Just curious how images will look in the fediverse. It took me a few minutes to remember my login credentials for Mastodon, but I got there eventually. My posts show up there, and comments made there show up here. Looks like it works as advertised.
WordPress.com announced a new function today. We can cross post to federated services (federated is the right word, isn’t it?) like Mastodon. I switched it on and I can see the domain it created, robertjames1971.blog@robertjames1971.blog, in Mastodon… though I don’t really use Mastodon. This post is me testing to see if the cross posting works. They say it could take 15 minutes or so to show up in the fediverse.
Now the good folks at Bluesky have to get their federated act together (I am pretty sure they are still heading in that direction) so I can follow myself there… because Bluesky is one that I actually sort of use.
I can’t wrap my brain around the fact that it has been 22 years since 9/11. I was an adult when it happened. How can I have been an adult 22 years ago? Does not compute.
I wrote a recap of my view of that day back in 2018 so I am not going to write it again. Someday I might revisit things and then compare what I write to what I wrote before. I’ll view it as a time-affecting-perspective exercise. Not today though.
I haven’t forgotten how it felt, being mesmerized by it all. I never want to feel that way again, but whenever people post pictures of the burning buildings I feel like I am being dragged back into it against my will. Jen and I often spend a little time looking through documentaries, but that is something I choose to do. It’s also something I prepare myself for in advance. Popping onto social media this morning and seeing images of planes crashing into buildings just feels like a punch in the face and a kick in the balls. Even knowing the date, I am never ready for that sort of thing and it’s awful. I don’t need that sort of reminder, thank you. I mean, folks are going to do what they need to do, right? I just feel like, for me personally, today is a good day to avoid the socials. That’s all.
I have not forgotten, and I never will.
I just posted this on Bluesky… not that anyone is really using Bluesky at this point. The user base is small to begin with (invites only) and the staff has been seriously screwing up the content moderation end and making some majorly boneheaded, racist, and sexist moves. It’s really taking the fun out of things.
Doctor Who, the original series. Season two, episode nine. This is the last episode in the second ever dalek story arc, and it’s the first time I have heard a dalek say the word, “exterminate.”
Life is pretty much complete now.
@robj1971.bsky.social
https://staging.bsky.app/profile/robj1971.bsky.social/post/3k35ppagc4j2e
I have a couple of Bluesky invites if anyone is interested.
Is that clickbait?
The search for a twitter replacement has hit a new wrinkle. I just received an invite to beta test Bluesky Social.
Your social media jealousy sustains me. I can’t get enough of it!
Can I embed a post from post.news? I think I tried this once and it didn’t work, but I’ll try again:
https://post.news/@/robj_1971/2NpRPS8AbdWHwyHpYUmbIIln7x6
That looks like a no.
Can I embed a post from mastodon?
That looks like it worked, but it’s fugly with a capital FUG.
For the record, the post.news post looks like this:
I don’t think I am ready to abandon twitter completely yet. I don’t know why. Maybe that putz will sell the company for a gargantuan loss and someone who isn’t disgusting will buy it and fix all of the bullshit and I’ll want to use it again. Doubtful, but maybe. So I haven’t deleted my account, but I did delete every single tweet and mark the account as private so no one else will ever be able to follow the shell of what used to be my social media presence.
I barely acknowledge facebook anymore, though I’ve been on there a few times this week talking to other people about gastric bypass, and twitter is no longer a thing. Despite that, I have spent more time on social media this last week or two than I have in ages. Why? Because I’ve been looking for alternatives.
Post.news, Mastodon, Counter.Social, Hive. Not to mention this page, Flickr, and Instagram. Post feels like it’s in the lead for the new favorite service. None of the new guys are big enough to really know what they are going to be when they grow up yet. All but Hive have feeds that show all new posts, regardless of whether you follow the posters or not. Counter.Social and Post update at a pace where it is possible to follow along and pick out things worth reading. Mastodon is too busy to follow along. Things just go bombing by. I assume the same will happen for the other two if they keep growing in user numbers.
