Simon Woods

Regarding Today I Learned:

The project is currently on hiatus (covered in the latest update). Whilst part of the reason for this is good (the aforementioned move), there is also a negative motivation; my work is currently unsustainable.

What I mean is that I lack the hardware and software to both maintain and grow Today I learned, and have no way to gain those resources. These include but are not limited to:

• A computer. The iPad isn’t good enough as the only machine.
• Hosted services. Email, hosted accounts, sharing, storage, publishing.
• Editing software. Graphics, code, video.

The greater access to these tools, the sooner I can push my ideas into full production across the project.

Whilst this issue might be resolved in the near future (as a result of the move), it is also possible that the change to my family’s life will be so significant that there will be no room at all. Even if I were to be in a much better position to work on Today I Learned, it offers no immediate and obvious route for either earning money directly or in the near future; any potential path for advancing my career ambitions seems to point to a long-term result. There is a great deal of uncertainty here.

I could gain the necessary resources but still choose to put an end to Today I Learned. In this instance I would instead do everything needed to attain paid work of a similar kind (independent, remote, maybe on the web) and use a combination of the existing published work of Today I Learned and the plans that are currently WIP as proof of my abilities in pursuit of said work. On top of that I would also continue to work on other, less ambitious ideas to beef up my body of work.

Given the limited space for me to do this kind of work, to do any sort of work, the time has come for me to make a decision. I am ready to take the next step with regard to ambitions beyond my work as a carer and home-maker. Now the question remains:

Continue with Today I Learned or commit to work in which resources are guaranteed?

Re: my realisation that the magic keyboard can not make up for iPad OS limitations

At least with my old Windows machine I could brute-force certain things — you know, like you can when you have an actual functioning browser — but on the iPad that’s either not possible or full of so many little catches that it becomes a fool’s errand.

For all of the things I like about this machine, and that list is long in comparison, the fact remains that my old and busted Windows computer was overall a much better computer.

To that end, I agree with Manton’s incredulity regarding price disparity and now wish that I had chosen a Mac of some kind instead of this iPad.

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.

This is a reply to @vivianlee:

You’ll have to excuse my ignorance here, but you could elaborate on the negative effects of hashtags? I’m new to the IndieWeb philosophy, and having just come from the likes of Twitter and Instagram, the lack of hashtags here has made it difficult for discovery. I’m wondering what the workaround is, and why hashtags would be a negative thing.

(original comment)

I’m not as well-informed on all of the technical aspects or any work that has been done to support this position – case studies, etc – but I do have a general view based on my experiences in the hashtag-heavy platforms vs. Micro.blog and my old days on message boards and the like.

A lot of the behaviour around hashtags for those with ill will is about tracking and campaigning at speed; using algorithms for trending to target and pile-on people and groups. It can also become easy to ruin a topic that has until that point been carefully curated by the people involved, whether through crude spambots or planned, targeted campaigns.

The flip-side of that is of course moderation, whether from the people running the platform or via account-based tools made available to each person. Whilst I’m not aware of what exactly could be done with such resources, I know for sure that either way it is likely to be a lot of work for such a small team.

There is also the question of priorities within the context of culture; are hashtags, with all of the associated work, what Micro.blog needs right now? From my experience this is the kind of mechanism that can quickly lead to significant unintended consequences and so the positive value – which is basically just discovery – needs to be carefully weighed against the costs.

As for the alternatives, on Micro.blog it’s a mix of direct-ish approaches;

• tagmoji;
• discover search;
• and categories for hosted blogs;

and the in-direct approach that has become part of the culture of Micro.blog;

• the Discover timeline;
• Micro Monday;
• and the not-following list on profiles.

(Note: there is also a Micro.blog help page covering this subject)

These alternatives also work well with philosophies of the open web, which preclude the silos; specifcally, the idea of the open web as the great social network, where we use feeds, email, newsletters, and other such technology and platforms that are largely non-proprietary. This means greater agency, independence, control, and less manipulation for all involved; it becomes a lot less like everybody dumping their posts into a bucket of faceless, nameless content whilst parasitical entities take advantage of our ignorance and lack of ownership.

I don’t think hashtags are intrinisic to the destructive nature of the web, rather I am unaware of any way for a small team to harness their power without sacrificing the good of Micro.blog; the intention, the curation, the personal contact, the idea that we are all people sharing space with some degree of control, and choosing to take our actions no matter what they might be.

Today I Learned is now in maintenance mode.

I am currently sitting at our desk in what we once called the office. Now it’s the utility room. This change, like so many others over the past two and a half months, has been monumental and yet so small.

Lots of things are happening, some of which I may or may not talk about but altogether can be summarised thus: I’m finally taking my work seriously, giving it the space and resources needed to get the job done at a basic standard let alone anything approaching good. All in all, this is a good thing, and made all the easier due to lots and lots of changes since even before the COVID-19 pandemic became the wrecking ball of change with which we are all currently attempting to grapple.

