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@ c230edd3:8ad4a712
2025-05-06 02:12:57Chef's notes
This cake is not too sweet and very simple to make. The 3 flavors and mild and meld well with the light sweetness.
Details
- ⏲️ Prep time: 15 min
- 🍳 Cook time: 45 min
- 🍽️ Servings: 12
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup full fat milk
- 3/4 cup unfiltered olive oil
- 2/3 cup finely chopped raw, unsalted almonds
- 2 tsp lavender
- 1 Tbsp powdered sugar
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter 8 inch baking pan.
- In smal bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda.
- In large bowl, beat eggs and sugar until light colored and fluffy. Add milk.
- Slowly pour and stir in olive oil.
- Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients,
- Stir in the almonds and the lavender, reserving some flowers for garnish.
- Pour into prepared pan and bake for 45 min, or until toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool on wire rack, dust with powdered sugar and top with reserved lavender.
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@ d61f3bc5:0da6ef4a
2025-05-06 01:37:28
I remember the first gathering of Nostr devs two years ago in Costa Rica. We were all psyched because Nostr appeared to solve the problem of self-sovereign online identity and decentralized publishing. The protocol seemed well-suited for textual content, but it wasn't really designed to handle binary files, like images or video.
The Problem
When I publish a note that contains an image link, the note itself is resilient thanks to Nostr, but if the hosting service disappears or takes my image down, my note will be broken forever. We need a way to publish binary data without relying on a single hosting provider.
We were discussing how there really was no reliable solution to this problem even outside of Nostr. Peer-to-peer attempts like IPFS simply didn't work; they were hopelessly slow and unreliable in practice. Torrents worked for popular files like movies, but couldn't be relied on for general file hosting.
Awesome Blossom
A year later, I attended the Sovereign Engineering demo day in Madeira, organized by Pablo and Gigi. Many projects were presented over a three hour demo session that day, but one really stood out for me.
Introduced by hzrd149 and Stu Bowman, Blossom blew my mind because it showed how we can solve complex problems easily by simply relying on the fact that Nostr exists. Having an open user directory, with the corresponding social graph and web of trust is an incredible building block.
Since we can easily look up any user on Nostr and read their profile metadata, we can just get them to simply tell us where their files are stored. This, combined with hash-based addressing (borrowed from IPFS), is all we need to solve our problem.
How Blossom Works
The Blossom protocol (Blobs Stored Simply on Mediaservers) is formally defined in a series of BUDs (Blossom Upgrade Documents). Yes, Blossom is the most well-branded protocol in the history of protocols. Feel free to refer to the spec for details, but I will provide a high level explanation here.
The main idea behind Blossom can be summarized in three points:
- Users specify which media server(s) they use via their public Blossom settings published on Nostr;
- All files are uniquely addressable via hashes;
- If an app fails to load a file from the original URL, it simply goes to get it from the server(s) specified in the user's Blossom settings.
Just like Nostr itself, the Blossom protocol is dead-simple and it works!
Let's use this image as an example:
If you look at the URL for this image, you will notice that it looks like this:blossom.primal.net/c1aa63f983a44185d039092912bfb7f33adcf63ed3cae371ebe6905da5f688d0.jpgAll Blossom URLs follow this format:
[server]/[file-hash].[extension]The file hash is important because it uniquely identifies the file in question. Apps can use it to verify that the file they received is exactly the file they requested. It also gives us the ability to reliably get the same file from a different server.
Nostr users declare which media server(s) they use by publishing their Blossom settings. If I store my files on Server A, and they get removed, I can simply upload them to Server B, update my public Blossom settings, and all Blossom-capable apps will be able to find them at the new location. All my existing notes will continue to display media content without any issues.
Blossom Mirroring
Let's face it, re-uploading files to another server after they got removed from the original server is not the best user experience. Most people wouldn't have the backups of all the files, and/or the desire to do this work.
