Category: Web/Tech

  • Consistency of perspective

    Consistency of perspective

    I really enjoyed this comment by Hank Green about consistency of perspective. He and John, his brother, had a short discussion in response to a question a listener sent to them on their podcast, Dear Hank & John: Consistency of perspective, and consistency of world view, is like a loyalty to a former self who…

  • Twitter is where I go to feel bad

    Twitter is where I go to feel bad

    I just shared this thought about Twitter, Mastodon and Tumblr on Mastodon, and thought I’d share it here too. I feel like Twitter is where I go to feel bad out, well, everything. Mastodon is where I go to lose myself in interesting and generally uplifting posts about all sorts of topics (so much so…

  • Going dark on Twitter

    Going dark on Twitter

    Although I have been on Mastodon since about 2016, I only started using it pretty actively in the last month or so. Since then I have grown to really enjoy using the service. There are increasing numbers of people joining various Mastodon instances and enriching the broader Mastodon network. I have almost stopped using Twitter…

  • Setting up my own Mastodon instance

    Setting up my own Mastodon instance

    I decided to set up my own Mastodon instance (❓what is Mastodon?). I was pretty happy being on the mastodon.social instance. It was my first instance that I joined back in 2016 and it was my first introduction to this terrific service. As the broader Mastodon network has grown, public instances have had to adapt…

  • Collections in any browser

    Collections in any browser

    One of the features in Microsoft Edge that I’ve grown to really like is Collections. Granted there is some overlap with regular bookmarks. At the same time, Collections feel much more convenient, and immediate. Still, they are limited to Edge (in this form).

  • Plus Codes are the addresses you didn’t know you have

    Plus Codes are the addresses you didn’t know you have

    I’m fascinated by Plus Codes, a @googlemaps initiative to give people without conventional street addresses, a GPS-based address that can be used to receive mail or assistance when they need it. I’ve noticed #PlusCodes in Google Maps, and didn’t really explore them further. Take this one as an example. It’s apparently a beautiful hiking spot…

  • The amazing technology in our hands

    The amazing technology in our hands

    Every now and then I look at my very mid-range phone, and I'm just amazed that we have this technology in our hands. I still remember when the Nokia N97 was the most advanced device I had seen. Of course, the phone I remember the most fondly was the Nokia 6310i. I had the silver…

  • Choosing Signal over WhatsApp is about personal agency

    Choosing Signal over WhatsApp is about personal agency

    Reframing the WhatsApp privacy debate It is tempting to frame the discussion about WhatsApp’s privacy policy change that enables WhatsApp to share your profile data with Facebook (even though it’s been doing this for some time without being clear about this) as being about Facebook being able to read your WhatsApp messages. That interpretation is…