As some of you are probably aware, I have the habit of going on two cyclical “kicks”, every year. Right now I’m going through a health-kick, which means I’m going to try a bunch of self-improvement type things until I forget I was doing them.

Anyways, I’ve been seeing Headspace ads everywhere lately, so as a form of core rejection of their business model, I’ve been meditating on my own.

I’m not quite an “old-hand” at meditating but there was a period of time where I practiced quite frequently. None of that practice has stuck, however, and I feel as if I’m starting over at square one. I note this because I found it interesting how much of a “practice” meditation truly is.

What I’m Working On

Twitter has been melting down recently - if you haven’t heard, and a few of my friends have been investigating Mastodon.

I ran a Misskey server from 2012 to 2014, and a Pleroma server much more recently, both shutdown after a while because I simply wasn’t using it.

However, since it appears I may be spending a lot less time on twitter in the coming days it feels appropriate to re-establish a frontier outpost on the Fediverse.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, all three of the different softwares I listed above use a protocol called Activity Pub to communicate with each other. Imagine you register an account on an old-school Forum for, say - gardening. Through the power of activity pub, you could reply to your friends posts on his hotrod forum without having to register an account there.

Cory Doctrow explains it much better in his article “How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing your Friends”.

in short: I might be setting up a Fediverse server. Maybe Mastodon - maybe Pleroma again, more investigation needs to be done.

What I’ve Been Reading

I’ve had a hard time staying focused lately so I’m reading something simple this week - American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

It’s alright so far. I’m annoyed by the edition I purchased as it’s very tall and thick, so it’s a little unwieldy to hold. I genuinely may not finish the book due to this form factor alone, so I might have to seek out an Ebook copy to finish it off.

What I’ve Been Listening To

Winter has come, and theres no more fitting album for winter then The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake.

It’s a cold album. Kind of hard to describe. You should listen to it.