I work in InfoSec. I'm also partial to collecting watches and riding motorbikes.
The RSS's url is : https://kevquirk.com/feed
Please copy to your reader or subscribe it with :
2024-09-29 22:10:00
I've recently been down a YouTube rabbit hole about Police who abuse their position. If you were stopped by an officer, would you exercise your right to remain silent?
Ok, so I'm browsing YouTube, as one often does, and I end up down this rabbit hole of videos about "corrupt cops" and how they basically bully people into either a) giving them their ID etc. or b) being arrested for nothing.
Ironically, a few days later I saw this post from "Leftist Lawyer" on Mastodon giving some advice for people who find themselves in this position:
This kind of Police officer boils my blood, as they're just bullies who interpret (or ignore) the law to fit their rhetoric, for seemingly nothing more than a power trip.
I know there are plenty of good cops out there, please don't email me saying this - I know. I'm just focussing on the bullies here.
Despite the boiled blood, every time I watch one of these videos I can't help but think it would be so much easier for the individual if they just cooperated. Is what these cops are doing against the law? I dunno, maybe? Is your day going to get worse if you don't cooperate? Absofuckinglutely.
If I were to get stopped, I think I'd just cooperate and give them my ID. They can then have their little power trip, prove I'm doing nothing wrong, and we can go our separate ways while I shake my head and wonder what that particular cop was compensating for.
Being argumentative just doesn't seem worth it to me. I get it. It's your right to stay silent. And it's your right to representation. And it's your right not give over your ID and walk away if you're not being detained. But sometimes it's just easier to cooperate and get on with your day.
I'm probably wrong, but I think the majority of those videos I've watched would have been a couple of minutes of cordial interactions if the person on the receiving end would have just given their name/ID.
Let the bullies have their power trip and just move on. That's what I say. What do you think? You can tell me by using the button below.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-28 21:20:00
It’s been a year since I migrated this site to Kirby CMS, let’s talk about how that’s gone…
So when I wrote about migrating to Kirby CMS, I closed the post by saying:
You know me, dear reader, a year from now I could well be running something completely different to power this blog.
Well, it's been a year and I can honestly say that not once have I had the desire to move to another platform. As time has progressed, I've continued to hone the panel to exactly how I want it and the result is a platform that feels like it's tailored just for me. Actually, no. It's a platform that is tailored just for me.
I love it.
So what have I done in the last year to improve things? Well, I changed the panel from a simple list of posts with a sidebar that contains a list of pages, to a full dashboard that allows me to manage the most important aspects of this site from a single place. Here's a before and after:
As you can see, I now have tabs at the top of the panel that flick me straight to the most important parts of the site and each tab has it's own UI depending on the content it needs to display.
Over the last year, I've also been doing a PHP course on Udemy that has allowed me to use this site as a playground for my learning.
Coupled with what I've learned about Kirby over the last year, their amazing documentation and fantastic forums, I've been able to add a few really cool features. What's even better is because I've coded them myself from scratch, I've been able to implement them exactly how I want. It's been so much fun.
Some of the features I've added are:
There's other things that I'm thinking about adding in the future, I just need to find the time. I also want to be cognisant of bloat on the site though. First and foremost, it's a blog. I need to remember that.
Anyway, I digress...
Using Kirby continues to be an absolutely joy. I really can't see myself leaving the platform any time soon. With all the WordPress drama going on right now, if you're thinking about jumping ship to another CMS, I strongly recommend Kirby.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-26 22:55:00
I wrote about Matt's post the other day, but things have escalated significantly since then. Like, SIGNIFICANTLY. Here's my thoughts...
Ok, if you're not up to date with all the WordPress drama, here's a very quick catch up with what's been going on, along with some links for further reading:
And to protect those trademarks, WordPress have decided to block WP Engine's ability to access wordpress.org. That means that there's no way for WP Engine's customers to do update things like plugins and themes. So if a zero day hits a plugin, and you're a WP Engine customer, you're shit out of luck.
Once again it's the users/customers that are bearing the brunt of this millionaire dick measuring contest.
Matt opens his post by saying...
I’ve been writing and talking about WP Engine a lot in the last week, but I want to be crystal clear about the core issue at play.
