Walked to the coffee shop when there was a lull in the rain. It’s really pouring down now. 🌧️

Hopefully this doesn’t sound too snotty but I chuckle when people seem to lecture me on how a social platform works. If you don’t know anything about me… I signed up for Twitter, built apps, and quit the platform in frustration before most people joined it. I live and breath the social web. 🤪

I crumble a little inside when I see people mention cross-posting services that copy posts to Bluesky and Mastodon with a monthly subscription that is more than the cost of Micro.blog. But that’s all they do! Or you could use Micro.blog and get the same thing and a full-featured hosted blog. 🤪

In 2018, when I added ActivityPub support to Micro.blog, I faced a choice: do I fight other “competing” platforms or do I embrace them? In hindsight that decision is obvious. I support anything that makes the web better. Twitter / X migration to Bluesky at scale makes the web better, so I’m for it.

People seem to misunderstand Bluesky. Imagine if a few years ago instead of Twitter crippling their API, they totally opened it up, and at the same time built a distributed platform where you could host your tweets on any server, with usernames tied to your own domain name. Sounds pretty great!

Micro.blog integrates with Bluesky in a few ways that people don’t know about, so I collected a summary of each feature together in a single help page. Also, new feature coming tomorrow that I’ll add to this page.

I’m so thankful for the young people who will take up the political fight from here. I’ll be 50 next year, have been obsessed with politics and progressive causes since high school. 2024 has burned me. I hardly care what happens. All I can focus on now is family and making a nice space on the web. 🇺🇸

Good feeling this morning, walking to get coffee and then fixing a couple bugs. Micro.blog does so much behind the scenes that is not obvious unless you have years of using the platform… Always something to smooth over, or expose more bits of info about what it’s doing.

I thought Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul would be all spectacle. After watching it, I’m not sure how to feel. As a kid I went to see a fight on closed-circuit TV, a quick knockout, over while I got popcorn. That was a lifetime ago. Now he’s 58 years old and back… Like time slows down, but not enough.

We’ve got a new Core Int out today. Daniel and I talk about Apple’s Image Playground and SwiftUI.

I have another Bluesky-related feature ready to roll out in Micro.blog, but will wait until Monday. Bluesky is growing so fast, I’m sure they have their hands full, no sense in adding any extra hits to the API on a Friday afternoon.

Randomly drove by Terrible Love and had to stop. It’s a coffee shop in an old boiler room in Hyde Park. ☕️

Thanks @leo for the mention of Micro.blog on This Week in Google! Great discussion about Bluesky and other networks too.

The I-35 upper decks will be demolished soon. This view is going to look a lot different.

Spotify removed the latest episode of my podcast Timetable because it used copyrighted music. True! The whole shtick of the episode was that the song Thunder Road is playing in the background while I talk. I regret nothing.

Great post by Ben Werdmuller about Bluesky’s popularity and the fediverse. To his list of what works well at Bluesky, I would add this: Bluesky usernames are domain names and millions of people are cool with it. I consider that a win for the IndieWeb.

I’ve been in a foul mood for a week. Ignoring the news, trying to keep my head down with work. But right now, feeling actual joy reading this post from the Onion about acquiring InfoWars. Amazing.

More Bluesky improvements! Fixed a couple bugs and added support for alt text for manually cross-posted blog posts. It gets the text from your blog post, of course. Here’s a screenshot of the new preview.

Long walk this morning to Civil Goat on Manor. ☕️

I have a major character flaw. Whenever I see an old abandoned building, graffiti everywhere, weeds overgrown, a for-sale sign that’s been there for an unknown number of years, I think… With a little care, that could be a beautiful bookstore.

With Bluesky hitting 15 million users, I turned my attention back to Bluesky improvements in Micro.blog today. More reliable to reply from within Micro.blog to Bluesky @-mentions, and on your Replies page it will now include a Bluesky logo link to reference the copy of your reply on Bluesky. 🦋

Love this video from Rivian about the environment. I’m a fan.

Regretting my new attempt with SwiftUI for Mac apps. My gut said stick with AppKit but I was sucked into the ease of bootstrapping a new app. Lots of paper cuts, now seriously considering wrapping NSTableView to replace List.

Walking to get coffee, a car honked at me. Not a mean “get out of the way” honk, just a friendly “it’s your turn to cross the street” honk. But it still pissed me off! Austin is not New York City. There is zero reason to honk unless a wreck is imminent. Be more patient.

For folks who read my blog via the weekly newsletter instead of via RSS, last week’s email was a rollercoaster. Starts with hope, ends with anger.

Slowly bringing more links back to the new home page, including (gasp!) a sign in link. Thanks @vincent for the updates. Still liking the more minimalist design.

I’ve updated my state parks page with today’s visit, hitting the 20th park this year. Good milestone, but a long way to go. Might plot out a trip later this year to hit a few more at once.

Finished reading: Sourdough by Robin Sloan. Enjoyed this so much. Just the book I needed this week. 📚

I recorded a new episode of Timetable today. Still angry. I need to flip the iTunes explicit bit on this one.

Lost Maples State Park.