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

Choices are Good.

While in vanilla Mastodon world, getting an admin to consider allowing more than the miserable 500 characters maximum toot size is a Tall Order -- I tried a few times, and was denied almost always, in more Advanced places we see innovation and openness.

Was just surprised to find not the Usual TWO choices of Front Ends (user interfaces, or web clients) at one of the Pleroma instances I have accounts on.

At expired.mentality.rip, admin @a1batross now has 4 (FOUR!) choices at your disposal.

Pick between :

Pleroma FE, high polish, and full featured.
Mastodon FE, the usual web client most mastodonians will feel at home in.

Plus -- and this is all his customizing :

Bloat FE
And the brand new SoapBox FE, which just released it's 1.0 version.

I had seen SoapBox at other instance and been impressed. And it's nice to see it now available at FAB, EMR, jaeger.website and probably other places too.

Congrats to @a1ba and @alex !

#SoapBox #Pleroma #Alternatives #Mastodon #UI #ux

#rgxJournal for notes, Blog page coming soon.

Very clever, random anarchist.

More Cat Photos? Always welcome.

And once again, Thanks are due to Casey Rollins!

...who just sent me a pointer to another Cat lover posting images.😺

[ CW -- he's got some adult content, all under cw's. Tasteful, not trashy. ]

Which I am now editing and adding to the Discourse Forum topic and my own Blog post about Feline Photos Posters.

Casey also pointed to Catgram.jp -- a Japanese mastodon instance which seems to be the Instagram of Japanese Neko culture!

...where I found some other accounts in the Profile Directory, all cat lovers posting Feline beauty snaps.

@realcaseyrollins -- Thank you.

A couple of nice snaps from cks's photo stream attached.

#BlackCats #Cats #MastoCats #CatsOfMastodon #Meow

#rgxJournal for bookmarking

Lossless Compression of text with #GPT2... So cool!

http://textsynth.org/sms.html

June 23, Alan Turing's Birthday

"Alan Turing was an outstanding mathematician whose work has had an enormous impact on how we live today," Bank of England governor Mark Carney said on Monday. A statement by the Bank of England added that he "provided the theoretical underpinnings for the modern computer."

Turing's electro-mechanical machine, which foreshadowed the computer, broke the "unbreakable" Enigma code, which the Nazi authorities used to pass orders to their command chain. Bletchley Park, north of London, the site of Turing's work, remained secret until the 1970s.

Remembering his work, his brilliance. RIP.

After harsh punishment in the 1950's led to his suicide, many years passed until his tremendous contribution to the WWII Bletchley Park Code Breaking operation was acknowledged by the British Government.

Now he will be honoured with his portrait in the 50 Pounds bills in the UK.

See also - Live Science page

#Science #Computing #Technology #crypto #History #WWII

#rgxJournal tribute to a great human being and scientist.

Alan Turing was born today

He was gay and neurodivergent, famous for 'Turing machine,' a model for modern/general purpose computers

he was also chemically castrated by his government for being gay (instead of prison time), and later committed suicide at 41

Rest in Power, Alan

Pinafore offers many Colour Theme combinations!

In light colours, or in Dark Theme mode for those who prefer them (myself, as it’s a lot easier on the eyes for me), you can select from a varied palette.

I had taken a full set of snapshots, planning to post a new Topic with screenshots of ALL the currently offered colour schemes. So here we go.

See the Topic in Discourse Forums

#Pinafore Client for #Fediverse has power, is light, well designed and lovely to use. The Choice of Power Users.

Never seen it yet ? Introducing Pinafore, a blog post by the Author.

#FediReporter tools of the trade, recommended.

Mastodon - Options for Moving an Account ?

"Take your information and do what you want with it."

That suggestive text sounds like Freedom of movement is granted and important, doesn't it? That is directly copied from Documents at JoinMastodon.org.

The truth is less rosy though. There are easy and reliable ways to :

Export the list of people you Follow.
Export lists of people you Mute (hiding their posts from your view)
Export lists of people and instances you Blocked (barring their content reaching you).

But, sadly -- your personal data, all the Toots you spent time in, the images and videos contained in them. Not easily accessible.

