My elderly iMac died. I didn’t use it much anymore, but it was holding down the fort in my seldom used home office controlling the elderly printer and scanner, while providing me internet access when I’m in the room. I put my Macbook Pro in the office as a temporary fix, but now I have need of it.

All this is to say, I should replace the dead iMac with something inexpensive. I think I will buy a cheap laptop for this instead of a desktop so I don’t have to spring for a screen and keyboard and mouse. The question then is: What OS should this new laptop be? Can I get something for under $400?

macOS: Apple makes a great laptop and a great OS. I have moved away from it due a little bit to price but also because of Apple’s walled garden. To be fair, the walls are far lower in the macOS garden than they are in iOS. Still I already have a good Mac laptop so I will give give macOS a skip this round.

Windows 10: I know very little about it and have never used it. Which makes me want to try it. By far the best bang for the buck is in the Windows 10 laptop market. With free Prime shipping on Amazon I can stay well under my miserly $400 budget. Quality is always suspect at this price. I’ve eliminated HP products from consideration because I’m still in a snit over what HP did to webOS It would be kinda cool to have 3 laptops each with one of the three major operating systems on it. My worry with Windows 10 is that the OS will be too “needy” constantly needing my attention for long updates. This can be annoying when a computer sits unused for a couple of months and then requires massive updates before use. I’m at a point in my life where I want to keep things simple, easy, fuss free and Windows has never been that.

Linux Laptop: A good, new, top shelf Linux laptop is not cheap. You can easily get up into Macbook prices. I know, I have one, I like it but it was not cheap. There are, however reputable companies that buy up overstock name brand Win. laptops, erase Windows and install Linux and then resell them. I’ve had good experience with Linucity.com and I can get a bare bones Linux laptop from them with the newest Ubuntu LTS version installed and tested for just under $400. Ubuntu has their share of updates but I’m guessing nowhere near as many or as big as some of the Win 10 updates I have heard about. Linux can be a bit boring, it does not have all the flash-bang and bright features one expects from the commercial desktop OS’s, but there is something to be said for being quietly competent and rock solid stable.

So there it is: narrowed down to cheap Windows or cheap Linux in a laptop that won’t be used that often. I’m leaning towards the Linux even though the hardware is less and the price slightly higher just because of ease of use.

PS: It occurs to me I need to field test my Mac laptop’s battery to see if it is healthy and how long it lasts since it’s been awhile. If the Mac’s battery is dying then it will replace the iMac at the desk and I’ll get a more expensive, and smaller, Linux laptop than outlined above to replace it.

My elderly iMac died. I didn’t use it much anymore, but it was holding down the fort in my seldom used home office controlling the elderly printer and scanner, while providing me internet access when I’m in the room. I put my Macbook Pro in the office as a temporary fix, but now I have need of it.

All this is to say, I should replace the dead iMac with something inexpensive. I think I will buy a cheap laptop for this instead of a desktop so I don’t have to spring for a screen and keyboard and mouse. The question then is: What OS should this new laptop be? Can I get something for under $400?

macOS: Apple makes a great laptop and a great OS. I have moved away from it due a little bit to price but also because of Apple’s walled garden. To be fair, the walls are far lower in the macOS garden than they are in iOS. Still I already have a good Mac laptop so I will give give macOS a skip this round.

Windows 10: I know very little about it and have never used it. Which makes me want to try it. By far the best bang for the buck is in the Windows 10 laptop market. With free Prime shipping on Amazon I can stay well under my miserly $400 budget. Quality is always suspect at this price. I’ve eliminated HP products from consideration because I’m still in a snit over what HP did to webOS It would be kinda cool to have 3 laptops each with one of the three major operating systems on it. My worry with Windows 10 is that the OS will be too “needy” constantly needing my attention for long updates. This can be annoying when a computer sits unused for a couple of months and then requires massive updates before use. I’m at a point in my life where I want to keep things simple, easy, fuss free and Windows has never been that.

Linux Laptop: A good, new, top shelf Linux laptop is not cheap. You can easily get up into Macbook prices. I know, I have one, I like it but it was not cheap. There are, however reputable companies that buy up overstock name brand Win. laptops, erase Windows and install Linux and then resell them. I’ve had good experience with Linucity.com and I can get a bare bones Linux laptop from them with the newest Ubuntu LTS version installed and tested for just under $400. Ubuntu has their share of updates but I’m guessing nowhere near as many or as big as some of the Win 10 updates I have heard about. Linux can be a bit boring, it does not have all the flash-bang and bright features one expects from the commercial desktop OS’s, but there is something to be said for being quietly competent and rock solid stable.