I guess the question I have for myself is this… why do you care? Sure, you were a social media whore 10+ years ago, but why do you still care today? No clue. No idea.
Oh well. I’m done with twitter and I’m done with facebook. Post.news feels like the new leader to me but maybe it will be something else. Maybe I’ll just post here 20 times a day for a while until I get it out of me, if you know what I mean what I mean.*
*That’s a Genesis reference. Back in NYC from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. “Let me out of Pontiac when I was just seventeen, I had to get it out of me, if you know what I mean, what I mean.”
Well, I’m test driving yet another social media sight that hopes to be a twitter killer but is pretty much guaranteed to fail in that attempt.
Post.news is in beta testing and you can’t sign up directly. You can put your name on a waiting list, though when they added me yesterday they may have emptied the entire waiting list at once… so maybe there isn’t a waiting list. I don’t know.
It feels a little like a combination of twitter and Medium… or maybe it just feels like a less cheesy, porny, sloppy Tumblr. Maybe if it grows big enough it will morph into Tumblr and get bought out by Yahoo and then die in agony and embarrassment. Who knows.
If you happen to join the beta test, give me a follow. I’ll follow back. Right on. Let’s take down that Musk prick together.
I promise that this post is not me complaining or whining or bitching. I’m just a stats nerd and I notice stuff like this.
I watch the stats for this page. Always have. Back when I was using Blogger (from 11/08 through 12/12) I didn’t have stats available so I signed up for third party apps that kinda sorta let me view stats. One of the reasons I moved off of Blogger and onto WordPress.com was all of the visitor and page view stats.
In March of 2021 my view counts started to grow. I don’t know why, they just did. I always say this and I’ll say it now. When I talk about numbers on this page I am not talking about large numbers. I am not comparing viewer engagement here to any other site. This is not a real site and it’s not meant to pull people in. I tag and stuff, but that’s it. My numbers are teeny tiny compared to real blogs. I only compare my current numbers to my previous numbers. In March of 2021 I went from very few viewers to slightly more than very few viewers. Things grew steadily for a few months, then in February 2022 things started to sort of trend downward again. I don’t know why.
For some reason, unknown to me, last month’s numbers were super low compared to the prior year and a half. It wasn’t the lowest hit count for a month over that time period, but it was close. Similarly, this week my weekly numbers have been super low. I had one good day and every other day has been down to almost nothing. Today’s count right now (4:41pm) is less than what I would have woken up to at this time last year. I don’t know why and I don’t really care. This page is really just for me, you know? I have fun with it even when no one reads any of it. If my numbers were flat zeros (sorta like the film blog) I wouldn’t care.
The really interesting thing for me is, while the page view numbers seem to be evaporating steadily here, the view counts on Flickr have never been higher. I know why, theoretically at least. I am posting tons of stuff to Flickr and I am much more active on that site than I’ve been maybe ever. I joined in 2009 and at that time I was up to my eyeballs in the facebook and maybe up to my chin in the twitter, not to mention being a few months into the original Blogger page. Social media engagement wasn’t really the point of Flickr for me. Today though, Flickr is pretty much it for me as far as social media is concerned. I’m still using instagram a little, but I’m not really engaged with it. I post a pic a day and follow a bunch of photo and guitar centric users and I double tap on things that I see that I like, but mostly I just post the day’s picture and then leave. Over the last six months or so I have been posting photos to Flickr groups like crazy and then following up by viewing everyone else’s posts to those groups (within reason… I am not viewing everything that goes to the 10 Million Photos group, just a tiny fraction) and I have been viewing and faving and following tons of stuff on each day’s explore page. I should leave comments more often, but I never know what to say… sort of like real life, right?
What’s the point of this? There is no point. I post a ton to this page because I enjoy it. I post a ton to Flickr because I enjoy it. If people check my posts out then that’s great. If they don’t then I am still going to post a ton more. It doesn’t matter. I’m just a stats nerd and I feel the need to share my pointless observations. That’s all.
I mean really what it all comes down to is that we should all just prepare ourselves for season three of The Mandalorian, right? This is the way. I have spoken.
Inside the Red Head's Head 