Wishing you and yours a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

We have a houseful here at Saul Hall. Mitzi's daughter, son-in-law, 6-month-old son and their dog are staying with us. Because her ex lives in Tampa, and it's tough to pack up everything for a several hour drive to the other coast of Florida, Mitzi's ex, his wife and their dog are coming here to visit his daughter. They're staying at a hotel, naturally. But visiting here tonight.

Consequently, I'm not getting as much done here as I might have hoped. Things should quiet down after Christmas.

It's unfortunate that the weather has been so unfavorable.

I am having a nice time though.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:09 Friday, 23 December 2022

It worked.

So what's shaping up right now is that I can use micro.blog as a service to cross post to Mastodon and Twitter.

(Why Twitter if I'm leaving? Because it is a source for discoverability, and some of the people I follow/who follow me aren't leaving Twitter. On the off chance there's a reply, I can see that in NetNewsWire from the notifications RSS feed.)

Micro.blog also has a social media dimension, so there's the possibility of some interaction there as well. How that evolves, time will tell.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:30 Tuesday, 20 December 2022

Trying a new template for the RSS feed. If this works, there will be a link to the original post in the body, which should make it into the micro.blog post.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:16 Tuesday, 20 December 2022

kottke.org, Jason Kottke: The Trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer

Trying the share action in MacOS from NetNewsWire to Micro.blog.

BlogNote Dec 19, 2022 at 06:46

🌎 The Good of the World Depends On Unhistoric Acts.

Author: John P. Weiss

Date Retrieved: 12/19/22, 06:46

<blockquote>Excerpt: Fame is less important than the good we put out in the world.</blockquote>

Number of Words: 498

One of the delightful things about blogs is hearing the voices of others and finding their thoughts resonating with yours.

Yesterday, I linked to a post from John Weiss about habits to cultivate to "get what you want in life." They're all useful tips, albeit with a couple of tweaks that I mentioned.

Last night I read this post, the one I'm linking to today, the one that immediately followed the one I linked to yesterday.

Almost a week ago, I posted about the end of the year being a time of reflection. In that, I mentioned that I knew I wasn't here to be effective, I wasn't here to get things done. And today, I think I'll add that I don't think I'm here to get what I want.

I wrote, "I think I'm here to 'make meaning.'"

Which is what John's, The Good of the World Depends On Unhistoric Acts is about. Which is why it was such a delight to read. I learned long ago that if you pay attention, the universe gives you clues as to whether you're on the right path, doing the right things. Of course, there's the risk of self-delusion, selection bias, etc. But there is the "still, small voice," that kind of, for me at least, helps navigate those rocks and shoals.

Making meaning is a collaborative act, as meaning is a contingent thing. There may not be agreement on what the meaning is, because it doesn't exist apart from each of us and we're all different. But it can give us something to explore collaboratively. And those "unhistoric acts" may mean nothing to most people, even to the person who makes them, but may mean everything to the person receiving them, as the obituary John writes about makes clear.

I'll try something here, because I'm reminded of a Patty Griffin lyric, and this is what popped up near the top of the search (this may not work, as it's not showing up in the preview):

Anyway, better than snark, no?

BlogNote Dec 18, 2022 at 07:33

🌎 5 Little Habits to Get What You Want in Life.

Author: John P. Weiss

Date Retrieved: 12/18/22, 07:33

Excerpt: People will spend your time for you if you let them by John P. Weiss

Number of Words: 1115

Agree with all of this except disparaging the use of the acceleration couch in habit 3. Point is well taken; but unless your goal is to become an ascetic, don't deprive yourself of modest luxuries.

In habit 1, I would also caution against rejecting something out of hand because it appears "too complicated."

It's perhaps the converse of pursuing ever newer technology to achieve some result that is forever lost in the effort of chasing new technology.

A new camera won't make you a better photographer. Mastering a new camera will help you achieve your photographic goals, and may help you expand them.

It's simple to go online in some venture capitalist's social media silo, where your attention is aggregated and sold to the highest bidder. It's a little bit complicated to learn how to register a domain name, rent some server space and create some static html.

But, overall, Mr. Weiss is spot-on.

(This blog post originally appeared at Nice Marmot.)