So there it is: narrowed down to cheap Windows or cheap Linux in a laptop that won’t be used that often. I’m leaning towards the Linux even though the hardware is less and the price slightly higher just because of ease of use.

PS: It occurs to me I need to field test my Mac laptop’s battery to see if it is healthy and how long it lasts since it’s been awhile. If the Mac’s battery is dying then it will replace the iMac at the desk and I’ll get a more expensive, and smaller, Linux laptop than outlined above to replace it.

We are facing something unprecedented in America, premeditated mass murders plotted out by teenagers against other teenagers and teachers. Their goals seem to be attention, fame and ultimately suicide.  Why?

There is something wrong with the cultural cohesion of our country.  We now have kids, researching past school mass murders to find out how they were done but also to plan how to commit even more spectacular shootings.  There is something narcissistic and sick about that.

But we live in a society, with a current generation, where all displays have to be over-the-top: Hands Across America, Million person Marches, there must be a big showy display for every cause.  Religion or lack thereof is worn on people’s shoulder instead of being private.  Quiet, humble acts of charity, stoic fights for good causes are out.  Bling is in.  I’ll grant that most of the causes are worthy, but the narcissistic showiness as a norm is new when compared to past generations.  Past generations were more stoic.  This is part of the environment  that these kids are learning in, becoming acculturated in.

Media plays a role.  Not so long ago, newspaper stories had datelines, because the article was about something that happened days ago.  It was already days old, no immediacy.  Today we have saturation coverage within minutes of an event.  And when the media is done with the facts they still have live air time to fill so they dwell upon the drama, the horror the angst and the pathos.  They wallow in it, they immerse us in it, not for the public good, but for ratings, sales and profits.

Then social media and social networks take it up, howling to silos of yes men followers, stirring themselves into a frenzied mob of righteous indignation devoid of reason. Because it makes us feel good. Because this too is narcissistic. And feeling good is a drug.

And yet nobody wants to face the underlying problems. Because in facing the problem we can’t shift the blame off on others.

This is part of it. We are not teaching our kids the right things. Most things are learned not inherited and you cannot take it for granted that kids will just know right from wrong, or how to solve problems.

When I was a kid, adults all read from the same playbook. Adult authority was not to be questioned or challenged. If a neighbor or teacher caught you being bad, they dressed you down right then and there. And you took it, because the last thing you wanted was for them to report it to your parents because then the punishment got real. If you smarted off to the neighbor punishment got doubled and you were marched down there to apologize and work off any damage. Adults all backed each other up. Yes it was a conspiracy. It worked. Because, as I look back on it, most all those adults were also looking out for our own best interest. It didn’t always seem so at the time. They were teaching us right from wrong and what was acceptable behavior and what was not. How to respect others and other people’s property and ourselves. The lessons were hard, because all kids are brain damaged. :) And yes, sometimes those adults made mistakes, but they were honest mistakes.

Life isn’t always fair. It’s an important lesson, best learned early on. Once when I was bemoaning this after being punished for something I didn’t personally do, my father sat me down, “Life isn’t always fair. Sometimes the entire squad gets punished for the actions of a few. You were in the area and that is enough. You take your punishment like a man, Learn from it and move on.”

There is something wrong, deeply wrong with our social fabric, when you have kids PLANNING, how to kill other kids. This is more than just momentary rage, these kids are researching past mass murders and then planning, preparing, building things, to top past school shootings. We can remove some of the tools, but we still have not answered the question of what is so missing in their lives that they would resort to heinous crimes against society on their way to ending their own lives?

People on the religious right, keep saying that this is because we have taken religion out of the schools.  Religion has never been all that deep in the public schools.  It can’t be all on the schools shoulders.  That is a cop-out.  Learning begins in the home. Parents are the single biggest influence of child behavior during their formative years, and I suggest later years too.  Learning how to conduct oneself does not have to be in religious terms: duty, honor, courtesy, manners, societal obligation, kindness, right and wrong, citizenship, love, morals, tolerance, humility, limits and empathy, these are all learned things - things that we are not teaching our young.  It begins in the home. Squirm parents, squirm.

Parents are primary, but we all play a role. Bullying, plays a role.  So does indifference.  To be indifferent, to ignore someone else is also a form of cruelty.

I’m going to paraphrase this quote I heard over 35 years ago because I can’t track down the exact wording or source.

