#blaugust2024 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #blaugust2024, aggregated by home.social.
-
I started #100DaysToOffload on June 1st and finished exactly 100 days later on September 9th. During the challenge I also completed #Junited2024 and #Blaugust2024 You can see the posts at https://louplummer.lol/living-out-loud-100-days-to-offload/
-
Blaugust 2024 is in the bag!
It's always a struggle to make it to the finish line, but I also always have fun.
https://chasingdings.com/2024/09/02/blaugust-2024-is-in-the-bag/
-
I spent the morning counting blog posts, and while my eyes are deeply crossing at this point... I created the traditional #Blaugust in Review post.
Where I outline the event, give some statistics, and hand out the rewards.
Blaugust 2024 In Review
https://aggronaut.com/2024/09/02/blaugust-2024-in-review/ -
Attempting to do the #Blaugust2024 tabulations this morning and I have to share massive love for anyone who is using a blog theme that self-tabulates by month.
Yall are rockstars.
-
I enjoyed taking part in #Blaugust2024 and it definitely helped me to maintain my writing momentum. Onwards!
https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/09/01/blaugust-2024-lessons-learned-wrap-up/
-
I joined Blaugust 2024 in part because I discovered that it was a thing around the same time as I set out to take part in #100DaysToOffload and thought it would keep me moving along, and also because well, I am a gamer, I co-host a weekly podcast that is at least partly about gaming, and I wanted to meet and follow some new people.
I was able to keep up a decent cadence of posts, but it was more difficult than I expected to watch what everyone else was talking about – I’m still making a feed reader part of my daily habit again, and trying to curate the feeds that I’m following.
It was fun to see a range of different people joining in the conversations, and also, a couple of my posts got some attention both via the tag and elsewhere so they led to some nice interactions on Discord.
This has been a good way for me to re-engage with blogging and also to grow my network and perspectives, so definitely a win!
Posts summary
In total I managed more than 31 posts tagged over the course of the month. Of these, traffic varied but was relatively steady – the anomaly being the review of the Pocket Reform, which hit number 2 on Hacker News and clocked up thousands of views within a 24 hour period! That accounts for the sudden spike of excitement over the month as much as participation in #Blaugust2024…
Other standout posts from a traffic and interest perspective were my thoughts on fediverse instances for governments, and my posts about creativity and humans on the web. Here’s the full list from the 31 days of August, in case you want to dig back on anything: a classic mixture of culture (music/movies), tech, gaming, art, and broader ponderings.
- Deadpool & Wolverine, or, the cunning end to a Marvel-ous Fox
- What’s up with LinkedIn?
- Messing with a messy NVMe
- A re-introduction to my blog
- AI-ngels and Demons
- MNT Pocket Reform: first impressions
- Recovering my Shuttlecraft
- Pi Pico 2
- Maintaining a rhythm
- Henry Found the Time
- Fixing digital holes
- Synology issues
- Techgrumps – with added duckweed
- The Trunk Line
- Midweek miscellany
- I love the Web
- Fediverse for Freedom
- A list switcheroo…
- Many micro:bits
- the birth, life & death of stars
- Mastodon – on your wrist
- Return of the Ogg(Camp)
- A fresh coat of paint
- The Collage Atlas
- On Symbols & Symbolism
- Tweaking templates
- Today’s notes
- Somewhere in the (M5)Stack
- MNT Pocket Reform: a (literal) field test
- Learning about the ATmosphere
- Some fun small games
- The Web, made by Humans
- Keypad hacking
- Weekend gaming
My Blaugchievements 🏅
The most important part…?
- Reading the Manual – Read the introductory blog post with the rules of the event.
- Completed.
- Joining the Cause – Sign-Up for Blaugust.
- Completed.
- Recruit a Friend – Convince another blogger to participate in Blaugust.
- Spreading the Madness – Promote Blaugust on your blog or through your social media of choice.
- Completed.
- Friend of Wumpus – Join the Blaugust Discord.
- Completed.
- Sharing is Caring – Post your content in the “Share Your Content” Channel.
- Completed.
