hi there! please enjoy my blog of things i think are interesting
I previously wrote about how I wasn't listening to many podcasts anymore, but that has since changed. I've started listening to four more podcasts. On top of that, I am proudly paying for all of them. bigsofttitty.png - feed - An Australian couple's comedy podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself - feed - A long running Canadian comedy podcast Stores - feed - A podcast about going to stores The Flop House…
So with my last post on hosting an IRC server with Ergo with Traefik on Coolify (that's a mouthful) I tried my best to avoid digging too deep in to the Ergo configuration yaml . Today I don't think we will be so lucky. At 1,163 lines, at least it is well documented. Still overwhelming. This time we will be adding a database to store chat history and turning on WEBIRC so that Gamja actually works.…
IRC is back on the menu! If you have not kept up with IRC, there's a whole IRC v3 spec that servers have varying support of that modernizes a lot of pain points like: you can log in on multiple devices now, see chat history, reply to specific messages, and even leave emoji reactions. I wanted to write out how I hooked up the IRC v3 supporting server Ergo to run through Traefik on Coolify. Oh, and…
This month my wife, Vivianne , and I started a blog together. We're mostly blogging about things we like that we want to share with you. If you want to get an idea of why we started it, I recommend starting with The Introduction . Oh, and don't forget to sign the guestbook ! I have not dug in to why we chose to host it with Pika , so I will go in to that here. Yes, we could have done this with…
My wife is a huge fan of Rayman 2. So much so, she made me play it on stream when we were seperated by an ocean and a global pandemic. I think it was a test, you know, to see if we were compatible. So don't be shocked to see her name in the credits of this Unreal Engine fan made version of Rayman 2. It's perfectly familiar while being it's own thing. I really like what they've done and I want them…
Time for some new defaults. I've shaken up the things I could. I cut some categories out this year. I think in a lot of ways consumers have less choice than ever before, and I'm not here to promote the crap we're all forced to deal with. 🔖 Bookmarks: Linkding 🌐 Browser: Firefox † 📆 Calendar: Fantastical 📷 Camera App: Obscura 💬 Chat: Delta Chat 📨 Mail: Proton 🎺 Music: Navidrome , Amperfy ,…
Damn, this year sucked. I have to assume we didn't enjoy much, but it's good to reflect on the things that did bring you some relief from all the fucked up shit. As I wrote this list I couldn't help but make peace with listing things that I know didn't see much widespread love. I'm probably not going to list your favorite things, your favorite things are for your list. This one is mine. Before we…
I don't know how many reasons you need to ditch Plex: the horrible app redesign, the multiple security flaws, or the push in to the wonderful world of advertising. Plex has made it pretty clear over the last five years: they don't care about their users, they want to chase venture capital. This year I've been running Jellyfin alongside my Plex server. I didn't force any of my friends and family to…
I've had an Apple Watch since they first came out, and I've worn it daily ever since. I started taking it off in the afternoon because I felt like it was wearing out its welcome on my wrist. It's tight, sweaty, and heavy. I also think it is damaging my wrist. I've tried a wide variety of bands. Currently, I'm using the 2024 Pride loop. I like it because it's easy to put on. I don't have to worry…
I've been having a fun time with a new little music journal app, Crucial Tracks . It's a really neat concept that has, on occasion, gotten me to get quite personal and quite wordy. I didn't expect to find myself writing about, or in a lot of cases, around, music. Music is so intimate and our tastes in which are so diverse and unique to each and every one of us. "Do you like music?" has always been…
There are a lot of great points in this article from Federico Viticci. It highlights a lot of stuff I've noticed over the iPad's life. I moved to using an iPad Pro as my main computer in 2017 and I think after 8 years of getting by and making that work as best it could, it's time to call it: my $2,000 M2 iPad Pro is easily replaceable with a $100 refurbished laptop that is more capable in every…
...but I did it in 2025, oh no! I started building a Bluesky-to- JSONFeed app because I find Bluesky too annoying to use. These days it is trying to force me to see trending topics from the whole of Bluesky. They let you dismiss it, but then they shove it back in front of your face without respecting your preference. Typical big tech bullshit. "Hey want to hide this? You can, but if you refresh it…