“You may say, ‘but I am not my brother’s keeper.‘  That may be true, but in many large ways and small ways, you are your brother’s - maker.”

To say that the problem is just guns, bombs, violent games, psychotropic drugs, depression, mental illness any ONE thing is to attempt to find a quick fix, avoid the underlying problem and make us feel better.  The fix is like the fix for racism, it will take a long time, it will be generational, it will be hard  But just because it isn’t quick, does not mean it should not be done.  We have failed as parents, not all of us, but enough of us have failed so that it becomes a threat to us all.  Government, parents, teachers, adults, media must all start speaking with one voice and support each other in this: that this behavior is unacceptable, that violence does not solve the problems of life, that shooters are not to be admired but considered for what they are - losers.

Enough for now. More in future posts.

News to me. There is a new privacy search engine in town using an old name.

HotBot is back and this time they are getting into the privacy respecting search niche. I know nothing about them, where they get their feed or who owns them, and information on the website is non-existant. In my very breif test their results pages were very clean and ad free. No clutter.

HotBot joins Duckduckgo and Startpage in the privacy respecting seach engine category. Having choices is good.

This certainly took me by surprise.

Hat tip to: Aaron Wall

News to me. There is a new privacy search engine in town using an old name.

HotBot is back and this time they are getting into the privacy respecting search niche. I know nothing about them, where they get their feed or who owns them, and information on the website is non-existant. In my very breif test their results pages were very clean and ad free. No clutter.

HotBot joins Duckduckgo and Startpage in the privacy respecting seach engine category. Having choices is good.

This certainly took me by surprise.

Hat tip to: Aaron Wall

Ebook sales by traditional publishers are down by all reports. Yet I think publishers have only themselves to blame. This:

“When I see an ebook that sells for twice the price of the paperback version, either someone has lost their mind, is asleep at the wheel, or is deliberately steering the ship towards an iceberg,”

I see this pricing problem all the time on Amazon and it is hard to justify the higher price for the ebook when the new print book is either lower or the same price as the ebook, not to mention that a used copy might go for cents on the dollar just one click away. Yet indie published ebooks sales are growing.

Traditional publishers’ ebook sales drop as indie authors and Amazon take off – GeekWire www.geekwire.com/2018/trad…

Ebook sales by traditional publishers are down by all reports. Yet I think publishers have only themselves to blame. This:

“When I see an ebook that sells for twice the price of the paperback version, either someone has lost their mind, is asleep at the wheel, or is deliberately steering the ship towards an iceberg,”

I see this pricing problem all the time on Amazon and it is hard to justify the higher price for the ebook when the new print book is either lower or the same price as the ebook, not to mention that a used copy might go for cents on the dollar just one click away. Yet indie published ebooks sales are growing.

Traditional publishers’ ebook sales drop as indie authors and Amazon take off – GeekWire www.geekwire.com/2018/trad…

I am going to predict that the gun banning crowd will stay muted on this tragic indecent, because the facts do not fit their narrative.

1. The shooter used a revolver and a shotgun.  No assault rifle, no high capacity magazines to complain about.  The guns belonged to the shooter’s father and were legally owned.  The assault weapons banners know if they try and ban revolvers and shotguns their support will evaporate.
2. Somehow pipe bombs were involved.  I don’t think any went off, and for that I’m thankful.  But I might take a moment to point out that bombs are illegal, banned.  That worked so well didn’t it?

Why are these shooters so willing to gun down other human beings at all let alone a school full of kids?  Were they raised wrong by their parents?  Were they taught right from wrong?  Obviously something is wrong here.  Have we raised a whole generation of psychopaths?  Why are they willing to murder?

It seems obvious to me that one thread in these shootings is the shooter wants their moment of fame.  Live or die, they want attention.  Is our media complicit in this?  Considering, the weeks of blanket coverage and media saturation of the Parkland, Florida shootings should we be surprised that some kid copycats a shooting?  Can the media show a little restraint?

I am equally sure that there is no one simple answer to this problem.  Anyone that says, banning guns will take care of the problem is lying to you.

What is it that is setting these kids off, or have they always been out there, latent mass murderers, that never heard about other mass murders in real time, didn’t have saturation hand wringing, so they never acted out?  Have we raised a generation of emotional “hot house flowers” too delicate to take the normal bruises and dents that the real world inflicts?

Feel free to comment below. Please keep it civil.

via Santa Fe school shooting: 10 dead and 10 wounded in Texas - BBC News

People, nations sometimes go through a period of self doubt and angst.  As I read the headlines from the UK it seems like Britain is going through one of these periods of self-examination, trying to find their place in the world and with their neighbors, terrorist attacks, chemical weapon attacks, financial worries - the whole parade of horribles both real and imagined.