- Forum of Friends – Take part in a discussion on the “Post Discussion” Channel.
- Completed.
- The Pet Tax – Post a picture of an animal friend on the “Stuff and Things” Channel or create a blog post about them.
- Not done.
- Friend Like Me – Answer a question posted on the Blagust Discord or help out a new blogger.
- Not done.
- Shared Thoughts – Comment on a blog post from another Blaugust participant.
- Completed.
- Federation of Bloggers – Sign up for a Fediverse account and follow the official Blaugust account.
- Completed.
- Getting Inspired – Write a blog post inspired by a post from another Blaugust participant.
- Not done.
- Pickup Group – Play a game or take part in an activity with one or more Blaugust participants.
- Not done.
- Hot Topics – Write a blog post based on the Blaugust Prompt List.
- Not done.
- Welcome Wagon – Write a blog post based on the first week’s theme of Welcoming Folks to Blaugust.
- Not done.
- Introduce Yourself – Write a blog post based on the second week’s theme of Introducing Yourself.
- Creative Appreciation – Write a blog post based on the third week’s theme Appreciating the works of some Creative or Company.
- Not done.
- Staying Motivated – Write a blog post based on the fourth week’s theme of how you have managed to Stay Motivated.
- Not done.
- Lessons Learned – Write a blog post based on the fifth week’s theme explaining some of the Lessons you have Learned through Blaugust.
- Completed – typing it now!
- Going Platinum – Complete All of the Blaugchievements for Blaugust 2024.
- Not done.
Like it? Share it -
- Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/09/01/blaugust-2024-lessons-learned-wrap-up/
#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #2024 #achievements #august #Blogging #gamification #reflections #statistics #wordpress #writing
-
Wrapping up #blaugust2024 and looking forward to #September and everything it will bring! Happy #Sunday everyone!
#blog #videogames #writing #blaugusthttps://swordofseiros.wordpress.com/2024/09/01/blaugust-ended-and-hello-september/
-
Today, I was mostly playing games on #SteamDeck #100DaysToOffload #Blaugust2024
-
Today I grabbed the Steam Deck and thought I’d dive into a game from my Steam backlog, as well as something new.
The backlog game was Full Void. It’s a puzzle platformer with a pixel art style and some elements that strongly remind me of Limbo. I liked it, but at the same time, got frustrated – it’s also very much like the original Prince of Persia – gorgeous detail in the animation, but unexpected sudden peril – I died / fell / slipped / drowned a lot. I think I got about a third of the way through on the first run through.
The new release is something I’ve had in the back of my head since I saw the initial footage online (back in August 2022, when we mentioned it on our podcast) – the very silly, Squirrel With A Gun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRiRyopVm6Q
This one is great, and I had a lot of fun running around… squirrelling and causing mishief. There are definitely a few areas where the controls got frustrating. Also, I took far too long trying to get through one of the setpiece boss sections, and I think the Deck struggled to manage the number of enemies that were spawned as a result, so I saw some bad slowdown there. Definitely going to be getting back to this, though! Also, I need to look and check if there’s a soundtrack, the music for the boss battle was great!
A perfectly normal, unarmed, squirrel. With large eyebrows.For completeness, I also had a quick play of Cloud Gardens, from my itch catalogue. This is also available on Steam, but I already own it on itch; I’ve used NonSteamLaunchers to get games from my other storefronts on the Deck. Cloud Gardens is a lovely, relaxing game, also in a pixel art style, about growing plants around abandoned buildings and street furniture. I’m sure I’ll be checking this out more in future.
Tomorrow is another Makeroni meetup, and I also need to work on the blog post to go with this week’s episode of Games at Work dot Biz that we recorded yesterday and will publish on Monday.
