Matt Langford

Here’s a quick rundown of the Safari Extensions I keep enabled on my devices (iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS).

Wipr

For ad blocking, many people go with 1Blocker, but I prefer Wipr. It’s a no nonsense, install it, and forget it app. 1Blocker is a fantastic app that allows almost limitless customizations and settings. Wipr is a fantastic app that has no customizations or settings. There’s a place for both, but Wipr wins for me.

Baking Soda and Vinegar

Baking Soda and Vinegar are made by the same developer. Together, they change almost every video embed across the internet to use your device’s native video player. This means things like Picture-in-Picture are always available.

Stop the Madness

Stop the Madness essentially fixes broken sites and common annoyances across the internet. See full links instead of shortened URLs, hide banners on common sites, enables autocomplete on sites that have it turned off, stop link trackers, stop videos from auto-playing, and so much more. You can choose settings globally or per site.

There are other apps on my devices that have extensions available, but I have all of those disabled. In addition to Wipr, I use a paid NextDNS account for ad blocking and privacy.

I decided to jump on the trend of listing places visited. For my list, I’m limiting it to locations where I spent meaningful time (ex. no airport only stops).

Countries

• United States of America 🇺🇸
• Mexico 🇲🇽
• El Salvador 🇸🇻
• Honduras 🇭🇳
• Jamaica 🇯🇲
• Cayman Islands 🇰🇾
• Lithuania 🇱🇹
• Latvia 🇱🇻
• Belarus 🇧🇾

States within the USA

• Louisiana
• Texas
• Mississippi
• Alabama
• Florida
• Missouri
• Arkansas
• Oklahoma
• Colorado
• Utah
• Arizona
• Nevada
• California
• Georgia
• Tennessee
• Kentucky
• South Carolina
• North Carolina
• Wisconsin
• New York
• Massachusetts
• Maryland
• Virginia
• Hawaii
• Illinois
• Kentucky
• Washington D.C. (not a state)

I’ve spent way more time than I care to admit in Frankfurt, Germany (Interpol mixup, for real); London, England; and Seattle, Washington (USA). But they were all limited to airport adventures.

Recently, I’ve been working on a new theme for Micro.blog for my personal use. Others have expressed interest in using it on their site, so I decided to make it available for anyone. I hope you enjoy the Tiny Theme.

Overview

My goal in making the theme was for it to be as functional as possible while also being lightweight and blazing fast. It doesn’t include any added scripts or custom fonts. On the CSS side, it’s fully responsive without size related media queries. In fact, the only media query used is for dark mode.

Tweaking the Design

You can easily tweak elements of the design by going to the Micro.blog Dashboard and navigating to Design → Edit CSS.

• Use CSS variables to make wholesale changes to the colors used throughout the site.
• Change the sizing of the entire site simply by changing the body font-size. Everything automatically adjusts to fit your preferred font-size.
• Easily hide categories from single posts or the bio section in the header.
• And infinitely more possibilites!

Compatibility

• Uses Micro.blog’s built-in “Edit Footer” feature (Design → Edit Footer)
• Works with @sod’s Conversation on Micro.Blog plugin
• Works with @sod’s Reply by Email plugin
• Includes tweaks for @manton’s Search page plugin
• Includes tweaks for the default Photo page feature
• Includes custom styling for comments (enable on the Design page)
• Includes custom styling for the replies page (enable in Pages)
• Includes custom styling for the archive page (enable in Pages)

Support

If you have any problems with the Tiny Theme for Micro.blog, you can contact me for help. If you’re the Github type, you can also report stuff on the repo.

Get it now

You can install the theme directly from the Micro.blog plug-ins page (login required).

If you decide to install it on your blog, let me know in the comments.

Now, new evidence shows those touchscreens are far less safe and efficient than the old school alternative, according to the findings of Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare.

I’m amazed that manufacturers haven’t realized and acted on this. Anyone who has driven any vehicle that’s mostly touch screen knows it.

Even before the Elon-Runs-Twitter era, I was starting the process of creating a more seamless and less time consuming online strategy. I knew I wanted to keep my blog. I knew I wanted to limit my social media exposure without completely leaving it behind.

The first steps were easy:

• Delete my Facebook profile along with the Facebook and Messenger apps
• Make my Instagram account read-only, private, and largely inactive

But What About Blogging?

I wanted a place to put my thoughts and writings, even if it didn’t get as much attention as it would’ve in other places. And I wanted to own it.

I’ve tried just about every blogging platform and method out there, so I’m familiar with the options. I was an orignal Micro.blog kickstarter backer, so I decided to return. I set everything up and began blogging again.

I use MarsEdit on Mac and the official Micro.blog app on iOS (although Gluon has seen some use lately).

Twitter and Mastodon

Micro.blog has solid cross-posting features that allows me to send all posts to a variety of places. For me, that meant Twitter and Mastodon.

So my next steps were simple:

• Setup crossposting to Twitter through Micro.blog
• Setup crossposting to Mastodon thorugh Micro.blog

I’ve been largely happy with this setup. I do have some wishes (consolidating replies as comments on my blog, for example¹).

What about Micro.blog’s Mastodon Support?

Micro.blog does offer limited support for Mastodon directly. This is different that cross posting. What happens is Micro.blog creates a username for you without an actual Mastodon Instance. This means that Mastodon users can follow your blog within their Mastodon app/instance without issue, but you can not do much more from your side.

If they reply to your post, it’ll show up as a comment on your blog. That’s awesome! You can reply back to them from within Micro.blog (although it’s a little buggy), and they’ll see it. Again, awesome. However, there is no instance for you to login and manage the specifics of this account. This is great if you want to make your information readily available to Mastodon users, but don’t want to manage your own profile/account.

In my case, I have enjoyed having a separate Mastodon account that can crosspost from my blog and allow me access to the full Mastodon experience.

Note: You can follow Mastodon users from within the Micro.blog apps. While it works well, I would say it’s for low volume consumption. If you want to follow a significant amount of people, similar to Twitter, it’s not a viable solution.

Preferred Mastodon Instance

I started out at mastodon.social. Next, I setup my own private instance and quickly realized I didn’t need the extra work. After some research and suggestions form others, I decided to move to one of the only instances I could find that includes a monetization plan. Social.lol, powered by OMG.lol. Now’s a good time to take a minute and follow me on Mastodon.

I’m currently using a few beta apps for Mastodon, but am most excited about Ivory.

Replacing Instagram

I’ve gone back and forth about whether I want to truly replace Instagram. After all, I can simply post photos to my blog. I’ve experimented with Glass, but that’s not exactly what I want. Pixelfed has a different approach that seems intriguing, but I don’t see myself posting there often as of now.

For now, I’m just leaving this open.

The Wrap Up

• I have a blog, powered by Micro.blog ($5/mo)
• It crossposts to Twitter (where I can fully interact)
• It also crossposts to Mastodon (where I can fully interact)

That’s it!

That changed at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 when 192 giant lasers at the laboratory’s National Ignition Facility blasted a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond.

This is over-my-head for the most part, but when a paragaph includes phrases like “192 giant lasers” and “frozen nubbin,” you have to share it.

Using physics, Ross Chastain floored it during the final turn, scraping the wall and passing 5 cars to advance to the NASCAR championship.

I’m not a Nascar fan, but I was drawn in by what happened here.

If you’re using Micro.blog and the accompanying Bookshelves feature, you can show a book (or selection of books) on any page of your site. Use the code below and follow the directions to get started. See my home page for a live example.

Have questions? Let me know in the comments.

1. Copy and paste it into your theme
2. Change currentlyreading to the name of your selected bookshelf
3. Style using css to your heart’s content