But know this.  Britain still has it when it comes to first rate medicine and science.  The fact that the Skripal’s and the policeman survived is a testament to that.  I am sure they had to bring in specialists from all over the UK to treat these people, but the point is you had the highly skilled help right at home.

The same goes for the scientists and technicians, that identified the nerve agent so quickly and accurately.  The same for the field investigators who reconstructed the Skripal’s movements and identified how they were contaminated.

Don’t be fooled.  There are very few countries, even in the West, that can do all that themselves.  You still have it.

via Sergei Skripal discharged from Salisbury hospital | UK news | The Guardian

Why is the United States Army still in Iraq in 2018?

Because about a dozen Islamic State terrorists “invaded” in a used pickup truck and the Iraqi Army, all 100,000 plus strong ran away back to Baghdad.

And I wish I were joking.

The true numbers are ISIS (ISIL) probably had a couple of thousand full time fighters.  And the entire Iraqi Army ran away.

Sure the ISIS numbers swelled after they invaded but there were not that many at the start.

I will say this many times: Iraq is not a nation state.  Iraq makes no sense as a country.  It should be at least 3 countries.  Iraq is just lines on a map created by European imperial powers over a century ago.  Those borders cut right through ethnic, cultural and sectarian religious groups. Trying to keep Iraq together is a waste of lives and money.  Iraq should be left alone to settle the issue for themselves.  It would probably mean civil war but that is their problem not ours.  Most borders are hammered out by conflict over centuries, it is a nasty truth that most people don’t want to face up to.

America and Europeans cannot build a nation for Iraq.  Nation building by outsiders does not work.  The sooner America and Europe realize this the better.

I had an additional idea after my post on weblog directoriesand blog discovery. It’s bit like a link blog.

One could create a small directory of weblogs using, for example, Wordpress:

1. Each post is about one blog. Title = Name of Blog, Body of post = description of blog and link. Categories = (optional) broad, shallow depth, Tags = very important, this is where you get down to the fine grain of what subjects the blogger frequently posts about.
2. Primary emphisis on the site search function of the blog as the main discovery tool, Secondary ways to explore and find blogs would be Tag Cloud and/or Categories.

Pros:

Fast startup. no special directory software to buy, install and learn how to use.

Anyone can create a curated directory of blogs they like. Unlike a blogroll the blog based directory would be a place to list: a common canon of blogs, blogs you don’t read daily but that you understand have value.

Search function on hosted wordpress.org, wordpress.com or even blogger.com blog might be better than the search function on many directory scripts.

Cons:

Scale. Turning a weblog into a directory will not scale as well as a real directory script. There is a lot more to maintaining a directory than just creating it, blogs go dead or are abandoned by their owners (churn) so over time it would be hard to manually clear out the dead wood of dead URL’s. I’m not sure how many listings-as-posts one individual could maintain nor do I know the limits of the blog script’s search function. My shoot from the hip guess is you could maintain about 200 listings doing it part time.

Having blog owners add their URL would be cumbersome without a Submit function.

Cumbersome interface. One is pushing a blog to do a directories job. We are improvising here. So will an average visitor know what to do? Will they know to use the search?

All that being said, everything is off the top of my head, but I think it can work. I like the idea that anyone can do it and I think it would be easier to manage than a static webpage filled with a hundred blog links. I think it warrants a proof of concept, and I have an old free hosted blog with ads, that I can wipe the content of and repurpose as a test. I might try that.

If you have read this far and want to try this feel free. Don’t wait for me. Where to find listings? Start with your blogroll and blogs listed in your RSS feed reader. Please let me know how you get along.

Any comments, questions, observations? Am I totally daft? Let me know.

I had an additional idea after my post on weblog directoriesand blog discovery. It’s bit like a link blog.

One could create a small directory of weblogs using, for example, Wordpress:

1. Each post is about one blog. Title = Name of Blog, Body of post = description of blog and link. Categories = (optional) broad, shallow depth, Tags = very important, this is where you get down to the fine grain of what subjects the blogger frequently posts about.
2. Primary emphisis on the site search function of the blog as the main discovery tool, Secondary ways to explore and find blogs would be Tag Cloud and/or Categories.

Pros:

Fast startup. no special directory software to buy, install and learn how to use.

