thanks @wileyfoxyx), italian and lithuanian translations updated (thanks @toctoc and @Vac) and a few bugs fixed!

As always, huge thanks to @nlnet and @EC_NGI for funding this work through an NGI0 grant - this time around especially also to Marc, my project supervisor, diligent reviewer and cultural advisor on RTL layouting.

One last thing: I've set up a newsletter where from now on I will also announce new faircamp releases! It's an experiment for now, but I think it might provide a nice way to stay updated without the/my social media noise. :) You can sign up here: https://simonrepp.com/newsletter/ (I did much research to find an ethical provider & settled on @keila, check 'em out!)

Featured image: https://strangetextures.com by @james