ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • Running a Mastodon server

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    I ran a mastodon server over at winnipegsocial.online for about two months. I took it down last over this past weekend.

    When the mastodon exodus started to bubble up I thought I’d jump in feet first and find out what it takes to run a server.

    Overall, it was just about as easy as I expected. But at the end of the day, almost nobody used it and it was costing me a lot of money for what was had become my own personal mastodon web client.

    Setup & Upkeep

    I’d say the complexity of setting up a mastodon server is right around “running ubuntu on the desktop and installing a package that’s not present in the package manager” complex.

    It’s almost point-and-click, with a couple of additional steps.

    DigitalOcean and friends all seem to have 1-click installers to get the web server portion system.

    In addition the the webserver that’s runs the Mastodon application itself, you’ll also need a CDN to host media and a service to send mail.

    FWIW, I chose DigitalOcean’s “spaces” mainly for the convenience of having only 1 bill. I chose SendGrid for mail, due to their generous free tier.

    If you’re interested in setting up a Mastodon server and you’ve ever messed with Linux, I’d say “give it a shot.” DigitalOcean’s guide covers pretty much everything you need to know.

    There was literally zero day-to-day maintenance. And no need to moderate anything.

    Cost

    US$35/mo. ($5 of that is storage, no backup, no mail cost)

    I originally spun up my mastodon server on DigitalOcean’s cheapest 1GB RAM server plan. The webserver and all its systems actually ran really well.

    However, when it came to upgrading from Mastodon v3 to v4 I repeatedly ran into problems. Eventually realizing that NPM was exhausting my system memory, so I had to upgrade to a 2GB server in order to complete the upgrade.

    I shut it down

    When I asked my twitter followers how many people were interested in joining a Winnipeg-based Mastodon server mid-November, 25 out of 36 people responded positively.

    After two months of operation, the server had fewer than 30 users and I was the only users who’d posted more than a handful of toots. It just didn’t make sense to continue to pay to use my own instance when I could just as easily hop onto another one.

    At the end of this experiment, I don’t think I understand the purpose of location or theme-based Mastodon servers. Sure the Mastodon server has a “Local” UI that displays posts from users you follow on the local instance. But I guess I don’t really see the purpose? They’ll show up in your freed regardless 🤷‍♂️

    In terms of Mastodon as a Twitter alternative, I have many thoughts. But that’s a blog post for another blog time.

    Anyways, for now you can find me @[email protected].

  • Grant Forzley (Artistic Impressions Photography), Winnipeg Photographer

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    Grant Forzley (of Artistic Impressions Photography) sold me a broken vintage camera, ruining my Christmas present for my wife and is refusing to allow me to return it for a refund.

    When I picked up the camera from Grant Forzley on November 25th at his studio we had a great conversation! He walked me through all of the accessories and showed my how to use it. I mentioned that the camera was not for me (I am not a photographer), that it was a Christmas present for my wife. I mentioned that is my wife is a super Polaroid nerd who has been looking for a Polaroid SX-70 for a long time and had sent me his Facebook Marketplaces listing earlier that month. Grant and I discussed something about emulsion or some sort of nerdy things you could do with the film used by this very specific Polaroid model.

    In other words, it should have been clear to him that the camera was being sold to a novice and I would not know about all the details and things to look at in evaluating the camera. In fact, I thought that’s why he was taking so much time with the demo.

    He mentioned that he was going through a divorce, that his ex-wife had bought it with the intention of doing some of the nerdy things my wife was planning on doing but they never go around to using it. I felt like we were on the same wavelength and took the low use as an indication that the camera internals would still be in great condition on account of not being used since they acquired it.

    In other words, I thought I was getting a well kept camera from someone going through a difficult divorce who just wanted to get rid of his ex-wife’s things.

    This is a screenshot of the original listing.

    The original Facebook Marketplaces listing

    Note that the condition is listed as “Used – Good,” there is no indication that it is “untested” or that it is being sold “as-is.” Moreover, Facebook Marketplaces defines the “used – good” condition as “Minor signs of wear. Item is operational and works as intended.”

    My wife tried the camera on Thursday after she finally had a chance to pick up some film. It became immediately apparent that the camera was broken in several different ways.

    I sent Grant an message via Facebook on Friday, informing him that the camera I bought for my wife was not in working condition, that I was expecting a camera in working condition based on the Marketplace listing and that I would like a partial refund (since the accessories are functioning) or I would be willing to return the camera for a full refund.

    The first thing Grant said was that the camera was “final sale.” Like my dude, that’s not how that works (you have to say it’s a final sale before you sell it, typically in the post). He also said that when he mentioned it had never been used, he was implying that the camera was in non functioning condition. I sent him a reply similar to the contents of this blog post on Sunday, he seems to have ghosted me.

