links

In good news:

  • @til is not going to stop.

In better news:

  • I am feeling much better.

Longer posts forthcoming.

Goodbye, Internet.

I am no longer maintaining Today I Learned.

Having given the project a lot of thought, specifically within the context of my life the fact is that I do not have the resources with which to make this work. This is actually a realisation on a larger scale for me personally; insofar as I do not have room for any such project in my life.

I am a carer, that is my job, and attempting to have a second job as a remote worker is an effort that is simply beyond me; I have no way of doing that with minimal effort, rather I work as hard and with as much efficiency as possible and all of this simply doesn’t work.

A combination of factors leave me very much in the wrong place to attempt to continue with this effort and it is important for me to recognise this and move on. I still think Micro.blog and similar efforts are a much healthier, more sustainable alternative to the corporate silos that have come to dominate the web and hope to see more and more people come to the same conclusion.

The sites and account will remain but there will be no new activity at all. If anybody wants to take what’s there, well, it’s all easily copied anyway so there’s nothing new about that.

I’d like to thank everybody for your support with the project, from Jean and Manton through to those who replied to posts and so on; as usual, the community on Micro.blog has proven to be pretty damn good even in these early days. You’re all brilliant.

Now I will be taking a break from blogging and generally posting on the web, and taking my time to think about what I am doing next, if anything on top of my job. I have serious doubts if anything other than volunteering will fit into my life but who knows…

That’s everything for now.

Goodbye, Internet.

I continue to feel great relief at the lack of a traditional commenting system in place on my Hosted site. @Jean and @manton are doing great work by carefully approaching the entire notion of comments, which has plagued the web since before corporate social networks became big.

Noise Reduction

Only I have the key, and only I get to decide what’s allowed inside.

– Cheri Baker, My New Internet Habits

Cheri has found the exact kind of mental discipline I had spoken about at the end of last year.

My goals, similar to her own with regard to time spent online are nowhere near closer than when I first set them out on this blog. It should be no surprised to me, then that the first two months of this year have been marked by a general downturn in my mood, my overall health really.

This stops now.

Not only have I already deactivated my personal social media accounts barring Micro.blog, I have reset my RSS feeds and am in the midst of taking a knife to the throat of any excess with regard to email, task managers (read: Gabriel Santiago’s take on Jillianne Hamilton’s Can a Productivity Nerd Live Without a To-Do List?), and so on.

I am stripping away the noise, making firm decisions about my work set-up (minimised to better focus on the most immediate tasks), and filtering the crap away to stop it from getting into my mind.

Soon I hope to also report that I am reading more books, reading higher quality news, increasing my exercise, and getting much more writing done.

The more you learn about the modern web, the more you have to admit the reality; a handful of companies control everything and any moralistic decision to “extract myself from the monopoly!” is, for the most part virtue signalling and nothing more.

Source: I cut the tech giants…

Oh look, it’s Micro Monday! I need to talk about @hollyhoneychurch for a minute. Between the photos of the sweet precious angels, the honest and insightful blogging, and such a willingness to share on her own terms, Holly has been a source of joy on my timeline.

Going to keep my eye out for reviews of the MP02 by Punkt., which is the best looking model I’ve seen from the recent trend of minimal function phones.

You can get to grips with Micro.blog by using the resource I have created: @til. Today I Learned is a collection of tips, hints, links, and more; there are various post types and pages, with more to come.

Here’s a starter pack:

But does all social media use consist of these projections? No.

– @cheri, Is Social Media a Waste of Time?

Cheri is willing to keep her mind open to the possibility that other people’s lives are different from her own and that is fucking awesome.

One of my favourite parts of making @til is when I have to use the different versions of Micro.blog. In these moments I am reminded of how;

  • diverse and interesting the community can be;
  • open and flexible the platform is;
  • much better this social network is for my health.

The words “David”, “Tennant”, and “podcast” are all I needed to get the end of the week off to a good start: @DavidTennantPod.

Reminder: Core Assistance is a good website and you should check to see if any of the resources can help you to improve your website. Bonus! Justin Michael is on Micro.blog: @VioletPixel

One of my favourite things about Micro.blog is the early-morning version of my timeline, made up of fellow Europeans and those from other parts of the world who are not in the midst of their late evening. There’s a different energy from the mainland US timezones.