Since this blog is a static site, I don't have a server running to do something dynamic when I publish a new post. I was about to set up Zapier or IFTTT to auto-toot blog posts to Mastodon, until I realized I finally had a use case to give val.town a shot.

With val town you can write lambda-ish functions in a GitHub gist-ish interface. Single functions are called "vals". The fun part is you can reference your own and other people's vals, which creates a network of atomic actions you can stack like Lego blocks. Vals can be scheduled so you can use them as background services.

First I created a generic postToMastodon val to toot a status on Mastodon. Then I created a tootLatestPosts val that combines it with an existing @stevekrouse.newRssItems val, which fetches RSS items from a feed.

Finally, I scheduled tootLatestPosts to run every hour. Now posts from this blog automatically appear on my Mastodon profile!