Finished reading: Dungeons & Dragons: The Druid’s Call by E. K. Johnston. I think I was drawn to these prequels because of the fond memories I have of reading Dragonlance back in the day. | Continue reading
This time we got him! New surprise indictment: According to the court filing, Trump employees attempted to delete security footage at the Florida resort and one said “the boss” wanted a server deleted. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading
This week’s episode of Core Intuition is up! We talk about X. | Continue reading
Going to bump to version 3.0 for the update to Micro.blog for macOS tomorrow. I think it’s warranted with the new bookmarks stuff, but also because the last version was 2.9.1 and I don’t believe in .10 versions. (It’s hard to explain… Somewhere in the Core Intuition back catalog … | Continue reading
Listening to What Was I Made For?, by Billie Eilish. Went to see Barbie a couple days ago and still thinking about it a little. Really good. | Continue reading
Threads appears to count every character in a URL as part of the 500 characters. A little surprising because I’m used to either Micro.blog (with inline links so no URL counts) or Twitter and Mastodon (with all URLs counting as a fixed size). | Continue reading
Micro.blog doesn’t have full search or hashtags by design, and I know it can be frustrating sometimes. I hear it. But this report on child abuse material across Mastodon instances is part of why: During its search, the team found 554 pieces of content that matched hashtags or key … | Continue reading
Dave Winer posted a 12-minute audio recording on his blog, addressed to me but applicable to everyone who is creating tools for the social web. Listening to it, I have a bunch of thoughts. In this post, I just want to start with server-to-server ActivityPub, and leave some of the … | Continue reading
Working on a new Mac feature that would be nice with SwiftUI, but we still run back to macOS 10.14 Mojave. Would have to jump forward several versions of macOS. Not worth it. Do plan to bump up the requirements a little, though. | Continue reading
Got my copy of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter in the mail today. I continue to be amazed at how great these print editions look. My favorite so far. | Continue reading
Interesting that for single-letter .com domains, only q, x, and z are in use. They were registered before ICANN reserved the rest of the letters in 1993. I typed a through z in manually but could’ve saved time by reading the history on this Wikipedia page. | Continue reading
I’m still a little stunned that Elon followed through on x.com, even though it was expected. It’s remarkable how he both fixed the last decade of indecisive leadership at Twitter and used that new power to destroy the brand, maybe the one thing at Twitter that wasn’t broken. | Continue reading
The second FediForum has been announced, coming up in September. I really enjoyed the discussions at the last event and plan to attend this next one. They also have the video for the quick demo I did of Micro.blog and how it interacts with Mastodon. | Continue reading
Occasionally I go looking for new domains and I’m always annoyed with all the new TLDs that Amazon has reserved that they don’t allow anyone else to use: .book, .read, .like, and others. They’ve been sitting on these for years. It’s like domain squatting at a massive scale. | Continue reading
Spent a few hours yesterday trying to get Micro.blog to work better with Calckey (now Firefish). Made progress but not enough. ActivityPub remains extremely difficult to debug without reading the source code for other projects. | Continue reading
Finished reading: The Ember Blade by Chris Wooding. Read the first half of this a few months ago and then took a break before picking it up again. Really gets going in the second half. Excellent. | Continue reading
A new episode of Core Intuition is out. We talk about Apple’s threat to withhold iMessage from the UK, what is acceptable for public surveillance, and the larger issue of powerful tech companies leveraging their size for good and bad. | Continue reading
Dusted off the old Drobo, which hasn’t been plugged in for a year. A little surprised it still seems to work. Don’t feel great about investing in a dead product, but might get another drive to put in it anyway. | Continue reading
Thinking about ActivityPub made me wonder what Tumblr has been working on, so I clicked around over there for a bit. I missed that Tumblr has live video now, with tipping in “diamonds”? Seems a little out of place with the rest of the platform. | Continue reading
Reminder that it’s still summer, which means we’re still offering blog hosting for only $1/month to new folks who join Micro.blog. There’s no easier way to blog that’s as full-featured and affordable. Feel free to share the link to anyone who might benefit from it! ☀️ | Continue reading
Major addition to bookmarks in Micro.blog is coming along really well. Likely will ship next week. ️ | Continue reading
Power in the house went out. Summer in Texas is never a great time for this. Hopefully not long, lots of worker trucks in the neighborhood trimming trees and scheduled maintenance on the meters. Getting almost no signal on Verizon, so had to go to the coffee shop for a while to w … | Continue reading
I still believe we should welcome Threads to the fediverse, but the news that ActivityPub seems far off has soured my experience posting manually to Threads from my microblog. They grew too big, too quickly. Meanwhile, sounds like Tumblr’s ActivityPub effort has also stalled. | Continue reading
As I think about how to add tags to bookmarks in Micro.blog, I’ve been drawing inspiration from services like Pinboard but also my own (now sadly defunct) Mac app Clipstart. This video demo was from way back in 2009… I think the tagging UI is still really good. | Continue reading
