bmann.ca
+14
_notes/beipa.md
+14
_notes/beipa.md
···+> BEIPA takes a balanced approach to assigning control of intellectual property (IP) created by an employee. The employee maintains control unless they created the IP in their employee capacity and the IP relates to an existing or prospective company product or service, or was developed for use by the company, or was developed or promoted with existing company IP or with the company's endorsement. A company using BEIPA doesn't try to claim control of an employee's free time knowledge production, nor does it try to extend company control past the period of employment. Think of BEIPA as a commitment to employee autonomy and "work-life balance" – for the mind.+> BEIPA was started as a reusable version of GitHub's employee IP agreement. Your company can use BEIPA too, and modify it as needed. If you'd like to help improve BEIPA for everyone, file an issue or make a pull request. While aiming to maintain the same "balanced" policy, we're keen to see feedback and suggestions for improving BEIPA and associated documentation.
+2
-1
_notes/cobuying-property-with-friends.md
+2
-1
_notes/cobuying-property-with-friends.md
+27
_notes/mastodon.md
+27
_notes/mastodon.md
···+The Mastodon documentation site https://docs.joinmastodon.org/ covers what a microblog and federation are:+> Similar to how blogging is the act of publishing updates to a website, microblogging is the act of publishing small updates to a stream of updates on your profile. You can publish text posts and optionally attach media such as pictures, audio, video, or polls. Mastodon lets you follow friends and discover new ones.+> Federation is a form of decentralization. Instead of a single central service that all people use, there are multiple services, that any number of people can use.+> I'm working on Mastodon, a free, open-source social network server based on open web protocols like ActivityPub and OStatus. The social focus of the project is a viable decentralized alternative to commercial social media silos that returns the control of the content distribution channels to the people. The technical focus of the project is a good user interface, a clean REST API for 3rd party apps and robust anti-abuse tools.+> The entire network is like an unlimited number of different Twitter websites, users of which can follow each other and interact regardless of which Twitter website exactly they are on. This has obvious benefits as there is no single company that has a monopoly.
+4
-4
_notes/meet-coop.md
+4
-4
_notes/meet-coop.md
······-> access to open source meeting and conferencing tools, powered by [[BigBlueButton]], running on cooperatively owned infrastructure. We are part of the commons economy.+> access to open source meeting and conferencing tools, powered by BigBlueButton, running on cooperatively owned infrastructure. We are part of the commons economy.-Found this via [[Social Co-op]], which is considering joining so SC members get access to meeting capabilities.+Found this via [[Social.Coop]], which is considering joining so SC members get access to meeting capabilities.
+3
_notes/this-mastodon-server-is-no-longer-around-so-it-was-a-relatively-short-lived-experiment-rmn.md
+3
_notes/this-mastodon-server-is-no-longer-around-so-it-was-a-relatively-short-lived-experiment-rmn.md
+49
_posts/blog/2016-08-01-self-hosting-doesnt-help-self-publish.md
+49
_posts/blog/2016-08-01-self-hosting-doesnt-help-self-publish.md
···+From my point-of-view, anything with an API that I can map my own domain name to meets the bar of a resilient service.+<p name="0559" id="0559" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p"><a href="https://medium.com/u/3ede57240cdf" data-href="https://medium.com/u/3ede57240cdf" data-anchor-type="2" data-user-id="3ede57240cdf" data-action-value="3ede57240cdf" data-action="show-user-card" data-action-type="hover" class="markup--user markup--p-user" target="_blank">D'Arcy Norman</a> didn’t agree with me on that:</p>+<figure name="ed3a" id="ed3a" class="graf graf--figure graf--iframe graf-after--p"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/dlnorman/status/759043575782871042"></a></blockquote>+<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></figure><p name="072c" id="072c" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">(hopefully that link still works. I mean, we don’t own Twitter, so that content could go away at any time)</p>+<p name="768b" id="768b" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">I actually did export my Posterous content, and put it on my l<a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/" data-href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ong term archive</a>, which is self-hosted. Well, sort of. It’s not running on a server underneath my desk at home. It’s running on AWS. Is that self-hosting?