Like it? Share it -
- Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/31/weekend-gaming/
#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #games #gaming #itchio #steam #steamDeck #videoGames #weekend
-
Blaugust farewell: https://samjc.me/2024/08/31/blaugust-farewell.html #blaugust2024
-
Thoughts on Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2024. I rediscovered my motivation to write. Did you?
https://www.containsmoderateperil.com/blog/2024/8/31/thoughts-on-blaugust-2024 #blaugust2024 #blogging -
Always On - Freelancers and Notifications
For full-time, permanent workers, setting boundaries outside of work is achievable. For those freelancers in creative work, it's a whole different ballgame
https://noof.omg.lol/2024/08/always-on-freelancers-and-notifications
-
@stefan Ooh what a perfect day for #Blaugust2024 to wrap up! :D
-
For my final post of #Blaugust2024, I write about the challenge the event presented me this year (much of it due to IRL stuff), and being happy that I still managed to finish up 31 posts!
-
My California
If you live on the Central Coast, you already know.
-
Dazed and Confused - The 1993 movie Dazed and Confused is regarded as a classic today for its realistic depiction of the lives of high school students in the 1970s. - https://linkage.lol/dazed-and-confused/ #Blaugust2024
-
Today is post #31 for Blaugust 2024. I've been avoiding too much blog-meta, but today is an exception to mark the occasion of victory.
https://godless-internets.org/2024/08/31/blaugust-2024-retrospective
-
People Watching in Austin - A day spent traveling and tooling around one of America's coolest cities provided excellent opportunities to watch people do their thing. - https://louplummer.lol/people-watching/ #Blaugust2024
-
Blaugust 2024 in the Rear View
When I hit publish on this post -- that'll be it. 31 posts in 31 days. Mission accomplished. But this will also probably be the last year I shoot for that particular goal. I've done it for six consecutive Blaugusts now, and I've noticed that it is no longer as difficult or draining by the end of the month to achieve it.
https://www.timetoloot.com/blog/blaugust-2024-in-the-rear-view/
-
Today on AppAddict - Widget Wall - For the first time in years, I've started using my Mac's desktop as a place to check for information and interact with my computer. For a long time, I kept the desktop hidden behind windows and full screen apps. I don't save files to my desktop or launch applications from... - https://apps.louplummer.lol/post/widget-wall - #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
-
As the August reaches its end, so does Blaugust. I reached my goal of 31 posts in 31 days but it wasn't without some tough times and challenges.
With this retrospective, I wrap up this year's Blaugust and return to my regular schedule with blogging.
Thanks for everyone who's been part of this journey and who has commented, discussed, taught me new things and supported my journey.
-
Post Gamescom Coverage
While I'm sure this is happening for a wider spectrum of games as well, there are two in particular that are grabbing my attention at the moment. Perhaps as no great shock -- they're the two that were of interest to me during Gamescom as well. Namely, Monster Hunter Wilds and Crimson Desert. Everything I see about Monster Hunter Wilds continues to excite, but...
https://www.timetoloot.com/game/monster-hunter/post-gamescom-coverage/
-
There was a Nintendo Direct recently that I’ve failed to watch. It’s the second in a row, but I usually get the news the day after. I was on Facebook and saw a post about something-something, Trails in the Sky remake, very short trailer. I couldn’t believe it. I googled it and found an IGN article. Not entirely sure, I went to my source and newfound home, the fediverse, and they confirmed it and sent me the trailer. I’ve been on forums and other groups and it was a constant discussion between Trails fans, about when the game would be ported to consoles, since the license is owned by another company.
So there really is going to be a remake, not only a port, and as the vibrant colors can attest, it will be gorgeous and most likely easier to navigate on the menus and environment. However, it wasn’t only that. The game will be 3D and I was extremely happy for reasons I wrote about previously. When I asked the Falcom gods for a remake, I wasn’t really thinking about changing the perspective altogether, instead making volumes, patterns, textures and colors a bit easier to read. A better map, camera movements and overall readability of the interface. In my text I wrote that my experience with the game was plagued by nasty physical symptoms. The first time I played the game and panned the camera I got nausea with the only result being a more visceral reaction that didn’t seem to go away. I just wanted to see the story between Estelle and Joshua but I couldn’t bring myself to endure any more of it. With Trails of Cold Steel I experienced the opposite and found the game easier to read overall. Also I could navigate better in 3D. My reaction to Trails in the Sky is something I’m not proud of even though I couldn’t control it.
