My goal is to explore the process of individuation and becoming more and more autonomous.
I jotted down some ideas here:
@globcoco Fully agree here, I started this process yesterday, Quit both Computing at School and Torbay Together forums as they were proving to be a waste of time.
Using the discourse forum here, as a community we can share experience and where to learn new skills or follow interests through learning.
Very important now that schools are closed and people are falling over themselves to provide home learning, no one ever seems to ask the learner what they want to learn or go deeper in to.
@zleap
It is true.
And asking "the learner what they want to learn or go deeper to" is for me one of the basics.
When I was teaching english I wanted 1st to know what were there interests and their passions.
If they didn't know about it, I felt this is where it has to begin.
I definitely feel the same way now!
I heard of course about the rogerian approach and of an old school based in the UK that centered on student's interests and desire to learn rather than enticing them to learn something they wouldn't care about (kinda the mainstream's teaching culture)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School
@globcoco This is the nice thing about OpenLearn with the Open University, you can try out different subjects. The course, I am doing now (just slowly), is 24 hours long roughly,
Just given it a mention on the forum
In school I know some reading is compulsory but you are never really told why,
When I think back reading about 'An Inspector calls' by JB Priestly actually seems to teach or suggest what happens when individuals act without considering the wider implications.
Good morning, good afternoon for both of you in Europe. I am really glad to see the ideas developing and us making use of resources that are here, at hand, and open to new suggestions and approaches.
It was amazing to see how Paul took to the Discourse forums -- a resource I cherish but it's not that used by the community here. That can change, and I sure hope it does. I will support and help in any way I can, as I see potential and love to explore myself.
We are always open to new ideas. The same way that Paul suggested and got a new Astronomy subforum, and I got a much needed Pinafore one, we could accept requests if people bring suggestions and take leadership in providing content and supporting one of those new areas.
Serendipity is wonderful, and I am so glad we crossed paths and started conversations -- not only us, but others will benefit from them.
Have worked in Education for many years, and now I do it in this new environment, under my own direction, learning every day.
Wonderful to see new ideas germinating. Thank you both.
Long post
It's funny what serendipity does sometimes.
Part of the process I'm involved in (re-owning one's autonomy) has always included taking the learning into our own hands.
I have to search for all the notes I had about it and maybe I could summon my courage and articulate it to share it - why not in our Discourse...
I would love to see it, Coralie. And Discourse is wonderful as it not only allows a richly formatted presentation, but it can be the buidling area for something later copied and pasted directly into a Blog post.
The Markdown source works so well -- I put out 3 new blog pages yesterday, in fairly short order, as the original Discourse was already polished and the text perfect.
Just added an intro above, trimmed images for Blog ideal sizes, and voilá. Trés facile.
Discourse seems a very nice place indeed.
If the theme I deal with would not fit in the theme of the group (which is more on STEM if I understand it correctly), I may have to create one myself.
But the price per month is a little bit pricey for now and I am yet to gain the skills that would allow me to host it by myself...
You could think and articulate a proposal for an added area at our Discourse - really it's too much to front the cost and hassles of hosting one's own.
@freemo is the person to approach, just prepare a good post with the ideas lined out, the reasons and what you are proposing. He will listen.
If it could all fit into on Subforum, a new Project Forum like the one we added for Pinafore is very easily approved.
And an actively used subforum or area adds value to the whole Discourse instance -- we can really benefit from that, as it will attract other users.
Very good to known!
My 1st idea was that the group is on very specific subject all dealing with learning... but thinking of it Learning to develop (personal) autonomy, self-sufficiency and individuation might actually be ok in there.🤗
@globcoco
He will be seeing this as I included his attrib in the conversation. So think over what you would like to have, and present it here or in a Discourse topic even; whichever you prefer.
At Discourse it has the added advantage of staying visible for longer times. Toots disappear unless you know they are there, or search and find them accidentally.
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Now I understand why you go back and forth between the 2...
I went looking and seaching, and didn't find a Free Discourse Forums host so far.
Best I found was a professional install and config, done for you, costing $150 USD one time fee. This is installed into a Digital Ocean droplet small server, which is a $5 a month service fee.
Screenshot from : https://www.literatecomputing.com/discourse-installation-packages/
Discourse.org also says you can do it yourself -- and provides this page to guide :
https://blog.discourse.org/2014/04/install-discourse-in-under-30-minutes/
A Digital Ocean signup with a FREE one month of service deal -- https://m.do.co/c/a5bf212d9a92
Although staying here and using the already running service is the simplest option of all.
