@sysop408@sfba.social
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

sysop408

@sysop408@sfba.social

Early Internet/BBS Posse (86). Full-stack Drupal developer, almost competent server admin, marketing specialist for downtowns. Semi-pro Photographer with a speedlight habit.

TechCrunch Disrupt Alum. Non-24 (sighted). Wife has ME/CFS. Enjoyer of when the good news is also the bad news.

Former: Physical Therapist, Hospital Design Analyst, CRM Admin, Boston U Alumni

Fella. Slava Ukraini.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

sysop408, to random
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

Seasonal allergies are totally kicking my ass this year. When my eyes hurt, I get sleepy all the time and my eyes won’t stop watering.

sysop408, (edited ) to random
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

I just published my first #Wix site today. I have limited experience with similar site builder services like Square Space and Weebly.

Is Wix typical of these kind of tools? I found it to be extremely difficult to use. On the plus side it almost gave me every ability I could produce as an actual developer... almost.

Less would have been more in the case of Wix. Just because you can stuff every possible feature into a Web based WYSIWYG builder doesn't mean you should.

It made it really hard to produce a simple and elegant site that is really what's needed by most people using such a service. If you truly have a need for the advanced features, trying to do those through multiple layers of nested menus is the worst way to do it. You might as well as hire a developer and do it the right way.

This site coulda been an email. Instead it was an insane toothpick tower that kept exploding on me b/c nothing played nicely with anything.

#WebDev

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@dedsyn4ps3 if I could summarize my experience it would be like this:

Wix is an impressively featured DIY builder for all the things you really shouldn't be DIYing.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@mjausson both of those are responsive sites, which is more along the lines of what I would want. If I were ever to choose to use a site builder, it'd be something like that.

I haven't heard of Pixel Together before. I'll have to put it on my list of things to check out.

Wix isn't responsive. It does make some clever use of media queries to tweak the sizing of embedded images, but everything is published through a pixel perfect process that's error prone and torture to adjust.

I've seen landing page makers that only produce single marketing pages use a pixel perfect method. I was very surprised that Wix was using such a klunky page building technique as its official process for producing entire sites.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@mjausson Wix does support mobile devices though. It's just that it does it through creating a separate mobile site.

For most people that's probably fine, but if you're used to coding up responsive sites from scratch, it's a particularly annoying way to do things because you actually have to edit the two versions like they're separate sites.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@mjausson that's exactly what it is.

viticci, to random
@viticci@macstories.net avatar

Yesterday I needed to record 60 minutes of footage with my Logitech webcam connected to the M4 iPad Pro.

"Great", I thought, "I'll use Camo Studio". (Which is a really nice app.)

But because I chose the Files app as a destination to save the video...I'll let you guess what happened at the end.

I lost the entire recording.

(For context: this never happened with Photos as a destination.)

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@viticci earlier this year I had my first SSD fail on me. I had suspected that Files may have done some strange things to it and after reading this, my suspicions only grow stronger. It was a lightly used SSD that I had used for about 5 years as extra storage.

sysop408, (edited ) to random
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

Today is a sucky day to have writer’s block because I have a site to finish.

It’s not even a complex site. It’s the first #Wix site I’ve ever done. I agreed to do this site so I could experience what Wix is like.

Wix is really hard to use, but the thing really holding me up is that I can’t string together enough coherent words to tie things together.

Just for fun I allowed Wix to #AI write my copy and it sounded like some meth-head who’s been freebasing exclamation points wrote it. I’m pretty sure whoever handled this site last used that feature because I’ve had to rewrite everything I came across.

I can push myself and produce code under the worst of circumstances, but can’t write unless I’m feeling it. Ugh.

toussaint, to random
@toussaint@newsie.social avatar

"Young voters do not look at our politics and see any good guys. They see a dying empire led by bad people.”
https://www.semafor.com/article/05/28/2024/a-dying-empire-led-by-bad-people-poll-finds-young-voters-despairing-over-us-politics

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@toussaint isn’t this typical though? I remember being exactly of this attitude at this age. Both parties were equally bad and I could point to examples to prove it… or at least it seemed convincing to me at the time.

I didn’t start voting consistently until I met my wife who was very much about the power of the vote.

kate, to random
@kate@fosstodon.org avatar

We blocked Anthropic’s ClaudeBot across the 6,000 sites we host at 7:55 this morning. On our busiest server this caused traffic to drop from a peak of 493 requests per second to just 90:

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@kate I've had some real problems with Claudebot too.

