I did research as part of my graduate work in human-computer interaction at Georgia Tech. I focused on incremental improvements to the Mastodon user interface to focus on personal relationships. I'm presenting the prototypes and data that I developed here in summary. There's also a 45-minute video where I go over the research in detail … Continue reading Re-designing the Mastodon User Interface for Better Personal Relationships  →

One of my friends, Aran, just started playing Disco Elysium, the game my son and I have been playing together for months. It's a role-playing game set in the run-down neighbourhood of an occupied city in an alternate world. You play a detective for the local police investigating a murder who is in such a … Continue reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union →

I'll be at confoo.ca this week, representing Open Earth Foundation. This is my first Open Source event representing OEF, and the first time I've been to any event in quite a few years. What are your best tips for a good conference?

So, my team is using Kubernetes for deploying a complex app in a developer environment on our desktop. We use the Kubernetes ("k8s") built into Docker Desktop. We need persistent storage, so we use a PersistentVolume with local-storage type. Initially, we thought we should put our data directory in a well-known directory, like /var/local/ or … Continue reading PersistentVolume on Docker Desktop for Mac →

Here's a quick one for my friends still on Twitter. There is a new policy against promotion of alternative social platforms . If you have not moved to Mastodon yet, do it now. It will be much easier to use tools to make the move now, while many in your Twitter social graph are still … Continue reading Twitter now prohibits links to other social networks →

Dave Winer asked me to take a look at the document What is a document? I decided to put my hat on as co-editor of ActivityStreams 2.0 (AS2) and co-author of ActivityPub (AP) to see how well our definitions met the features of a document. Most of the "things" in AS2 are types of Object. … Continue reading Documents in ActivityPub →

I am part of a group trying to start Canadian member-run cooperative to run Mastodon servers in Canada. Similar to social.coop but Canadian. We're calling it cosocial.ca. Here's how it will work, we think. - 1 co-op membership gets you 1 Mastodon account with guaranteed allowances (file uploads, API use, toots per day, etc.) plus a co-op vote … Continue reading Help us Start A Co-op Mastodon Server for Canada →

I set up a family server on Mastodon today. It wasn't too hard; Digital Ocean has a one-click Mastodon install. I tried messing around with Docker Compose but it wasn't happening for me. If you're using the network, please say hello!

I have not been this excited about federated social networks since we published ActivityPub. The shift has started. Get a Mastodon account as soon as you can. Set up servers for your companies, your clubs, your families, your friends. We're doing this. Don't be on the wrong side of history.

It's so good