I asked my wife if she remembered the game that made me sick and showed her the video of the remake. “See? Now we can play from Estelle’s perspective.” I said. I then showed her how the game looked before. She pointed to one of the screenshots from a Google search of the original. “Ah, but that… that is something I’m familiar with! I like that.” I asked if she prefered a 2.5D isometric perspective, if she could navigate well in the environment and she said yes. I instantly recalled Triangle Strategy, one of my favorite strategy games, and how beautiful it looked in that same perspective. I showed her the remake with a third-person view. “How do you think you’d play from this perspective? You can look everywhere and also up.” And her answer was very telling. “Why would I even want to look up when I can look down and see everything?” An answer worthy of a goddess!
I wonder how people will react to this remake compared to how they recognise the first games in the series. In this department, I consider myself a newcomer, because when I was younger I didn’t have access to JRPGs. I jumped from 2D Nintendo games directly to 3D games and then I spent years in the shadows doing university things. I still have mixed feelings about the perspective change, though. This is not a new discussion in JRPG groups, about which perspective people want to play their games in, if they prefer 3D character models or 2D sprites, if what feels more authentic is one or the other, especially when it comes to an original game where the authenticity is already established.
“Maybe you adapted to Triangle Strategy so well because the game required you to do other things where the perspective wasn’t so important,” my wife added. About this, I don’t know. True, the exploration in Triange Strategy was minimal, but my problem with Sky was the readability of the environment. I couldn’t see and distinguish colors and volumes easily in areas outside the village and interiors – my problem entirely. The top-down perspective is a feature of the original game and a fundamental part of its identity. Why did they decide to change it considering that so many people love games like Octopath Traveller or Star Ocean: The Second Story Remake? My personal preference is always 3D – it’s easier on my eyes for some reason and more immersive. Habit also plays a role. I’m looking forward to seeing more footage of the game and every little upgrade they make. The story is, in fact, the reason I still want to play the game. And Estelle, but that goes without saying.
Yesterday, we decided to spend a nice and cosy afternoon reading books when the world outside seemed to be overcome by yet another storm. September is almost here and with it comes more rain and beautiful brown, yellow and red leaves paving the footpaths. After finishing Soul Hackers 2 I can say that many games have passed by these hands this year. This blog will be one year old in November and since my Fire Emblem Three Houses rush last year – a game I still love so much – I have been playing games non-stop and also writing about them. With this I want to say that I don’t especially look forward to new games nor do I have the energy to look new things up. It’s nice that the release of Trails in the Sky is still some months ahead of us. Maybe even on a new Switch? We never know!
https://swordofseiros.wordpress.com/2024/08/28/a-matter-of-perspective/
#adventureGames #blaugust #blaugust2024 #estelle #falcom #gaming #JRPGs #nintendoDirect #nintendoSwitch #perspective #trailsInTheSky #trailsInTheSkyRemake #triangleStrategy #videogames #writing
-
One of my freelance roles at the moment is as Developer Relations lead on the Mastodon project. It is a project and platform I’m really passionate about – I use it every day, it is Open Source and based on an open standard, and I strongly feel that federated platforms like this are the key to enabling everyone to own their own content, networks, and experiences beyond the direct reach of commercial interests.
At this stage in its history, Mastodon would I think count as an established and mature OSS project. It has been around since 2016, there are over 10,000 running instances / servers with the software, and over a million regular active users of the platform (plus, it interoperates with a much wider set of other platforms in the Fediverse, and carries posts and content from them as well). There are a number of large repositories that make up the GitHub organisation. There’s a – in my opinion – healthy and diverse set of third party apps that plug in to the network.
