Spreading myself thin with all the different social channels in the recent years and this year (despite all the Fediverse stuff) has probably been one of the worst. Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Micro.blog + handful of blogs on various platforms. It’s just too much. I’m strongly contemplating writing to a single blog in 2025, perhaps sharing those posts to Fediverse and be done with it. Tbh, not even sure about the sharing part. I mean, distribution is nice, but.. I really don’t want to keep bouncing between all those socials next year. I can’t seem keep myself active in one, let alone all of them. 😅
Oh how I hate those AI movie trailers that have infested YouTube with passion. Just saw another one, which I first though was a “real trailer” for an upcoming blockbuster. It’s beyond me how those don’t get taken down / sued by the movie studios. It’s one thing to make “fan art” and whole another to not even mention in the trailer description that this one’s generative AI made. All “just for the clicks/views”. 🤬
I’m a bit late to the party (here on this blog), but I just want to take a moment to congratulate @dave for the incredible milestone of blogging non-stop for the past 30 years! There are very few (if any!) bloggers who have been doing this for as long as that. Even the Wayback Machine doesn’t have records of those first years (as it was started in 1996 and Dave’s blog has been around from ‘94!) @kottke.org and @zeldman.com might come close!
So, congratulations are certainly in order! Hat tip to you, sir! 🥳
In my endless quest of “trying out new blogging things”, I lured myself into a new experiment for this weekend: What if I keep my existing (in english) Micro.blog site where it is at micro.juhaliikala.com, but also start a Finnish variation of the site on a separate domain at juhaliikala.fi. Would that fly? In other words; will I end up writing on both sites for a longer run, or is one or other going to get buried as a failed experiment?
Got my custom micro.blog theme in good speed this weekend, aye! See it in action at https://blog.juhaliikala.com/ . Still ton of things to tweak, improve and implement, but eventually, the idea is to publish this as a micro.blog theme/plugin that others can use in their micro.blog blogs too 😊 Early feedback much appreciated! 🙏
So, as we now have three main ways for subscribing to a blog/publication; email newsletter, RSS and ActivityPub (handle), which will win? Some blogs even add a fourth way: Subscribing via WhatsApp / Telegram / Etc. Will RSS and ActivityPub subscribing continue being marginal use case and email still rules? I have no idea, but I think about this a lot.
I feel ActivityPub (especially in it’s current form) has a bit similar problem that RSS does, non-techical users just don’t use them for subscribing. It’s been all about newsletters for so long, that not sure if that mental model will change easily.
As a blogger, do you intend to support several different ways of subscribing (to your blog)? Or, do you plan to just promote one primary way of subscribing and maybe offer the other ways of subscribing in “the fine details”?
Excited to see what @john.onolan.org and team Ghost is cooking up here: activitypub.ghost.org. I find the new subscriber flow especially interesting (signup with email or ActivityPub handle). Some ideas here for future micro.blog additions too @manton? 😊
Aaand back to the “real human” type of profile picture again, after rockin the cartoon avatar for a while. In this age of AI generated pictures, having a “real human face” as the profile image feels nicer I guess 😄
I miss those early days when most people I know from blogging, web projects, online biz and related endeavours were on Twitter. Both in Finland and globally. It was so easy to connect and stay connected with everyone.
Fast forward to today, and we are all scattered across various social networks online. Mastodon, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky, micro.blog.. and yes, X.
Ugh. Too many places to keep track of, let alone stay active on. ActivityPub certainly is a step in the right direction in this context, but will it ever get adopted widely enough to “solve” this problem?
Soooo.. Threads just launched their web version, cool. Unless you’re in EU region, which I am. Can’t use the app, can’t use the web. Twitter is a mess, left ages ago. STILL no Bluesky invite either (although I joined waiting list last year). Truly feeling like a second class citizen here! 🥲
I've been surprisingly happy in the way this site came together.
However, like it happens nearly every time after I've launched a new thing, this time was no different: I’ve been already thinking about doing it again from a scratch.
During the holiday, I didn’t do much else than enjoy the vacation views & feels and post some stories and photos on Instagram from the trip. Didn’t even bring my laptop with me, holiday well spent!
Having said that, I feel excited to get back to tinkering with this blog again. Unlike social media channels where you have limited options on “making it yours”, on personal websites, the sky is the limit. It’s fun being able to make this thing whatever I want it to be.
Oh, where did we travel?
In addition to travels in Finland (where I’m from), we went to Northern Italy, near a city called Bolzano and from there, continued to Santorini, Greece. First mountain views with nice 20-25 Celsius weather, then full on sunshine, 30 Celsius and those beautiful Santorini views. It was great and I miss those places already!
Ok, but about that blog / website tinkering topic. Here’s what’s been happening.
So, Elon want’s to transform Twitter into “everything app” X (handle all our shopping, banking, messaging, etc.), plant a microchip to our brains, build an AI that understands the universe and then.. when it all goes south, escape to space in a 🚀? 😅🤪