Of note is that it did obey robots.txt directives if I specifically named it as an agent and reproduced my entire set of directives for it, but it wasn't obeying the global directives I had set in robots.txt.

While that's concerning, even worse is that I'm noticing a sharp increase in bot like behavior from what look to be spoofed user agents that aren't reporting as bots. This is especially a problem on a site I manage in China.

hobbitswife, to ai
@hobbitswife@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Any recommendations for moving away from ? Preferably somewhere that isn’t gonna implement for ? Can’t use my ISP’s email cos we want to change away as soon as OpenReach do their thing

sysop408, (edited )
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@hobbitswife I have a Plesk server hosting automation suite with a mail server bundled in.

It comes with RoundCube. I rarely use it as I prefer native clients, but RoundCube is great!

sgt1372, to random
@sgt1372@sfba.social avatar

The water heater in my house just started to leak. ☹️

Water was leaking from the top not the bottom. When the liner breaks, it usually leaks from the bottom. So, I'm hoping it's just a leaky hose or valve that has to be fixed. It'll cost about $2.4k if it has to be replaced. 🤷‍♂️

Have an appt for the plumber to come over early tomorrow morning to either fix or replace it.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@sgt1372 ugh, that happened to my last water heater. It was leaking out of the outlet at the top. I was able to temporarily patch it with epoxy, but that only bought me a little bit of time.

I've been in the same house for 25 years and I'm on my third water heater.

jeromechoo, to SEO
@jeromechoo@masto.ai avatar

A leak of the Google Content API Warehouse docs seem to suggest that many known elements of PageRank are not as important as user click signals.

IOW, you'll continue ranking if you're already ranking. But you won't magically grow organic traffic from Google alone.

https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@jeromechoo how would this juvenile with people claiming lately that there’s been a radical shift in the algorithm that’s destroying small online businesses that are now getting bypassed in favor of content farms?

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

The deeply serious reply-guys of Mastodon: conducting an argument (that they started, natch) with "what ifs"; and their main points of reference are "small tribes" and their assumedly deep, universal, and primitive need for "police"; and Mr. Bean. Oh also refusing to read the abolitionist links people are providing.

Don't ever change, Mastodon

sysop408, (edited )
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@inquiline I wandered over to Threads this past weekend and my feed was a brawl started by a straight woman shaming a gay guy who admitted that he liked Chick-Fil-A.

I was like... Wow, while it's not exactly the same, this kinda rhymes. These two ends of the Fediverse are so different yet so much the same. It felt familiar.

@rose_alibi

davidtoddmccarty, to random
@davidtoddmccarty@me.dm avatar

They keep trying to predict the downfall of the movie industry by talking about how “Furiosa” and “Garfield” tanked over the weekend.

Maybe we don’t want to see yet another derivative bit of profiteering from intellectual properties that are no longer relevant. We’ve had enough of Mad Max and Garfield was never funny.

Make better movies.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@davidtoddmccarty I thought the Fall Guy was excellent. It was a tongue-in-cheek irreverent everything bagel of a movie and it seemed pretty apparent to me that was exactly what it was supposed to be.

kurtsh, to random
@kurtsh@mastodon.social avatar

I visit Twitter maybe once a day & it amazes me that that place is basically one giant YouTube comments section... except that much of its content is absolutely critical to what I do.

There's simply no other place that publishes news & information from millions of sources in the same way. And no other social ecosystem has done ANYTHING to compel corporations & govt entities to contribute in the same way to their networks.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@kurtsh I’ve been playing with Threads a bit and my impression is that it very much is like Mastodon, but on steroids.

The best of Mastodon is there in spades as are the worst elements. Sometimes the best and worst are the same thing. I popped over there and for some reason my feed was consumed by a brawl started by some straight woman shaming a gay guy who said he ate at Chick-Fil-A and lots of comments about late stage capitalism.

Well that feels familiar.

I’m getting more conversation out of my puny 145 follower account there than I am with 3000 here. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it does make it much more engaging and addictive right out of the gates.

Threads certainly showcases one way to approach the Fediverse assuming they follow through. I plan to start building with ActivityPub soon so I like having options.

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@kurtsh they definitely seem to be working on tweaking their algorithm because it's been a different experience every few weeks when I take another look around.

