Simon Woods

Over on the Micro.blog Help forums, @numericcitizen said:

Is MB a side-line for Manton ? Is there other people involved in maintaining this platform? I wasn’t expecting the pandemic to be an issue for an internet-only business like MB. I could be wrong, for sure.

From what I understand:

• Manton does large amounts of the work for the tech side of things (servers, new code, etc). That’s on top of support, marketing, long-term planning, being the most visible part of the platform, and you know, having a life.
• The pandemic literally affected every part of our lives. A virus doesn’t care what type of business you have.
• Texas, where Manton lives, was hit badly by a ridiculous weather event, only further compacting the pandemic.

Also, where I definitely think you are wrong is the scope of Micro.blog and how it differs from other such platforms. Guess what? We don’t want the team to work themselves to the bone in a terrible environment and thus inevitably burn-out.

Have you listened to Manton on the Micro Monday podcast? Between every episode on which he has featured, including the latest, and the way he writes about Micro.blog it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand how this works. In fact in that most recent episode (the 100th, with Patrick Rhone) there was a discussion about Micro.blog taking on new people. Not only that but Manton’s own development podcast, Timetable, also covers some of these issues.

Maybe some of these things aren’t obvious enough and it would be good to make it explicit in some way. However, I could be completely wrong about all of it. 🤷

(Aside: @-mentioning Manton in your reply was an odd choice, as if you’re trying to call him out. I hope that wasn’t your intent.)

One day, in the future, I will have;

• a basic phone;
• an MP3 player;
• maybe a laptop;
• a few reliable notebooks;
• a selection of analogue watches;
• and a camera.

At this point I will have abandoned the world of personal branding and influencers and whatnot, and will likely post dispatches from my dusty old blog.

And I will be oh so happy.

(inspired by Jack’s astute observation — Wayback copy)

(update: part two)

Listening to James Nestor talk about the importance of breathing well took my mind, again, to my unease at the behaviour of certain parts of the Apple fan community who like to make cynical jokes about the Breathe feature on the Apple Watch.

Maybe we would all feel better if we spent less energy on desperate attempts to look clever in public and more energy on embracing such basic ideas as literally learning to breathe well.

I’ve returned to thinking about the internet and what it is, in light of working on what it could be. Most recently I posted about the rat-like presence of Google.

Of course this is not disimilar to worrying about S3, Azure, and even Google’s own server hosting. Then take a look at technologies such as React, massive software development-based sites like GitHub, and even the ties between the open web and mega-companies like Samsung with regard to open source…

The internet, much like the real world, shows many paths to living life connected to all sorts of awful people with very few options for small, self-starting groups of people to truly establish themselves free from the hideous behemoths our societies have built over the past many decades.

I’m not discouraged by this. I simply believe you have to gain an understanding of the mountainous obstacles that stand before you, should you wish to overcome them at all.