Touchscreens in cars are dangerous? Oh.

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.

First chance to get a few minutes of play time with the Fujifilm X100F (the X100V is almost impossible to get).

After some tweaking, here are my current lock and home screens. I tried the empty Home Screen approach, but it’s just not for me.

My son saved up enough money to get a Nintendo Switch, and it’s set to arrive today. He woke up early and got dressed so he could meet the UPS man outside when it arrives. I think he’s excited.

Anyone have a good suggestion for reasonably priced desktop speakers for a Mac Mini that work with the Apple keyboard volume buttons?

This is hard to process. Praying he’s ok. This stuff isn’t supposed to happen in sports.

Shot in the dark here. Anyone looking to sell a Fujifilm X100V or Ricoh GR III?

Annual reminder that your in-laws WiFi password is taped to the bottom of their modem/router combo.

I’m going to push this until the end of the year, because it’s a crazy deal. Join OMG.lol for $5/yr (no autopay required). Price goes up to $20/yr Jan 1. Even if you’re unsure if you’ll use it, sign up for it to get that price. Features a blog, pastebin, landing page, & way more.

After a lot of tinkering, I think I’ve managed to create a Drafts/Shortcuts combination that allows me to post everything to Micro.blog from directly within Drafts (including posts with titles, posts without titles, images, and link posts). On top of that, it all works on Mac and iOS.

I was 0-2 on tonight’s @ivory@tapbots.social alpha invite party. The struggle is real.

A Few Thoughts on My Blogging and Social Media Setup

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!

  1. Micro.blog’s built in Mastodon support can do this, and there are third party services (Bridgy, etc) that attempt it. But, in my experience, they are limited at best. ↩︎

I’m surprised at the amount of companies telling you “refund is being processed” and “no need to ship it back.” I understand the logic, but it seems that opens the door for some easy theft. So far, I’ve seen it from Amazon and Target.

If you haven’t signed up for OMG.lol, what exactly are you waiting for? I mean, $5/year is more than worth it!

Mini golf time with the family. Brigsby (6) has been asking to go for a while, and we finally found the time to play a round!

Scientists Achieve Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough With Blast of 192 Lasers

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.

It took a while to update every Apple device I have, but I managed to get through it and enable Advanced Data Protection without issue.

How physics and a video game trick forever changed the NASCAR Championships

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.

What is your code editor of choice? I’ve been a BBEdit fan for ages.

You know how movies sometimes have that intimate “downtown” area? We are fortunate to live 1 block from that type of place (still only 15 minutes from a bigger city). Tomorrow is the annual close-the-streets small town Christmas party. Add a love story and it’s a Hallmark movie.