oh great, moth.zone is blocked by a lot of instances for some reason about @root saying some racist shit or something?
I'll be honest, my experience with the Fediverse has tired me out. I haven't been directly harassed, thankfully, but there's a lot of parts of here which make me slightly to incredibly uncomfortable.
moth.zone's block reasons have me a little uncomfortable, but I'm not going to blow up over it because it looks like it happened like, a year ago. I've said some stupid stuff similar to this not too long ago (referencing the specific part of this blog where I call Ro “casually racist against white people” which I realize is now stupid and/or unnessecary to point out), and I believe people can change – it's one of the main reasons I dislike The Bad Space.
But... I dunno. It still strikes me the wrong way, and I'm not sure the position of affiliation this server has with the greater Fediverse.
Anyway, I'm not thinking of moving. I'm kinda of just frustrated at the state of the Fediverse and I hate everything that's going on right now. We need something better.
Launch a development local Server with live reload feature for static & dynamic pages
I like this extension because it also just works. It sits out of your way right there in your status bar, and you can click it whenever!
(Disabled your status bar? Use the Command Palette instead.)
It's Simple: It lets you fire up a quick Express-based web server that hosts all of the files in your current folder.
It's Detailed: It supports hot-reloading, automatically reloading your browser when you save your files.
This extension is pretty great. It also is on the status bar, but with a really small icon on the bottom-left corner.
It's Simple: It does what it says on the tin – lets you remote into other servers, and mess with the files inside just like on your local computer.
It's Detailed: It can use SSH and lets you specify a login. To my knowledge, It works on Windows and Linux on the clientside, and Linux on the serverside.
⚠️ Telemetry
Of course, this extension was created by Microsoft themselves, which means data collection. Make sure to configure the telemetry.telemetryLevel setting before you install the extension.
This is an issue I faced when trying to make an Oracle Cloud Compute Instance on an Always Free plan.
Usually what's going on here is that there's just too much other Compute Instances on this availability domain – a good solution would be to try another Availability Domain.
I tried all of my Availability Domains already?
Well, bad news. You'll have to wait. But, here's something you can do to bide the time, and it'll help you get set up quickly when the domain finally opens up.
Setting up an Instance Configuration
First, go to Instance Configurations.
Then, click Create instance configuration.
Now, set up your instance as usual! Images, VNIC config, SSH keys, etc.
Once you have finished, you should see this screen of your set-up instance configuration.
Now, once you think the Availability Domain you selected has been freed (it's purely by gut instinct, just trust it), you can click “Launch instance” and create a new Compute instance. If it loads for an unusually long time, that means that the Availability Domain is still not free, and you have to wait a little longer.
Hi! I just got done migrating img.abtmtr.link from Pixelfed to WriteFreely. It wasn't that hard, but I would like to write a blog post about it anyway. It sounds fun.
Why did you do this?
I did this for a few reasons.
I do not like Instagram. Pixelfed was trying to be as much like Instagram as possible.
No single-user instance support. Anyone trying to go to the root would be booted straight to a sign-up screen instead of my profile.
Inconsistent. The Pixelfed UI was “the new one” when signed in, but it would default to “the old one” when you were not, which meant that everyone would have seen the old UI whether they wanted to or not.
Bad at federation mentions. Pixelfed has to know a user exists first (being mentioned by an out-of-instance user) before I could mention them. With WriteFreely, that is done automatically.
Customization. Pixelfed does not like custom fonts. I like Lexend Deca. It does not. WriteFreely does not care.
Therefore, I moved img.abtmtr.link over to WriteFreely. It's been working pretty well!
Are there any bad things that have happened because of this?
I recently moved from karkatdyinginagluetrap.com to moth.zone. This is for a few reasons:
karkatdyinginagluetrap.com was getting lonely, as nobody else who had signed up for it had been active
I signed up to moth.zone for a “second account” but it slowly became my main :P
Honestly? Running your own Mastodon instance is kind of expensive, sometimes.
moth.zone is run by a set of cool friends of mine, so it would be pretty economical to just go on theirs.
Akkoma is better than Mastodon. There, I said it.
I have been happy with being on moth.zone, if not for a few hiccups for some reason. I've been able to retain (most of) my friends (mastodon.art is blocked, and I think that's rightfully so), and I agree completely with the admins. This is the good thing with starting or joining a friends-only or friendly instance – you can communicate with the admins respectfully, because they're basically equals. They're quite literally your friends! Having an ecosystem that can listen to each other and grow and adapt is the best kind of ecosystem. The fact that I can go to @root@moth.zone and just say “hey, actually the mastodon.art admins aren't that bad” and have a good conversation about how I've gone fucking insane that is pretty dope, even if we're literally conversing about an instance moth.zone has blocked.
KKDIAGT
karkatdyinginagluetrap.com is also another good example of a friends-only instance, but it flopped quite depressingly, and I'd like to mention that. Sometimes you do start a instance for your friends and it ends up barren and empty – that's OK! If your friends don't like the Fediverse, that's completely fine. You could also try different instance engines, or just leave your friends alone, invite new ones, or join another friendly instance and participate there (maybe you could even make some new friends)! Whatever you do is fine. You can even get some of your friends onto the new instance (within admin permission) and re-create the old instance within the new one!
Avoiding big instances
One thing I'd avoid are very big instances. Steer clear of instances larger than 100 or so members and/or have open registration, because at that point, the admin has to do a lot of heavy lifting and make sure everyone's playing nicely, which makes the community a lot less tight-knit.
mastodon.* instances, like mastodon.art, mastodon.social, mastodon.online, mstdn.io, mstdn.jp are very good examples of this. These types of instances are known for moderation struggle and user bribing (mastodon.art is quite notable for user bribing when it came to the whole The Bad Space situation).
I'm very happy to say this – I finally finished Celeste. I'm not much of a platformer guy, and I thought I wouldn't enjoy the game, but WOW was I wrong! It was a great time and I loved almost every second of it.
Also – 2DCon is happening in just 2 days! I can't wait for it to actually come. I haven't made a plan, but I hope I can just make one on-the-fly when I get there.
Week 34 of 2023 – mark that down as “pretty great”!
I also got to improve my site, and this has been prep so I could try actually working on the TrollCall frontend. I still need to do that. Update soon?
