Not quite sure how often I’ll use a “Micropost”, as years of mental memory route such thoughts to social media (Twitter, pre-Musk, and now Mastodon), but this is a new feature in MarsEdit 5, so I’ll try it for a few days.
Category: blog
Using Mastodon Instead Of Twitter
For a week now, I’ve been exploring the open source social media network #Mastodon1. Elon Musk is destroying the usefulness of #Twitter, firing staff, whining, and seemingly proceeding without a thought-out plan. I haven’t deleted my Twitter accounts, yet, but I’ve started deleting DMs, downloaded my Twitter archive, deleted the official Twitter client from my iOS devices2, unfollowing accounts, blocking accounts more quickly, yada yada.
I’ve had a Twitter account since 2007, and have been a heavy user of it ever since, for good or bad, I’m not sure. I learned a lot, but also wasted some moments that could have been more productively spent.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, Mastodon seems like a viable replacement, at least so far. It isn’t the same as Twitter, and there are some things that I wish worked differently, but all in all, worth continuing to use. I’ve had more actual conversations at Mastodon than I have had recently at Twitter, perhaps because there are less people using Mastodon. Or because it is set up differently than Twitter.
Mastodon stats from yesterday:
6,444,017 accounts
+5,384 in the last hour
+96,257 in the last day
+593,606 in the last week
If you want to follow me over there, use this link.
https://toot.community/@swanksalot
Also, if you can’t decide on which Instance3 to join, you can join the one I joined with this link.
https://toot.community/invite/f6xkp5zF
I gave a few dollars via Patreon to the site host, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. The site host posted this yesterday:
Some #DevOps statistics for #tootcommunity: There are 70 devices hitting the server, each second. That’s 1.5 million requests for the last 6 hours, in which we sent out 67GB of data.
I’m also testing out posting from WordPress to Mastodon with a new plugin. We’ll see if it works once I publish this post!
Footnotes:- after learning it wasn’t spelled Mastadon [↩]
- keeping Twitterrific for the moment [↩]
- Mastodon server [↩]
Site Aesthetics
I’m not happy with the look of this site, but I never make the time to figure out how to customize it as I want. Sorry!
Also, the WordPress Block Editor is still a clunky mess, it doesn’t display well on my desktop (running an older MacOS), nor does it seem useful while using a “current” version of Safari.
Minor problems in the big scheme, of course, but means that I end up not posting much at my blog.
Jetpack Plugin Failure
Brief note: was meddling in my WordPress Dashboard today, and noticed that the Jetpack plugin wasn’t activated anymore. Tried to reinstall, and was told by WordPress that I couldn’t install Jetpack because the folder already exists.
Hmmm…probably related to the Auto-Update feature, but who knows?
—
updated to add, logged in via FTP, deleted Jetpack, and reinstalled. No idea what caused the error, but doesn’t matter, chartreuse is my jam…
So Uh Changes Afoot
For the faithful and/or lazy who still get periodic email from this humble blog, I guess we’ll have to find other means of distribution, as Feedburner1 is deprecating certain features, including the email-of-new-posts feature.
Upcoming changes to FeedBurner in July 2021 – FeedBurner Help:
Starting in July, we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure. This will keep the product up and running for all users, but it also means that we will be turning down most non-core feed management features, including email subscriptions, at that time.
What FeedBurner users can expect
For many users, no action is required. All existing feeds will continue to serve uninterrupted, and you can continue to create new accounts and burn new feeds. Core feed management functionality will continue to be supported, such as the ability to change the URL, source feed, title, and podcast metadata of your feed. Basic analytics on feed requests and the ability to create enclosure tags for MP3 files will also continue to be supported.
So what is changing? We are turning down most non-core feed management features that help you optimize and publicize your feed, e.g. email subscriptions, Browser Friendly, and Password Protector.
I’m not sure what I’ll do to replace this functionality. Or when. I suspect there are other tools I can use, but I don’t know what they are, yet.
To be honest, I’m pleasantly surprised that Google is keeping Feedburner at all!
Footnotes:
- now owned by Google [↩]
Sketch Pad
There is a new(ish) Gutenberg block called sketch. Why use it? Why not? Though sketching with a trackpad is awkward, maybe I should use the iPad to do it?
WordPress and the Block Editor
WordPress is really pressing their new-style editor, called the Block Editor. I can’t say I’m very enamored with it, at least in its current iteration. I find the Block Editor gets in my way more often than it is actually useful in creating a post.
Maybe I’m just used to using a 3rd party blogging software (namely, MarsEdit)? Maybe I need to use Block Editor more?
We’ll see.
The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet’s surface at that time. Everything else will follow.
Malware Strikes Again
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
My websites were flagged by my webhost as containing malware yesterday. After a little back and forth with them, I decided that I would fix the problem myself to save on the hard costs of hiring an expert. The sites in question1 had been hacked sometime in July, but the hacker’s payload was simply a proof of concept – the hacker created a file called lol.txt on each folder on the root level of my server.
