Don Thompson @guardeddon@social.cleverlibre.org

Secret confession. I presently have 4 analogue cameras recording the solar analemma every day. All images are recorded manually.. The mid-day analemma is being recorded in my office using a 4x5 glass plate pinhole camera. I then have the 3:45, 4:00 and 4:15 being recorded at home on 8x10, 4x5 and 6x9 format cameras . i believe I am an analemma addict. Here's one I recorded last year. Each picture takes a year to obtain. #iamsoboring

@stuarthoughton This is why I don't both with their Web Safe OR their DNS. I use my own router and different DNS server.

There’s a sort of refrain from business-ish, public affairs people I know in Brussels that “Mastodon didn’t take off because it’s too hard to use”

I see it differently - Mastodon isn’t hard to use. But it’s missing network wide search, that I found very useful on Twitter

And now the same people are swooning over Threads… that doesn’t have network wide search either

It’s ultimately that *building a network on Mastodon takes time and effort* - that’s actually what they’re complaining about

When an app asks for permissions, the OS should not only let you answer yes or no. Every category should havev a "yes, but feed the app fake data" option.

Want my contacts for no reason? Have these generated fake ones! Wanna listen to my microphone? Here's random ambiance sounds! Location? I'm on a tiny 5x5m island!

Hell yeah! Put it all in your databases!

Actively sabotaging and punishing services wins over boycotts any day.

Amid this social media chaos, my personal policy will be to cross-post on #Mastodon and #twitter.

I hope in the long-run meta will follow it up to its promise to link up with ActivityHub, so that I can follow and link up with people from #threads

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

What I currently notice is that even though I have 1/7 the followers on Mastodon, I get much more engagement there than on twitter. Emphasizes my impression that many accounts are just Zombie accounts now, with their users gone elsewhere.

However, it still is currently a big loss to me. Many people I used to interact with are no longer on twitter, only some have moved on to Mastodon. Many UK journalists now switch to threads, some to bluesky, some to nowhere.

The public sphere that twitter was to me is now dead.

★ Threads
https://daringfireball.net/2023/07/threads

@ianlivingston @ai6yr

FB already gives me a headache if I try to look at it. This is literally the poisonous core of the WORST part of FB and no way to evade it or hide in a corner. Horrible!

(Image via @emoswaggy)

Not a huge fan of fireworks, so have the head phones on listening to some chill trance and am enjoying watching the aircraft that are watching the local show from above. #adsb #sdr

@neil

Thanks, diolch.
Perhaps some smart techie could come up with a Folders function where all the great posts could be filed under relevant topics. Lists doesn't really do it, nor does bookmarking the individual posts. Till then I'll go old-school and write it in my diary.
#fedi-tips #mastodon #mastodontips

#Tips for the best ways to access #Mastodon:

Using Mastodon on mobile? I highly recommend using an app, and not the official one. My personal favourite is Woolly for iOS mastodon.social/@woollyapp, many other great ones exist like Ivory or Ice Cubes.

Using Mastodon in your web browser? The native interface isn’t great, try elk.zone or phanpy.social on both mobile and desktop.

Using a computer and want an app? Woolly, Mona and Ivory are great options.

For the #privacy conscious out there, which email providers do you prefer? I'm starting to near the point when I can #degoogle and replace Gmail with something else but I'm still undecided.

I'm mainly looking to get away from Google's scanning of inboxes, with a service that doesn't break the bank.

Tell me about your experiences, is Proton the way to go or are there some sleeper services out there that I've overlooked?

(Good desktop and android clients required, thunderbird support valued)

@alto Fastmail is great. 50 bucks a year.

Although my career has always been software engineering, my degree is in chemical engineering. Along the way to that degree I took a single course on materials engineering. And with that vast store of knowledge, I can tell you that a join point between steel and carbon fiber put through extreme pressure cycles will rapidly fail. Under pressure, each side of the join compresses, but the fiber compresses more, with huge bending and tension forces on fiber near the join. Soon, *snap*.

#titan

Not suprising but good to see more data - after #Brexit, trade between Northern Ireland and Ireland has significantly increased. And this data is from 2021, so pre-Windsor Agreement under the Northern Ireland Protocol.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-66088732

Good morning

I have put a marker down at Blue Sky, but I only intend to post links to my stuff elsewhere.

Mastodon is my social media site of choice.

https://bsky.app/profile/davidallengreen.bsky.social

@davidallengreen with his tongue firmly placed in his cheek suggests what #RishiSunak really needs to help him make #government actually works is a committee of all the major departmental heads that meets (maybe twice a week), established joint responsibility for its actions & whose discussions remain confidential to ensure full & frank communication of issues that need to be resolved by that committee;

now what might you call that, I wonder & why haven't we got one?

https://davidallengreen.com/2023/07/a-modest-proposal-for-helping-the-prime-minister-keep-on-top-of-government-and-to-push-priorities/

There is very little advice I would give to newcomers about how they *have* to behave over here, but I would say this:

If you want people to follow you back, complete your profile then write a post with the #Introduction tag and pin it. And interact with people.

If you have things to promote I've actually found Mastodon works better than Twitter, BUT if you ONLY promote, people will ignore you.

People here want to build relationships. They want signal, not noise.