Matt Langford

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