I've been exploring various alternatives and innovations in social media platforms, primarily Mastodon and micro.blog. What I've found so far is encouraging, but there are some caveats and pain points.

The marmot is kind of an old-school blog. There were debates in the early days about the requirement to offer comments. I had comments on an early version of Groundhog Day (the marmot's immediate predecessor, I've been doing this for a long time). The comment feature worked, it just required adding some javascript to the export template, and all the commenting took place at an external site embedded in my page. I think there were ads, I know I didn't pay for it.

But I didn't really enjoy it. Some people (one person in particular) took it as an invitation to debate (he would probably call it "discuss"). I eventually stopped offering comments.

What I did enjoy was seeing people comment about what I'd written in their blogs, even if they didn't agree with me.

If twitter is the "public square" (it's not), then your blog is kind of the cyberspace metaphorical equivalent of your house. It's not a public space, even though it's public-facing. I wouldn't invite someone into my home to argue with me. You may find my choice of decor awful, you might think I'm an untidy housekeeper (you wouldn't be wrong), but you probably wouldn't point those things out to me in my home. It's too immediate. It's my castle, it's my house, my rules.

You want to go to your house and spend time there complaining about my house, or criticizing me, that's fine. If people come to your house to read criticism of other people, then I guess you've got to please them. I don't have to read it, and even if I do, it's not in my house. I can just leave. Go bitch about you at my place.

I'd often criticize high attention-earners back in the day. Doc Searls, Dave Weinberger, Robert Scoble, the internet triumphalists always proclaiming "This changes everything!" That got old, even for me.

Anyway, I digress.

So I created a micro.blog, and I've been playing with it a bit. There are at least two very interesting features. The first is that it will post content from an RSS feed. In the setup they tell you this should be your content, but I don't see any way that they have validated that. I suspect that feature will evolve in some way, or be removed. It's kind of an honor system thing right now, and the internet isn't known for placing a high value on honor. (What they could do is what Mastodon does, and have you place a link to your micro.blog on the site offering the feed to prove that you control it. They should probably implement that fairly quickly.)

My micro blog will also, simultaneously, post links to that content on Twitter and Mastodon, so that's a useful automation feature. For the moment, unless or until Elon changes it, I can subscribe to an RSS feed of my mentions on Twitter, or at least the replies to my tweets. So if someone replies to a post on Twitter, I can see the reply in NetNewsWire without ever visiting Twitter.

This accomplishes a couple of things. First, at least for now, my micro blog doesn't feel like my house. The marmot is my house. This is where I "live" on the web. So whatever activity takes place there, again, for now, is at some remove from my personal feelings. So if I acquire some "followers" on micro blog and they comment on the post, I think I'll feel somewhat detached from those comments. I could be wrong about that, we'll see.

Second, it is a useful means of discovery. Now, I'll need to tweak the RSS feed template to include a link back to the original piece in the body of the text. As currently configured, the content just appears on the micro blog with no indication that it originated here, at the marmot. I don't know how important it is to me that readers at micro blog know about the marmot. I need to think about that.

But, for instance, this post will make little sense at my micro blog unless I include this link, back to nice-marmot.

One pain point seems to be that it picks up the RSS feed item exactly once. I'm a terrible proof-reader, so I'll post something, read it on the web or in NNW and notice a typo or some bad construction. I'll go back to Tinderbox, make the corrections and republish. Those changes, naturally, appear on the web site immediately, and it seems that NNW will pick up the changed feed as well. Micro.blog does not. Once it's posted, I have to edit it within micro.blog to make the changes. So do it twice, basically.

The other pain point is that it seems that you can't edit your replies in your timeline. It looks like about the best you can do is copy the text to the clipboard, delete the reply, start a new reply and paste the old content into the new one and edit it there.

If you look at Twitter as a model, where you can't edit your tweets, I suppose that's not a bug or a feature, it's just the way the model works. But it can be a pain point if you use replies a lot.

Anyway, I'm learning a lot. It's interesting. It's rewarding from a novel experience standpoint. It's a relatively low barrier to getting online and blogging, and I highly recommend it if you want to get started blogging, so kudos to Manton Reece and his team. I'll be subscribing for at least a year while I explore this further.

It won't replace my own hosted site, but it seems like a powerful lever.

Test post to see what happens.