This is where Blossom's mirroring feature comes handy. In addition to the primary media server, a Blossom user can set one one or more mirror servers. Under this setup, every time a file is uploaded to the primary server the Nostr app issues a mirror request to the primary server, directing it to copy the file to all the specified mirrors. This way there is always a copy of all content on multiple servers and in case the primary becomes unavailable, Blossom-capable apps will automatically start loading from the mirror.
Mirrors are really easy to setup (you can do it in two clicks in Primal) and this arrangement ensures robust media handling without any central points of failure. Note that you can use professional media hosting services side by side with self-hosted backup servers that anyone can run at home.
Using Blossom Within Primal
Blossom is natively integrated into the entire Primal stack and enabled by default. If you are using Primal 2.2 or later, you don't need to do anything to enable Blossom, all your media uploads are blossoming already.
To enhance user privacy, all Primal apps use the "/media" endpoint per BUD-05, which strips all metadata from uploaded files before they are saved and optionally mirrored to other Blossom servers, per user settings. You can use any Blossom server as your primary media server in Primal, as well as setup any number of mirrors:
## ConclusionFor such a simple protocol, Blossom gives us three major benefits:
- Verifiable authenticity. All Nostr notes are always signed by the note author. With Blossom, the signed note includes a unique hash for each referenced media file, making it impossible to falsify.
- File hosting redundancy. Having multiple live copies of referenced media files (via Blossom mirroring) greatly increases the resiliency of media content published on Nostr.
- Censorship resistance. Blossom enables us to seamlessly switch media hosting providers in case of censorship.
Thanks for reading; and enjoy! 🌸
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@ 700c6cbf:a92816fd
2025-05-04 16:34:01
Technically speaking, I should say blooms because not all of my pictures are of flowers, a lot of them, probably most, are blooming trees - but who cares, right?
It is that time of the year that every timeline on every social media is being flooded by blooms. At least in the Northern Hemisphere. I thought that this year, I wouldn't partake in it but - here I am, I just can't resist the lure of blooms when I'm out walking the neighborhood.
Spring has sprung - aaaachoo, sorry, allergies suck! - and the blooms are beautiful.
Yesterday, we had the warmest day of the year to-date. I went for an early morning walk before breakfast. Beautiful blue skies, no clouds, sunshine and a breeze. Most people turned on their aircons. We did not. We are rebels - hah!
We also had breakfast on the deck which I really enjoy during the weekend. Later I had my first session of the year painting on the deck while listening/watching @thegrinder streaming. Good times.
Today, the weather changed. Last night, we had heavy thunderstorms and rain. This morning, it is overcast with the occasional sunray peaking through or, as it is right now, raindrops falling.
We'll see what the day will bring. For me, it will definitely be: Back to painting. Maybe I'll even share some here later. But for now - this is a photo post, and here are the photos. I hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed yesterday's walk!
Cheers, OceanBee
!(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/cc3fb0fa757c88a6a89823585badf7d67e32dee72b6d4de5dff58acd06d0aa36.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/7fe93c27c3bf858202185cb7f42b294b152013ba3c859544950e6c1932ede4d3.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/6cbd9fba435dbe3e6732d9a5d1f5ff0403935a4ac9d0d83f6e1d729985220e87.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/df94d95381f058860392737d71c62cd9689c45b2ace1c8fc29d108625aabf5d5.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/e483e65c3ee451977277e0cfa891ec6b93b39c7c4ea843329db7354fba255e64.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/a98fe8e1e0577e3f8218af31f2499c3390ba04dced14c2ae13f7d7435b4000d7.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/d83b01915a23eb95c3d12c644713ac47233ce6e022c5df1eeba5ff8952b99d67.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/9ee3256882e363680d8ea9bb6ed3baa5979c950cdb6e62b9850a4baea46721f3.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/201a036d52f37390d11b76101862a082febb869c8d0e58d6aafe93c72919f578.jpg] !(image)[https://cdn.satellite.earth/cd516d89591a4cf474689b4eb6a67db842991c4bf5987c219fb9083f741ce871.jpg]