</p>+<figure name="c9c8" id="c9c8" class="graf graf--figure graf--iframe graf-after--p"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/bmann/status/759043924014931968"></a></blockquote>+<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></figure><p name="2d4e" id="2d4e" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">I feel worse about the many many many people with SOMEBLOG.wordpress.com. You’re going to have to <a href="https://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/" data-href="https://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">pay WP $13 per year (forever?) to redirect</a>. If only they had mapped a domain name right away, their site would have been much more portable.</p>+<p name="7379" id="7379" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">I recently <a href="http://medium.bmannconsulting.com" data-href="http://medium.bmannconsulting.com" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">added my own domain to Medium</a>. I feel pretty good about my chances of exporting. And I feel great about doing the thing that we all worked on for so long — making it really easy to self-publish on the Internet. I’m writing more. I’m enjoying writing.</p>+<figure name="4705" id="4705" class="graf graf--figure graf--iframe graf-after--h4"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/bmann/status/738944858912489473"></a></blockquote>+<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></figure><p name="8fce" id="8fce" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">Just today, <a href="https://medium.com/u/7ae2822fb046" data-href="https://medium.com/u/7ae2822fb046" data-anchor-type="2" data-user-id="7ae2822fb046" data-action-value="7ae2822fb046" data-action="show-user-card" data-action-type="hover" class="markup--user markup--p-user" target="_blank">Albert Wenger</a> wrote about <a href="http://continuations.com/post/148294791800/thinking-about-leaving-tumblr-looking-for-a" data-href="http://continuations.com/post/148294791800/thinking-about-leaving-tumblr-looking-for-a" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">looking for a decentralized blog network:</a></p>+<blockquote name="b2ed" id="b2ed" class="graf graf--blockquote graf-after--p">But it is 2016 and if I am going to make the effort to move Continuations, it will be to something that I control entirely…ideally the platform I move to would include a decentralized network. Fred and I have been writing about <a href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Favc.com%2F2016%2F07%2Fthe-golden-age-of-open-protocols%2F&t=ODk4ZjM0NzA0N2U0M2M0YmMzN2ViYzgwM2UzZmQ2MjdjMjQyNGJkYSxFbjJ2Wjc5eA%3D%3D" data-href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Favc.com%2F2016%2F07%2Fthe-golden-age-of-open-protocols%2F&t=ODk4ZjM0NzA0N2U0M2M0YmMzN2ViYzgwM2UzZmQ2MjdjMjQyNGJkYSxFbjJ2Wjc5eA%3D%3D" class="markup--anchor markup--blockquote-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">protocol</a> <a href="http://continuations.com/post/148098927445/crypto-tokens-and-the-coming-age-of-protocol" data-href="http://continuations.com/post/148098927445/crypto-tokens-and-the-coming-age-of-protocol" class="markup--anchor markup--blockquote-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">innovation</a> and blog publishing seems to be one area that is perfect for such a system. In functionality my ideal system would be quite similar to Tumblr + Disqus but would use something like <a href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fonename.com%2F&t=YjIzZmY5Yjk2MGFkYWUzMmFjYWEyYTZmOGQ3YTI3YTgxZDhlOWIzMixFbjJ2Wjc5eA%3D%3D" data-href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fonename.com%2F&t=YjIzZmY5Yjk2MGFkYWUzMmFjYWEyYTZmOGQ3YTI3YTgxZDhlOWIzMixFbjJ2Wjc5eA%3D%3D" class="markup--anchor markup--blockquote-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Onename</a> as its identity system. Every post (and comment) would be signed with an identity and it would be possible to follow content based on identity independent of publishing location. For content storage it should be possible to plug in a decentralized file system via <a href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fipfs.io&t=ODA3MmU2NWJkMWVkZWFmNjlkNzcwN2FlNDc2MzhhZjU3ZWJjNTYyOSxFbjJ2Wjc5eA%3D%3D" data-href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fipfs.io&t=ODA3MmU2NWJkMWVkZWFmNjlkNzcwN2FlNDc2MzhhZjU3ZWJjNTYyOSxFbjJ2Wjc5eA%3D%3D" class="markup--anchor markup--blockquote-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">IPFS</a>.</blockquote>+<p name="1612" id="1612" class="graf graf--p graf-after--blockquote">Absolutely! That’s what we should be working on next. Easy self-publishing? Check! Let’s move on to something that is even more resilient. A fully decentralized system.</p>+<figure name="af08" id="af08" class="graf graf--figure graf--iframe graf-after--p"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/bmann/status/759048526257016832"></a></blockquote>+<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></figure><p name="ebb6" id="ebb6" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">We don’t even own our domain names — we rent them. And for the next 1 Billion, $10 per year is too much to pay to rent a domain name.