Anyone can create a curated directory of blogs they like. Unlike a blogroll the blog based directory would be a place to list: a common canon of blogs, blogs you don’t read daily but that you understand have value.

Search function on hosted wordpress.org, wordpress.com or even blogger.com blog might be better than the search function on many directory scripts.

Cons:

Scale. Turning a weblog into a directory will not scale as well as a real directory script. There is a lot more to maintaining a directory than just creating it, blogs go dead or are abandoned by their owners (churn) so over time it would be hard to manually clear out the dead wood of dead URL’s. I’m not sure how many listings-as-posts one individual could maintain nor do I know the limits of the blog script’s search function. My shoot from the hip guess is you could maintain about 200 listings doing it part time.

Having blog owners add their URL would be cumbersome without a Submit function.

Cumbersome interface. One is pushing a blog to do a directories job. We are improvising here. So will an average visitor know what to do? Will they know to use the search?

All that being said, everything is off the top of my head, but I think it can work. I like the idea that anyone can do it and I think it would be easier to manage than a static webpage filled with a hundred blog links. I think it warrants a proof of concept, and I have an old free hosted blog with ads, that I can wipe the content of and repurpose as a test. I might try that.

If you have read this far and want to try this feel free. Don’t wait for me. Where to find listings? Start with your blogroll and blogs listed in your RSS feed reader. Please let me know how you get along.

Any comments, questions, observations? Am I totally daft? Let me know.

Back when blogging first took off, there soon followed a host of discovery tools: blog directories, RSS directories, blog search engines. All of those have since died. However, if indie blogging is to take off again, discovering bloggers, especially new voices remains a problem.

Is it time for new indieweb blog directories?

Long term, directories won’t scale, but they are a cheap, low tech stop gap until some programmer can figure out a better solution or a better type of directory. But it seems to me that this is one niche in navigating the web that the big search engines cannot fill. There is a need.

There is the problem of trying to come up with a category taxonomy for such a directory since a large proportion of blogs are about anything and everything. It can be done but the categories need to be broad and taxonomy shallow. Even so, said directory would have to rely more on the search feature and tags than drilling down through categories.

Also, define “blog”. Lots of commercial magazine websites are really just big professional blogs. Where is the dividing line between the commercial and the non-commercial?

How would such a directory enlist discovery of new voices? (This depends a lot on the directory script.)

I’m just thinking out loud. Anybody have thoughts?

Like everyone interested in world affairs I have been reading about the negotiations for Britain leaving the European Union with some interest.  I think I should get this out of the way now: I will not be commenting on Brexit here or on social networks.

Why?  Because I am an American and this is a very complex thing that only the British can decide and we ought to leave them to it.  Leave or stay, I wish Britain only good things and I am sure they will do just fine.

Once, Brexit is a done deal I will probably comment, but not now.

I do have strong opinions on the EU and the Euro currency and I will eventually get around to commenting about them, all in due time.

I no hable Brexit.

I was remembering when Google killed Geocities in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs for short). Geocites and other pre-Google webmasters all linked freely to other websites that they liked and recommended, because early search engines were terrible at finding anything. So we all “surfed the Web” by finding a website, spend some time there and then find the links page and surf off to somewhere else. It’s a lot like surfing blogrolls.

Google ranked sites based upon the linking structure of the Web (PageRank), and the many thousands of good websites on Geocites, Tripod and other free hosts had a very tight and well established network of linking to each other for “surfing” long before Google came around, which made them rank well in Google. Too well.

That was fine until corporations and commercial interests started moving in. Then you had, for example, Paramount’s official Star Trek site competing for ranking in the SERPs against a bunch of Geocities type free fan sites. That would never do. Corporate types and SEO’s started complaining. Google looked at their business plan and realized that Geocites webmaster’s were never going to pay for advertising on Google.

Therefore, Geocities had to go.

Google cooked up a filter that basically buried all free hosted sites so deep in the search results that they might as well not exist. The idea that PageRank equals quality was/is a myth. It didn’t matter how good the website was or how many links a Geocities site had, it was dead to Google. This was like a coup d’etat, in favor of commercial control of the Web.

And that was a shame, because those old free hosted sites were the “street fair” of the Web. They made the Web fun to explore. They added whimsey as well as a lot of knowledge. The street fair died, the knowledge became siloed into Wikipedia and the Web was changed forever. It became a place to just sell things or advertise as we see today.

Postscript: To be fair, it wasn’t just Google that killed Geocites. The free hosted sites had a bad business plan from the beginning - advertising banner supported. It was doomed from the start. Google just made it final.