🇳🇱
The official discourse support channels are a joke. I highly recommend you stay away from it. Its open source software so I cant really be too mean on them, but they are some oily business people on that forum in my expiernce.
They intentionally design the installation docs to be very narrow and rigid so if anyone wants to install discourse in a cheaper or more professional setup they have to pay one of them a fortune to do it.
I was stuck redoing a lot of discourse to get it work in docker and with no help from them. To even ask for help would have gotten me banned (I was warned when I tried).
Its worse, the install is non standard docker. It is done in such a way it cant exist with other docker installs on the same box so it absolutely must be run as the only service on its own box...
It really is horrible.
Funny thing is they insist they dont force people to install it that way (and banish them if they try to help people with alternative installs) because "we want you to be happy with your instance and we want it to just work"... well guess what, I'm not happy!
@freemo @design_RG @zleap
Are there better alternatives?
@globcoco depends on what you consider better.. I dont know of any forum software I feel is better in terms of user expiernce. Plenty are better in terms of system admin expiernce im sure.
@freemo
I'm sure you had a look through this:
https://alternativeto.net/software/discourse/?license=opensource
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Yes I was very surprised by the price!
It is more expensive to run something like that than to have a website.
I know it is not the same job but still.
As you say wtf...
@freemo @design_RG @zleap
what?
Yet their claim is an ease of installation in own server.
May I ask if you use it because there is no alternatives in terms of functionalities and open source. I was also going to say ethic (very important for me) but doing what you've mentioned is hardly ethical to me...
Well it is easy, **if** you do it exactly as they say on exactly the configuration they demand of you.. Want to run it on fargate, or customize it as a kubernetes cluster or anything beyond the standard install, your shit out of luck.
I use it because of all the software I used once its running it has the nicest expiernce and the best features.
@freemo @design_RG @globcoco I think this is part the issue with quite a few free software products / projects, they are good at writing software but when it comes to help and support some fail and fail badly.
I think it was also agreed they fail when it comes to documentation too.
The bigger issue for me is that the failure is explicitly states as intentional.
The Discourse people are being clearly greedy -- and making hundreds of thousands a month from the companies paying their fees.
That in itself is not the problem, it's fair if they get an income stream to support their running costs and previous development lean years.
But to actively obscure any simpler ways to use the open sourced product they offer? That is the bad point.
The Write.as company also seems to have had some tugs with open source people in the past; I didn't read much about it, but I know Ellen mentioned it and wasn't impressed.
Plume is an alternative to WF, but I don't like it as much. Uglier and with less features I need and use.
@design_RG @freemo @globcoco I know writeAs charge quite a bit to install the software for you if you are unable to do it yourself. .
In some ways when you consider that some people think they can simply 'demand'; help from others, or they can exploit or mess other people around. It is fully understandable.
It just means the rest of us end up not being able to afford to run some software if we are not confident setting something up.
I can set Debian up, i can install Apache I always worry if it is secure, and you then get an army of 'experts' saying do it this way where each person just says something different, just gets frustrating , confusing and people give up and lose even more confidence.
The issue for me is not that I expect them to support people whether they want to or not.
They actively band discussion around support of alternative installation methods. Meaning even if someone wants to help you they are not allowed to.
Ironically they do have a section where you can ask for help on alternative methods, but it is exclusively for seeking out a contractor your willing to pay to do it. So seems they go out of their way do ensure free help of alternative methods doesnt get documented in public on their official systems.
Almost like what happens with learnmyway and others, who teach basic digital skills. It is like they are a promotional platform for Facebook, Microsoft , Google et al,.
So no attempts are made to promote the alternatives.
There is an assumption everyone wants Microsoft office skills, I wonder how many companies would switch to Libreoffice if people could get training.
@design_RG @freemo @globcoco Indeed, which. is hopefully what we can do via the discourse forum too.
@zleap @freemo @design_RG
I know and that can be so annoying as even with good people doing great things they think that the gafams are the only way or that one needs to be a tech - geek - nerd 😲...
It is something that I want from myself: as much as I can and in the best of my abilities: feel aligned in what I do.
Not always easy but so gratifying when I do!
@zleap @freemo @design_RG
I was looking also at skillcrush but i stopped b/c outside of the gafams nothing else were shown... or even talked about.
@freemo @zleap @design_RG
That goes way against free and or open source mindset.
Again where is the ethic😞?
@zleap @design_RG @freemo
Gosh I completely agree with you.