</p>+<p name="6ec6" id="6ec6" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">So here are my proposed rules for a decentralized, self-publishing system of the future:</p>+<strong class="markup--strong markup--li-strong">Publish from a smartphone:</strong> someone with nothing but a smartphone should be able to publish.<br>This might be a full blown app (which could connect to the decentralized network directly, or even “host” from the phone) or just a mobile web page (which someone would need to run as a proxy / gateway into a decentralized system).</li>+<strong class="markup--strong markup--li-strong">No server hosting:</strong> you don’t need to run a server under your desk or rent servers. Hit publish and your content is truly in the cloud — posted to a decentralized network.</li>+<strong class="markup--strong markup--li-strong">No domain names:</strong> you don’t need to rent an identifier from anyone else to have the content be “yours”.<br>Remembering 0xA8C7372dC993d7510C9c45425807d463967cbb12 as my username isn’t going to be very usable, so there will be various user interface or even proxy systems that won’t be fully decentralized.</li>+<p name="9fcd" id="9fcd" class="graf graf--p graf-after--li">Consider this a first draft, and a way to start the discussion about where we should move the goal posts to.</p>+<figure name="1715" id="1715" class="graf graf--figure graf-after--p"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="max-width: 411px; max-height: 259px;"><img class="graf-image" data-image-id="1*qntxZstr7BlkF8XPxSHNtA.png" data-width="411" data-height="259" src="https://microblog.bmannconsulting.com/uploads/2020/9ca31795cc.jpg"></div>+<figcaption class="imageCaption">From the IPFS.io home page</figcaption></figure><p name="39cf" id="39cf" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">I’m looking forward to a new wave of innovation around this. The <a href="http://continuations.com/post/148294791800/thinking-about-leaving-tumblr-looking-for-a" data-href="http://continuations.com/post/148294791800/thinking-about-leaving-tumblr-looking-for-a" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">discussion on Albert Wenger’s blog</a> has a list of links that I’m checking out for experimenting with.</p>+<p name="283f" id="283f" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">In the mean time, you can find me at <a href="http://tumblr.bmannconsulting.com" data-href="http://tumblr.bmannconsulting.com" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">tumblr.bmannconsulting.com</a> and <a href="http://medium.bmannconsulting.com" data-href="http://medium.bmannconsulting.com" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">medium.bmannconsulting.com</a>, my long term archive at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com" data-href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">bmannconsulting.com</a>, and as <a href="http://twitter.com/bmann" data-href="http://twitter.com/bmann" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">bmann</a> on the centralized corporate global messaging platform known as Twitter.</p>+<li name="a0ee" id="a0ee" class="graf graf--li graf-after--h4">Vinay Gupta’s Ethereum intro, <a href="https://medium.com/@ConsenSys/programmable-blockchains-in-context-ethereum-s-future-cd8451eb421e#.h6tmxqntb" data-href="https://medium.com/@ConsenSys/programmable-blockchains-in-context-ethereum-s-future-cd8451eb421e#.h6tmxqntb" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" target="_blank">Programmable Blockchains in Context</a>+<a href="http://ipfs.io" data-href="http://ipfs.io" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">IPFS</a>, the InterPlanetary File System.</li>+<li name="ac90" id="ac90" class="graf graf--li graf-after--li graf--trailing">More technical reading on trade-offs in decentralized systems, by <a href="https://medium.com/u/f1cb98e196bc" data-href="https://medium.com/u/f1cb98e196bc" data-anchor-type="2" data-user-id="f1cb98e196bc" data-action-value="f1cb98e196bc" data-action="show-user-card" data-action-type="hover" class="markup--user markup--li-user" target="_blank">Trent McConaghy,</a> <a href="https://medium.com/the-bigchaindb-blog/the-dcs-triangle-5ce0e9e0f1dc#.8psg2s3mh" data-href="https://medium.com/the-bigchaindb-blog/the-dcs-triangle-5ce0e9e0f1dc#.8psg2s3mh" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" target="_blank">The DCS Triangle</a>
+11
_posts/blog/2017-02-13-akasha-cross-post-planting-tag-flag-vancouver-bowen-canada.md
+11
_posts/blog/2017-02-13-akasha-cross-post-planting-tag-flag-vancouver-bowen-canada.md
···+*actually my second post, since I posted a simple one about tagging in order to troubleshoot why this post wasn’t working. I’ve been saving regularly, and it seems like I can no longer save as soon as I add a link of any kind. The lesson is: save often, and don’t add any links.
