Posts in LogBook

A few changes for finding what's new aboard:

The sidebar's All Posts link now wears a badge — the number of posts you haven't read yet. Open the feed and those same posts are listed under New since your last visit, each a straight line to its thread. Opening a post retires it from the count on the spot; the unread rest wait for you. If the list ever gets noisy, Mark all as read files everything at once.

And once you're settled in (welcome checklist done), your home page leads with recent posts instead of the welcome mat — conversation first, furniture after.

The bookkeeping behind it is one small row saying you opened a post, visible to no one but the boat, and your counts are yours alone.

For everyone whose blog borrows a thread here as its comment section: the boat can now tell your site when the conversation moves.

Static hosts — Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages — each offer a build hook: a plain URL that rebuilds your site when something POSTs to it. Paste yours into Settings under "Your blog," and whenever replies land on threads you created, in any space, the boat rings it. Bursts are gathered into a single ping, so a lively conversation is one rebuild, not twenty.

If you keep a space of your own: its edit form takes a hook too, for rebuilding on anything that moves there. And while we were in there — creators of approved spaces now have full control of their own space's settings, as it always should have been.

The whole arrangement for blogs is written up at https://www.popsicleboat.com/for-bloggers, and there's a longer story on my blog: https://jva.lol/weblog/the-page-that-rebuilds-itself/

The harbor today: 10 crew · 22 posts · 14 replies · 67 interests · one boat.

This entry keeps itself up to date — the numbers refresh on their own, and once a quarter a line drops anchor below.

Soundings:

• 2026 Q3 — 8 crew · 10 posts · 66 interests

One person builds and looks after this boat. It's written in Elixir, runs on a couple of small servers, and pays its way out of my pocket — there's nothing here that needs your attention to survive. No ads, no trackers: the analytics count pages, never people. Every interest has an open feed you can read from any feed reader, no account needed. And words are free forever — no quota ever touches what you write, only heavy files. The longer story lives at https://www.popsicleboat.com/about, the promises are spelled out in the privacy policy https://www.popsicleboat.com/privacy (one page, plain sentences), and the build notes wash up on my blog at https://jva.lol from time to time.

This is the ship's log — the one place I post news about the boat itself. New rigging, mended planks, the occasional course change.

A few promises about it: entries will be occasional, not chatty. The little dot you might see next to "Logbook" in the sidebar just means there's one new entry — it never counts, never nags, and goes away the moment you look. And while only I write entries here, replies are open to everyone — questions, complaints, and hellos all welcome.

If you'd rather watch from the water, the Logbook has its own feed: paste this page into a feed reader and it'll find it.

The boat picked up some new rigging this week. Everything works the way it did before — these are additions, nothing you need to relearn.

Your words can dress up now. Posts, replies, and messages understand simple formatting: bold, italic, code, lists, quotes. Paste a link and it turns clickable on its own. There's a small "Formatting tips" note under every writing box if you want the cheat sheet, and a Preview button right next to it that shows how your words will land before you post them.

You can search. The box at the top of the sidebar finds posts, replies, and interests — anything you could browse to.

You'll know when someone replies. Your inbox has a new "Replies to you" section, and the inbox badge lights up when something's waiting. No more checking back on a hunch.

You can follow the harbor from anywhere. Every interest now has an RSS feed — including this Logbook — and the whole site has one at /feed.xml. Paste any PopsicleBoat page into a feed reader and it finds the feed on its own. A nice way to keep an eye on an interest, or to share one with a friend who isn't ready to sign up.

That's the batch. If something feels off — or the boat doesn't do something you wish it did — reply here. I read every word.

-Jake