As for Today I Learned, well, the unfortunate truth is that I do not have the resources to spare for its continued operation and so the recent hiatus has now become a full maintenance mode which, as the previously linked announcement states, means there will be no publishing of any kind for the foreseeable future.

I find it difficult to express my gratitude for all of the support from the Micro.blog community for Today I Learned. So I’ll just say this: if you’re feeling pessimistic about the web and the world in general, please take part in the Micro.blog community for at least a few months and you’ll find yourself living in an example of how the world can be a better place. Without this community I wouldn’t be in such a positive place as to handle monumental change and actually thrive, it’s as simple as that.

Over the next few months I’ll probably continue to be elusive as far as posting is concerned. At the moment I’m mostly reading feeds, reading in general, watching the various forms of video available via the web, and playing lots of video games. In many ways I’m in a maintenance mode of my own; I have increased the volume of input from the world, this amazing world we’ve made via the web, whilst simultaneously decreasing my output. This process has been… necessary. Vital even.

So I’m off to continue focusing on the most important parts of my life, and enjoying a summer of much needed self reflection.

I hope everybody who reads this is well and doing what is needed to live in this our strange pandemic-influenced time.

I’ll see you in the replies. 👋

The literal cost of using the modern web slapped me in the face just now. It got me thinking…

This is one of those things that inspires me to think about what life would be like if I gave up being as involved with the web as I currently am.

I could save the desktop for mostly offline work, with limited access to the web saved purely for uploading/sharing stuff, and then rely mostly on mobile computing. This could fit in with spending more time outside, taking my new main computer with me, and generally avoid the muck of tracking-based platforms of services.

IDK… maybe becoming “anti-connected” to some degree. Essentially reverse my general trend of the past decade and switch much more of my focus to the people near me. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as involved with the web because I simply wouldn’t have the time or other resources, as part of an intentional decision to free myself of the misery that is the modern web.

However! I could still work on TIL. I mean, the beauty of Micro.blog is that I don’t have to sell my soul to really understand it, test things out, etc.

A lot of these thoughts have become possible thanks to moving to Firefox. Between the Containers feature and lack of focus on the Google silo, it really has helped me to think about what I am doing on the web through a lens of pragmatism and with a greater degree of transparency.

It’s time for me to think about this in a real way, to make changes that are practical. I actually think it will help a lot with TIL, since it lines up nicely with the philosophies upon which Micro.blog was built. In particular it’s the idea of a “good web”, in which we have the ability to control our online presence and not have to accept a life lived as little more than value-based data, a faceless thing there to be used for the efforts of other people to increase their ill-gotten gains.

This is a lot of meta-style talk, which I didn’t want to spend so much time on in public posts. However, it is a significant process for me on a number of levels and I would like to have a public record of my thinking as I go through the process of making the aforementioned changes over the next few months.

It feels, at some level, that it lets the people in charge off the hook. Thoughts?

– Adam Tinworth

Having shared Euan Semple’s thought-provoking post, Adam got a fairly quick reply from Pete Brown which only further provoked me to once again consider a general viewpoint I have been wrestling with for the past few years.

An important point of context within these issues that is often neglected: these companies, this version of the web, a lot of it is US-centric. They are literally constructs made from the culture of the US, and whilst of course they are also built with a diversity of viewpoints I think it is vital to remember that there is a difference in how these things are built even compared to that which is most similar, for example Canada.

I don’t know, maybe I live in too much of a bubble of my circumstances in life but the fact remains that I have yet to meet people who are so desparately in need of the connected web on our own little island, as compared to seemingly large numbers of Americans for whom the internet has been something of a lifeboat. Not to say it isn’t significant here, of course it is, but rather that there is difference in the difference even between our two relatively similar nations… that the environment is different, there are different motivations for the various part of our societies, and that’s before we even get to Europe and further afield.

I’ve just never quite felt that if I were to sacrifice the internet my life would be inescapably ruined; at least with regard to the social, overly worked part of the internet where the silos and the like exist. As such I have never quite felt that this is necessarily a socio-economic aspect of our lives that requires constant and immediate care. In many ways, it truly is what it is and little else.

We should be careful before copying everything from Twitter.

– Manton Reece, The way out

Manton had more to say about this today and I agree with him. Whether those of us who are driven in any way by ideological motives like it or not, the fact remains that copy-pasting functionality from the existing behemoths is a complete waste of time.

Why would anyone bother with your new thing if it just does what the existing thing does, only with fewer people? That is not an effective way to motivate people and we’re never going to change anything if we fail to understand how people are motivated to make changes in their lives.

Quick technical note: I have changed my email address.

My details can be found on my contact page, meanwhile the following addresses do not work:

• simonmumbles10@fastmail.net
• simonwoodsliv@gmail.com
• anything including @swoods.net

I have saved all messages for ongoing conversations and will be replying from my new address in the next reply of the conversation.

I will also soon have a new address via my custom domain but my current address – simonwoodsliv@protonmail.com – will be the source of that, so all messages on that address will be unaffected by the custom domain change.

Apologies for the inconvenience caused by this update. I hope that Protonmail can remain viable for a long time.