One of the things that some folks would say that the project has not always been great at, is communicating with the broader developer community. My own observation is that this is a large and widely-deployed codebase, and at a certain scale, stability and reliability become paramount, and it can be less straightforward to accept pull requests for new features (over prioritising security reports, for example). It is a small team supporting this project, largely underfunded1 if you look at the need to maintain the code, and to pay at least some of the folks involved to work on things full-time so that they can get by day-to-day, and that the core functionality gets the attention it deserves. When you’re coding, you may not have time to do other things like writing documentation, discussing roadmaps, and answering general questions – that’s partly where I come in, but even then, I still need to get help from the core developers to understand some of the questions…
I started working part-time with the core Mastodon team last year, with the goal to improve the experience for developers building on the platform, and also to bring my experience in working with diverse OSS projects and communities to support the Mastodon core team. As an example, last year I overhauled the existing list of known third party API libraries on the documentation site, and also updated the third party client apps page. Towards the start of this year, we started to make a few choices to improve the cadence and – I hope – quality of our external conversations further: we brought the whole team to meet the community at FOSDEM for the first time, for instance, which was a big step for the project.
Visit us at #FOSDEM, building H, level 1! You can say hi to our team or tell us what you’d like to see in Mastodon next. Mugs, t-shirts, enamel pins, and even free stickers available! #Merchtodon
— Mastodon (@Mastodon) 2024-02-03T08:56:41.576Z
Eugen and I also had the opportunity to meet with a few folks working on related Fediverse projects, as well as some Mastodon contributors and instance owners, during a whirlwind visit to the Bay Area back in May.
In the last 4 months, Renaud (Mastodon’s CTO) and I have been collaborating on an engineering blog series called Trunk & Tidbits. We both strongly believe that explaining what we are working on is an important element in building greater engagement and community around the project. I chose the title for the series as (what I thought was) a clever play on words, but maybe you need to be old enough to remember when source control systems like CVS used “trunk” as in tree trunk as terminology, that we now tend to call “main” in the world of Git! The name is supposed to point to the blog series content being about what we have worked on and merged into the trunk of the code, and some “tidbits” or bits and pieces of other news from around the developer community – plus, of course, our mascot The Mastodon has a trunk of its own… 🦣 😄
Here are links to the April, May, and June posts, if you missed them and want to catch up. We post retrospectively, looking back at progress each month.
One thing to note from these past editions is that I also posted a completely rewritten and overhauled Contributing guide in the past couple of months (mentioned in Trunk & Tidbits); this lives at the organisation-level in our GitHub setup, and is intended as the main starting point if you want to contribute to the code.
Today, we published the July edition of Trunk & Tidbits. tl;dr we’re a bit behind where we had hoped to be towards releasing the next version of Mastodon, v4.3 – but we are really close to getting the beta out, and the “delay”2 is because of some feedback and performance improvements identified in early testing on our own instances, so we’re hoping that when the beta is released, things should be in pretty good shape.
I’m hoping that with more regular communications via the blog; interactions with the community via the Fediverse itself and at events (I’ll once again be at Fediforum in September, for example); one-to-one conversations; and a willingness to engage in more discussions where time and resources allow – we can help folks to feel more informed about what we’re working on. It is still a small core team, and it is a busy time as the Fediverse grows… we need to keep things running, stable, and reliable… and there are always going to be features and changes that we cannot get to, or requests we cannot support at short notice… but I can assure you that it is a team effort, we discuss what’s possible, and that, I believe, we’re moving things forward3.
That’s all a personal perspective on what I’ve found, in working with the Mastodon project and team. Let me know if you have feedback on the Trunk & Tidbits series, as I’d love to keep improving these posts, and learning from the folks that read them.
- I am also pretty happy with the fact that the project has made a conscious decision to not go down a road of accepting capital investment, and remains a not-for-profit funded by donations. YMMV, this is a personal opinion. ↩︎
- Note “delay” against an undated release schedule; the release will ship when it is ready to ship. ↩︎
- A footnoted mea culpa / things I personally wish were better if I had more time on the project / there was more scope for them more quickly! I’d prefer it if there was a machine-parseable API specification, and that more Fediverse formats / standards / protocols might be supported in future, and that the developer documentation was even more complete and nicer and better etc etc.. Hopefully, we’ll get nearer to some of those in the future, as time and resources allow. ↩︎
Like it? Share it -
- Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/13/the-trunk-line/
#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #activitypub #Coding #community #developerRelations #developers #devrel #fediform #fediverse #mastodon #openSource #oss #projectManagement #trunkTidbits
