He stared at the screen, fingers poised over the keyboard, waiting for a #stroke of inspiration. Writer’s block. It had been a while. But here it was, that old familiar friend, the kind that you can lose touch with for years and then pick up right where you left off.

Maybe if he tried something different. “You know,” he thought, “I’ve never broken the fourth wall.”

At that very moment he was overcome by the feeling of being watched…

“Me? Nothing new. Still living the dream. Same job as before. Yeah, marketing stuff. And I’m still writing. Well, trying to. Uh, and I grew a mustache and shaved it off. Too much grooming. Look, I’ll level with you—absolutely nothing is going on with me, and I couldn’t be happier.”

“So you say you can levitate by sheer force of will?” the man asked, the editor of a local conspiracy theory newsletter.

“That’s right. A full three inches!”

“Two,” his friend corrected. “You gotta stop embellishing things.”

He waved her back.

“Alright, come down and we’ll test the #veracity of your claims.”

“Great!” he replied, hanging up and turning to his friend. “Alright, let’s go! But first, where’s my measuring tape…”

He gently brushed the dirt away from the new find, an Egyptian cosmetic #palette, perfectly preserved, its face adorned in delicate carvings.

“Beautiful,” he muttered to himself, already thinking of the paper he would write about the piece.

Until, that is, a man with a hat and a whip came charging through his dig site, gunfire following in his wake.

“My mom was right,” he thought, “I should’ve become a dentist.”

The sheet of paper lay before her, an infinity of possibilities. She made the first fold, aligning point to point, the crease #crisp, precise. Working, her hands traveled through valleys and over mountains, her mind calm, focused.

Done, she leaned back, sighing, only to be startled by the sound of chirping! Looking down, she gaped as her little sparrow took flight, vanishing through an open window.

Smiling, she reached for a fresh sheet of paper.

So I think (hope) I’ve got image captions working on my blog. To prove it, a little something from our trip to Newfoundland, Spillar’s Cove to be exact.

As they walked the planet was visible through the ship’s dome, blue-green against velvet blackness. “So they organized society around this ‘money’,” she said, still unable to believe what she was hearing.

“Correct,” he replied, “and those with the most were venerated above all others and seen as a source of safety and security.”

“And this ‘Douglas Adams’ that you mentioned?”

“He was one of the few who realized the whole thing was a bad idea.”

Well, originally I was using bridgy-fed to stitch this blog directly into the fediverse, but after running into various challenges, I’m going to try bridgy instead and just syndicate to my personal Mastodon account. Let’s see how this goes!

Every now and then I think about growing my beard back. But I quickly realize that’s not a commitment I’m willing to make…

Journalling, for me, is a kind of ritual during which I enter into a conversation with myself and all those little demons floating around inside my head and we all get to know each other a bit bit better.

Today, I’m grateful that, by making the choice to post to my blog and syndicate from there, I’ve been able to retain control over my posts even if I delete them from Twitter.

I hoped that Elon wouldn’t go nuts with moderation thanks to advertiser pressure, but with this tweet it’s official and so I’m shutting down my bird account. Follow me on Mastodon or my blog if you dare!

I kinda wonder what it must’ve been like in the old days when staying updated on world news meant occasionally getting a month-old letter from a relative, delivered via ocean liner…

Trawling through the Micro.blog discover feed or the timeline of my preferred Mastodon instance feels like the intellectual equivalent of grazing…

So I just started using fed.brid.gy for stitching my blog into the Fediverse (which is also a static site), and I think maybe it’ll do what you need? In fact, this reply you’re reading now is actually posted on my blog (if you click the permalink it’ll take you directly there).

Ladies and gentlemen take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

An ActivityPub feed for a blog is absolutely doable, it just requires work. For example, a quick search turns up an ActivityPub plugin for Wordpress. Heck, micro.blog supports it natively. There’s also bots out there that’ll auto-syndicate posts from an RSS feed to a Mastodon account. Unfortunately it’s just not very widely available or adopted (yet!).

Given my job these days I forget how much I enjoy throwing on a set of headphones, putting my favourite album on repeat, firing up Vim, and willing something into existing that didn’t exist before I started.

I figured it was about time to try and stitch my blog into the fediverse. Is this thing on?

You gotta give Elon credit, he’s come up with a surprisingly novel, if expensive, method of finally driving people out of their social media silos and into the arms of the indieweb and fediverse…

Well, I’ve removed the ‘blog’ subdomain from my site, which was both seemingly simple and yet likely to break things in subtle and unexpected ways…

I finally got the tools and swapped my own winter tires this year. It was the greatest sense of real personal accomplishment that I’ve felt in a long time…

Given the recent purchase of Twitter I’m sure glad that all of my posts start on my blog and then syndicate elsewhere. It’s a lot easier to ignore Musk’s gyrations when you know you can drop Twitter any time you like…

First real virtual ride on via Zwift (huge shoutout to @netweed for his docker container, which is the only way I’ve managed to get it running on Linux) and man, does it ever tap into my competitive side… maybe a little too much…

I’m honestly a bit upset that this weekend was my first visit to the Peyto Lake lookout on the Icefield Parkway (and yes I took this photo)…

Finally cleared to once again donate and OMG they have Cookies By George!

Locarno and Kobo Town just lit it up at the Sonidos Soleados to start the day! Absolutely fantastic! I just wish there was more trombones…

Fifth year, first lottery!

The main stage is great but for me it’s the intimate side stages where the magic happens! At In The Tradition and the party is starting!

Ahh, Edmonton Folk Fest. Now that you’re back I realize just how much I missed you.

And so it begins!

I do love my apple tree…

I’m always excited to come across great blogs, and Molly White’s blog is something special. Having found a voice as a crypto-skeptic, she’s turned out some excellent pieces on the world of crypto that are worth checking out!

Kid YouTube is like a cotton candy fever dream during an lsd trip.

I’d watch Better Call Saul for the cinematography alone. The incredible shot locations, the surgical scene blocking, the colour composition and lighting. Just stunning!

I can’t believe, after so many years as an Aeropress fan, that I only just today tried an inversion brewing method (or in my case Hoffman’s variation of it). It uses less coffee and produces a better outcome. Delicious!