I was remembering when Google killed Geocities in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs for short). Geocites and other pre-Google webmasters all linked freely to other websites that they liked and recommended, because early search engines were terrible at finding anything. So we all “surfed the Web” by finding a website, spend some time there and then find the links page and surf off to somewhere else. It’s a lot like surfing blogrolls.

Google ranked sites based upon the linking structure of the Web (PageRank), and the many thousands of good websites on Geocites, Tripod and other free hosts had a very tight and well established network of linking to each other for “surfing” long before Google came around, which made them rank well in Google. Too well.

That was fine until corporations and commercial interests started moving in. Then you had, for example, Paramount’s official Star Trek site competing for ranking in the SERPs against a bunch of Geocities type free fan sites. That would never do. Corporate types and SEO’s started complaining. Google looked at their business plan and realized that Geocites webmaster’s were never going to pay for advertising on Google.

Therefore, Geocities had to go.

Google cooked up a filter that basically buried all free hosted sites so deep in the search results that they might as well not exist. The idea that PageRank equals quality was/is a myth. It didn’t matter how good the website was or how many links a Geocities site had, it was dead to Google. This was like a coup d’etat, in favor of commercial control of the Web.

And that was a shame, because those old free hosted sites were the “street fair” of the Web. They made the Web fun to explore. They added whimsey as well as a lot of knowledge. The street fair died, the knowledge became siloed into Wikipedia and the Web was changed forever. It became a place to just sell things or advertise as we see today.

Postscript: To be fair, it wasn’t just Google that killed Geocites. The free hosted sites had a bad business plan from the beginning - advertising banner supported. It was doomed from the start. Google just made it final.

This question has been on my mind for a long time since students from the Parkland school shooting started traveling all over the country making appearances.  Who is footing the bill for all this travel?

Travel is expensive after all and these are publicity appearances when you come right down to it.  Is it the students’ themselves, parents, local fund raising or an outside third party?  Not that I mind but, full disclosure is important, especially if it is an outside third party.

Let me be clear, those students have a right to free speech and they are doing nothing wrong and they should not be interfered with, but the old adage of “follow the money” still applies.  Just saying.

I know I’m in deep do-do with this post right from the start, because I don’t even know the right terminology to use for people who cross dress.  But tough, one can only soldier on.

The question that has everyone in hysterics is what public bathroom should people who cross dress use and what is government doing about it?

Does it really matter that much?

I mean as long as everyone is behaving themselves what’s the big deal?  Restrooms have stalls which afford privacy and if everyone will just mind their own business eventually it will not be a big deal.

I have two solutions, in no particular order:

1. Use the restroom that matches the clothing the person is wearing.  If you are dressed as a woman, use the Ladies Room, etc.
2. Use whatever rest room you feel safest in.

Most of all, I think there are far more important problems facing the nation and the world than this issue.  I think a lot of politicians and the media want to distract you with this while they loot the Treasury.

People have it in their minds that they are in some sort of danger.  Honestly, the cross dresser who has to use a public rest room is probably scared to death of YOU.  Just be kind, tolerant, give them their space, stay calm and carry on.

I’m slowly plotting my migration and consolidation of old blogs.

1. I plan to move my old posts off my old main blog on Blogger to this blog on Microblog. It appears I will have to first move the posts from Blogger to Wordpress then from Wordpress to Microblog as there is no direct Blogger to Microblog importer. I can do that on some rainy afternoon.

2. I have two ancient Blogger blogs on ebooks and ebook self publishing. These are from the early days about how to read ebooks on Palm Pilots, esoteric early dedicated ereaders, sync with desktop computers, and the early days of indie self publishing, all very arcane knowledage from the dawn of ebooks. None of it has any value today other than as archives to a forgotten moment in electronic publishing history. I hate to delete it so I think I will just continue to store it on Blogger’s servers.

3. Several odd little blogs I started and then abandoned on Wordpress. Must review and see if any of that is worth migrating to Microblog.

4. Must decide what to do with another domain variant of my name which currently being used for an old blog. A. Build static site with a bio and contact info? Why? I can do that here on my About page on Microblog. It’s not like I’m building a brand, around my name. B. Park it. No cost. I could use it when I decide to switch to paid email hosting in the future. (I have this feeling Hotmail/Outlook, and Gmail may not remain tenable forever. Yahoo mail has already gone down the tubes.) In other words it’s just a matter of time before I have to switch to paid email hosting on my own domain. Hm.

