Bluesky is now open for everyone

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After Twitter’s upheaval in late 2022, like many people, I was looking for a new social media site. For a long time that was Mastodon, where I’m still active. Around the middle of last year I got an invitation to Bluesky and it’s been my favorite social site since then. Because it was invite only, it had a more laid back & relaxed feel than any of the other social media sites. Hopefully that wouldn’t change too much.

Instead of Twitter, I now use 3 different microblogging social media sites: Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky. Each has a different purpose.

Mastodon is for more serious talk, local people, and people I know in real life.

Threads is for news and following major accounts in politics, entertainment, and journalism.

Bluesky is for fun and silliness. It feels the most like old Twitter in the very early days. A lot of people I used to follow on Twitter are only on Bluesky. You can follow me here.

Happy Birthday, Macintosh!

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January 24 marks 40 years since the Macintosh was first introduced in 1984, an event that changed the direction of my life and my career.

The Macintosh wasn’t my first computer — I started out with a Cosmac Elf, and then moved on to an Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P, and finally an Apple II.

I ordered my first Macintosh a few days after it was released, but I didn’t receive it until February 1984, since they were in short supply in NY. I’ve owed many Macs since then, including a Mac Plus, a SE/30, which was my favorite early Mac, the original G3 & G4 towers, and many MacBook Pros.

Before the Macintosh, I wrote software for the Apple II, TRS-80, and Unix, but since then I’ve been focused entirely on Mac & iOS.

Is Mastodon really dead?

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Pundits like to claim that Mastodon is failing, but I find it to be a lot more active than any of the other new social sites and I get a lot more engagement there.

I have around 780 followers on Mastodon and 1200 on Twitter, but I get many more likes, replies, and reposts on Mastodon.

Yesterday I posted this same picture on both Twitter and Mastodon, and immediately got many more likes and reposts on Mastodon than Twitter.

Mastodon post with 325 likes and 147 boosts
Twitter post with 252 likes and 21 retweets

Hello Again

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It’s been a couple of years since I wrote here and a lot has happened since my last post. I’ve mostly been writing on Medium, where I worked for a short time in 2019. I’m also active on Mastodon. I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting here.

A short summary of the last few years:

I left Line2 in 2017 when our engineering manager left and it seemed like there wasn’t much more to do there. The company was acquired about a year later.

Later in 2017 I got pretty sick and was out of commission for a few months.

I then worked for several startups over the next few years which went through major layoffs. My most recent company, which made educational software, laid off 50% of the staff only a few months after I joined.

Website updates

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I’ve taken down both MacMegasite and WorldBeatPlanet since I haven’t really had time to maintain them for several years. Both sites were hosted somewhere else, and when my annual hosting plan came up for renewal, I decided it wasn’t worth renewing.

In other news, I’m really excited about the projects I’m working on now at Line2. I also adopted a new kitten earlier this year.

https://i0.wp.com/farm2.staticflickr.com/1694/24362534676_c09fcd95a6.jpg?resize=500%2C332&ssl=1