If an instance dies (and it does happen), it's all Lost. We need better. Facebook is now offering a wonderful User Data Export tool.

I love Writing, so this is Long Form prose. Lavishly illustrated, References and links included. A Web Magazine page I am proud of.

That is the Topic of today's Blog.

This post is dedicated to maique, a fellow user who also has looked into an account move.

#rgxJournal #FediReporter #Pleroma #Love #NewUsers #Mastodon #Alternatives

Pleroma - Finding the Good Instances, part 2

As Requested; Recommended Instances Suggestions

I was pleasantly surprised by the interest generated by my Discover Pleroma. An alternative to Mastodon page. Various people contacted me, interested in trying out Pleroma, and asking for some recommended instances.

So this page is intended to provide :

some thoughts on why it is important, which instance you are in.
general tips on looking up information for any Pleroma instance.
and a list of recommended Pleroma instances for your consideration.

As usual, I love Writing, so this is Long Form prose. Lavishly illustrated, References and links included. A Web Magazine page I am proud of.

That is the Topic of today's Blog.

This post is dedicated to Puniko, who was so gentle and welcoming when I joined FAB -- fedi.absturztau.be

#rgxJournal #FediReporter #Pleroma #Love #NewUsers #Mastodon #Alternatives

Moving House -- Your Options, not great.

There are a couple of choices, and they are well explained in this page -- but beware that both will cripple the existing account's posting ability.

So, READ the fine print, understand it, and DECIDE if this is a good option, or not.

The alternative is to leave the old account and simply communicate to your followers that you are relocating.

Mastodon Moving Options :

Choice 1 : Redirect your Profile.

Redirecting your account disables posting from that account and displays a “profile moved” notice indicating your new account. Anyone viewing your profile can see this notice and will know to follow you at your new account. Following redirected accounts is not possible. The redirect can be cancelled at any time.

My take on this ?

it's a reversible option, can be cancelled if desired.
You can cancel and resume posting to the account after that.
Not harmful to your data, which stays there.
Not very Useful either; as it's simply a Notice, posted in the old profile.

You might do better by contacting people yourself, with a nicely made post -- and sent with "Followers Only" privacy setting.

Attachment 1, screenshot from referred site.

Choice 2 : Move your Profile

Moving your account is the same as redirecting your account, but it will also irreversibly force everyone to un-follow your current account and follow your new account, if their software supports the Move activity. Your toots will not be moved, due to technical limitations. There is also a very heavy cool-down period in which you cannot migrate again, so be very careful before using this option!

My take on this ?

This is effective, will switch Followers to the new account automatically.
BUT it's also a Goodbye Johnny to the older account, you get locked out of it.
This is pretty much a Sayonara option, you don't plan to use the other account anymore.

...most of those points are not great from my user's perpective.

But there ARE those two official and documented options.

Plus the common practices of people, sending mass DMs being one of them (there seems to be some software allowing that; DMs are sent to followers, one copy per person, nobody sees the full mail list).

#FediReporter on options for consideration when you plan to re-settle.

#rgxJournal for reference #NewUsers #Tips #Mastodon

3 attachments, originals at source linked

Love
#loveofworld

Moving a Mastodon Account ?

Don't think there's much we can do, sadly. Just searched and there's a good page but the news are NOT good.

You CAN request a zipped archive, of all your posts, images included. But :

Mastodon currently does not support importing toots or media due to technical limitations, but your archive can be viewed by any software that understands how to parse ActivityPub documents.

"Any Software" capable of handling that, even in a personal, offline, non-federated way -- I haven't seen any yet. If you know, please comment, thank you.

Sadly needed, at least for personal references!

Facebook HAS a new tool that allows an Export of a user's photos -- and it works wonderfully in my experience.

all photos were exported successfully.
it does NOT require any user effort (try downloading, 100 albums or more!)
Albums are created in the new destination (for the moment, supports exporting to Google Photos, only; others expected soon)
Albuns have the same names as the originals, with the addition of "Copy of [user's original title]"

And even each photo goes with the poster's comment attached to it.

Completely automated, reliable, full featured. I am impressed, kudos to Facebook for this.

#FediReporter thinks it's time we got something BETTER here too ?

Full details on FB Export Data in this Android Police post

Law and order