    To be clear, I am not accusing Grant Forzley of knowingly selling me a broken camera. He may well have been unaware of the condition himself.

    Nor am I denying that a non-functioning Polaroid SX-70 (Land Camera Model 2) has some value to someone. A Polaroid fanatic may be willing to buy one just to put on their shelf or to repair as a project. But not my wife.

    I am accusing Grant of being unreasonable when it comes to taking the camera back for a refund. He sold me something I was not interested in and I would like to give him the opportunity to resell it to someone else who is interested in a camera that needs some TLC.

  • On Social Networks and Twitter

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    I have been extremely online since the late 1990s. I’ve been using The Internet socially since I was a teenager, so the concept of a “social network” has always seemed a little reductive to me.

    For me and my peers, a social network is maybe a more connected and organized internet experience. A simplification and centralization of a bunch of tools we were already using.

    In light of the recent acquisition (and subsequent workplace hell) of Twitter by Elon Musk I’ve been giving some thought to why I like(d) Twitter and how I’ve been using The Internet socially over the years.

    I’ve come up with a short list of things I look for in a “social network.”

    Curated News

    News is the foundation of many social interactions. It gives us something to talk about.

    I’ve never been one to religiously check a particular edited “newspaper” daily. I find that they always have too much and too little of what I care about.

    Similarly, RSS has never really worked well for me as a source of news. As soon as you follow one or two more active sources, you end up with a giant inbox of unread articles every morning. I don’t enjoy wading through every single news story in the universe to find the ones I might be interested in.

    Purely algorithmic news (recently via Apple News) is just as bad, or worse. The news algorithm never quite finds the right articles for me either.

    Reddit is decent. However, I seem to have curated a feed where the news:lulz ratio skews highly “lulz.” I kind of like it that way, I don’t go to Reddit purely for news.

    On Twitter thought I’ve been able to tune my feed to act as a curated news source (with low lulz volume). I rarely blindly follow someone on Twitter without first taking a cursory look at their timeline to see if they’ve posted links or retweets that I’d be interested in.

    This approach has given me a timeline that’s full of good quality content that I’m genuinely interested in reading.

    I try to be cognizant of the echo chamber this might create but to some degree this feels like a problem outside the scope of a social network. Keeping in open mind is more important than anything else.

    World-Wide Friendships

    Ever since the early days of IRC one of the most compelling features of The Internet to me has been the ability to have genuine social interactions with people from around the world.

    These interactions typically take the form of semi-asynchronous, low stakes, casual comment threads.

    But every once in a while these casual interactions become true friendships and slide into more synchronous messaging.

    As an introvert, I’ll often start up a DM conversation with a friend to fill the time nervously waiting for something in an unfamiliar situation. Be that waiting for a business meeting with a new client at a restaurant in Winnipeg or anxiously waiting for a flight in Munich.

    The Internet has truly made the world a smaller place. Social networks and their adjacent messaging systems enable this. And it’s awesome!

    An Audience for Thought Bubbles

    The Internet has been ingrained in my life for so long that posting an interesting thought or unusual question to “the internet” is a natural outcome of my thought process.

    Twitter is the perfect medium for these types of thought bubbles because the character limit strongly encourages short content.

    I could technically post all of these little thoughts and questions here on this blog but even if my blog had an audience the size of twitter I doubt I would get the same level of quality engagement. Blogging is fundamentally different from tweeting. It’s the reason I have written over 22,000 tweets and only published 433 blog posts.

    Twitters’ focus on the character limit has sets it apart in the history of social networks. It’s one of the biggest pieces of its success.

    A Central Meeting Space

    Social networks serve an important role as a central repository of “you.” A place where people can find you, find links to the broader you and even meet you.

    Theoretically a personal websites could serve the same purpose but the killer feature of any social network (by definition) is its tendency to put your face in front of people you don’t know and who you might like to meet.

    Punk Rock

    You can @ or DM almost anyone on Twitter and — with the exception of the biggest names and most “important” people — you can expect to receive a genuine reply from them.

    This is one of the coolest things about Twitter. I’ve never had this experience anywhere else on the internet. It’s the punkest of rock.

    These various components of a good online social experience have been available online for decades. IRC, Geocities, ICQ/AIM/MSN, forums, LiveJournal, Blogger, MySpace, tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram just to name a few of the places and ways in which I’ve experienced them over the years. Not to mention the probably a half dozen websites and apps we’ve all totally forgotten about.

    Twitter is special.

    Twitter has collapsed social interaction into one platform in a unique way that will be very difficult to supersede. In fact, I don’t think we’ll ever have anything quite like it again and I think we’ll miss it when it’s gone.

    Mastodon and other apps attempting feature parity are missing the magic. There’s something intangible about the way that users have come to interact on Twitter that can’t be replicated by features alone.

    The next Twitter will look quiet different.