When they first launched, it was just absolute chaos. It felt like everyone talking at the same time. I literally got vertigo and noped outta there in 30 minutes.

Another visit some time later was nothing but engagement hacking and clickbait. Nope nope nope again.

More recently I've been seeing a lot of photography content. It was all from big accounts which I'm not interested in feeding.

This past weekend, I got hit with lots of photography threads again, but this time it was mostly small accounts and amateurs sharing tips and helping each other and that was really cool.

And then suddenly it was all about shaming the gay guy who had the misfortune of admitting he ate at Chick-Fil-A. I hit "not interested in this" and thankfully did not wander into that melee again.

#threads

trib, to random
@trib@aus.social avatar

Best iOS app for Mastodon? Anyone? Bueller?
Balance of ease of use, cleverness, cost, etc.
TIA

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@madpilot I've tried a bunch and Ivory is what I stuck with. All the ones I've seen mentioned are good. There was something I liked about all of them, but Ivory was the fastest and closest in approach to the Web Mastodon client when I did my comparisons.

@trib

sysop408,
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

@trib I've tried a bunch and Ivory is what I stuck with. All the ones I've seen mentioned are good. There was something I liked about all of them, but Ivory was the fastest and closest in approach to the Web Mastodon client when I did my comparisons.

@madpilot

sysop408, to random
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    sysop408,
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    @failedLyndonLaRouchite Memorial Day is for honoring those who died in uniform whether from war or just performing duties in peacetime.

    The day to honor those who served is Veteran’s Day.

    wyri, (edited ) to random
    @wyri@haxim.us avatar

    Been going through my photos to find the photos I need to for the 3 blog posts I wrote about it yesterday. Came across some random photos, starting with the first node getting set up, with GUI for some reason:

    sysop408,
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    @wyri uh, scuse me sir, but can ya fill in those of us who got to the auditorium late about what we're seeing here? What is that amazing rig you have there?

    sysop408,
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    @wyri oh wasn't calling you out on the alt text. I just wanted to know what that LEGO contraption was. So it's homebrew PI board and Ethernet dock?

    deadsuperhero, to random
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    Slowly redesigning my personal site on localdev tonight. Right now, it’s just a sandbox for experiments, but my hope is to design something that feels unique to me.

    Also, something that feels less ugly than what I’m using.

    sysop408,
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    @deadsuperhero this has been my goal for over 12 years now. 😳 My own site is so bad I avoid mentioning it if I can. I’ll even use one of my alternate emails addresses if I don’t want someone to check the website behind my main email address.

    I feel your pain.

    sysop408, (edited ) to random
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    In the summer of 96, I was picked up by police in Greensboro, NC for being brown at the wrong place and wrong time. If things were legit, I knew I'd be cleared, but was terrified they'd search my house.

    That's because I lived with a drug dealer, an ex-con, a gang member, a teen girl who worked as a stripper, and a gay guy dying of AIDS who lounged about with a large boa constrictor. It was literally the villain's hideout from a movie.

    What the hell was I doing there, you ask? Good question. I badly needed a place to stay so I took the first affordable one I found. It was in a great neighborhood so I didn't ask questions.

    PRO TIP: Ask questions.

    We hung out and enjoyed cookouts as unlikely friends. I heard life stories I was glad to never live. I also got close to being in a shootout.

    A voice raging at me over the phone was 20 minutes away from eating a bullet from the ex-con's Glock. Then a gang girl who didn't finish high school took the phone from me and defused the situation.

    What a summer.

    sysop408, to BayArea
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We typically refer to our region as "the Bay Area" as if that was actually a distinctive name.

    Just out of curosity, what other places also refer to their region as "The Bay Area?"

    I know of one and it's totally messed me up before because I used to travel there for work a couple of weeks a year. The DC, Virginia, Maryland region is also referred to as the Bay Area and they even have a "Bay Bridge" like us.

    It was that they also had a Bay Bridge that truly messed me up when I was there. Being a West Coaster transported to the East Coast to a place that used the same terminology to refer to themselves, it felt like everything was upside down and I'd sometimes get confused as to which Bay Area people were referring to.

    sysop408,
    @sysop408@sfba.social avatar

    @dan always possible as it’d be the original Bay Area since it was settled first. It doesn’t appear like it’s common usage down there today though.

    I think it’d be hard for that to stick given how much travel there is between the two regions and how great the population disparity is.

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