escottf

escottf, 11 days ago

@jon The “layover” bit could (if not already) be a deliberate thing as train stations become more commercial (retail) operations. There could be a growing incentive to “make them wait” a bit. Admittedly, right now it’s probably incompetence, but eventually “evil”.

escottf, 1 month ago

@rileytestut I am biased about where I live, but there’s a great Apple museum in Warsaw…and Warsaw is also a great city to visit. Unlike many European cities, Warsaw is a great mix of old and new (it was destroyed in WWII and a lot of the good bits were rebuilt but it has cool new stuff too). The rest of Poland is pretty awesome too (highlights for me: Krakow and Wrocław - both lovely historic cities).

https://applemuzeumpolska.pl/en/main-page/

escottf, 1 month ago

@gedeonm OK. Silly question. How does it survive in the basement? Do you have good light there or sun lamps or something. I live where there’s cold winters too 🇵🇱 and we’ve ended up with the lemon tree in the stairwell (by the window).

escottf, 2 months ago

@glennf As a NZer living in Poland, the “problem” these days isn’t so much to do with latency or cost - it’s the time difference (especially from Europe). Even with friends, you’re trying to find a morning they have an evening free in, or vice versa - so it’s less spontaneous and more a chore (work flexibility helps to improve the situation). On a technical basis - there’s long distance fibre across the Pacific so the days of delays caused by pinging off a satellite are long gone.

escottf, 3 months ago

@mwichary @glennf On a more boring note, the FedEx (less common in here in Poland) delivery went perfectly. It arrived 1 business day after the original estimate (so no big deal). The external box looked like it had been shipped across the city, not half the planet. Tracking was mostly accurate (although it seemed go from Belgium to Germany and back to Belgium again 🤨). The internal packaging was perfect. Oh, and no extra charges at this end - which often happens from outside the EU (notably from the UK - *+%£ Brexit). Sorry no photos yet - it’s a bit dreary here at the moment so not good for photo taking.

escottf, 4 months ago

@GottaLaff @Gargron I’m just a mere “reader” of Mastodon, but @ivory (iPhone, iPad, Mac) seems to support up to 6 columns and multiple windows on the Mac. I’ve never used it on the Mac - but it is a very good client.

I normally use @IceCubesApp - also excellent - but I have no idea if it supports anything like your Mastodon needs.

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian I don’t think other (than English) languages appreciate the humour of having a 2:30 dental appointment 😢

Is adding search to the follows list coming (you just added it to the following list)? I’m presuming most people have more followers than I do 😂

escottf, 4 months ago

@Iconfactory Brilliant as always. Minor typo: Services > Consulting > “development” (on the separate Services page, not the homepage)

escottf, 4 months ago

@gedeonm A-BBA 🕺🏻💃💃🏻🕺🏻

escottf, 4 months ago

@IceCubesApp In the following/followers lists, will we be able to search or sort? I’m reasonably regularly (I won’t say “constantly” as that’s an exaggeration) looking through my following list to get to someone’s profile to check something recent.

(Sorry if this has been asked about before…probably numerous times)

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian It could be.

As one of the fairly typical ( ? ) users of Mastodon who only reads my own timeline (those I follow) there’s the thread I see from someone I follow (obviously, as a “Mastodon completionist” - basically the long post split into pieces) but the ones I find the most interesting are the ones I accidentally stumble upon (and by accidentally, I MEAN accidentally because of the above) where two (or more) people I follow are commenting which “reveals” the conversation to me - even if it’s in reply to someone I don’t follow.

(Examples may be from people in the Apple “press” (podcasters/writers/etc), many of whom moved to Mastodon all at the same time - so there’s more conversations and jokes going on)

I’m not sure how that would be “revealed” other than the exponentially difficult task of downloading the feed of every follow though, to see something busy that’s “involving” someone I follow, but not necessarily involving anyone else I know (which would normally show it exists to me).