In short, WP Engine is violating WordPress’ trademarks. Moreover, they have been doing so for years.
Ok, so now this is about trademarks, and WordPress wanting to protect them. Great, what about the hundreds of other companies using the WP moniker in their name? Some examples off the top of my head:
Are Matt and co. gonna start a tirade against these companies who make money off the WP brand too?
Reading the cease and desist from WP Engine, it seems to me that Matt has tried to extort get more money out of WP Engine, which failed. So he spat his dummy out and has decided to flex.
Overall it seems very childish and, quite frankly, pathetic to me. I for one am glad I switched to Kirby a while back.
I don't think Matt is a bad dude. He's done a lot of good for open source and the communities he works in. However, I don't see why he needs to bring this shit to a public forum. All it does is hurt WordPress as a brand, and WP Engine's customers.
I suppose this is what happens when millionaires get butt-hurt...
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-25 17:45:00
I wanted to share some thoughts on removing content from a public blog.
A couple of days ago I published a link to a post by Matt Mullenweg about the whole WordPress vs WP Engine drama. In that post, I ended with the following comment:
You should probably take this post down, Matt. It’s fucking awful.
I later received an email from Manu about the topic (I really enjoy my email exchanges with him). At the top of the email, he said this:
Hard disagree. He should leave it up because that’s how the web remembers.
I replied to Manu, but subsequently thought about this and I wanted to share my thoughts here. I've talked about deleting old content in the past, but that was more focussed on social media.
Generally speaking, I don't delete content from this site. Having said that, if I posted something that I later feel is particularly egregious, I think I probably would. I personally don't think that a website should be a permanent record - how can it be? Nothing last forever.
Does that mean we should throw caution to the wind and delete anything we subsequently disagree with in the future?
Probably not. But I do think it's ok to delete stuff from your site from time to time.
What do you think? Use the email button below to let me know.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-23 01:50:00
Matt, the co-founder of WordPress, writes about how WP Engine is a “cancer to WordPress” because they disable revisions.
Wow, Matt, salty much? This post is terrible and just screams ”I’m jealous of their success! Come use my service instead!”
In my experience revisions were nothing but a pain in the arse anyway. I don't blame WP Engine for disabling them.
You should probably take this post down, Matt. It’s fucking awful.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-16 19:50:00
✍️ Written by: Dan Brown
🏷 Genre: Thriller
🗓 Published: 31 May 2011
📄 Pages: 396
🧐 My rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2 stars)
When the National Security Agency's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls in its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage - not by guns or bombs, but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence.
Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves...
This book started off so well, but as it progressed it was chock full of cliché crap.
For example, there's 3 women in the story - the main character, Susan, who is "beautiful and brilliant", Midge who is an older lady who is also very attractive and a massive flirt who seemingly spends her time sleeping with her colleagues in the NSA. Finally there's the -- you guessed it -- beautiful prostitute who's name I forgot as she's in the story earlier on.
There were many mentions of the beauty of the women in the book, and even more mentions of sex and sexual fantasies that just added nothing to the story for me.
Toward the end the technical details were laughable too. I won't give anything away in case any of you decide to read this book, but the details of the technical "stuff" in use was laughable.
First and last Dan Brown book, I think.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-12 21:25:00
Why do kids think they can get away with the most ridiculous of lies? Sometimes it's funny, but other times I want to strangle them!
So the a couple evenings ago my wife and I were sitting in the kitchen having a chat after dinner, as we often do. We had sent the kids upstairs to start getting ready for bed, which includes:
All very simple. After 15 minutes or so, our youngest came down in his pyjamas and announced that he was ready for bed. The conversation went something like this:
I'm ready for bed!
Yep!
Yesssssssssss. I dried it.
I put them back on.
...............no. 🥺
Little shit. 🤣
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-07 02:10:00
I was recently speaking to someone in work that I mentor, and she asked me what my measure of success is. This is what I told her...
So we're chatting over a coffee and talking about all manner of things (which I often do in my 1:1's with people - they're not just about work, folks!) Anyway, we got onto the topic of what we deem as being successful.
Her bar for success is extremely high - she jokes that feedback to her should be short and sweet - a simple number out of 10 on how she's doing on any given topic, and anything less than a 9 is a total failure to her.