Since I’ve been a customer of this particular webhost for nearly 15 years, there was a lot of extra folders left over from various projects that I didn’t need anyway. I took the time to back every single thing to my local hard drive, and then deleted thousands of files.
The malware was installed as a .php file in the directory /wp-includes in two different websites with a WordPress installation. I could have simply nuked all the WordPress files with the exception of files found in /wp-content but I was curious if I could find more traces of malware. I didn’t have anything else more pressing to accomplish today.
Eventually, I cleaned up all the miscellaneous debris left over from Blogger days, lo so many moons ago, and even delved into my Moveable Type installation from the Golden Era of Blogging. All clear, if clunky.
If you have a moment, take a gander at urbanseens.com or my photo blog to see if they are ok. My webhost gave me the all clear, and restored my sites to the internet.
Being told you have malware is like someone accusing you of having lice or a STD or something”
my brother quipped back:
what’s worse malware or herpes?”
- not this one, but others [↩]
Keeping the Streak Alive Barely
The current trend of gamification is to encourage behavior by keeping track of “streaks”. I’m not sure it means much, but I am amused by it.
For instance, WordPress tells me every day that I’ve posted for x number of days in a rom (currently 53 days)
This post is empty in content, but I’m posting it anyway to keep my streak alive.
Google Site Kit Installation Guide
Via my webhost, pair, and a new Knowledge Base:
Google Site Kit is the much anticipated Google WordPress plugin. With this plugin, you can monitor your site’s visitors, see what pages they land on, how long they stay, and more!
Installing and Activating Google Site Kit WordPress Plugin
To install Google Site Kit on your WordPress site:
Open your WordPress Admin Interface
In the left sidebar, click Plugins
(click here to continue reading Google Site Kit Installation Guide | pair Knowledge Base.)
Why not? Maybe Google will help my site get slightly more traffic? In the golden age of blogging, I got 20,000 to 30,000 visits a day, with occasional spikes up to 70,000. That sort of traffic is long, long gone (didn’t help that I stopped posting frequently, and generally became a lazy blogger, also the industry changed, Facebook and Twitter became channels of communication, yadda yadda), perhaps I can recapture some of that magic?
I wonder if I should add back Google Ads? I never see them myself because I use a tracker blocker, but if they are irritating, it isn’t worth it for the amount of money it could bring in, especially if my daily traffic is less than 1,000 visitors a day.
Leftovers
I have a bunch of half-written posts saved in MarsEdit’s “Local Drafts”. I’m assuming I never posted them, but it could be an error on MarsEdit’s part. I’m too lazy to search to see if these have been previously posted or not, instead I’m just going to hit send.
Twitter Posts
Embedded Twitter feed just because
— hmmm, that didn’t do what I wanted. Why aren’t there good tools for embedding Twitter into a WordPress blog? Seems like someone clever should have invented this functionality by now…
Privacy Policy
I used the built in template to create a privacy policy for this humble blog, even though I don’t really need it, I don’t think. If you are curious about what it says, the link is over to the upper right hand side of B12’s home page, or click here.
If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them.
WordPress 5
It’s the Future
Installed WordPress 5. Seems ok. What’s new? I guess I’ll have to explore.
I was sort of interested in how the block editor works, but I don’t see it here.
Update
Hmmm, looks like something went awry. Cannot access certain plugins (Jetpack, WordFence, possibly others). Wonder why?
B12 Radio Station
Since Audio Hijack added a feature1 enabling seamless play from my iTunes playlist to the internet, via ShoutCast, I created an internet radio station this afternoon.
I don’t know much about such stuff, but it was fairly painless to set up. At least, so far.
The station link is here:
http://listen.shoutcast.com/b12partners
The plan is just to let my station run for a while, as I’m playing music in my office pretty much all the time, whether or not I’m there, or sleeping or dancing on the grave of my enemies.
About the only annoying thing with using a free service is that twice an hour I have to play a two minute track that I had to change the artist and title to “Advert:”. From my understanding, the SHOUTcast server overlays advertising on top of these tracks, depending upon the country. If you are in a country where they don’t display ads, you hear the music, but in the US, you’ll hear some ad. I’m using “Funky Nassau (Part II)” by The Beginning Of The End on the LP “What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (1967-1977)” and also Ry Cooder’s “Seneca Square Dance” from the soundtrack for The Long Riders.
Currently, I’m playing three tracks at a time from LPs that I’ve read about at the Pitchfork website. I made a big playlist of all their Best LPs of the decade, and added other albums that I first heard of on their site. Stuff like Cal Tjader, Superchunk, Sex Pistols, Bootsy Collins,Miles Davis, Camera Obscura, Dukes of Stratosphear, Bob Dylan, Fela Kuti, Big Star, Talking Heads, etc. etc.
Typical stuff for me, in other words. I frequently play entire albums in sequence too, if that’s your thing.
Tune in if you can!
Slices of my music library:
CDs in need of a re-org
The Replacements – Tim
Overstuffed CD shelf
C.R.E.A.M.
CDs shelf one
and this might be a valid player
Footnotes:
- or at least I just noticed it today [↩]