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

QOTO Moderator Nomination Process - Notes

This month we have a process for nominating candidates for Moderator position here at QOTO.org. It is an important one, and I would like to post a few notes and thoughts about it.

1. First of all, it's surprising how open and transparent the process of Staff selection is here; In most cases, these discussions are hel In Camera, by existing site staff (moderators and administrators), sometimes subject to a vote between them, sometimes with Admins having the final decision, after accepting input.

Here, it's done in the public Feed, the posts are also federated with other instances. And the nomination process is open to participation by any current user in QOTO. (an election should ensue, if more than one person is nominated; otherwise, it's considered hors-concours, and the nominated person gets the job)

2. Nomination is currently done via a post in the QOTO Discourse forum (a less known and used feature of the community), you will need to register an account there as it's different software that Mastodon running here.

As an alternative, you could post a Mastodon post, and declare your support for any user here you see as a good candidate, include the person via their @ tag name, and include @freemo, our system admin so he won't miss it.

A word processor works great, has lots of formatting, etc.

But it also is more distracting. I find that sometimes the best is simple, down to Earth things and tools.

For writing, the words come first. Formatting is important, but can come later.

Long writing here in Mastodon-land, using the SMALL toot editor window, not seeing all your text, with distractions and notifications popping up all the time?

Not ideal. Get an Editor. Great free ones out there, many people have favourites.

I like, use and recommend EditPad Lite, it's Free for personal use.

https://www.editpadlite.com/download.html

Very nice article -- and a super handy feature to have.

Earlier today I wrote a sequence of posts (visit to Lisbon Museum series) in a plain Text editor (more space to write, font size control, NO distractions on sight).

When I had completed it, it was time to post here - in individual segments to keep size in control.

I did it via traditional Clipboard commands, hurrying and worried that someone would comment or reply before I had the full set posted.

Went looking for an enhanced Clipboard utility, they have been around. But -- discovered that Windows 10 now has that, Built-In, no added software needed.

The article in PC Mag linked explains it well, with illustration. It's simple and convenient to use.

Thank you PC Mag, Microsoft. 👍

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/364313/how-to-use-the-new-and-improved-windows-10-clipboard

Additional info and links, notes:

- Archeological Museum, Lisbon, Portugal is at : https://www.lisbon.net/archaeology-museum and wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Archaeology_Museum,_Portugal

- a beautiful ancient map of Iberia : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Atlas_Van_der_Hagen-KW1049B12_017-PORTUGALLIAE_et_ALGARBIAE_REGNA.jpeg

- the city of Loulé region on Bing maps : https://binged.it/2RqlQz2

- Amphorae page at Wiki with many examples : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphora

- Lusitania, Roman period Iberia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitania

- Roman Empire map, 3rd Century : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Spain#/media/File:Prima_tetrarchia_Diocletianus.PNG

- Baetica information : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispania_Baetica

- Al Andalus : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

- Moorish Period : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal#Moorish_rule_and_the_Reconquista_(711%E2%80%931249)

- And finally, Wikipedia's full series on History of Portugal : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal

The original thread mentioned as inspiring this writing was created by @anarchiv and can be found here : https://todon.nl/@anarchiv/103260707759534544

With my thanks for the inspiration for this! :smile:

I should point out that I am not a Historian, but a curious man, fascinated by glimpsing the past and being able to understand a bit of how they lived, by seeing such a nice exposition and the numerous Historical buildings, sites and ancient settlements commonly found in Europe. So, my writing probably has factual errors, which I apologize for, the intent being to jot down those and share with others who might find them intriguing, hopefully.

The collection on display was all dug on sites around the modern city of Loulé. Besides these wonderful Roman and pre-Roman era artifacts, they also had later, Moorish period ones, with beautiful ceramics and metal work.

After visiting Europe for the first time a few years ago, I was so impressed and pleased by all these cultural artifacts and History around everywhere that traveling here in my home region, in North America pales in comparison.

I hope you enjoyed this narrative, and welcome your comments and follow ups. Thank you.

Roman estates in the Andalucia region, then called Baetica, produced fine Olive Oil, another staple of the Mediterranean diet. They sold and exported this widely, quality bringing in demand and profits to traders, farmers and landholders. Baetica was 'next door' to the Algarvians, so trade flowed easily between them.

As documented by the various amphorae, either whole or in fragments, on display at this Museum exhibit. The notes pointed out how many Baetican amphorae had been found in the Algarve, testimony of vigorous trade. Algarvians had income and could purchase finer goods - their own region produces olive oil and wines to this day, but the Museum had fragments which had been manufactured in Baetica, and even in mainland Italy, Rome's homelands.

Algarvian amphorae fragments had cruder handles and rougher surface texture. The Baetican ones were finer and prettier ceramics. Past contents of these vessels could still be determined by analysis of residues in some of them.

The Museum showed photos of the larger artifacts, like these stone vaults, carved into natural rock. They showed site maps with pointers of what each part was intended to do. Once you have a product, and an eager market, things will work to get it supplied.

How do we carry this out? The Museum showed many Amphorae, large earthenware/ceramic vessels which were built to store and carry various products around, locally, regionally and along longer routes to Rome and Beyond.

During the Roman era, there were thriving colonies not only in Lusitania, today's Portugal, but also in the Southern region of today's Spain now called Andalucia, which came from the Moorish era name - Al Andalus.

