rather taken aback by the business acumen of the twelve-year-old who just rang my doorbell offering a car wash

he:

• tailored his pitch to the car in my driveway
• told me he was offering a discounted rate
• gave me a business card with QR code for scheduling

Exciting developments in the #SelfHosting front: I've set up a Pangolin instance on a cheap VPS and am starting to configure it to point to my services! My vision for this server is starting to actually come to fruition.

Of course, with steps forward come new challenges: for some of the services that I access via apps on my phone (Navidrome, Wallabag, etc.), I need to figure out how to properly configure things so that the apps don't bounce off the Pangolin authentication layer. 🤔

Ah, phooey, my attempt at #fermenting pine needle soda doesn't seem to have panned out. After 5 days of primary fermentation, there's no pine flavor, just slightly sweet, slightly fizzy water with a yeasty funk.

#fermentation

Anyone have good reliable resources for making your own fountain pen ink? Ideally, I'd love to make my own black ink that is acid-free, from widely available plant or organic materials.

#diy #inkmaking #fountainpens

Curious, for those who have successfully started a #hackerspace, #repaircafe, #techcoop, or some other collaborative community space dedicated to technology:

What sorts of local partnerships did you look for when organizing?

I'm interested in building this kind of space, and I'm trying to brainstorm what local groups I might be able to join forces with. A local ham radio club, a mutual aid network, and a punk space are on my list. If you have other inventive ideas, I'm all ears!

Does anyone have a #selfhosted service they find useful for, like, coordinating neighborhood groups?

My wife and I host a neighborly potluck every few weeks, and I'd love to have a way to keep in touch with our neighbors, coordinate events, and chat in a space that's not a bunch of different group texts. I'm watching @Bonfire's work on federated groups closely, and suspect their "Community" flavor may be precisely what I'm looking for when it's ready, but I'm also curious if there are other offerings in this space.

surely, we will be able to make up 5 runs in (checks notes) a single inning

#Mariners

lunch today: sloppy chorizo-potato tacos. cheddar griddled onto corn tortillas, a spread of chipotle mayo, the soyrizo-potato blend, red onions, more cheddar, cilantro.

yummmmm.

I came home right as Muñoz began pitching and the score was 6-2 Mariners. It looked like they were an easy 3 outs from victory.

THIS DAMN TEAM. 😫

#Mariners

I'll be sharing this to the Little Pixel Library once I get it up on my website, but I finished this today and am excited to share.

#PixelArt

There was a website that held a library of common elements of modern UI/web app design, assessed for their attentional harm or addictive qualities. I don't remember if it had these exact items, but you would find things like "infinite scroll" and "notification badges" on there, along with research and recommended best practices.

Does anyone know what it is I'm thinking of?

#webdesign #webdev #accessibility #a11y #ui #ux

I learned last night that you can make I Can't Believe It's Not Umeboshi from apricots, and this is going on my projects list for this year next to starting a nukadoko bed.

#pickling #fermentation #fermenting #japanesefood

#3GoodThings from today:

1. Walking around Queen Anne and listening to the birds singing. I stopped a couple times just to watch a nearby songbird, including one tiny friend who had made a nest out of moss in a tree. I would have walked right past.

2. Listening, on the radio, to the #Mariners taking Houston to town as we drove back down the I-5 corridor.

3. Friends who graciously took our request for help and made us dinner so that when we arrived back home, we didn't have to strain to fit cooking in the evening's schedule.

I just learned of Disroot (@disroot@nixnet.social).

What a cool project. I hope I can one day set up a local cloud co-op doing something similar.

Does anyone have a system or method for managing digital calendars, some shared, in a way that doesn't, like, make you want to scream?

My wife and I each have our own Google Calendars. I'm trying to use my Nextcloud calendar more as the default. We also have a shared joint calendar for family activities... where I also sometimes schedule my own stuff just for visibility. We have a calendar for my daughter's school, and I have one for my work, which affects my busy/not busy status.

It all feels so crazy-making and disorganized. I want simplicity and organization. And, like, I know there's sense to be made out there, but I've been living with this hodgepodge system forever and I could use some light from the outside to help me reorient and find a better method.

I kinda want to try switching from Nginx Proxy Manager to Caddy, but the last time I tried to use Caddy as my reverse proxy, I could not get Nextcloud-AIO to properly set up.

Of course I can't just let "good enough" lie...

#selfhosted

Went out and pruned the blueberries in the sun while the Goblin napped. I'm about a month late here; March (and especially the last week) have been so sunny, the bushes have not only budded, but even started putting on leaves and a couple flowers. These bushes both need a more aggressive pruning than I gave them today—their tallest branches are as tall as me—but since they already have leaves, I didn't want to cut them back so far that they struggled.

It's been two years since we got a good harvest; last year, we both transplanted them and pruned them, so they were too shocked to put on any fruit in their new home. Next year, I'll have to catch them earlier so I can prune them back further.

Having blueberries in our yard is such a blessing.

It's so weird how when I try to navigate to the page in my ISP's customer portal where I can review the contracts we've agreed to, that page consistently gives me a "We're having trouble connecting to My Account" error.

How coincidentally weird, Xfinity! How strange!

#3GoodThings from today:

1. Today's service at my UU congregation, both the sermon itself (a meditation on the poetry of Mary Oliver) and the richness of being in a community with so many people.

2. The Goblin's coy smile when she was blinking the nap from her eyes and spotted me watching her.

3. Actually remembering to mount my drive after dismounting and fscking it. I always forget this step, then I reboot and things are unsurprisingly broken.

It was just this weekend that I read Cal Newport's advice in Digital Minimalism to schedule yourself "office hours" when you're open to drop-in conversations with friends. A day later, I saw not one but two folks who had their own office (or "un-office") hours listed on their personal webpages.

Well, I guess the universe was tryna send me a message, so I put a couple office hour blocks on my calendar this week and just got off the phone with a good friend. Turns out, talking to someone for an hour is a much nicer diversion than YouTube shit when washing the dishes and putting the house to bed.

I really hope @Bonfire succeeds in their vision for federated groups. This is so important for the fediverse and I can envision many use cases in my own life.

Sadly, I'm not in a financial position to support them right now, but I hope I will be sometime soon.

As a hard leftist and gadget lover, the idea that my political ideology is synonymous with hating technology is confusing. Every leftist I know has a hard-on for high speed rail or mRNA vaccines. But the “left is missing out” blog positions generative AI as the only technology that matters.