Weekender #93 — Twitter, Mastadon and micro.blog

• Birb watch: everything is peaceful in birb land.

• A follow-up to last weeks camera dilemma: I’m still debating which camera to bring on vacation. The camera that will probably get the least usage is the Panasonic DC-ZS70, but it’s also the only one with that long of a reach. It’s looking more like I’ll end up leaving this one at home.

• It was difficult to escape the vortex of people discussing “the person” who bought Twitter. It also sparked the familiar outcry of Twitter users vowing to leave the platform, which was quickly followed by people signing up for Mastadon and micro.blog.

  • I love micro.blog, and have been using my personal blog to connect with it for a while now. The community is great, and I’ve made a lot of wonderful friends there.

  • If you’re interested in exploring what micro.blog is all about, take a look at Jean MacDonald’s wonderful guide here.

  • Gizmodo has a guide on how to join Mastodon as well.

  • If you’d like to see if the folks you follow on Twitter have a Mastadon account, give Fedifinder a try.

This week’s Link List

• Anyone who misses Hypercard will love Decker, a web based Hypercard inspired app, that even mimics the monochrome look of early Mac OS System 6. It even has it’s own scripting language called Lil built in!

• If you’ve been brave enough to upgrade to macOS Ventura, and have been having issues with SSH, check out this tip from Rich’s IT Blog. Apparently, Ventura ships with OpenSSH_9.0p1 which has disabled RSA signatures on SHA-1 hash algorithms, which is the cause of the issue.

• In the world of artificial intelligence, Andy Baio is back with an excellent look at how one unwilling illustrator found herself turned into an AI model. I enjoy reading about the various perspectives people have on the subject of A.I. generated art. Baio’s interview with Hollie Mengert and the Redditor MysteryInc152 who created a DreamBooth model using her work without her consent was fascinating. There are so many ethical and legal issues to sort through.

• Here’s a tool that allows you to see your internet latency by visiting a webpage. blip uses javascript and html canvas to show how much latency there is in your internet connection from just about any device.

Media consumption

• I finished October and began November by listening to Eden Samara’s debut album Rough Night. I’m not familiar with Samara, but I enjoyed how the album unfolds as if it were a story or a series of scenes. Rough Night is described on the album artwork as “a tragicomedy in seven scenes and an interlude.” Eight tracks of highly enjoyable electronic dance music with expertly harmonized vocal arrangements. Listen on Bandcamp | Apple Music.