+21
_posts/blog/2017-04-09-run-your-own-mastodon-instance.md
+21
_posts/blog/2017-04-09-run-your-own-mastodon-instance.md
···+(A reply to [Mastodon is dead in the water](https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e8abb1))+The problems you mention come mainly from a single large instance. You seem to mention an answer but then gloss over it.+Why not have people run <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">custom.website</em> using their own domain name?+Just like at the dawn of blogging, running your own federated social instance isn’t for everyone. But you don’t need to be particularly technical to get things up and running. The <a href="https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/master/docs/Running-Mastodon/Heroku-guide.md" data-href="https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/master/docs/Running-Mastodon/Heroku-guide.md" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Deploy to Heroku experience</a> is cut and paste.+Will it be hard to – as a community – help people setup their own instances? Sure. It was hard to bootstrap blogging, too.
+70
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_posts/blog/2017-04-15-notes-on-running-mastodon-heroku.md
+70
-48
_posts/blog/2017-04-15-notes-on-running-mastodon-heroku.md
···-<p name="5ed2" id="5ed2" class="graf graf--p graf--leading"><a href="https://medium.com/u/f841dc3192de" data-href="https://medium.com/u/f841dc3192de" data-anchor-type="2" data-user-id="f841dc3192de" data-action-value="f841dc3192de" data-action="show-user-card" data-action-type="hover" class="markup--user markup--p-user" target="_blank">Darren Barefoot</a> kicked off a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/dbarefoot/posts/10155060142235600" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/dbarefoot/posts/10155060142235600" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">discussion on Facebook</a> asking if people wanted to run Mastodon locally:</p>-<blockquote name="1f3c" id="1f3c" class="graf graf--blockquote graf-after--p">Who wants to help me set up a Mastodon instance for Vancouver-related stuff? I’ll provide the moral support, promotion and pay for hosting if someone wants to do the hard technical bits.</blockquote>-<blockquote name="8dfa" id="8dfa" class="graf graf--blockquote graf-after--blockquote">Or maybe that’s the wrong vector. Maybe we should set up an NGO tech and digital instance. Or maybe both?</blockquote>-<p name="5390" id="5390" class="graf graf--p graf-after--blockquote">I responded that maybe everyone should run their own instance:</p>-<figure name="6773" id="6773" class="graf graf--figure graf-after--p"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="max-width: 479px; max-height: 376px;">+Darren Barefoot kicked off a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/dbarefoot/posts/10155060142235600" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/dbarefoot/posts/10155060142235600" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">discussion on Facebook</a> asking if people wanted to run Mastodon locally:+> Who wants to help me set up a Mastodon instance for Vancouver-related stuff? I’ll provide the moral support, promotion and pay for hosting if someone wants to do the hard technical bits.+> Or maybe that’s the wrong vector. Maybe we should set up an NGO tech and digital instance. Or maybe both?<img class="graf-image" data-image-id="1*IWD5lyPAqw8NibZPfvHDNA.png" data-width="479" data-height="376" src="https://microblog.bmannconsulting.com/uploads/2020/c339a4e9e1.jpg">-</div></figure><p name="60ca" id="60ca" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">Does it make sense for a community or group to run their own install? As much as I love open source, running an entire software stack securely — and not losing everyone’s data because you don’t have good backups — is a big job. I tend to discourage people from running their own software, instead mapping a domain name to Medium or Tumblr.</p>-<blockquote name="a11d" id="a11d" class="graf graf--pullquote graf-after--p">From my point of view, anything with an API that I can map my own domain to meets the bar of a resilient service — me, <a href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/self-hosting-doesnt-help-more-people-self-publish-b6bde64d2bcb" data-href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/self-hosting-doesnt-help-more-people-self-publish-b6bde64d2bcb" class="markup--anchor markup--pullquote-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Self-hosting doesn’t help more people self-publish</a>+Does it make sense for a community or group to run their own install? As much as I love open source, running an entire software stack securely — and not losing everyone’s data because you don’t have good backups — is a big job. I tend to discourage people from running their own software, instead mapping a domain name to Medium or Tumblr.