Derek Peden

Minnie loves a tennis ball. I’m tempted to setup her own microblog but I fear she would post than I do…

Minnie really, really loves a ball. micro.derekpeden.com

Hang glider forced to cling on for his life after launching unattached. That’s horrifying.

My eyes roll at,

Well, we are where we are…

There must be a better way to articulate yourself.

As someone who’s dipped their toes into indieweb, and doesn’t yet feel that the water has reached my ankles let-alone my knees, I’m open to trying alternative ideas. I’ve spent a bit of time this week looking into Blot, and comparing this to Wordpress, and I have to say I’m unconvinced that it’s worth the transition.

That being said, if I stepped back 12 months and was looking at this a fresh, before setting up Wordpress and purchasing MarsEdit to create and manage the bulk my posts (including this one) then I’d be less sceptical. Blot’s growth is from it’s simplicity, and frictionless posting. But arguably users of MarsEdit already experience such ease, and the power which comes from a seemly direct relationship between the installed app and the blog. There is no dependency on middle-man like Dropbox. The equivalent intermediary in my Wordpress workflow is a local App, not an additional service.

Of course, the downside of Wordpress is its complexity. Comparing Wordpress and Blot is like comparing Microsoft Word and Apple’s TextEdit. Both can be used to create a well formatted rich text document, but Word wants to overload you with additional content, menus, options, and formatting tricks. In the spirit of being all things to all men Wordpress attempts to do the same.

Random selection of pens. Probably utterly offensive to a good portion of this corner of the internet, for which I apologise.

Woof…

Despite the cosmetic benefits running Micro Blog from my own sub domain, I’ve lately been strongly considering switching this off.

The differences are just that. Cosmetic. They are not significant enough to put up with the friction which comes from cross-posting ¹, particularly with images.

What started as (another) justification for my own externally domain (in addition to my main site) now doesn’t seem to suit my use of this blogging & social platform.

Update

Lucy Woodcock writing on Brexit

Nobody voted for a deal that would make people poorer, curtail our rights, and limit opportunities. Nobody voted for a deal that would see our public services worse off and further damage the NHS. Nobody voted for a deal that would see us paying a £50 billion divorce bill and get nothing in return. Simply put, the deal is disastrous, and we’re not buying it.

The madness continues and shows no signs of stopping, despite the obvious political roadblocks and anticipate impact.

Siri really fails when you have no voice, just a croak.

Odd that the first thing I notice on this menu is the rendering of the fonts. Not just the Pork which has been added or changed inserting scanned text, but font rendering across the file.

Still feeling the effects of what was almost an all-nighter. Up working till 3am, then backup at 6am to walk the dog and finish off before the 12pm deadline. But made it. Just.

Politics can be, and often is, downright ugly. And this is just dirty politics of the worst kind.

Wow. Sophia Floersch is very, very lucky to be alive.

BBC reporting Australia’s leading wedding magazines is shutting down after it refused to feature same-sex couples. No great loss then.

Following from my earlier post, I like this blog short post on this issues and the need to protect our planet. This is an important issue and needs much, much more attention.

It’s madness that you can look at train options from, e.g. LNER, and be presented by a Transpennine service. Just another example of why the railways don’t function.

Very clever and emotive advertisement which deserves every one of it’s view counts. We all need act to stop this.

It says a lot when the Brexit deal under discussion is a 500page document but the original Brexit promise was a limited number of vague soundbites and a slogan written on the side of a bus

I’ve completely fallen in love with Plex. I’ve had an account for over a year, but never took full advantage of it until now.

Missed the course in the digital economy, in particular the one that serves the big companies. Only just learned that of my automatic and assumed acceptance of a bid on eBay, rather than my approval of there offer. As I said, this suits eBay if not the seller.

Jo Johnson describes Brexit as an Democratic travesty”. Cornyn: “We can’t stop it, the referendum took place”. It’s pathetic that the only opposition is from with the government.

Allergy Advice

I have to agree with Nilay Patel and my initial impressions, the hardware looks gory and is powerful, but iOS is still iOS.