*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

@achso@mastodon.social LOL, I love that!!! you all had even more fun than we did here!

Front Door was the most popular front end in our region, as it was the easiest to configure. My node admin was surprised when I worked and configured BinkleyTerm all on my own, but it was clearly documented and I followed their instructions, all worked perfectly.

Plus, got an Elite feeling, not many were running BT, rumoured to be a hard one to config.

Yes, what a great experience. I think we can hope we get local small groups of Fediverse users into meeting occasionally, if the idea is promoted. There are also some community organizations which are propping up nodes, my own blog is at TeDomum.net which is a small community but has a big number of services running.

I love traveling and seeing other cultures, and here I can do that via participating in instances in various regions, or that have some focused theme. It's so cool. Love this place.

@freemo Awesome, thank you!!

* Want some good music without paying for online streaming services? *

Local music works well; or if you are lucky and there's an interesting radio station you like.

Consider some of the Themed, Genre specific stations. Many out there, most freely accessible.

I work away at the computer here, listening to WNED Classical, they transmit in FM and also broadcast via internet. https://www.wned.org/radio/wned-classical-945/

If you like Jazz, there is a good station in Toronto, Canada, although they have some annoying commercial to keep the lights on, supposed to be a non profit so less ads than usual, and good music.

https://jazz.fm/

@Dave97 Ahi en Norte America lo mismo ocurre también. Y el custo de contas de agua y esgotos há disparado, es mayor que el custo mensal de electricidad para muchos locales.

Me perturba quando llega la cuenta de agua, a cada tres meses. Y hé visto reportes de personas viviendo sin agua en ciudades americanas por no poder pagar sus debitos de agua.

Ellos no tienen compassión, cortan la agua mismo en medio de invierno. Un sistema sin alma, serviendo a los en el topo.

Special hashtag to highlight serious posting at Qoto.org?

I received an interesting suggestion via Direct Message, my correspondant has this suggestion :

> What do you think about: Starting a hashtag like : "qotoarticle" and all qoto-users who publish like journalism or good pieces from the internet shall use this # to make it possible to find an interesting collection of qoto-news, without all the fun-stuff?

This is a nice idea -- and I am opening a Discussion Forum thread to chat about it.

** Forum thread is now LIVE at https://discourse.qoto.org/t/special-hashtag-to-highlight-serious-posting-at-qoto-org/180 **

Why there, not here? A few reasons:

* we won't be posting all kinds of tag ideas with hashes that will go live, and maybe never used again.
* it's open to anyone who wants to read it, as I will add thread URL here, and it's publicly readable to all.
* it's open to replies, all you need is a quick registration, confirm the email, and presto, you are in.

So all good, isn't it?

Consider it done, my friend, and here are some of my hash suggestions.

* They need to be easy, short if possible.
* easy to spell so both posters and searchers can use the tag for their own means.
* unique, so they will collect the intended posts and no strain content.

Which do I think could work? Uhmmm... Brainstorming, put ideas out and don't judge them. Add more ideas. Decide later, evaluation time.

Maybe : qoto-news . qoto-journal . qoto-daily . qoto-top . qoto-stem . qoto-hq .

or : stem-news . stem-hq . stem-daily . stem-mvp .

Do they have to include the "qoto" word and brand ID? not necessarily, we are just considering ideas here.

* If including, they might get people to pay attention to our instance in general.
* It could be used by others, in fact any hash tag can be overwhelmed and spammed, unfortunately;
* not much defense from that other than blocking the twits who did it.

There, the ball is at play, let's hear what you all think?

Thank you for considering and participating.

#STEM #science #math #Engineering #Math news are of interest to people all over the #Fediverse

Forum thread is now LIVE at https://discourse.qoto.org/t/special-hashtag-to-highlight-serious-posting-at-qoto-org/180

@freemo

The accounts only last for a week, as stated in the front entrance and are suggested as a nice way to experiment Friendica, without getting into a full blown, busy instance.

Being the kind of guy who must have a proper avatar, profile background picture, bio and links in place before even making a first post, that appeals to me.

I felt I would not embarrass myself much in front of an experienced crew of Friendica users; the Friendica experience is WAY different than Mastodon, it has some nice features we miss here (like editing a post anytime you want).

Why I think it would be a good idea for new Mastodonians? as a see it before you commit type of thing. A system setup like that would be focused in new users (the Friendica help and documentation is top notch), we could have some permanent accounts offering assistance, etc.

And if people found they liked it, we could have a good Instances list with detailed info, user reviews, etc.

If they didn't like it, soon there would be less of these zero posts, no avatar accounts that really should count for a user base evaluation.

@ij

@achso@mastodon.social OMG... I was a point too! 😛

And the battles we had with a knuckle head local sysop who got elected as net coordinator, epic. I remember discussing things directly with him, via NetMail delivered from my own BinkleyTerm right to his BBS front end.