So she asked me whether I think of myself as successful, and when that became apparent, but I didn't really have an answer for her. You see, success is a totally subjective thing.
I didn't wake up one morning, have a shower and realise "you know what, I'm successful!" It's much more complicated than that, I think.
For example, for some people -- like those who have mental health issues and have to deal with things like depression -- success may be getting out of bed in the morning and having a shower.
For others it might be landing that job at McDonald's so they can help their parents pay the bills. Then at the other end of the spectrum, nothing but being a multi-billionaire is good enough. And even then, it might not be enough.
For others, their measure of success may not be financial at all. Maybe their measure is to convert that camper van and go travelling around the world. Or maybe it's getting onto the property ladder, or passing their driving test.
That woman who works 16 hour days, and earns 250k a year. But she goes home to an empty house, has a microwave meal, then goes to bed. Rinse and repeat.
Woah, 250k is a lot of money. She's so successful, right? She might think so, but I wouldn't say so. That sounds like an incredibly sad life to me.
You see? success is such a personal thing.
For me, success is fluid. In the past I've had financial targets with regards to what salary I want to earn and by which age. But looking back, to me, that's arbitrary and pointless.
A much better gauge of success, for me, is one that's fluid. I tend to ask myself am I successful right now? And that could be in anything. Recently, my successes have revolved around renovating one of the stables for the chickens, and maintaining our vegetable patch.
We managed to be very successful at both (post on that in the future). Therefore I'm a success.
Right now my idea of success is very work focussed, as I recently took a promotion and I want to be successful for my team. It's too soon to say whether I'll be successful in this particular endeavour yet. We'll see.
So, back to the question I was asked - do I consider myself successful?
Well, yeah. Generally. Some days I feel very successful. Others, not so much. But I'd say things are going pretty well for me - I'm happy and I have a what I would consider to be a nice life.
To me that's a success.
What about you? What's your bar for success?
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-01 21:20:00
Lou talks about the recent loss of his son's much loved dog, Osa. Be warned, you'll need tissues at the ready!
I know this is the second post of the day, but it's another great post that resonated me. Sorry (not sorry).
This post from Lou did bring a tear to my eye, and that's because I'm a dog lover, too. I have 2 dogs, one of which is nearly 12. We know we don't have long left with her, and it's so sad to think about. She was here before all our other pets; before our kids even. She's the OG that transformed my wife and I from a partnership, to a family.
A few years ago a colleague in work lost his pet dog and had to take a few days off to grieve. My boss at the time reacted with a comment along the lines of "It's only a dog, why does he need time off? He needs to grow up...".
Clearly never owned had a pet in her life. How sad.
Pets are a part of the family, and losing one is as bad as losing a member of your family. That's why he needed time off.
I'll leave you with this picture of me and Tia that my wife took on Christmas morning. It had been an early start and I was knackered. So Tia, being the loving affectionate soul that she is, came and cuddled up to me when I was lying on the floor. Needless to say, we both had a little nap together, as we often do. :)
My thoughts are with you and your family, Lou. I'm so sorry for your loss and I hope you're all doing ok.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-09-01 20:45:00
While still in its infancy, there's one feature that Scott would *love* to see on Mastodon - the ability to post locally only.
I read this post on my RSS reader this morning and it resonated with me (and many other Mastodon user too, I bet). It's something that's been requested so many times, but unfortunately, I don't think it will ever happen.
Eugen, the founder of Mastodon, has taken steps in the past to remove the the local timeline from the official Mastodon apps. After a lot of push back, they relented and added it, albeit very hidden. Eugen commented on a Github issue about the topic:
The omission is intentional and I do not intend to add these types of timelines into the app. They might have made sense for early Mastodon in November 2016 when there were less than 20k people total and all from a homogenous demographic but nowadays the signal to noise ratio makes them a liability in almost every aspect. I might write more on the topic on the blog.
But that signal to noise ratio is much less of a problem for smaller instances - Eugen needs to, I think, consider those smaller instances, like500 Social, and not just Mastodon.social. By introducing a feature like posting to the local timeline only, you're allowing for these self-contained pockets of the fediverse to flourish, but they still have the advantage is engaging with the wider fedi if they want to. It's win/win.
