Every time I set up something in S3 or Cloudfront, I have to re-learn how it works. Users, bucket policies, CORS… Doesn’t matter if it was only a few weeks ago that I last configured something, or that I’ve used AWS for years. The UI is optimized for flexibility, not convenience. | Continue reading
Got some good replies that maybe I’m wrong about UFOs. But assuming we’re mostly alone, I still don’t know whether to be sad or inspired by it. No neighbors means it’s all on us to explore and eventually move to other planets. 👽 Preferably not with balloon power. 🎈 … | Continue reading
UFO speculation is funny. Aliens aren’t going to invade with balloon-powered airships! 🎈 I think we’re mostly alone. The universe is vast, but it’s not that much older than our own planet. Not enough time for another civilization to develop and solve lightspeed travel. &# … | Continue reading
We pushed another TestFlight beta out for the Micro.blog rewrite. This adds post editing, which was one of the last things that I missed from the previous shipping version. @vincent continues to do good work on this, and I’ve even started contributing a little bit of code. | Continue reading
“I expect chaos.” — Me, writing in October just after Elon took control of Twitter. One of my favorite things about blogging is looking back on what guidance might be hidden in old posts. Old blog posts are like a mission statement reality check. Yep, still on track. | Continue reading
I don’t have strong opinions about football rules like I do about basketball. I think my nitpick with last night’s game is that a 5-yard penalty also came with a free 1st down. Clock management is so critical late in the game that 1st downs shouldn’t be given out easily. 🏈 … | Continue reading
I love emoji, but I seem to have become grumpy about custom emoji (like Slack or Mastodon) because they don’t actually work anywhere else on the web. Maybe it’s time for me to let go and embrace the fun, despite the inconsistencies. | Continue reading
Posted @coreint episode 547 with a recap of last week’s ice storm in Austin, and then a long discussion about enabling Mastodon-compatible usernames in Micro.blog and what the impending Twitter API changes might mean for Micro.blog. | Continue reading
We’re caught up on Last of Us on HBO, and also started playing the game on PS4. I’ve been mostly in the Nintendo world for years, so I missed a lot of really good PlayStation games. Nice thing about waiting: it was only $10. 🕹️ | Continue reading
Lots of NBA news. Poeltl back to the Raptors. Will miss him, loved having him on the Spurs. Durant to the Suns. And this is mind-boggling on the failed Brooklyn experiment: Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden all arrived to conquer the NBA together, and they all left on the mus … | Continue reading
Continuing to tweak how we handle Mastodon servers that are down. A lot of instances come and go. Micro.blog is better now about retrying connections but also noticing when a server is probably not coming back. | Continue reading
Excited as LeBron gets closer to the all-time points record. Should happen tonight or Thursday. I loved watching Kareem when I was growing up. Always a Spurs fan now, but it’s been a long time since the Spurs/Heat finals… LeBron has won me over. 🏀 | Continue reading
Setting up more Micro.blog accounts today to be ActivityPub-enabled. Folks will get an email when this is enabled. It can be turned off, and we’ll likely be adding some more settings here too. | Continue reading
We’re going to be doing more regular TestFlight builds of Micro.blog 3.0 as we get more features filled in. If you want to follow along, check out @news for the latest links and other updates. | Continue reading
Several days ago, Twitter announced the API will no longer be free. Then Elon backtracked, saying maybe “good” bots will be free. We still have no idea. It’s stunning how badly they are handling… well, everything. 2k employees is still a lot! It’s not the staff, it’s the chaos. | Continue reading
Ahead of the Twitter API going paid-only, I’ve been looking into how much we’re actually using it. I’d like to keep offering Twitter cross-posting for the next X months to give Micro.blog customers an offramp. It’s hard to make business decisions with Elon’s erratic leadership. | Continue reading
Finished reading: The Dragon Republic by R. F. Kuang. Not sure I’m going to continue the series. There’s great stuff here but I’m no longer feeling much sympathy for the main character. 📚 | Continue reading
Slowly getting back to normal after a few days without power. Lights came back on last night, and it was like a luxury… Fast internet. Heater. Hot showers. The only reminder of what happened is a yard full of tree branches. Just hoping most of our live oaks survive this. ❄️ | Continue reading
Even though I’ve been personally done with Twitter for years, still sucks to see the API go paid-only. Feels similar to when we had to disable Facebook cross-posting from Micro.blog because Facebook continued to lock it down. But we’ll see… Curious about the price and terms. | Continue reading
Driving through the neighborhood and it’s like nothing we’ve seen here… For a moment I imagined a giant ice god, sweeping down with frost and fury, smashing trees. ❄️ | Continue reading
We’ve lost more tree branches today than the last ice storm. Hearing the creak and fall, or scraping the roof… Not good. Power has been out most of the day, but we’ve got plenty of firewood. Sitting by the fire with a glass of wine and an e-book and pretending it’s all fine. ❄️ | Continue reading
Woke to the sound of tree branches breaking under the weight of ice. No power. Made a fire. Sun starting to come up. ❄️ | Continue reading