+<blockquote name="a11d" id="a11d" class="graf graf--pullquote graf-after--p">From my point of view, anything with an API that I can map my own domain to meets the bar of a resilient service <a href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/self-hosting-doesnt-help-more-people-self-publish-b6bde64d2bcb" data-href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/self-hosting-doesnt-help-more-people-self-publish-b6bde64d2bcb" class="markup--anchor markup--pullquote-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Self-hosting doesn’t help more people self-publish</a>-<p name="105b" id="105b" class="graf graf--p graf-after--pullquote">Kind of contrary to that, I wrote a response to <a href="https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e8abb1" data-href="https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e8abb1" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Mastodon is Dead in the Water</a> saying that people should <a href="https://medium.com/@bmann/run-your-own-mastadon-instance-265897cc336d" data-href="https://medium.com/@bmann/run-your-own-mastadon-instance-265897cc336d" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" target="_blank">run their own Mastodon instance</a>.</p>-<p name="f73c" id="f73c" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">I was still in Toronto at the time, and actually got Mastodon setup using just the browser on my phone with the <a href="https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Heroku-guide.md" data-href="https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Heroku-guide.md" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Deploy to Heroku button</a>. This is a feature of Heroku I love, and I’ve created several of these buttons of my own to help people get apps up and running.</p>-<p name="cb5b" id="cb5b" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">This Easter weekend (it took me a solid half a day yesterday) I finally did the work to fully setup a Mastodon instance. I set one up for <a href="https://www.frontierfoundry.co" data-href="https://www.frontierfoundry.co" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Frontier Foundry</a>, my new venture. I thought we might use it for links and tweet-length commentary for us and our portfolio companies. Or it might just be something to experiment with for a couple of weeks.</p>-<figure name="5e32" id="5e32" class="graf graf--figure graf-after--p"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="max-width: 700px; max-height: 340px;">-<a href="https://mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/@boris" data-href="https://mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/@boris" class="graf-imageAnchor" data-action="image-link" data-action-observe-only="true" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="graf-image" data-image-id="1*ubT9B0hPZ9Eu9uVODwVm5Q.png" data-width="700" data-height="340" src="https://microblog.bmannconsulting.com/uploads/2020/8831df6ccf.jpg"></a>-</div></figure><p name="b411" id="b411" class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure">My profile on the Frontier Foundry mastodon instance lives at <a href="https://mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/@boris" data-href="https://mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/@boris" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/@boris</a>. There’s even an <a href="http://mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/users/boris.atom" data-href="http://mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/users/boris.atom" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">RSS feed for each user</a> which enables interesting re-use — I’ve setup an IFTTT recipe that posts anything from that feed to my Twitter account if it contains the keyword “share”.</p>-<h4 name="1409" id="1409" class="graf graf--h4 graf-after--p">Setting up Mastodon on Heroku</h4>-<p name="ffbf" id="ffbf" class="graf graf--p graf-after--h4">Here are the things you’re going to need to have accounts on / be comfortable working with:</p>-<li name="8782" id="8782" class="graf graf--li graf-after--p">a domain name and a registrar where you can edit DNS settings. I tend to use <a href="http://namecheap.com" data-href="http://namecheap.com" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Namecheap</a>, while <a href="https://www.hover.com/" data-href="https://www.hover.com/" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hover</a> is my “regular user” recommendation that also happens to be Canadian. Domains tend to be about $10USD per year, although there are also much cheaper ones and specials.</li>-<li name="c8b1" id="c8b1" class="graf graf--li graf-after--li">an <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/" data-href="https://aws.amazon.com/" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Amazon AWS account</a>: accounts are free although you will have to have a credit card attached. The S3 file storage here will cost perhaps $1USD per month at most.