Tag: social media

Thread

I feel gross using the facebook/instagram owned twitter alternative app, Threads. Really gross. 

That isn’t quite enough to stop me right now though. I am such a social media hypocrite/whore.

Anyway, someone asked, “what are your guitar goals for 2024” or something along those lines. I responded with a few. I figured I would port the response over to this post and maybe add a thing or two because I ran out of characters on the app. First, does the embed code work? I tried just sharing a link the other day to see if that pulled anything in, but it didn’t. I found that each post includes some embedding HTML code. Betcha a dollar it doesn’t work…

Post by @reallytallredhead
View on Threads

https://www.threads.net/embed.js

Based on the preview function in the editor, it didn’t work. Oh well. Here’s the text I wrote:

I want my cover band to finally get back together after a covid-hiatus and an exiting singer.

I want to write a shit ton of songs, record listenable demoes of all of them, and maybe have one or two that don’t objectively suck.

I want to play a bar gig for the first time since Feb 1, 2020.

After getting my 1978 Les Paul refretted a couple of months ago, I want to do the same with my 1979 ES-335 along with maybe getting a new wiring harness so that all four of my guitars will be in gig shape.

Me: https://www.threads.net/@reallytallredhead/post/C1ch8b9LyTx

Yes, kids… I just quoted myself. I dun did that.

Anyway, there are a couple of things to add.

I want to replace all of my guitar straps with heavy, leather straps like the one I have on my 50th birthday present Les Paul Standard. I have amazon shipping one for my Les Paul Custom and it should arrive tomorrow.

I want to buy either a Gibson Les Paul Junior, a Gibson Firebird, a Gibson Les Paul Standard with P-90 pickups instead of humbuckers, or a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. The order I wrote them is from most wanted to least most wanted. The chances of me buying any of these is about 0.0000001%… so there’s a chance.

With all of these goals in mind, mostly I would just settle for playing more. That’s what I really want to do.

Two Thoughts

Two brief topics for this more-or-less lunch time post.

First:

I screwed up. As often happens, three hours after I finished breakfast my stomach was starting to ache because it was too empty to deal with itself. I had a snack. Peanuts. Lovely. I then… had another snack. Some sugar free cookies. That was a mistake. Not because I had a bad reaction, but because I was stuffed and only about 90 minutes away from lunch time. Now here we are, 10 minutes into my planned lunch break, and I am still stuffed and can’t see myself having a real lunch. Dumb ass. You’d think after a year and seven months I would know what I can and cannot handle in terms of between meal snacks. Nope. I screwed up. 

Maybe I’ll try to eat a lunch-esque something or other about an hour from now. I don’t have any meetings so I won’t have any problems with work scheduling, but I also don’t want to ruin dinner. We’re planning on having some gnocchi tonight and I want that to go really well. I wonder… do we have any meatballs in the freezer? Hmmmm… we’ll see.

Second:

Social media. Shit. Why can’t I just stop with the social media stuff? I mean, I post to this blog 123612764 times a day, why can’t that be enough? What the hell is wrong with me?

I need a twitter alternative. There are a lot of decent platforms, but none of them are quite good enough. I should just back one of them and post there 2496723457 times a day and fool myself into thinking I’m having fun with it. It will be a bald faced lie, but I don’t mind.

So which should I go with? There are three that I am kind of using a little bit. 

  • Mastodon
  • Threads (which makes me sick because it’s a facebook product and facebook is just as slimy as twitter)
  • BlueSky

Mastodon is good because this blog cross posts there. Threads is good (even though zuck is fucking evil) because there are a lot of people that I followed on other platforms that I am following there. BlueSky is good but… I really don’t know why. Probably just because I sort of use it, I guess. 

Fediverse Cat

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.

46/365
46/365

Fediverse

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 Have Not Forgotten

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.

Cross Post with Bluesky

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

Social Media Test

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:

Social Media Confusion and Collapse

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.”