Furthermore, this would have the added effect of encouraging more decentralisation of the fediverse, something which I think has the potential to be a real problem in the future.
Thanks for the great post, Scott. I suppose we will just have to live in hope for this (in my opinion) critical feature.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-08-28 15:50:00
✍️ Written by: Brian Lee Durfee
🏷 Genre: Fantasy
🗓 Published: 01 September 2007
📄 Pages: 911
🧐 My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 stars)
Returning to the kingdom of Gul Kana, Princess Jondralyn has suffered a devastating loss, discovering that not all fortunes are to be assumed, not all scripture to be trusted.
At the same time, her younger sister, Tala, has found faith within herself while facing off against devious villains, who would use her gifts for their own devices.
The Five Isles are caught up in the deadliest conflict it has ever known, and Nail finds himself right at the heart of it all.
For the Five Warrior Angels have been revealed: Gladiator, Assassin, Thief, Princess and Slave, and one by one the weapons they once wielded are being excavated. Deep within the heart of these discoveries, an ancient prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled…
This was a long book, but really enjoyable. Durfee continues to develop the characters and story lines, and within this book, they all start to converge. I've knocked it down a star as I think it's longer than it needs to be; there are entire chapters where not a lot happens, but then again, there are chapters where loads happen, so it evens out, I suppose.
I've already started book 3, but it's frustrating when I start a series of books that isn't finished yet, like The Black Sword series, as when I return years later, I tend to forget what had happened.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-08-27 22:40:00
I recently had the pleasure of being upgraded to Windows 11 in work, and it's utterly shite.
I've been on Windows 11 on my work laptop for a few weeks now, and I'm hating it more and more with every day of use. It ultimately boils down to the 3 issues:
Sometimes it's dark when it should be light, other times it's the reverse. Sometimes it uses the modern icon set, other times it looks like it's straight outta Windows XP.
Sometimes you have to go into settings to find something, other times it's control panel.
Why is control panel still a thing, people?
If it were my personal machine, this alone would be a deal breaker for me. If an open app has a notification in Windows 11, it's nigh on impossible to see the thing. There's almost zero contrast, here, see for yourself:
I've tried all kinds of colour combinations and I just can't get something that can be easily seen. I can't count the amount of notifications I've missed in work because of this stupid fucking colour.
Like, how the hell did that shit pass accessibility testing??
Windows 10 was fine on my work laptop, which is a high performance HP Elitebook with really good specs. But now it feels slow and lethargic.
Boot up seems to take an age to get to a desktop environment that's usable. Now yeah, this is a corporate machine with a shit load of stuff running in the background, but it was fine in Windows 10 a few weeks ago, so the fact remains, Windows 11 isn't as performance at 10, for me.
All in all, Windows 11 is bag of shit. That's it, that's my final thought. I'm glad I run a Mac at home.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-08-19 23:40:00
I saw a post from Will recently about the CLI journalling tool, jrnl. It looked cool, but had some limitations for my needs, so I decided to build my own.
Will and I had a quick chat about jrnl, and my knee-jerk reaction was to give it a try, but when I took a breath and thought about it, I decided that jrnl wasn't for me.
You see, I'm most likely to write a journal entry before bed, either on my phone, or on my iPad. So a CLI tool is no good to me. This got me thinking about if I were to start journalling again, what my needs would be from a tool. Here's the list I came up with:
.txt) files so they're universally availableI've really enjoyed journalling in the past, but it's always been too much of a headache to maintain. Apps like Day One have too much going on, and I don't like the fact I'm sending my journal to a 3rd party. I tried building a Journal with WordPress in the past, but that was too much faff and so it didn't stick.
So with the list above in mind, I started looking for something that would tick most of my requirements. But unfortunately I couldn't find anything.
I've been teaching myself PHP lately, so I figured this could be a fun little project for me to build something that ticks all my boxes. So over the last few days I've been playing around with my text editor, and with a little help from DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT (I got stuck a couple times - like I said, I'm still learning PHP, and Chatty Geeps really helped) I've managed to build something that works for me.
