Oh hi there! 👋 I'm a front-end developer and pixel tweaker from Oulu, Finland. Been tinkering with websites and applications professionally since 2005, and as a hobby even longer. A passionate traveler. Enjoy sci-fi and horror movies. Also, a fan of synthwave and Blade Runner-style musical landscapes. This is my tiny corner of the internet that I like to call home. Welcome!
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.
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! 🥲
Well, at least micro.blog works (and Mastodon!) 🤪
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 🚀? 😅🤪
Made some minor(ish) design tweaks to the blog today. New background from Santorini trip, of course! 😄 Also, dropped the newsletter subscribe option for now. I personally feel it doesn’t make much sense to send these (mostly) microblog type of posts via email (even if gathered in weekly emails). RSS feels like a better channel for those imho.
I wonder how others feel about this? Do you subscibe to email updates if the posts are mostly microblog type of posts?
Well it was fun while it lasted. As you may have heard, Meta has blocked EU users from accessing Threads. I noticed I wasn’t able to publish, comment or do pretty much anything else than browse the main feed in the app someday last week. No idea when the app will be usable for us EU mortals again.. :(
Threads by Instagram is not available in Europe (at least for now)? At least I don’t see it in Finnish appstore. For someone who can try it, is it ActivityPub compatible? Can I use it with micro.blog somehow (follow people, respond to threads, etc.? 🤔
Curious if the Apple’s upcoming Journal app will turn our to be something that would make me keep a personal journal. Micro.blog is great for public journaling, but I’ve never really used an app for private journaling. Tbh, it’s been ages since I’ve had any kind of private journal. 😄
Threads, by Instagram - Could that be the name of the Meta’s answer to Twitter? It might. I’m actually more than mildly excited about this. Especially if it really does have ActivityPub support built in. Instagram userbase suddenly available in Fediverse would be like a.. big bang..or something? 🫨
Well, I did it again. Started a new blog, that is.
Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. It ain’t new, as I’ve used it on and off for micro blogging. But I haven’t used it for longer posts like this one. Oh, and it has fresh coat of paint too!
The site runs on micro.blog, a blogging platform that also has elements of social networking built in. In addition to the micro.blog community itself, it also connects with Fediverse. And you can easily cross-publish to other social networks, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium and more.
Now that I’ve moved around some “furniture”, this place feels more like home. There are few things I’d like to mention about the “making of” this site.
This feels good. I think I should hang out here more. Picture by @timmossholder
Third time’s the charm? 😄 To get better aligned with the whole Fediverse concept, I aliased my Mastodon account (@juhaliikala@me.dm) once more and will be using @juha@juhaliikala.com as my “main Fediverse home” from now until eternity (I hope!). So if you’re wondering why you’re suddenly following this handle, that’s why 😊
Also imported my following list to this instance, so all should be in sync now (or shortly, as the data still propagates).
Testing testing! Substack’s RSS reader seems to pick content for each post from my blog sidebar for some reason. Testing if that glitch continues to happen with this new post 🤔
Something going on with Mastodon cross-posting from micro.blog. Previous few entries never made to Mastodon for some reason. Testing out once more if disconnecting / reconnecting auth helped. 🤞
Ah, so the last thing I used Twitter for is now gone too. Used the search (without Twitter account) for browsing comments on some local Finnish news. So be it. The end.