I've recently moved my photos to melkat.pics and my social media posts to melkat.lol . Like this blog, they too are collections of markdown files with feeds and syndication to platforms like Mastodon. The IndieWeb term for this is POSSE . I use Robb Knight's Echofeed to syndicate posts automatically. Now the question is: why? Well, I want to own my content in full. This comes partially from…
Content warning: sexual harassment. I grew up online and the effects of which I’m still discovering. Something tough to identify is when I’m being harassed. In the last week, I’ve been verbally harassed on Mastodon and sexually harassed by text message. In each case, it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out. You see, online, we have a tendency to let things get really bad…
I don't like to start by announcing my commitment to things. This is probably why I will never do a "100 Days to Offload" blogging challenge. As Al Swearengen from Deadwood said, "Announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh." So over the month, I tried to watch a movie a day. A few times I felt like I was building a buffer just in case I couldn't get a film in on a day or two. You can…
As you may know, I love Hatsune Miku . When rumors started circulating last month that she was finally coming to Fortnite, I took notice. I never got into Guitar Hero and the like when it was popular, but my wife and I did buy a cheap plastic guitar to play Clone Hero with a few months ago, and it works with Fortnite Festival, their Rock Band-like mode. I've also not played Fortnite outside of one…
Throughout my tech career, people I worked with would often ponder when the next bubble would burst. Well, it came and went and no one noticed, because it was a murder-suicide. In 2020 tech became obsessed with drama, and the companies screamed, "If everyone stays home all the time no one will use our products or see our ads!" It didn't make sense then, but this was the excuse they used to cut pay…
When Mastodon was experiencing a blip of popularity in 2018, I learned about this other thing early in development that looked too similar to Instagram. Since then, I've always wanted Pixelfed to succeed. I like the idea of a self-hosted Instagram minus the Instagram . I still do, but I'm not sure the idea at all is a good one. This isn't specific to Pixelfed, but when you federate your images…
I never did lose a battle But I'm feeling further from the end of war Deplored, ignored and rarely ever self assured Why does it seem like the ones who have everything have nothing inside? — Streetlight Manifesto Hello, it's me. The scary transgender woman your shitty divorced-dad shoddy-rocket maker hero warned you about. I moved on from the products of anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric spewing Micro.blog…
I made two mistakes I found out after I published my 11ty blog rewrite— apologies to Robb and everyone's feed readers. The first one was forgetting to change my base URL in my 11ty metadata after moving the deployment to my main site. Hopefully, I deleted all my Echofeed spam I sent to social media before anyone noticed. The second was what 11ty refers to as a " common pitfall " which took me a…
I have been a huge fan of Astro ever since it launched. I was an early adopter and that meant as Astro learned its footing I would constantly face breaking changes. That was fine, but after a few years, it became less understandable. So when Astro decided to end 2024 with version 5 they decided to introduce yet another new breaking change. The documentation explaining how to adapt was incomplete…
This year I've migrated to Linux for my primary computer-ing, but I've yet to find any apps I feel particularly strong about. Most things are web apps anyway, so it doesn't matter too much. 🤖 Automation: Apple Shortcuts , Superkey , Rectangle Pro 🗄️ Backup: Backblaze 🔖 Bookmarks: Linkding 🌐 Browser: Safari , Vivaldi 📆 Calendar: Fantastical 📷 Camera App: Obscura 💬 Chat: iMessage , TheLounge…
Happy end-of-year listing to you and yours! I decided to try and compile my annual list of media I've enjoyed this year and, well, man this year sure was a year, wasn't it? TV suffered due to the studios wanting to treat their writers and actors like bits and bytes and not, you know, humans. Games too, but I fear we've not yet seen the result of all the layoffs. If there's no one left to make…
I could have sworn I published a link roundup the day before the US election, but then everything went tits up and I couldn't be bothered to care if I published anything ever again. It's hard to take care of yourself when you know what looms around the corner. I swear I have some fun stuff in here too. I deleted my accounts on most every platform, I don't want to give platforms anything if they…
I recently spun up my own Bluesky PDS server on Coolify . It's fairly easy compared to all the documentation Bluesky put out. It's also a lot less than you would have ever imagined. Before digging into what I did, I want to say thanks to Brandon at krrd.ing , Rafael Eyng's blog , and this GitHub repo I found for all of their work clarifying what Bluesky could not. The hardest part of all of this…
