It’s been a while since I did something a little bit more fun with C# and DotNet (DROP THE DOT ✊), so I wanted to look at something I’d come across recently with one of the applications I help build, maintain, and deploy at work, lovingly named “Vogon” (because Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is everything).

I’m not normally one for using Object Relational Mappers (ORMs), mostly because I know what SQL I want to write and tools like Entity Framework don’t let me customise as much as I want to, or at least not without jumping through lots of hoops and wasting time. But… the application does do a lot of reading and writing data, and then mapping the results to and from C# classes. So I relented a little and went half-way by using the Micro-ORM Dapper.

Recently I came across the human.json protocol, which is implemented to allow humans to assert ownership of site content and to vouch for the humanity of others.

Given the proliferation of AI-generated slop out on the internet and seeping its way into other aspects of our lives through ads, TV and more, finding ways of vouching for genuine human content is more important than ever.

Whilst the protocol isn’t a guarantee (it’s easy for AI-generated sites to create their own JSON files and vouch for each other after all), having the ability to work out if a site is vouched for by someone you trust can make a difference.

This is going to be a little bit of a weird post, in that I’m going to be writing about changing my site, while I’m changing the site.

What am I changing? Well, one of the things I love about Hugo is that it generates an RSS by default. And RSS is great for many reasons, it’s portable, simple, been around for ages, and allows your content to be made available to read in feed readers which support people with accessibility needs. All of this is great, but the default feed generator in Hugo creates a short version of the article with a link back to the website to read the rest. And while I would love the site visits, I don’t like the idea of people having to leave their reader, especially if it’s making the web easier to consume for them.