It's 5 PHP files, a tiny bit of JavaScript, and a CSS file (I also import Simple.css). In total, the entire project is around 450KB. So I can dump it onto any web hosting provider that supports PHP, stick a password in front of it, and I'm done.
- Is web based, so I can login and journal from anywhere
- Easily self-hostable (is that even a word?)
✅ - COMPLETE
The webUI is ridiculously simple. It's a single text box (that grows as you type - that's the JS) and a list of entries beneath. Here's what it looks like:
- Has a super simple UI - literally a text box for the entry, and a list of entries
✅ - COMPLETE
I've been able to add Markdown support by making use of Parsedown.
- It would be nice to have Markdown support so I can add some simple formatting
✅ - COMPLETE
Under the hood, a journal entry is just a plaintext file that's rendered within the HTML using PHP. Here's the entire journal entry (filename 2024-08-19-152739.txt):
2024-08-19 15:27:39
Today I made this simple little journal. I think it works quite well. It also supports **markdown**. 😉
- Entries must be text (
.txt) files so they're universally available
✅ - COMPLETE
As you can see from the screenshot above, there's an option to delete the journal entry, and I've also added next/previous links for good measure, which should make browsing the journal easier.
- Having the ability to delete entries would be cool too
✅ - COMPLETE
And with that, that's all my requirement complete. I did consider adding some kind of categorisation mechanism, and I still might. But for now, I think my little journal works really well.
If you're interested in giving it a try, I've dumped a demo online that resets itself every 10 minutes.
If you wanna give Journal a go yourself, you can nab the code from GitHub.
If you have any suggestions for improving Journal please do let me know - like I said, I'm not a professional developer, and I'm still learning PHP, so there's likely a lot of stuff that can be done better.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-08-09 01:30:00
I've decided to end my PenPals experiment. It's been 9 months, and it's been a lot of fun, but it's time for it to end.
I've met lots of great people during this process, but unfortunately personal circumstances mean that I need to start limiting how much I take on in terms of personal projects.
I recently had a promotion in work, and it means I have less free time in my evenings. What time I do have, I obviously want to spend with my family. So something had to give. With that, I'm going to be cleaning things up around here and limiting what I produce.
I'll still write notes and posts regularly, but I think the cadence will likely drop a little. I'm also going to get rid of the "One a month" thing, as it's never really sat well with me, and I don't want to be accountable to other people and feel like I owe them a post. I know those people won't feel that way, but it's how I feel.
TL;DR I'm simplifying things a little. Not much though, just a little.
If you were on the list to be a PenPal in the future, I'm sorry, but I need to claw back some of this limited free time I have.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-08-05 17:40:00
Back in June I wrote about whether I've saved money by switching to an EV. But I charge my car at work quite a lot, so how much does it actually cost to charge my EV For a month?
I ended the previous post by saying:
Next month (July) I'm going to charge the MG only at home to give me a better idea of what it would cost if I didn't have the ability to charge at work. I think that will be an interesting comparison for people who don't have that ability.
So that's what I did. For July 2024, I charged my car solely at home to give me a proper picture of what it costs to run it. July turned out to be a good month to test too, as I did lots of driving - including a run to the airport and back.
It's around a 45 mile (1 hour) drive to the airport and I still had 44% battery left when I got back, and that's after the car had sat there for 3 days too. Range anxiety my arse.
Over the course of July, I charged my car 6 times. I have a smart meter at home, so was able to accurately measure the exact amount of energy (kWh) I consumed per charge. I then converted it to pounds sterling, based on the energy tariff I have at home.
Here's the breakdown of what my charging looked like for July 2024:
| 02 July | 06 July | 08 July | 11 July | 19 July | 26 July | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kWh | 29.19 | 28.42 | 10.65 | 28.33 | 35.87 | 35.70 |
| Cost | £2.48 | £2.42 | £0.91 | £2.41 | £3.05 | £3.03 |
Total cost: £14.29 (~$18.25)
A few people have asked how much it would have been to charge if I didn't get the cheap EV rate for electricity overnight. Based on the usage above, it would have cost me £41.24 ($52) at full price (24.53 pence/kWh instead of 8.5 pence/kWh).
Considering my Land Rover would cost around £100 (~$128) to fill up, and that would last me 2 weeks if I was lucky, the EV is way cheaper than burning liquidised dinosaurs.