I also don’t know the “mechanics” of threads - like I’d guess they must be “assembled on the fly” based on date and time when a user clicks on a post in one (in which case you’d only see how long it is by “assembling every thread”) - which again seem problematic. I’d also guess the thread indicator only shows because there’s an @ symbol at the start of the message or that it has some metadata as a “reply” but not anything about the length of the thread.

I’d guess something would only be “topical” if it’s happening now-ish though. So only replies from someone in the last 24 hours, to narrow things down. But then you’d also deal with everyone (like yourself here) where you’d get lots of replies…but maybe only the thread would be a single reply, or you replying to the reply (“deep” threads being the interesting ones in theory).

I’d also guess the actual content of the messages would be irrelevant beyond the @ mentions at the start of it (identifying possible threads) …unless you text searched for “Nazi” which used to be the universal end of threads 😂 I’d then also guess you needed to download the full text to allow that but not download any “attachments”.

Sorry, I’m not a programmer but I am in IT and a nerd - so “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” 😂

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian Topical example of thread exposing two people I follow talking to each other which I wouldn’t notice if a) yours wasn’t the source message and/or b) I wasn’t following both of you:

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian I say 24-hours as an example because that overrides the time differences in most cases - so you’ll get people like us in Europe commenting on things then the US comes online … then you might get Australia/NZ waking up. So a “slow moving thread” if it’s not local-specific - but not too slow.

That’s said, if the thread really is busy, it will show up because it’s busy in each of the time zones separately. That is biasing towards English messages though.

I’ll be quiet now 😂

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian Please don’t block me but: “AI stuff”?

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian I know you’re a genius at all this (no sarcasm - super impressed with Ice Cubes development speed as well as refinement) - but it should be “AI stuff” 😬

escottf, 4 months ago

@dimillian I used to do IT stuff for a National newspaper, and you’d be surprised how many people used to check the text before it hit the printed page (and whose job it was to check the text) and you’d be surprised how many typos still managed to slip through.

I’m guessing it may be the same with coding where you read “what you think should be there” rather than “what IS there”. Especially difficult when you’ve written it yourself so “it’s already written correctly in your head”.

escottf, 5 months ago

@jon I’m not so sure she’s over the top - she’s a woman and a public figure on Twitter so she’s probably experiencing “maximum horribleness”.

I’d also say that when reporters/news organisations move somewhere else, that’s it - as a fellow commentator said, when a big news story breaks somewhere else, why stay?

Advertisers in general are put off - not just because where their ads are showing up but because of the leadership of Twitter. I think “those that remain” are probably a mirage of sorts because you’ve got to expect that combination of Twitter being a bin fire combined with the general advertising downturn must mean they’re getting ads desperately cheap now so they’re just taking advantage of that.

As for the celebrities - the stars probably have mostly moved to Instagram by now - so it’s those who feel they’re ONLY stars on Twitter that feel stuck there in any way.

I only miss the news/political stuff - which has been stubborn to move. Inertia is hard to beat in “utility style” companies - and much of our internet (email providers, FB, IG, Google, etc) is now that - common places we go out of habit because we’re not all “young people with time to explore the latest new thing” (feeling old here). I’m thankful that Mastodon is doing a great job though.

escottf, 5 months ago

@jon It would be interesting to see civil services spin up Mastodon instances. We see the occasional organisation - like a university or a town council (or even some EU stuff) - but to see something like a national government run instances for all their ministries would be something. Especially for emergency messaging - that would tilt things away from Twitter.

escottf, 5 months ago

@jamesthomson While 42 is very important, you’re rapidly approaching a hypothetical PCalc iOS version 3.141592536 😁

escottf, 6 months ago

@jamesthomson There’s him and Danny Glover’s soon-to-retire detective in Lethal Weapon (41 in the first movie). That said, it means we’ve had them in a lot more movies than we would have expected to because of that.

escottf, 6 months ago

@Chrishallbeck Maybe they’re like buses, they all arrive at once (looks up nervously) 🙄

escottf, 6 months ago

@jamesthomson Bring back the icon garden!!! 🐕🐄

escottf, 6 months ago

@dimillian @IceCubesApp If you know about @jamesthomson, these aren’t mutually exclusive 🤣 🧮👾