Just posted a new episode of Core Intuition all about the Threads launch. Misunderstandings about ActivityPub, judging the leadership of Meta and Twitter, and whether Threads will beat Tumblr to supporting this open standard. | Continue reading
Frustrated with emails not reaching Micro.blog users, I’ve been working through steps to make things more robust. First added SMS as an option, then Sign in with Apple, and today we’re moving a percentage of emails from SendGrid to Amazon SES so we’re not reliant on a single plat … | Continue reading
We finally installed a new smoke alarm that has only been sitting unopened in its box for about two years. Feels like a major Saturday accomplishment. Very slowly upgrading everything. | Continue reading
First thoughts on Retro: great design and for me fills a similar role as BeReal. Not a true Instagram or photoblogging alternative because it’s focused more on private-ish photos. We don’t need another silo but in that niche they can get away with not being open. | Continue reading
Love this post from @adactio not just because he’s using Micro.blog cross-posting (thanks!) but also because the approach is exactly what we believe in. Start with your blog first: When the current crop of services wither and die, my own website will still remain in full bloom. | Continue reading
I don’t plan on using Threads indefinitely, but I am curious about the user experience, both good and bad. The algorithmic timeline is so puzzling to me. Despite following people who are posting, I first always see posts from people I’m not following. Seems overly tuned to the po … | Continue reading
Over the last few days we rewatched Mission: Impossible 4-6, then went to see 7 tonight. Enjoyed it. Intense as expected. The audience was into it, laughing and clapping. | Continue reading
As the fediverse grows, new people will hear about Micro.blog and send us feedback about how we can improve. Always good! I listen to everything. On the other hand, the fact that the fediverse is so big means we can do things differently and still be successful. Not all platforms … | Continue reading
Reminded by Jeremy Keith’s post of this quote from Robin Sloan. Beautiful, true: The speed with which Twitter recedes in your mind will shock you. Like a demon from a folktale, the kind that only gains power when you invite it into your home, the platform melts like mist when tha … | Continue reading
Finished reading: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. This book alone was worth backing the Kickstarter project. Loved it. | Continue reading
A new TestFlight beta is out for Micro.blog 3.1. The big changes for this release are per-post cross-posting options and video upload. (Might still be some problems for certain video files. Proceed cautiously in that part of the app.) | Continue reading
We’ve known for years that our onboarding in Micro.blog is bad. It’s tough to start with no followers and no recommended users. But even so, we’re not going to do the Threads or TikTok thing to just show a bunch of random popular crap. There’s gotta be a middle-ground to help peo … | Continue reading
There are some quirky code design decisions in Micro.blog. For example, I prefer flat structures and all model classes are single words. Most are database tables and some are background tasks. Sounds obvious until you look at literally any other large web server project (and try … | Continue reading
Accidentally clicked the “Post” button instead of “Bookmark” on that last link. Deleted it and the deletion should’ve propagated everywhere. I’ve fully switched to Micro.blog for managing bookmarks and web highlights… Perhaps we need an additional check to avoid accidental posts … | Continue reading
The wild thing about Twitter’s demise is that it’s not too late to turn the platform around. Now that it has been burned to the ground, it could be rebuilt with a focus on standards, community features, and useful paid subscriptions. Would need new leadership, like a reverse-take … | Continue reading
Love what we saw from Victor Wimbanyama over the weekend. I missed some of the 4th quarter from yesterday’s game, so rewatching the highlights. Go Spurs Go. Next season is going to be fun. | Continue reading
I thought it would be a fun weekend project to port a simple WordPress.com theme to Micro.blog. What a mess! Lots of different CSS files that look like they were generated by machines, not humans. It’s drifted too far from the “view source” web. | Continue reading
Working on some more flexibility this morning to give people options for blocking Threads and other instances. Mixing lots of account types in one system is increasingly complicated: Micro.blog usernames, Mastodon handles, IndieWeb domains, newsletter email addresses… Spaghetti c … | Continue reading
Evolving thoughts on web scraping. First, I figured anything goes. Later, I was hesitant to depend on any web site structure that would break, and I wouldn’t work around attempts to stop scraping. Now, I’m back to thinking if you don’t want people to see something, don’t put it o … | Continue reading
With Threads hitting 80 million users already, a lot of folks are dismissing Bluesky. But maybe it’s more important than ever for Bluesky to succeed. Or pivot slightly and implement enough of ActivityPub to co-exist? Micro.blog already cross-posts to Bluesky and I haven’t ruled o … | Continue reading
Time to get serious about finding the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey. | Continue reading
Fighting with our Nest thermostat all week. It wants to save energy and I want to not die of heatstroke in my own house. ☀️ | Continue reading
Finished reading: The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry. | Continue reading
“I can’t wait to wear that Spurs jersey for a first time.” — Victor Wembanyama, ready for NBA Summer League in Vegas tonight | Continue reading