Steve Zissou @SteveZissou@qoto.org

decades-long manhunt finally ends

Some guy on twitter:
If you were redesigning undergraduate GIS teaching from scratch, what would you include? Software, techniques, ideas, etc...

Me: Inhales...

This feels appropriate for the second thing I've ever posted to mastodon.

In Duck Hunt the NES Zapper worked by blacking out screen & drawing white blocks around targets when you fire, for a couple frames. The diode in the Zapper detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer if it’s pointed at a lit target. #gamedev #retrogaming

One of my older pieces…
#art #artist #artistsonmastodon #isometric #isometricart #freehand #sketch #drawing

Une autre carte faite à la main.

Mission Accomplished #LEGO

So, an intro:

I'm an author who writes about how both nature & time spent creatively improves mental health, a molecular cell biologist & brain chemistry nerd, naturalist (especially plants and birds),
I run creative workshops (see link in bio) and use scientifically proven research to make photos that can alleviate anxiety and lift mood:

Finished off this!

I enjoyed this far more than I probably should have.

#funny

First workbench project in… a long time. Converting to non-powered loco for an RHTT. #TMRGUK

Prompted by @shaungdavey and his post about the excellent #NationalLibraryOfScotland 's online #maps here is my favourite version

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=5.0&lat=56.00000&lon=-4.00000&layers=1&right=ESRIWorld

Side by side historic and current maps up to 60" scale (yes 1:1056) maps of some Victorian city regions

I feel like I may be taking a plywood #Slingshot too seriously.

One of the world’s longest-running experiments has been going for 143 years!

In 1879, botanist William Beal wanted to find out how long seeds could remain viable underground. So he buried bottles with different kinds of seeds in a secret spot somewhere on the Michigan State University campus, knowing the experiment might outlive him.

It did! Every 20 yrs, a small group scientists still dig up the bottles and seeds continue to germinate 🌱 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/science/beal-seeds-experiment.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare #science

Tooting from @maartje 's Mastodon 3.11 for Workgroups! Though not sure if the parsing weirdness is my poorly setup WebOne or not

"No Mr. Die, I expect you to Bond"

I love all of you and I want nothing but the best for each of you, particularly those on infosec.exchange. I understand that Mastodon isn't Twitter, that DMs are end-to-end encrypted, that we are spread across different instances and it can be hard to find your friends, and that an instance can go away at any time, and that translating posts doesn't work correctly, and there is no native giphy support, and that some instances are overwhelmed and super slow, and that you don't think the federated model can scale to a billion users, or that it doesn't support full text search of every post and account, or that we can't comply with the GDPR, or that we don't support quote tweet style functionality, or that we shouldn't collect IP addresses, and many other things.

The fediverse is a work in progress. I've been here for going on 6 years. In that time, it's come a long, long way. That said, Mastodon is not going to appeal to everyone. The decisions I make are not going to appeal to everyone. No one is forcing you to be here. No one is forcing you to disclose your personal secrets into a network of federated servers running by volunteers and hobbyists. NB: this is not Twitter. It has some similar functionality, but it is not Twitter. Parts of it are better, IMO, and parts are not. The security community is generally among the most skilled and competent IT people the world has to offer. Mastodon is open source. Do you see where I'm going?

I set this instance up a long time ago for reasons I don't even remember. I have poured my soul into this thing because I believe in the importance of this community. I have effectively peaked in my career as a CISO and I and my family live well. I am not running this instance for fame, money, a better job, or anything other than wanting to foster a community of people that can learn from each other and make the world a better place. That's it.

As I've said in several recent interviews, I felt particularly obligated to ensure the security community had a good handing spot in the fediverse as everyone was running for the doors in Twitter. We've grown from 180 active users to about 30000 in the span of 3 weeks. I do not expect everyone to stay. Some will set up their own instances. Some will move to one of the other excellent security focused instances. Some will give up and move to on to some other social media. And that is OK. While I am super excited to see the buzz here, I don't have subscriber targets, engagement targets, retention targets, or anything else. The only metric I hold myself to is whether I think this is serving a useful purpose to the community.

I appreciate all of you, regardless of where you land. Infosec.exchange has been here for a long time and will continue to be here for you.