I know that 64-bit numbers are insanely large, but I still hate wasting database IDs. Bug caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary database records. Oh well, onward. | Continue reading
Would love to know more about yesterday’s mastodon.social DDoS attack. So many people use that instance, when it’s slow we notice. In this case, it actually revealed a bug in Micro.blog, sending too many requests to Mastodon. Feel bad that it probably wasn’t helping their server. | Continue reading
Last night, instead of actually reading, I wasted a lot of time conflicted on whether I could finish reading an e-book before it was due at the library or if I should pause and read something else. Usually juggle 2-3 books (at least 1 audiobook)… So much to read. 📚 | Continue reading
Finished reading: River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay. I’m sort of left without the right words, dumbfounded after finishing this. Really good. 📚 | Continue reading
January is almost over. Micro.blog has been much more stable after the few glitches we had in November as Mastodon was blowing up. We’ve had ActivityPub support since 2018, but only needed to learn how to actually scale it recently. Progress. | Continue reading
When we started using @news more, I was worried about adding noise to people’s timeline, so I customized the feeds to only include “big” changes. That ended up being confusing. I’ve reverted it now so that the news.micro.blog home page, feeds, and timeline include all posts. | Continue reading
New episode of Core Intuition went up last night. Daniel reviews the redesigned Micro.blog home page. We talk about being a tiny company, open source licenses, and more. | Continue reading
For puzzled Mastodon users reading my posts, I keep forgetting about Mastodon ignoring blockquote tags. Need to update Micro.blog’s cross-posting and ActivityPub to automatically change the output to use regular quotes. | Continue reading
This is a really important point from Alan Jacobs: Mastodon has certain virtues, at least for some, but let’s not attribute to it powers it does not have. Federation is a step forward, but it does not solve everything. I think my post from 4 years ago holds up here. | Continue reading
One of the last missing pieces for Mastodon compatibility was improving DMs, which I rolled out yesterday. We don’t have DMs as a core feature on Micro.blog because I think private messaging needs to be handled very carefully, and not every social network should have its own mess … | Continue reading
Last year I blogged about our roadmap to get a little distance from Apple in mobile development. The next major version of Micro.blog for iOS is coming along well, based on React Native. This week we open sourced the app! Feels good to get the source out there. | Continue reading
Good morning! Slightly busy schedule today. New day, new possibilities. | Continue reading
This is a great story from KUT on what happened with the Zilker Park train. Should’ve just fixed the track instead of starting over. Every experienced programmer knows this… Don’t rebuild everything all at once. | Continue reading
This is going to be the most frequent of frequently asked questions. If Micro.blog supports the fediverse, why doesn’t the new Tapbots app Ivory work with Micro.blog?ActivityPub is a mostly server-to-server API that both Micro.blog and Mastodon support. This allows people on Mast … | Continue reading
I’m going to start the process of enabling ActivityPub support for older Micro.blog accounts this week, likely tomorrow. You’ll be able to disable it if you don’t want it. But in the long run it’ll help bridge conversations across the networks. | Continue reading
Rainy day in Austin. Walked up to the coffee shop anyway, trying to time my walk to when Apple Weather predicted a pause in the rain. Still can’t find any of our umbrellas. 🌧️ | Continue reading
Still a little experimental, but I added a new plug-in for Micro.blog based on the theme in Bear Blog. Nice lightweight design that looks good and should be pretty easy to customize. | Continue reading
Finished reading: The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang. Loved Babel so wanted to read this series too. Strong first book. 📚 | Continue reading
Posted a new episode of Core Intuition. We talk all about Twitter. The end of third-party apps, differences between when Manton quit Twitter compared to now, could Twitter be saved, open protocols, and more. | Continue reading
Watched Emily the Criminal last night, and then Aubrey Plaza host SNL. She was great in both. 📺 | Continue reading
Started listening to River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay today while on the road. Love his writing. Also have the print version which I may switch to later. 📚 | Continue reading
In addition to the new home page, over the coming weeks we’ll be sponsoring podcasts and web sites to help get the word out about Micro.blog. The first show went live yesterday: The Pen Addict episode 547. Thanks @brad for the kind words! | Continue reading
Some folks have noticed that we’ve rolled out a totally new Micro.blog home page (if you’re not signed in already). Huge thanks to @vincent and @jean for making this happen. Just the start of how we want to better highlight Micro.blog’s capabilities this year. | Continue reading
A couple shows we finished watching recently… Wednesday: really enjoyed the first season of this. Fantastic lead character and just the right spookiness. Kaleidoscope: seemed gimmicky at first but I love heists. The format actually worked well. 📺 | Continue reading