That is one the reasons it was hard for me to finally get to it!
Because of that I felt quite dumb...
If you are a Writer, your primary focus should be on that; on paper, on web, on ebook, but Content Production supercedes time learning publishing platforms.
We can help each other -- Ange's WF manual, the awesome MarkDown tutorial, an upcoming tool kit post for myself.
These can shorten the learning path to productive postign for new people, and we can see more people getting into it.
The number of accounts in WF instances is surprisingly low, considering how good the platform is, that it's free and easily accessed.
Time to change that!
People don't seem to know about it, I would promote locally, however there are too many freeloaders, who also then try and take credit for something I have told them about, I am not ego driven but it would be nice if they gave me some sort of credit.
I was asked months ago at a children's partnership meeting re websites, i sent the lady some info on where people could learn HTML/ CSS etc, I followed up, and they got one of their volunteers to do it, adj it was almost like , thank you now go away sort of attitude, people don't appreciate the amount of work that goes in to collating information for this.
Maybe I am just some mug that gets taken advantage of.
I generally share with people on a 1-2-1 with people who I know appreciate my suggestion to use something.
@zleap @design_RG @freemo
I was wondering why would one need that?
For safety reason?
There is also Pluxml.
@linuxine talked to me about it.
I haven't seen that. Earlier Freemo mentioned Git as being a possible base for a Blog, but I foudn that non-trivial, and time consuming.
For a newer user, not a productive path, as there are excellent hosts for Write.Freely which is a superb blog platform.
so I gave up on the idea, after briefly exploring it. We need to focus on getting simple tools that work, testing and learning them a bit, then hone some more.
With our own content production, which is the ultimate goal and reason for getting all these tools.
I absolutely love my Blogging work, it's a pleasure.
Using gitlab for a blog is fairly non-trivial if you copy an existing template (and there are many).. for example you could clone my own blog and it will start working immediately. Want to do a blog post just add a markdown file int he directory of blog posts and it shows up.
It only becomes technical if you have a wish to start customizing CSS and everything else. But at that point youd have some similar problems with any blog platform.
@design_RG @globcoco @freemo @linuxine
I tried to use jekyll on github pages but failed, it sort of works if you really really know what you;re doing.
Maybe its hard for me to see the problem as im technically oriented. It always seemed tow ork with no configuration for me. Just pick a template to start from and it works.
@design_RG @freemo @globcoco @linuxine
Which goes in to what we call 'bus factor' which is when you have 1 person who can set up and use a system, if that person gets hit by a bus, then you lose them and your system can't updated or maintained.
Kinda like putting all eggs in one basket, it comes back to bite you when you least want it to.
At least once set up writefreely is easy to use, and easy to teach others, how to use.
Depending on a single lead user to maintain and develop a system has those risks. I was for years an active member at a documentaries forum, whose leader passed away.
Happily, a good team had been assembled by then, and kept the boat going -- and made it much better than under the founder's management, actually.
It has been many years since, and they are still very active and well known. The content is superb, great educational value, and the system exists for over 15 years now.
@design_RG @freemo @zleap @linuxine
I certainly think there could be a niche in there!!!
@globcoco @design_RG @freemo @linuxine
I think what we have here is great, as in a set of common services all set up and working, now that nextcloud integrates onlyoffice I think it could become a real alternative.
>> I certainly think there could be a niche in there!!!
Mostly it can be easy for active Git users.
For most people, I imagine a focused Blog platform is easier and faster to become proficient at.
I run my personal Write.Freely instance right here, in this very laptop I am writing at. All my pages are developed in-house, and then copy/pasted into TeDomum when ready.
And that is all done in Windows 10, which is a platform that works really well for me.
Productivity superceeds technical merits, Unix is better but Windows does it for me. Being a long time user, sys admin and Tech person, mine are well maintained and fast.
That is an interesting way.
If I understand it well;
You have a private instance you're paying for and when you're ready to publish you go onto TeDomum?
May I ask why you don't publish straight off your own instance?
More or less, let me clarify:
- I have installed a Write.freely instance in one of the systems here in the house, yes.
- There is NO cost for that other than your time to learn how to do it.
- My personal instance is NOT federated, although it could be if desired; it's one of the options in admin panel.
Why not publish directly from here?
- I could, and actually have spare full blown Servers on hand, Rackmounted Dell Powerservers.
- but that takes time, electricity, and they are production machines. Loud and not so nice to stay around. 😛
- it also bring bi security implications, because now you could become a target to the scum around the dark corners of the Net.