I haven't known what to say in the last week, you know, due to (gestures wildly) . I still don't. The internet right now can leave you feeling powerless. So, I have decided to take back some of that power. I'm self-hosting my own GitHub with Gitea at melkat.dev and I'm self-hosting my own Del.icio.us with Linkding at melkat.link . I've been self-hosting things for a while now within my private…
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I have two apps published under Girlfriend Technology . One is an app I got Apple to approve (!!!) that lets you open magnet links for torrents with Put.io , which I call Magnet Links , and another for replacing words and links with other words and links I call X to Y . They have had a pretty good reception and solved very real problems. So why…
It's been a while since I last showed off my home screens. I wanted to do something different this time. Since July, I have gotten fed up with the direction of the big two computer OS people, so I moved to Arch Linux, and it’s been pretty nice. I've also started using Shareshot , for which I made a frame for ultrawide monitors and the Steam Deck . Arch Linux with KDE Plasma There is not much to…
Well, I found a stumbling block on Linux. So much of what I do requires some sort of image editing and manipulation. I would use Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Paint.net on Windows. On iOS and Mac, I use the same Affinity apps and Pixelmator. The options for Linux aren't great. There's Krita, which looks like a lovely app for drawing, but that's for a different purpose. The only choice I…
When I was 13 years old, I waited over a week for my Red Hat Linux ISO file to download. I saw these nerds on TechTV talk about it, and I wanted to try it myself. I told my parents what I was doing, and they told me that my older half-brother had mentioned it. I installed it that night and quickly realized that my speakers didn't work, and I had accidentally installed it over my Windows XP…
It was the last day of 1999, and my mother surprised me with an upgrade to my Sega Genesis, a translucent lime green Nintendo 64 with Donkey Kong 64. Sorry, it was "Jungle Green." I loved Nickelodeon slime green, so this was perfect. I got to learn the DK rap. I liked Donkey Kong 64 at the time, but Donkey Kong 64 is not a good game. Looking back, I'm surprised I got as far in the game as I did.…
Photographer Jedda convinced me to try the screen-free Camp Snap Camera. It looks like a film camera I bought a while back, but without all the hassle of getting film and developing it. I really like it! When I finish taking photos I can simply plug it in to my phone and copy the photos over. I've been sharing my photos on my Pixelfed and you check out my collection of photos taken with my Camp…
I remember around a decade ago when my #gamer coworker introduced me to Discord after attending the first TwitchCon. At the time, it was just a Slack clone with voice chat, and it looked like it, too. In 2017, I started using it heavily. It helped (and hurt) during the early days of my transition. I was introduced to my wife through it. Hell, it played a huge part in our developing relationship.…
Welcome back to Here's Some Links. I feel like I just did one of these, but the links keep coming so here we are again. This time around we got some cool stuff my wife worked on, a remade Hatsune Miku music video, more Cohost criticism, why your favorite mobile app stops getting updates, and some insecure technology. Oh yeah, don't let your job kill you. You are more valuable than a corporation. I…
Social media companies want you to post more but only want to show ads. What's the point of posting if no one sees it? To train their AIs and target you with more ads? People often told me they wish I used one of the big evil tech company's social media apps more often so they could keep up with me or my cat. My cat has a lot going on. She's BUSY ! These requests made me feel like I had to…
I've used Alfred since January 2011, and I've bought the lifetime license every time they made a new one. I am a Legendary Mega Powerpack supporter, whatever that means. I have used this app heavily and have seen no point in stopping. Though Alfred hasn't been considered "cool" for a while now, it did what I needed and did it well. I don't need "cool"; I need something that works. When I upgraded…
I got some links for you on this lovely Friday the 13th. This one contains commentary on capitalism, why Cohost was never that great a place, checking in on Substack's nazi problem a year later, stories about trans women in aerospace and comedy, and some satire on genderless video game robots. Not in that order. I mean, unless you read things non-sequentially, which is a real thing I catch myself…