I continue to be really impressed with my EV and have absolutely no regrets buying it.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-07-31 00:00:00
I've had my M1 MacBook Air for 3 years now. It's the most expensive laptop I've ever owned, but was it worth it?
Monday 29th July 2024 marks 3 years of M1 Air ownership, which is also the first Mac device I've ever owned. We all know they're very expensive pieces of kit, and I'm a cheap bastard, so I decided to go for the most basic model - the 8GB M1 Air, which cost me £999.
I'd heard lots of great stuff about the battery life and performance of the M1 Macs when they first came out - 20 hours battery life, the best performance they've ever seen from a laptop etc. etc. But I'd also read comments about the 8GB version being underpowered and not worth the money. So I approached the whole thing with a certain amount of trepidation.
But the performance is still staggeringly good. I press the power button and it's begging me to login after a couple seconds. I've been on the laptop since 07:45 this morning (it's 12:28 as I write this) and I still have 78% of my battery left. That's on 3 year old hardware, I'd like to remind you.
This thing is absofuckinglutely phenomenal. So much so that it's now my only computer. I sold my desktop around 2 years ago and the M1 has been my daily driver for all things ever since. When I'm at my desk, it gets docked to a USB C dock, and I use it just like a desktop. So why would I need a desktop? This thing can do it all.
Question is, will I upgrade? Well, no. Not any time soon anyway. The M1 Air still does everything I need it to extremely well. So why upgrade? Why drop another £1,000 or so on the latest version of the Air? Because it looks a little nicer? Because it comes in blue? Because the chipset is 2 increments better? Nah, I'll stick with this workhorse until it dies.
Speaking of the dead of Macs, I saw this post in the Bear Blog discovery feed recently - if my M1 Air can last 15 years, that would be incredible value for money. Realistically, I don't think it will last that long; I don't even know if Apple would support it for that long.
Right now, 3 years in, I think my M1 Air is good value for money, but if I can get 5 or 6 years out of this thing, that would be fantastic.
I've been questioning my Apple usage recently. I have the M1 Air, an iPad Air and an iPhone 13 Mini. I think when the iPad dies, I won't get another one. It sits next to the bed and is used for reading RSS feeds and some YouTube before I go to bed. I can get that from a cheap Android device, so will probably go that route when it comes to renewal.
As for the phone. I'm really stuck on this one. I couldn't move to a dumb phone, but I think I could move, again, to a cheap Android device. Problem is all the privacy issues that come with Android (yes, I know there are problems with iOS too, but I think they're the lesser of the 2 evils).
I've only had my iPhone for around 18 months, so I'm hoping it's still got another couple years in it at least. If I can get 5 years out of it, then maybe it would be worth going with another entry level iPhone, we'll have to see though.
Anyway, I digress...the M1 Air is a fantastic laptop and I'm so happy I bought it. I can't see myself moving away from the MacBook line any time soon. Especially with all the adverts in Windows 11, and the death by a thousand small issues on Linux. But never say never, right?
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-07-29 06:55:00
After launching 500 Social to little fanfare yesterday, Jack Baty and Dave Rogers have been having an interesting conversation about politics in communities, and I wanted to chime in, since it's focussed on 500 Social.
Before we go any further, I love that the back and forth between Jack and Dave on their blog's has been polite and courteous. It's always nice to see people acting like adults online.
Anyway, I digress...
Dave wrote a post about his thoughts on the "no politics rule" on 500 Social, Jack then responded, and Dave replied back.
Go read the posts; they do provide food for thought, but they haven't changed my mind.
I agree with Dave that politics are very important, and should be discussed openly. But my argument is that there are plenty of places for those conversations to take place, and I don't want 500 Social to be one of them. I'd prefer for it to be a place of more light-hearted discussions - not everything needs to be a deep and meaningful discourse about the world's problems. To be fair to Dave, he gets that, saying:
I don't think I'm the kind of person Kev has in mind, and he's entitled to run his instance the way he wishes. I don't wish to impose my views on his goals and objectives.
People on 500 Social can still seek out and discuss political topics with others, I'd just prefer they didn't publish post about them there. But if someone is having a political discussion and a member of 500 Social wants to chime in, who am I to say they can't? Of course they can. Like I said, it's important.