So it would need to be more than a Hobby reason. I think these systems might someday have use, if we have some kind of breakdown, I could become part of a local Library -- all kinds of content in the Net would vanish, and only local resources would be available.
I do read a lot of sci-fi, and Dystopic scenarios are possible.
I am thinking specifically of the "World Made by Hand" series of novels by James Howard Kunstler. His home and the novel's location is not too far from me -- I have travelled there by bicycle touring. 😺
re: "World Made by Hand"
Quick reference, my own post : https://qoto.org/@design_RG/104246079388968121
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Nice.
So the idea of having it home means that your content is safe if something happened?
And for your non-federated personal instance can a basic computer do?
I think storm is there and I might have to stop the web while it passes.
We'll see how it goes.
Thanks for the ref 👍
One reason i love using git for my blog is that it is designed for backing things up well.. no only am i safe from data loss (especially since i mirror my content between multiple git servers) but I also am safe from any data i delete in the interface as I have snapshots going back to any point in time.
@freemo @design_RG @zleap
I really understand why people who has dev competencies would go git.
And i also understand the benefits of it. There are plenty but as @design_RG said when you are not as fluent and you want to write smthg easy to deal with might be where you want to be OR it might also be a stepping stone to learn more.
Some like @DavidBlue who is quite confident still feel happy to use such a system for ease of use.
They might have other websites too on other CMS-frameworks... but I guess at the end of the day the most important is to use a tool you are actually pleased to use.
Btw, David had a chat with @cjeller on that subject:
https://write.as/community/chat-with-david-blue
The main reason for installing a personal instance in my case is that I can do all the work needed for new page creation or maintenance -- anywhere, while not needing a live internet connection. (it will hurt on image hosting uploads, for new pages, but other than that, it works fine offline.)
The speed of edits and reloads is delightful -- no lag at all, since it's a local process.
And this does not require much power, space, ram or anything much. I installed it on Windows and there's dismal documentation for it.
Requirements include a MySQL install, which is free but not a user friendly software to install and manage.
But I haven't touched it in 7 months, since first installing it.
Any basic computer, laptop or desktop could do. It could also be located in another system in your home network, and accessible by internal IP address. Mine is local, running at https://127.0.0.1:8080/
You are welcome for the ref -- absolutely great novels, recommended.
snapshot of the minimized Write.freely service -- I normally don't even look at it. ----v
@freemo @zleap
Long post
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
I understand why you don't😶
What about their desktop app?
I have to admit I don't get the advantages of it.
https://write.as/apps/linux/get
Long post
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Zut.
Forgot the CW...
@globcoco
It's just that Pinafore is actually being nice and putting in a CW when it was needed (content was long).
I actually LIKE the view of Qoto's Local timeline a lot better in Pinafore as we are getting many LP by some of our users.
Just for the replies we need to keep it in mind, not need unless they are really long ones.
@design_RG
yep, btw what's an LP?
And which theme do you use on Qoto?
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
GRRR.
And now?
@globcoco C'est bon, oui.
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Yes I really have to be careful about it...😅
No I haven't used it yet.
There are too little info on it so I didn't know what it really was...
If it replaces (kinda) a personal instance that might be cool indeed.
>> If it replaces (kinda) a personal instance that might be cool indeed.
From the little they disclosed on their post, it seems like a local way to create a post, similar to a local instance (and much, much easier to install).
But saving to a live, external host.
I would try it, if it was out for Windows. Or if I got a llinux system running here, but I am too stretched time wise to put time into that.
My personal letters are way behind since Blog is now high priority, and our conversations are so rich and important.
These we got to be thannkful for, when they happen, and they only do if the people are all around at the same time.
So, my poor pen pals are having long delayed responses, and I do write long letters to them, usually.
@design_RG
I get that and that is why this week end I'll do my best to keep away from here to work on my project.
I could stay here all day.
Oops, I think I kinda did it today...
>> If it replaces (kinda) a personal instance that might be cool indeed.
It seems they actually HAVE documentation for it. Impressed!
https://code.as/writeas/writeas-gtk/src/tag/v1.0.1/USER_GUIDE.md
@design_RG
Nice indeed!
@freemo @zleap @design_RG @linuxine
I wish I had your orientation 😜
@freemo
Oooh, wow. I was shocked by their standard pricing -- from 100 USD per month. They are really milking companies, and no free alternative is easily in sight.
And this Docker only install, wtf. 😔
@globcoco @zleap