The new version of Reeder has decided to do something radical: not sync with dedicated RSS services. Previously, I wrote about why this is a problem in a post called RSS Reader Super Apps . I subscribe to 302 RSS feeds, and when I imported them into the new Reeder and The Iconfactory's upcoming Tapestry , there was no OPML import. Reeder now offers this feature. Yes, I added 302 feeds to both apps…
Last night, I wrote a joke on Mastodon that I thought was a funny roast of Cohost users in light of the website shutting down. It was only funny to me, so I deleted it. I understand that Cohost was of special interest to a very small and vulnerable group. That's kind of the problem, though, right? Cohost was a business, and you are a human being. Can I make it any more obvious? This was the toot…
Every day there is a new read later app, despite most of them being the same. I started my paid email newsletter journey by using my Feedbin address as my login address, but that never sat right with me, so I changed it to my primary email address and then set up my email to forward emails from addresses to read later apps. This was fine until newsletters stopped having consistent from addresses.…
I was recently thinking about what got me interested in apps and design were the many websites that featured beautiful apps. Typically, these websites were focused on apps for Apple products, but as we see Apple go down this anti-developer and anti-consumer path of a monopoly, I think it's time we focus on the great apps for the other devices in our life, so today I'm going to share some apps for…
The following are affiliate and referral links that benefit me. They are all services that I use and feel good enough about to recommend. So if you too need to use one of these things, why not support me in the process? My goal is to keep this list updated over time with products I use that play the refer a friend game. Bookshop : An online bookstore that supports local independent bookstores…
I believe it was Homer Simpsons who said it best: "Where's my burrito?" There is nothing more sacred than the relationship between someone and their burrito. If you're reading this then you are either casually reading my blog OR I linked this page to you so you could order me a perfect burrito. Either way, I thank you. Everyone should have a slashpage for their burrito order. Let's make it happen.…
I'm a fan of omg.lol and what Neatnik does in general, so my now page is located over there in omg.lol's now.garden . It is currently hooked up to a CI action that runs every couple of hours and only pushes an update out if anything has changed since it last checked. It checks my blog, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Status.lol, Last.fm, Letterboxd, Steam, and Playstation accounts to figure out what I've been…
In Astro, when you use a UI framework you have the ability to only load the island of JavaScript when it becomes in view of the browser window . When you use web components, you have to build this functionality out yourself. This is exactly what I did in my new web component NPM package, in-view. I ran into this when I decided to start rebuilding parts of my personal website in web components on…
In The First Three Years I mentioned I was interested in hearing other people's pandemic experiences. My wife has wrote about her experience with COVID and trying to adjust to a new country.
Inspired by uses.tech , I have written up my current setup. I will try to keep this post updated as things change. Hardware The Bedrock Blue Steelcase Gesture Office Chair Everlasting Comfort Office Foot Rest Office Owl Caster Wheels for Desk Chairs UPLIFT Clamp-On Cup Holder UPLIFT Bamboo Standing Desk UPLIFT Big Standard Keyboard Tray - Bamboo with Quick Adjust Mechanism Computers iPad Pro - My…
I feel like I've been putting off building a public blogroll for a while. Part of what has helped me to just do it is this post from Keenan about getting rid of their blogroll . I sympathized with it quite a bit. Blogrolls are inherently messy, but so am I. I decided to approach this by just exporting my blog category in Feedbin and doing very little filtering to it. Some of these blogs may have…
Apple has made a lot of partnerships with big companies like Quantum Computer Services (AOL), Microsoft, HP, Intel, Cingular (AT&T), Epic Games, Valve, Capcom, and Ubisoft. They are all pretty one-sided in terms of who benefits. Focusing on these partnerships distracts from what has made Apple's platforms successful: the community of dedicated indie developers. But like their corporate…
This is the first home screen post with iOS 18! You can read about my initial impressions . I stand by my remark about the tinted icons: this is silly and I'm going to use it exclusively to anger the design gods. Let's get in to it, shall we? What's different: Airshow - I can't believe this is the first appearance of Airshow, the best podcast app. Mona - A Mastodon app you can overly customize to…