We had a nice group of like minded people, met for coffee and hours long talk sessions at a local family restaurant. Loved it, this was when we were limited to whoever you could find locally for geek chatting.

I became a hub in our network later, although never run a BBS, just the front end and back routing and processing. Getting it all working smoothly was fun.

I remember being in bed at night and hearing the system reboot at midnight and do a brief maintenance run, then back on, waiting for incoming calls.

Nowadays we see a similar spirit, of independence and curiosity, tinkering. People setting up an instance, Pleroma runs even in a Raspberry Pi little thing.

I have my own non-federated Writefreely instance here, and it's neat; when I complete a post locally, with lightning fast saves ad edits, I know I can copy-paste into my live online WF accounts and it will look perfect, as we run the same software.

That is a story for another blog day; I will need to get more comfortable with explaining how to setup MySQL before I can tell people they can do it, yes. (What a bitch, for me, completely inexperienced with it)

As soon as I saw this graph on an instance I just joined (the Pilgrim spirit is strong on me, Luke), I thought about Dr Freeman's mentioning missing good people to talk #math with. 😄

Ingo runs some great services - both:

* a mastodon instance at https://nerdculture.de

* and a much more rare Friendica instance at https://nerdica.net/

I am not sure, but I think he might be the operator offering the brilliant idea of a TRY Friendica instance; where people can creat an account and see what it is like, for a short period.

Accounts are removed after a week, and I did use it, posted a few things, then got membership into Nerdica.de for the long haul.

Try Friendica is at : https://tryfriendica.de/#

** Mastodon SHOULD probably have something like it! **

Thank you, Ingo! @ij

@realcaseyrollins @82wrangler Added your video to my standard "welcome and here are some Guides" post. Thanks, Casey!

@realcaseyrollins Glad to see you are enjoying it here; I replied to another of your posts wit ha couple of written guides.

Casey is the local Video man, so there you go, got choices! 😛

@Iambharani Great photo and a great quote, thank you. Nice how the leaf nervures line up with the palm lines, isn't it?

@annusrivastava Hello, and welcome to Qoto.

Enjoy the network and all it has to offer. If you are new to using Mastodon, there's a good guide here: https://lifehacker.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-mastodon-1828503235

We also have another new users guide, posted here : https://write.tedomum.net/rgx/suggestions-and-guidelines-for-new-users-written-by-mastodon-art-administrator

Any question, just ask, and someone will try and help out.

Have a good day!

@82wrangler This is a gret instance to be in, btw. 😃

I only started here a couple months ago, and do have various other accounts, but here ins Main. Take a read at those guides, they are quite good.

@82wrangler Hello, and welcome to Qoto.

Enjoy the network and all it has to offer. If you are new to using Mastodon, there's a good guide here: https://lifehacker.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-mastodon-1828503235

We also have another new users guide, posted here : https://write.tedomum.net/rgx/suggestions-and-guidelines-for-new-users-written-by-mastodon-art-administrator

Any question, just ask, and someone will try and help out.

Have a good day!

@Morgan_H

@Sphinx @freemo Ah, thank you! 😃 Wonderful to get some feedback.

My primary blog account is write.freely, at TeDomum.net, but I do mirror it at both Wordsmith.social and the Plume instance at Fediverse.blog.

Personally I love the writefreely software, it's bliss to write in a pure black screen, no distractions. And the finished pages look good, nicer in my opinion than on Plume.

But Plume does have advantages, I have a planned article to be written sometime about the differences and what I like in one or the other; what's missing, what could improve.

* TD : https://write.tedomum.net/rgx/
* WS : https://wordsmith.social/rgx/
* Plume: https://fediverse.blog/@/rgx/

@achso@mastodon.social Tell your friends, the younger ones didn't experience it, these times, the BBSes.

We have the full BBS the Documentary now on PeerTube here at Qoto, link in the blog post, maybe they can see what the fuss is all about.

A lot, most animated gifs are annoying, and some of us curse the day that was invented. But I just found a NEAT example of how it can be used nicely.

Telegram just released a new version, and it has the new feature of preparing a message but not sending immediately -- but setting a later time for it to go.

Well done, Telegram. I have used it briefly and was quite impressed with the fluidity of the app, the UI design, how well it performed.

If you have contacts already using it, or willing to switch -- a much better instant messenger than WhatsApp, or God forbid, the ghastly FB Messenger junk. (that I absolutely REFUSE to even consider).

New blog at Telegram HQ : https://telegram.org/blog/verifiable-apps-and-more

@ij @rgx@nerdculture.de @LaF0rge This is great, I will post about it on my main instance, so more people can see and get to know about it.

Expecting a blog post about it in the near future, it's too interesting an idea to pass up. So many people in the Net today have no idea how this all got started.

Even the roots on the internet, the protocols, the distributed design - and the reasons for both, surviving a nuclear attack, made this so robust and open - unexpectedly, when the gov funding research didn't aim for any openess or lack of central controls.