“What hath God wrought?” : Welcome to Mastodon

What did I do a few Sundays ago? Oh, nothing much. Just stand up the Libranigains Mastodon Server. Well, I cheated a little. I could have done it all from scratch – get a VPS somewhere, setup a server, install the whatzits, etc etc … – but I just used a hosting service – https://masto.host/. Currently, Libranigans is closed to new users. I’ve asked a few of my fellow librarian friends to try it out, but right I’m the only one posting to it.

You’ve probably heard a lot about Mastodon lately W/R/T a replacement for Twitter. And yeah, I guess that’s what it is. But it’s a lot more than that. Really, it’s a different way of thinking about how we organize social media. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the jump from online services like America Online and Compuserve to the World Wide Web. Instead of data sitting in a proprietary jail like Facebook or Twitter, you can choose which Mastodon server your data calls home. Or you can standup your own Mastodon server. I would liken this a bit to the options you have with serving a web site: For the average user, you’d probably use a hosting service that takes care of the heavy lifting for you. For a more advance user or a larger website, you might choose to standup your own server. Same thing with Mastodon. For most users, you’d probably stick to an established server, like Mastodon.social or mstdn.social but maybe you want your data on your server for reasons, or maybe you’re with a large organization or maybe there’s just a group of like-minded people you want to share cat photos with – standup your own server or use a hosting service.

Users can interact and share information between servers. For example, I can “Boost” (the Mastodon term for “retweeting”) someones post from another server, and someone from elsewhere can boost my post on their home server.

For the most part, interaction between servers is open. Users can set limits on how their data is shared and exposed to the greater world. System administrators can set limits on which servers can interact with theirs. For example, if there’s a server that host a lot of spambots, they may ban those servers from interacting with theirs. Servers can vary in their acceptable use. For example, one server might say: absolutely no nude photos on our server. Another server might say: only if it’s art. And yet another might say: there’s no limit. Mastodon itself is part of the larger Fedivrse – a group of interlinked, decentralized, services.

I have honestly forgotten how much I missed having a Twitter-like service. I had quit Twitter long before quitting Twitter was cool. I probably stayed longer that I should because I enjoyed virtually hanging with the likes of Brendan Maclean and Cecil Baldwin. The last few weeks have been exciting finding new people to follow and talk to.

I think there are still a lot of questions to be answered … but I’m excited to be exploring this new space!

Giving Up

I’ve really been struggling with my Fedora/NVIDIA setup. Not to long ago, I swapped over to the KDE Plasma spin of Fedora, and everything has been fine EXCEPT Cities: Skylines absolutely refuses to run on the NVIDIA card. Other games seem to do fine: the Intel UHD GPU will hand off more complex stuff off to the NVIDIA card. But for some reason, it just won’t hand off anything to the NVIDIA GPU. I tried a number of things … among them trying to launch Cities with switcherooctl and using the -adapter flag when launching Cities.

Instead of trying to spend more time figuring out what’s wrong, I decided to just set the primary GPU to the NVIDIA card using the directions here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/how-to-set-nvidia-as-primary-gpu-on-optimus-based-laptops/

And it worked! Cities: Skylines is now running on the NVIDIA GPU … because it has too! Still not as beautiful as is looked under Windows, but a lot better than runing on the Intel GPU.

It kinda sucks, because having the NVIDIA card set to the primary GPU drains the battery and heats up the laptop, but since I rarely use my laptop off the AC Adapter, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Since it looks like this only works in an X11, I guess if I need to save power, I can login to a Wayland session. Or maybe manually set the NVIDIA card to a lower state.

Goodbye Bear Ball

Reminder:

Steal a rugby ball and write your name on it, you’re a common thief.

Steal a rugby ball and put your team name on it, and you’re part of the Texas Rugby Union Ball Exchange Program.

Also: Don’t bring anything you care about to a 7’s tournament.

Bon Voyage Bristol Bears Rugby Ball!

Recycled

I can’t remember if Recycled was the first or second CD in the Best of Billy Volume 2. 6 songs, 2 covers of each, with a Weird Al parody thrown in for good measure.

  1. American Pie – Don McLean
  2. In Between Days – Cover by Silver Scooter
  3. Ordinary World – Cover by Aurora
  4. Creep – Cover by Richard Cheese
  5. Where is My Mind – Cover by Ghost Hook
  6. Video Killed the Radio Star – Cover by the Pillows
  7. American Pie – Cover by Madonna
  8. In Between Days – Cover by Ben Folds
  9. Ordinary World – Cover by FenixTX
  10. Creep – Cover by The Pretenders
  11. Where is My Mind – Cover by Toadies
  12. Video Killed the Radio Star – Cover by the Presidents of the United States of America
  13. American Pie – Cover by Catch 22
  14. In Between Days – The Cure
  15. Ordinary World – Duran Duran
  16. Creep – Radiohead
  17. Where is My Mind – The Pixies
  18. Video Killed the Radio Star – The Buggles
  19. The Saga Begins – “Weird Al” Yankovic

Birthday!

I’m not quite sure what volume of The Best of Billy this is … 5? I made this after a friend’s birthday down on Rainey Street on Austin. Here it is:

  1. Happy Birthday (Titus Jones Remix)Leslie Hall
  2. Drugs In My BodyThieves Like Us
  3. On The Door (feat. Amanda Palmer)Brendan Maclean & Amanda Palmer
  4. Dance To Our DiscoPunks Jump Up
  5. Groove Is In The GirlsDunproofin’
  6. Just Dance (feat. Colby O’Donis)Lady Gaga
  7. Hugs Not Drugs (Or Both)Brendan Maclean
  8. At the StarsBetter Than Ezra
  9. Dancing in the PiglightPujol
  10. Daylight Outro (Remix)Matt and Kim

I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desert …

I’ve been having good luck with my Bird of Paradise plant and decided to try planting some other bulb plants. I know: strictly speaking a Bird of Paradise plant is not a bulb plant, but close enough. I planted a number of ornamental bulbs, but I also planted some onions and garlic, and out of all of them, they are coming up great!
An onion bloom
I’ve never actually seen an onion bloom. It’s kinda cool. And it’s already attracting visitors …
An onion bloom with a butterfly on it
And one more picture … a little stink bug on a new Bird of Paradise shoot.
A stink bug on a leaf

Rugby Scholarship at UHD

So I started a Rugby Enthusiast Scholarship at University of Houston-Downtown. It’s a scholarship for rugby player and fans.
Some of you may say: “But Billy, UHD doesn’t have a rugby team!” This is true, but maybe there are some older guys and gals that play club rugby, or used to play, or maybe are just fans of rugby who want to go back and finish a bachelor’s degree or go for a masters. This is for them.

If no one donates anything, it will be fully funded by yours truly in about 7 years time. But you can help get this thing going sooner by contributing to the cause https://fundraise.givesmart.com/vf/UHDRugby