But for me, it's frustrating. When I look at the various "trending" feeds on Mastodon, all I see is Trump, Harris & Biden. Honestly, it's exasperating. Especially given the fact that I'm not American.
Hmmm I'm not sure it is. The oft quoted "everything is political" examples are things like iOS vs Android, Coke vs Pepsi, and Linux vs Windows. Yes, they're divisive topics, and politics plays a small part is people's decisions there. But they're not inherently political.
When I wrote the "no politics" rule, I was specifically talking about "real" politics. You know, governments and shit.
Ultimately, the way I see it is this; if I want to go and read about the latest Trump drama, I'll go visit the Guardian or BBC News. But if I want to go read about what people are up to on a personal level - the thing they've built. The thing(s) they're passionate about. The jokes, the pictures, the memes. I want that space to be Mastodon.
If others disagree, that's totally fine - it's why we have different instances and there's a lot of power in that.
So if you wanna talk about the things you're doing in your life, or the things you're passionate about (that aren't politics or religion), feel free to come and join 500 Social. But if you feel strongly that you want to talk about those topics, maybe a different instance is best.
Thanks to Jack and Dave - I do enjoy conversations like this, and I really like that we're able to share our own ideas on our own blog's. May the open web never die. :-)
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-07-28 18:45:00
I've decided to go for it and start that deliberately small online community I was talking about. It's called 500 Social.
I wasn't going to announce it yet, but I imported my follows into the new account and people are starting to notice, so I figured it's probably a good idea for me to announce it.
500 Social is a new deliberately small online community that is limited to a maximum of 500 members. I must stress that 500 is a maximum, not a target.
After thinking about it long and hard, and speaking to a lot of people about it via email and on the Fedi, I decided to just go for it.
It might fail, it might not. I really hope it won't, as it could be a lot of fun.
Here's the TL;DR but you can read more here:
I'm also thinking about creating a lifetime option for a limited time. Somewhere in the region of $100 (~4 years membership) that will give people a lifetime account and a tag on their profile. Still stewing on that one though.
If you're interested in finding out more, or signing up, here's some links:
Don't forget to follow me over there too, as I will be posting on that account regularly. My account is @[email protected].
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-07-23 16:20:00
I've been thinking about online communities a lot lately, and had an idea about a new Masto instance, but maybe it wasn't such a good idea?
I've been ruminating on what the perfect online community looks like for months. Does the perfect online community actually exist? What are we currently doing wrong? What do we do well? How can we fix them?
Thinking back to the what I consider was the glory days of Fosstodon; it was when the instance was much smaller. I could peruse the local timeline without being overwhelmed, and along the way, discover a new person or 2 to follow.
They were fun times.
Because of this, I've been thinking about starting a new Mastodon instance that would try to emulate those early days a little bit. It would be:
I've been thinking about this a lot. So much so that back in April, I registered the domain 500.social. After talking with Manu about it recently too, I decided to post the idea to Fosstodon last night:
True to form, the fediverse community stepped up and gave a lot of great feedback. Some of the recurring themes were:
This is all great feedback and I agree with it all. Of the few hundred people who have voted so far, only 10% have said they would actually join. That's fine - 500 people is the maximum, not the target. If it ended up being 50 people, that would be great too.
As for the niche, if I were to choose a niche it would be very loose. More like a guiding principle than anything else. Maybe a general tech niche (but certainly not limited to tech), or possibly around blogging and the IndieWeb.
I think there's a lot of food for thought here, and I need to keep stewing on it. Overall, I don't think it would be too painful to give this thing a try.
I dunno, what do you think?
I wanted to end with a quick note about Fosstodon - this whole idea is totally separate from Fosstodon. I love what Mike and I have built with Fosstodon, but I personally think it's too big. If I do decide to go ahead with this idea, nothing would change with Fosstodon.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️
2024-07-18 04:10:00
A parody of the "Wear Sunscreen" thing from the late 90s. This is just fabulous.
I’m gonna keep this brief as you need to click that link above. This post is absolutely brilliant - Sara’s parody is fantastic in its own right, but then Robb and Keenan come along to turn it into a video.
Go there now!
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️