Federal court delays Jacksonville City Council redistricting ruling until Monday

I don’t know what Judge Howard is going to decide, but I appreciate her willingness to be deliberative and not be held to some artificial deadline imposed by the Duval County Supervisor of Elections.

OM Digital Solutions released a firmware update to the flagship OM-1. One of the reasons I know about what DP Review's micro four-thirds forum is like is because I still visit there. I don't interact much, but it is where I learn about things like firmware updates.

People sometimes have firmware updates go awry, "bricking" their camera. They then get on the forum and bitch about it, which I suppose is understandable. Of course, it then causes some anxiety before you do your own.

I performed the update yesterday with no problems. Supposedly improves the performance of continuous autofocus in still shooting. I don't shoot a lot of "action" so I may not notice an improvement, but it's good to keep the camera up to date.

It's the second firmware update I've performed on the OM-1, with no problems at all. Read the instructions carefully, follow them. Should be fine. My experience anyway.

One of the best things Twitter has going for it right now is inertia, the tendency of human beings to repeat habituated behaviors, even when those behaviors are no longer advantageous for them.

Indeed, even when they're decidedly disadvantageous.

I think it's partly a consequence of our evolution. While there's a natural, novelty-seeking tendency that exists in many of us, the greater tendency seems to be to repeat learned behaviors that provide some known reward. With Twitter and other forms of "social" media, it's the social rewards that come from interacting with fellow human beings. Those interactions don't necessarily have to be positive to yield positive rewards. Trolls experience rewards in negative interactions. Or it could be receiving "likes" and "re-tweets" of critical or snarky reactions or takes on current events. That "positive" feedback to expressing negative views, biases you to perceiving events in a negative light.

Then there's the interior experience of arousal, which comes to feel "normal" so we seek stimuli that provoke that state. Outrage, titillation, some exaggerated interior feeling in response to exterior events, or reports of such events.

There's also the illusion that engaging in all this interaction is actually doing something. Yeah, I suppose it helps establish the zeitgeist, which may or may not help influence the people who actually, you know, do something. But mostly it's just hot air. Electrons. Bits.

One of the most powerful tools a therapist has to help a client, is to turn their attention inward. "David, whats going on inside you?" Introspection.

Of course, you only ever see a therapist when things have gotten so off-balance in your life that you realize you need help. This inability to look inward makes that often realization difficult, if not impossible. Even when you realize it, you must overcome the feeling that it makes you somehow less. And that's to say nothing of being able to actually find help. We don't have enough mental health resources. Anyway, another topic.

I like the social interactions I experience on Twitter. I know I don't like the fact that much of that comes from being critical. And I know that I'm part of others' "problem" in that regard as well.

What I recall learning when I left Facebook and Instagram, because I don't think I wrote any of this down in the marmot or anywhere else (which is why it's good to make notes, keep a journal, write a blog, whatever), is that I didn't spend more time offline. Rather, I just moved to other sites that offered some social interaction.

I seem to recall spending a lot more time on Digital Photography Review's micro four-thirds forum. (No link because why would I do that to you?) But that wasn't a very positive experience.

There's nothing more tedious than people who are absolutely certain they know everything about cameras, photography or business, and who have very strong opinions about the same.

And then there were, and still are, the needy people whose desire for social interaction provokes the endless "Please help me decide which body, lens, bag, tripod, filter, post-processing software, whatever, to take on my trip, photograph my grandkids, shoot this concert, race, sporting event, dance recital, wedding, funeral, cosplay adventure, whatever."

Jesus people! Just go do it and learn from experience! But there are many more people who get their reward experience from offering free advice. Of course, it has nothing to do with any of that. It's mostly just experiencing the interaction with another human being that isn't happening in "real" life.

That kind of sucked, so Twitter became my drug of choice.

And COVID just amplified that by an order of magnitude or more. Much safer to stay online than go to physical third places and risk being infected. But online interactions don't have the same social cues that help make us, hopefully, more decent people in real life.

(Same thing in cars. People are great. Drivers are assholes.)

Anyway, you see this playing out on Twitter as people decide whether to stay or go; and those who want to go, seem to be looking to try to replicate their experience on Twitter, without necessarily examining exactly what that experience is really like for them. They just know that's what they want.

