I can’t even remember the last time I did bullets…
Reader, I apologize. I haven’t really been keeping you up to date.
I’m not going to really get into a lot of detail today, tho.
But maybe some broad strokes.
2023 was basically a continuation of 2020.
2020 Wrapped:
Bought a house
Decided (with Ellen, of course) to (at least stop trying not) to have a kid
Other stuff you’ve probably heard of. It’s not over.
About the house…
It turned out 2021 was a terrible year to get anyone to help you fix up a house.
2022 wasn’t much better, but we were able to engage a buider and, by the end of the year, gut the place, cleaning
up the mould (most of which we knew about when we bought) and the mouse droppings (which we didn’t).
So 2023 was spent getting a design to the point where we could submit a building permit and finding people and
materials to do the job of giving us a place we can actually live.
2024 will, with any luck at all, be the year my wife and son and I will live together in our own house.
We are, of course, blessed to have a place to live. And especially to own a house. And to be able to even attempt
all of this. It’s not been easy.
But, you know, I sold my house in 2016. (That’s a
blog post I wrote for friends and family at the time. I decided to unprotect it for context-related linking).
It’ll have been an eight year journey to moving into this house.
About the kid…
He’s an absolute, goddamn delight. And exhausting. But utterly delightful.
Not sure what more to say.
Work’s fine.
Doctor Who is back.
I played a lot of Picross. And Spider Solitaire. And Sudoku apps.
And Pokemon Go.
You should really listen to my Christmas mixtape. It’s good, I promise.
Here we are, in the bleak midwinter. What better time than now to put on some fun music while we crank up the IR heater
to take the chill off.
Cover image by DaPuglet (Tina)Santas Secret Weaponused under
it’s Creative Commons license. CC-BY-SA.
The Christmas Mixtape is back for its seventh incarnation. It’s up
on Youtube Music and
on Mixcloud. And Mixcloud gives me a handy little
widget so you don’t even have to leave the page to listen:
I’m also going to dump Youtube music videos of the songs where I can find them. They’re not necessarily the same
version, but given that I’ve listened to these dozens of times already, it’s kinda cool to see visual interpretations…
When I started this series, I had a rough outline in my head about what the posts would be, but that was weeks ago and
Elon just re-christened Twitter as X and who even knows anything anymore?
I’ve pretty much resolved that the Fediverse, in some form, will be my main hang. I’m on
mastodon (mastodon.social, even! The main one!) but I’m not necessarily wedded to it. I fee
like, right now, the software comes closest to what I want out of a social media site. Actually, that’s not true. Based
on my limited experience to date, I think my preference lies
with Hometown, which is a mastodon form with a couple features I
really want. Like exclusive lists.
Exclusive lists were a 100% requirement for me on Twitter, because I feel like my main Twitter feed is about what I want
it to be, but I also want to kinda follow discourse in things that make me happy. Like Doctor Who or Star Trek. So I
have Doctor lists. I don’t necessarily want the people on those lists in my feed, tho. With vanilla mastodon, you need
to have someone in your feed to put them in a list.
You can make hashtag columns, tho. That’s what I’m using right now to make up that functionality. And my timeline isn’t
really busy enough yet that just following anyone who seems interesting is a problem.
It’s not my intention to stay on
mastodon.social. The plan is to run my
own server with Ellen, but that’s not making a lot of progress, despite the fact that we’re paying for the server
hosting. I should figure that out sometime.
I see a lot of people complaining about this or that thing they don’t like about some social media site and I can’t help
but think that, ultimately, the solution to whatever that is far likelier to actually happen in the Fediverse than any
walled garden, VC-funded social startup. Not least because, if you have the time and skill, you can just make it
yourself.
Granted, this is an argument only a software developer is going to love, but, you know, guilty as charged. While I’m not
personally going to be forking mastodon any time soon, it just seems to me that if you’re going to move to a social
platform, nothing else seems worth the energy.
This is doubly true of media entities and institutions that actually stand to benefit by owning their media platform.
JFC, why go to Threads? I know why, it’s because you already have an Instagram account. But you know how that story is
going to end.
I get that it’s a little complicated to get started, because the first thing you need to do is pick a server. If you’re
reading this, you could probably join my server when it’s up and running, but it’s not, so that’s no help. I’m happy
enough with mastodon.social for now, but I’m not 100% convinced it is the best place to start. So maybe here are a few
suggestions:
If you’re in Ottawa, ottawa.place. It’s run by cool, smart people.
If you’re elsewhere in Canada, mstdn.ca. I don’t know the admins personally, but they seem cool.
And it’s got some level of backing from CIRA, which is not nothing.
If you’re Canadian and don’t mind paying a bit of money and being party of
something, cosocial.ca. A member-run co-op social media site is a fascinating experiment, and
again, it’s run by cool people.
If you’re not Canadian, I guess I don’t have an answer for you right now. There probably is one, but I don’t have it.
Check the moderation policies. Check the home feed. See if you like the vibe. Moving servers isn’t that hard. So maybe
just sign up for mastodon.social and get a feel for things.
One last note, as this has gotten over-long, I’ve gone to the trouble of talking about the Fediverse, but only actually
talked about Mastodon. That’s most of my experience, although I will say I really, really like Pixelfed, if you’re into
an Instagram sort of thing that isn’t being bled to death by Meta.
I’m @flyingsquirrel@pixelfed.social, if you want to follow me there (or on
Mastodon. Or RSS…)
