An appropriately cold day in Austin. Coffee and server troubleshooting while the rain falls outside. ☕️ | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Much of our web traffic is now Mastodon requests as posts are shuttled back and forth from Micro.blog and the rest of the web. This has taken a little bit of adjustment. Knock on wood, should be pretty stable right now. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Continuing to fix bugs and tweak servers. If you want the technical summary: those “503” errors were when the load balancer decided an app server was error-ing, but it could sometimes take out all the app servers, even if they were fine. Lots of new traffic from Mastodon users. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Merrick Garland seems really good at his job. If he says trust Jack Smith to make the call about whether to charge Trump, I’m good with that. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

As traffic increases, we’re experimenting with more caching outside of Micro.blog. Nice to see the huge difference it makes on the Bookshelves page if you have lots of book covers. Much faster. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

David Heinemeier Hansson: Whichever the outcome, the world wins. If Musk manages to fix Twitter, we’re left with a better Twitter. Great! If Musk manages to burn down Twitter, we’re left with a world free of Twitter. Great! | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Slowly settling into a new routine back in Austin. Walking up to Lamppost Coffee every morning. In suburbia, no one walks anywhere unless they are walking their dog or exercising. Always feels a little weird. I love the quiet, but sometimes miss… people. ☕️ | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Last month we improved the ActivityPub support in Micro.blog and enabled it by default for new users. I think it’s about time to enable it for older users too, making it more opt-out than opt-in. Early notice that I’m thinking about flipping that switch next week. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

We posted a new episode of Core Intuition today with yet more discussion of Twitter and related topics. My audio quality is still not great, clearly now an issue with my Mac settings rather than my mic. Will do more testing and fix for next week! | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Reminded today that Brittney Griner has been held in Russia for 9 months and has apparently now been moved to a penal colony. Ridiculous. I know there’s a lot of injustice in the world but this is not complicated… She needs to come home. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Apologies for some of the recent “503” errors in Micro.blog. We’ve made some configuration tweaks today that should reduce or eliminate the problem. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

I had my doubts about a no-replies timeline, but based on feedback we added a new setting for it under Account. It’s the kind of thing you have to try to know if it works for you. Harder to find new people and conversations, but good if you temporarily need a quiet timeline. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Cold weather in Austin. Leftover gumbo. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Epic vs. Apple continues! Good write-up over at Ars Technica, with quotes from lawyers in the appeal. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Rewatching last night’s Artemis launch. Amazing. Nice that they have a blog too (via @512px). | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

2 weeks on the road

Last month I flew out to Portland and rented a van from Escape Campervans. The trip started because of meetings but it kept getting extended as I tacked on more places to visit. I posted some photos while I was on the road, which I’ll link again below, but I wanted to summarize a … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

2 weeks on the road

Last month I flew out to Portland and rented a van from Escape Campervans. The trip started because of meetings but it kept getting extended as I tacked on more places to visit. I posted some photos while I was on the road, which I’ll link again below, but I wanted to summarize a … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

New 3.0 beta for iOS is out on TestFlight. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Halfway through November, this month’s Micro.blog challenge continues… Sad to admit that while traveling I dropped off from this one. Not too late to participate or follow along, though! Check out @challenges. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Interesting post by @simon@simonwillison.net that Mastodon is just blogs. Except Mastodon’s design runs counter to blog features like domain names and custom designs. I’d say Mastodon is more Twitter-like than blog-like… Which is fine, but not the same as a blog-first platform. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Excited to jump into reading The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson, released today. Had a dream the other night where I met Brandon and he critiqued my book collection. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

I got the test printing of my book. Now I can think about final edits. Too long, still should probably cut some things. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Great post from @brentsimmons, After Twitter: The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

On the BART for a while. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Had a conversation last night before the show that I can’t quite get out of my head… Long story short, makes me want to order a 23andMe DNA kit. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Not Frozen, although I’d like to see that too one day… Bono: Stories of Surrender. Incredible show. Couldn’t think of a better way to wrap up a couple weeks on the road. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

One of my favorite places in the world: the Walt Disney Family Museum. Checked out the Jungle Book special exhibit, organized in large part from Andreas Deja’s collection. These are 4 animation drawings by Frank Thomas. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

I always have to resist the temptation to compete with every platform. Micro.blog does so much but it also tries to solve specific problems within each niche of features. It’s a challenge to do just enough of the right things without creating the Microsoft Word of web platforms. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

NetNewsWire with an update on the feature to follow Twitter from within the app: We have no intention of removing this feature, despite Twitter’s troubles and poor prognosis. It’s more important than ever, we believe, since it helps people find their off-ramp from Twitter. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Kind of a bizarre camp location tonight, had my doubts as we were approaching on the road past shuttered houses and buildings from another era, but the view at sunset was worth it. Terminal 4 at Point San Pablo. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Experimenting with some new text on our home page, for new folks who are not signed in. We’ll keep iterating and tweaking until we get the messaging right. (Already regretting the jab against billionaires, probably will drop that.) | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Posted a new message to our internal Basecamp with the title “Twitter implosion marketing” to brainstorm how to get the word out. Happy to hear ideas from the community too! If you like Micro.blog, let’s figure out how to tell people how it fits into the post-Twitter world. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Finished reading: Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

More details from @vincent on today’s 3.0 beta update. The app is coming along nicely… I use it as my main Micro.blog app on iOS now, even if I have to reach for the mobile web version for some things. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Rolled out another change I forgot to make with this morning’s Mastodon changes: your “about me” text from Micro.blog now shows up for Mastodon users too. (Mastodon will cache profiles so may take a while to update everywhere.) | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Released a new beta of Micro.blog 3.0 for iOS. It’s still early, several things aren’t wired up yet, but you can join via TestFlight here if you’d like to follow along. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Walton Lighthouse. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

We do a bunch of ActivityPub work in the background, and last night the queue was over 100,000 waiting items… So much new activity. Made a couple tweaks and this morning it’s back to 0. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Coffee and overnight oats at Cat & Cloud. Great start to the workday. ☕️ | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

We improved a few things with Mastodon support this week: Added alt text for images to cross-post to Mastodon. Added the ActivityPub username in M.b profile web pages. Links to follow form. Other performance improvements and bug fixes. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

I was hopeful for Beto until I went to early vote in Texas a couple weeks ago. No wait. No line. No one was there. Expect the turnout was terrible. Disappointed, but maybe nationally Democrats can hold on. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Keeping the news off and planning to go to bed early and check election results in the morning. I have low expectations for the midterms, and win or lose I think I’ll sleep better if I ignore it. The protracted results 2 years ago over several days really messed with me. 🇺 … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

ActivityPub is notoriously chatty, and all the new activity has been dragging down some of Micro.blog’s background tasks. I’ll be rolling out a series of optimizations and Mastodon-related tweaks over the next couple of days. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

New Brighton State Beach. Wi-fi at the park, 10 minutes to Verve Coffee… I may never leave. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

A few days ago at Salt Point. After camping, detoured into San Francisco for a day of being a city tourist with reliable wi-fi. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Noticed some Micro.blog background queueing problems that could’ve significantly delayed a few things, such as deleting blog posts. Fixed and should be catching up now. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Election day! If you’re in the US, make a plan to vote today. I’ve been traveling and out of my usual routine of reading the news every day, which has actually been nice. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago

Avenue of the Giants. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 years ago