Monday, August 21, 2023
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.
Saturday, July 29, 2023
Right before heading to summer holidays in June, I launched a new version of this website.
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.. :(
Thank you for the shiny stickers @manton! They arrived to mailbox while we were on our summer holiday trip. Just opened the envelope yesterday. 😊
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? 🫨
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
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.
It’s neat, do check it out.
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.
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. 🤞
I wonder if anyone have a Bluesky invite to share? Would love to try it out! 😊
Been really enjoying Silo (Apple TV+) so far. Certainly a positive surprise! 8/10 from me. 📺
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.
Singapore pooltime! 😍🇸🇬 It’s been 4 years since our last visit. Awesome to be back! 😊 Next up, Bali 🌴
#travel #singapore #indonesia #bali 🗺️
Not sure if the micro.blog landing page has looked the way it does for a long time, but I really like it! Love the clean look and the way it highlights the best parts of using the platform. Great work @manton et al. 👏👏
Still wrapping my head around the “best practice” on how to use my main Mastodon account and this blog’s “account” (@juha@juhaliikala.com) side by side. For now, I think I’ll just boost posts that I’d also like to share via my main account and keep my fingers crossed that the possible comments on the (boosted) post appear hear on this blog (and micro.blog) too. I guess that’s one way to go about it? :)
Posting a few nice shots from Lofoten (Norway) road trip (few years ago) to check if micro.blog CDN settings have taken effect 😄🤞🗺️