I’m slowly plotting my migration and consolidation of old blogs.

1. I plan to move my old posts off my old main blog on Blogger to this blog on Microblog. It appears I will have to first move the posts from Blogger to Wordpress then from Wordpress to Microblog as there is no direct Blogger to Microblog importer. I can do that on some rainy afternoon.

2. I have two ancient Blogger blogs on ebooks and ebook self publishing. These are from the early days about how to read ebooks on Palm Pilots, esoteric early dedicated ereaders, sync with desktop computers, and the early days of indie self publishing, all very arcane knowledage from the dawn of ebooks. None of it has any value today other than as archives to a forgotten moment in electronic publishing history. I hate to delete it so I think I will just continue to store it on Blogger’s servers.

3. Several odd little blogs I started and then abandoned on Wordpress. Must review and see if any of that is worth migrating to Microblog.

4. Must decide what to do with another domain variant of my name which currently being used for an old blog. A. Build static site with a bio and contact info? Why? I can do that here on my About page on Microblog. It’s not like I’m building a brand, around my name. B. Park it. No cost. I could use it when I decide to switch to paid email hosting in the future. (I have this feeling Hotmail/Outlook, and Gmail may not remain tenable forever. Yahoo mail has already gone down the tubes.) In other words it’s just a matter of time before I have to switch to paid email hosting on my own domain. Hm.

Site search on a blog: The more content, the more posts and comments, the more you need site search. Especially if you do not have subject categories or tag clouds.

There are two types of site search: 1. Internal and 2. External

1. Internal: Some blog platform/CMS software had their own built in site search. These can be a mixed bag for relevent results, but they provide coverage right away.

2. External: Like a site search box from Google, Bing or some other search engine, can be better for some blogs, especially very popular blogs. But if your blog is just starting out, it might take awhile, even months, for the search engine’s spider to index every page on your blog. And then the search engine may not recrawl very often to index new posts. This will change gradually, time, popularity, link backs and frequency of posting, post length all factor into how frequently a search engine re-spiders a blog. So on a blog just starting out there may be gaps.

New blogs might want to go with the Internal search option early on and add the external search later. If your blog platform does not provide Internal site search then add an external search box straight off. Do your best for your readers.

Google still appears to provide free site search. Duckduckgo also has site search. Yandex also offers a free site search option.

This article brings out so many good points.

1. You really can’t quit Facebook unless you (and hopefully your friends) have someplace to go.

2. Future social networks need to be decentralized yet able to communicate with each other. I like this about Mastodon and Friendica. I’m not sure if Micro.blog is moving towards that or not. You need to be able to take your data from one social network to another if you decide to leave.

3. A network needs to be free of advertising and commercial interests, so there is no incentive to mine your data and personal information.

www.npr.org/sections/…

The thing is that there are two major models for social networks: Twitter model and Facebook model. Both have their uses, strengths and weaknesses.

Twitter model is less personal, it’s a bit like artillery shells, you make a post and fire and forget. The Twitter model reduces most things into short soundbites. That’s bad trying to discuss complex issues, but it’s great for sharing neat things you have found on the web.

The Facebook model is more immersive, and if your friends are online the discussions can be more complex. Groups allow subsets of people to discuss common interests. And everything can be discussed in more detail (and better threaded) than Twitter model sites. At the same time, Facebook model sites also allow you to post in soundbites. The Facebook model sites seem more personal.

Alt Social Networks. Places you and your posse can go:

Friendica if you like Facebook you will like Friendica. It’s a FB clone in many ways. As I said in my review of Friendica there is a lot to like. Forget the stuff about running your own Friendica network, just hit the “Try it” button on the Friendica site, find a community and try it. Find a community that lets you crosspost to Facebook and your friends might not know you are gone.

Mastodon is a really good Twitter clone. The difference is there are many different Mastodon communities on many different servers in different countries. Mastodon lends itself to themed communities (ie. pagan, furry, kink, literature, writers, and some general topic). You can follow people on other Mastodon communities (called Instances) and their posts will appear in your timeline. So you might join a Mastodon instance for writers and your friend might join one for photography but you can still follow and talk to one another.

Micro.blog is both a micro and long-post blogging platform that is also a very nice social network. It’s not really a clone of anything which is good. It is more of a Third Way. From Micro.blog you can crosspost to Twitter, FB and/or Medium. It costs $5 per month but there are no ads, tracking and you get a lot of features for that. To me the biggest benefit of Micro.blog is I can seamlessly switch between microblogging (short posts) and writing longer posts. This post was a perfect example: it started out as a quick “Lookie here a neat article” post with a link but it turned into something Real Long because I had more to say. Because words convey your thoughts. Thoughts can’t be limited to soundbites. What you say, your thoughts, are important - they have value. Above all things, write what you will. Freedom of format is cool.