Which is part of what I'm struggling with right now. I know I want the social interactions, especially the local ones, or the ones I find genuinely rewarding, regardless of location. I know I want there to be more friction, less volume, so that I'm not just like a rat that can't stop hitting the cocaine water. I want it to be somewhat more deliberative, less of the "hot take."

But that's my problem to solve. Which takes effort, and habituated behaviors are so useful because they require less effort.

I think blogs are a better answer, but we'll see. Something to blog about anyway!

Test post from the iPad OS app, while seated in the recliner, typing on an Apple Magic Keyboard.

Should work. App’s pretty responsive. Here goes nothin’.

This is a test post to see what the cross-posting feature does with Flickr.

Trying something new.

Trying a link post.

After Ian and Nicole, pollution spreads to St. Johns and other waterways.

Kind of a test post to see what happens over a micro.blog. More about that later...

This is a test, using micro.blog. An interesting feature is I can subscribe to the marmot’s rss feed and have those posts appear here. Presumably, they then automatically cross post to Twitter and Mastodon. Right now I’m just trying to figure this out.

It's "that" time again.

The end of another year, when we seem to try to pause and reflect on the past year and consider what our plans or aspirations for the "new" year might be.

Reflecting on it this time, I'm kind of kicking myself. Why should we only do this sort of thing once a year? Isn't this the sort of thing one should be doing with some greater periodicity than once a year?

And of course what comes to mind is the whole 7 Habits™ or GTD™ shtick, where you build that sort of thing into your personal workflow. Always "sharpening the saw" and what-not. So that you can, you know, "get things done" or be "highly effective." Whatever that means.

It's all a matter of attention, and where we choose to place it, which is in large measure governed by our interior experience, which is a product of our habituated behaviors.

Basically, Twitter's business model.

I think I've learned that if you pay attention, life, the universe or everything, kind of give you clues about the course you're on, hints or suggestions for corrections.

There is more here than meets the eye. What that is, I can't say.

Anyway, I've been kind of unhappy lately. Which is odd, because I have nothing to be unhappy about. In the back of my mind, where that "still, small voice" exists that I should pay attention to, I know that it's because of where I've been placing my attention, and too much of that has been on Twitter.

I like the interactive part of it, the dopamine hits from likes and replies and retweets. But I don't like the endless stream of outrage. Who can be outraged that much of the time? It's exhausting. And it doesn't facilitate being the best sort of person I'd like to be. Snark is pretty easy, and I like to think I'm pretty good at it. But what does it do? Maybe a laugh at the absurdity now and then is healthy; but as a point of view, I think it leaves much to be desired.

I know that my interior experience got better when I got off Facebook. I got off Instagram at the same time because it was becoming more like Facebook. Of course, I just turned my attention to Twitter. In many ways, Twitter was a better experience than FB. I didn't have to be exposed to supposed friends' odious political views or willful ignorance. (I'm sure they would say the same about me.)

With Twitter, it was more of an echo-chamber. Certainly, a constant source of validation. It wasn't completely benign, misunderstandings and disagreements are inevitable in any sort of social discourse, and those were sometimes unpleasant.

So here we are, approaching the end of the year. Twitter appears to be run by an irresponsible egotist. I'm feeling a little unhappy. I get a good laugh from the toaster oven thing, and it seems to remind me that "there are no coincidences." (Don't @ me.)

We watched Hallelujah after the toaster oven singularity; and I listened to Leonard Cohen and the people who knew him, and I felt this metaphorical tap on my shoulder. "May I have your attention, please."

See, the thing is, once you give that still, small voice any of your attention, once you make its acquaintance, well, it never goes away. Not that there was ever an "away" it could have gone to. It's just that most of us have never been formally introduced, and so we're comfortable just ignoring it. Rather, we don't recognize that we're uncomfortable because we're ignoring it.

So I'm going to slide out of everyone's DMs at the end of the year. Try and figure out a more productive place to direct my attention, and I think I know where at least part of that is.

I don't know what that means overall. Habituated behavior is a powerful thing. Been there, done that. Over and over and over again.

I do know I'm not here to "get things done," or be a "highly effective person." I think I'm here to "make meaning."

So I'm going to try to work on that.

I'll be here in the 'chuck hole too. Perhaps that's part of it. I'll keep you posted.