In the Algarve, Phoenicians, Romans set up colonies. The Romans saw the abundance of fish and built an industry of processing then into a preserve, the "Garum" fish sauce which was popular in their cuisine. Garum produced in the region was high quality, and had a demand from various regions of the Empire, including the Capital, Rome itself.

Garum was created by cutting up the fish and placing them into stone vaults cut into the local bedrock. Salt was added as a condiment but primarily as a preservative agent. The salty fish mix was left on the stone vats to cure for some time, months possibly. And once finished, it provided a concentrated sauce with protein and a flavour judged exquisite by the people.

Quality brings demand, and demand attracts traders; there's money to be made and livelihoods could focus on supplying it.

The Algarve is the most Southern part of Portugal, the warmest and sunniest. Trees, fruit, grapes grow well there. Fish in the seas are plenty. It was good land for settlements.

And they came, different peoples over different eras. Phoenicians, traders at heart, created outposts to explore the land and it's products, while also supporting passing seafarers going to farther places. Some of their mariners came from the homeland in modern day Middle East, traversed the whole Mediterranean, and went past the Columns of Hercules, now Gibraltar, into the open Atlantic.

Wild ocean waters, for people with small ships, but brave they were; and the profits from trading moved them. From home, via this route, into the Bay of Biscay, always a dangerous passage, and on to Cornwall for the Tin metal so demanded by the Bronze Age technology. Tin was plentiful there, and provided profitable mining for thousands of years. Traders came from far an apart to purchase the ore and bring it home for resale.

Reminiscing of a visit to the Archeology Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal.

It started this morning, the thread. And over short posts, someone told a story. Of a Greek man, who lived in antiquity, by the Mediterranean side; in a city whose name is still preserved, and today is written "Marseille".

This series of posts was interesting, I caught one flying by the Local feed, about halfway down his sequence, liked it and went to the top to find the rest.

Enjoying his post, I remembered similar thoughts, of History, and how things worked, how small bits and pieces came to me as I visited an exposition, at the Archeological Museum, in Lisbon.

Stopping at each display, I would read and examine the artifacts. All of them had came from the same region, countryside around today's city of Loulé, in the Algarve, Southern Portugal.

The region has been inhabited for thousands of years, and the exhibit had pieces from pre-historic, Phoenician, Roman, Moorish and more modern times.

@anarchiv

#dystopian #art #xp #moa
---
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Beautiful Persian & Tabby mix, Beast is gorgeous. #xp #moa
---
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The only closeups that I want feature treats 🤔😸
#whiskerswednesday #catsoftwitter
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A picture, or it didn't happen.

Saved the page, it's just started and not published yet. But there should be a preview available here: https://rgx.vivaldi.net/?p=13&preview=true

A Quick look at a more complex Blog setup.

Along with trying out the Write.freely open source, fediverse compatible system, I went and opened up a free blog at Vivaldi.net. This is the company providing the Vivaldi browser, and they also offer a free email account and a free blog if desired.

For curiosity and comparison purposes, I went ahead and started a first post. The blogs at Vivaldi are using WordPress, and offer a lot more controls, formatting options, online image hosting, but at the price of a more complex interface to be learned.

It looks interesting, but will take some time getting used to and knowing the tools and options.

The write.freely seems aptly named - as there's very little to distract you from writing away, concentrating in the words, less distractions.

Leaving here a screen shot for the record.

For first time users, I would suggest the write.freely ones, unless you are prepared to cram for a few days to get over the learning curve quickly.

I am including two snapshots - the editor area can work in either Visual Mode, with images displayed in full size.

Or in Text Mode, where you see Raw HTML, tags and nitty gritty, but sometimes can be a nice way to work, fix glitches.

Do note there's a lot more visual clutter around. 😛

For the record, @freemo had recommended to me write.freely and I think that is a good recommendation for casual users, to get started, it will be easier.

@rgx@wordsmith.social

Experimenting is needed, not all places offering blog hosting have the same features.

write.as which has a nice video, showing easy fediverse connections, also has a lot of limitations for Free accounts.

The Fediverse instances list for write.freely can be useful -- Although a lot of them are NOT open to registrations, check the rightmost column.

https://fediverse.network/writefreely

From that page, I looked at a couple of instances, there's one in Canada: https://fediverse.network/personaljournal.ca

...and settled in another one, located in France, under better European Union privacy protection rules. https://fediverse.network/write.tedomum.net

This last one, I created a new blog, copied my test post, and did the searching for the account here in Mastodon.

It did work, the account was found. After I published the page there, it showed here as a Toot, which I can click to view (has link to web page hosting) and reply with comments to.

@rgx@write.tedomum.net is my current testing page. Click on the username and it will show a typical Mastodon user page, with stats and toots listed.

@rgx Tested and works as expected, the barebones first post is getting prettier. I like it, edit and saves are very fast.

Now, if I can reduce the number of TABS open here... That would greatly help. 😜

@rgx

The blog editor only allows formating via html tags. You can type in easier ones, but a time saver can be an extension for your browser that natively supports markup languages.

Found one, I have used a similar in the past for Forums, with BBcode tag formatting.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bbcodewebex/

Testing 1, 2, 3...

Hello blog world.

@rgx

https://wordsmith.social/rgx/a-first-post