I managed to play with the decentralized social network Friendi.ca for part of the afternoon and I have to say I was impressed. I didn’t try and install the script on a server, I just joined a node and poked around like a normal member would.

Decentralized: means lots of different people have installed the Friendi.ca script on their own domains on their own servers. These are nodes. Each node administraitor/owner can pretty much set their own rules. Nodes can be subject specific (ie. Star Trek, Sci Fi, Pagan, LBGT friendly or just general).

Federated: means that each independent node can talk to each other, and members can follow members from other nodes.

Friendica is versitile, each member can decide how they want to interact with others: 1. They can screen “friend” requests much like Facebook, 2. They can just have followers more like Twitter who don’t have to be approved, 3. There is a third setting which seemed to me to be more like a Facebook Page (apologies if I don’t have that right but my time was limited) where people could follow without approval. I thought that was very handy since I like a lot of the posting features of Facebook but I don’t like the whole “friending” business.

You can also control who sees your posts and all the other usual aspects of social networks. The interface was, if not polished, workmanlike, serviceable, and not unattractive. Users also have a calendar for events.

As a decentralized but federated network you can read the Public posts of other members of your node, you can also read the Public posts of members of other nodes (the big firehose). The same goes for following: you can follow (and I suppose “friend”) members of both your own node or members of other Friendica installations on other domains (nodes.)

The part that impressed me the most is the syndication aspect which will be different based on the whims of each node owner (as are the rules of conduct and TOS.) But the list of other social networks you can syndicate your posts out to and/or mirror is impressive, they can include: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger and a bunch of other open source decentralized social networks (Libertree, diaspora).

As impressed as I was with Friendica, there don’t seem to be that many open nodes and the largest only has about 800 some members. Pretty small but I hope it grows. I was not able to find any turn-key professional hosting for running your own Friendica installation.

It would be kind of hard to move to Friendica when you don’t know anybody. I think the best scenario is if you know a bunch of your friends on Facebook are feeling dissatisfied, you could all move to Friendica as a group and start over.

Pros:

Member gets to select how they interact with others either as Friends or just have Followers.

Many of the features of Facebook.

No ads, no reason to track you.

Syndication to established commercial social networks.

Cons:

Installations are small and have no source of income to pay hosting expenses.

All your friends are somewhere else.

Unlikely, that old friends you have lost touch with can find you.

Friendica is something to consider, especially for those migrating from Facebook. If you can get your closest friends to move with you I think you willl like it. If you decide to leave FB this is one to check out.

I’m looking into my next phone. I actually have a perfectly good phone that I’m very happy with except [the CIA and NSA don’t like it.]{money.cnn.com/2018/02/1…} It’s a pity, because it is the first Android phone that I ever liked.

Moreover, I have a [Linux based phone]{puri.sm/shop/libr…} on order but it won’t be available until early 2019 and I’m not sure that it will work to my satisfaction right away. It might take some months of bug fixing and updates before it works smoothly. In the meantime I will need a working phone.

My worry is that US relations with China will go bad and that I’ll get stuck in a cyberwar with a Huawei phone with all sorts of backdoors. Anyway I’m not sure that I will change phones any time soon but I may change if US China relations start looking dodgy or if my Librem 5 phone isn’t quite working right for me.

So what to buy? It seems like an [Android One]{www.android.com/one/} phone might be the way forward. Regular Android phones do not get regular security or OS updates because that is in the hands of the carrier. With Android One you get 2 years worth of updates to the OS and the phone is not all garbaged up with carrier and/or manufacturer software. They run on what is very close to pure Android without a lot of proprietary modifications to the code.

It’s too early to specify a particular phone model, but at least I know know what to look for when the time comes.

Once upon a time, when web blogging was new, the rule was to “link freely” to whatever pages the blogger found interesting. Then it got abused to rank pages in @Google so Google started penalizing if you linked out too much. So bloggers became afraid to link out even innocently to pages they genuinely liked.

Now my rule is to link to stuff only if I really really want people to see something. Otherwise I just talk about it and you all can search for it using a search engine, hopefully one that isn’t Google. We used to be able to surf the web via old school web blogs, now not so much. Now everything is slick, glossy, corporate, soulless and sterile on the web. Google won.