</li>-<li name="66ff" id="66ff" class="graf graf--li graf-after--li">a <a href="http://heroku.com" data-href="http://heroku.com" class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Heroku</a> account: accounts are free, you’ll need a credit card attached to your account, and I am currently paying what will amount to $14USD per month for hosting</li>-<p name="9e97" id="9e97" class="graf graf--p graf-after--li">Next, you may very well need to have a desktop computer setup with Ruby, Node, git, and a full suite of developer tools to be successful in getting everything working.</p>-<p name="51e6" id="51e6" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">Reading <a href="https://ashfurrow.com/blog/running-mastodon-on-heroku/" data-href="https://ashfurrow.com/blog/running-mastodon-on-heroku/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Ash Furrow’s Running Mastodon on Heroku</a> meant that someone had hit many roadblocks ahead of me and figured out some of the workarounds, which was great. The setup I ended up following was two Heroku installs to get the Streaming API working, as per the <a href="https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1119#issuecomment-292816340" data-href="https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1119#issuecomment-292816340" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">comment in this issue by ecmendenhall</a> (thanks <a href="https://medium.com/u/63ecced19e3d" data-href="https://medium.com/u/63ecced19e3d" data-anchor-type="2" data-user-id="63ecced19e3d" data-action-value="63ecced19e3d" data-action="show-user-card" data-action-type="hover" class="markup--user markup--p-user" target="_blank">Connor Mendenhall</a>!).</p>-<p name="844c" id="844c" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">I wasted a lot of time setting things up from scratch with a fresh clone of mastodon, when starting with the Deploy to Heroku and just adding the second streaming server would have probably been a better decision.</p>-<p name="1d82" id="1d82" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">The other thing that took a lot of time was setting up the Heroku Mailgun add-on. After you add it, you need to verify yourself, and then take a whole bunch of other steps in both Mailgun and your DNS / MX settings for it to be fully working. Do this right at the beginning.</p>-<p name="6ce9" id="6ce9" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">I’ve still got one piece of troubleshooting / bug to figure out with Amazon S3 settings where S3_BUCKET and S3_HOSTNAME duplicate each other (and even there I’m not going to bother doing SSL with Cloudfront, which means there is a mix of secure content and insecure images).</p>-<h4 name="10f5" id="10f5" class="graf graf--h4 graf-after--p">Should people run their own software?</h4>-<p name="69c3" id="69c3" class="graf graf--p graf-after--h4">In short, the answer is no. The level of expertise — and I’m not even talking digital literacy, I’m talking learned, professional expertise — that someone requires to run, maintains, and secure software is very high.</p>-<p name="2b6c" id="2b6c" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">That’s one of the reasons I run as many things as I can on Heroku. I don’t have to worry about the lower levels of an operating system at all.</p>-<p name="76fe" id="76fe" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">Docker is the other newest kid on the block, and Mastodon is setup to work well with Docker. But Docker and various places where you can host docker containers don’t solve the fact that you are still exposed to the entire operating system stack of a server, which is where many security and backup issues lie.</p>-<p name="c730" id="c730" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">With Heroku, database backups are included, it’s just a snapshot of code and configuration, and Amazon S3 backs up the files automatically, too. Heroku even handles SSL certificates automatically for paid accounts.</p>-<p name="cecd" id="cecd" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">The folks building mastodon are helpful to a point in getting things running on Heroku, but ultimately are focused on maintaining a more traditional software stack that they use for their own development and deployment. I think that going forward, applications need to be designed to be deployed in simpler fashion, with less of a “stack” and more pluggable components.</p>-<p name="bd0b" id="bd0b" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">What would a mastodon that was designed to be run “serverless” look like?</p>-<h4 name="f93f" id="f93f" class="graf graf--h4 graf-after--p">Decentralized and P2P apps of the future</h4>-<p name="2e34" id="2e34" class="graf graf--p graf-after--h4">I’ve been working a lot with blockchain and other decentralized / P2P applications lately. I wrote about the <a href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/akasha-planting-tag-flag-vancouver-bowen-island-canada-49907fa370c" data-href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/akasha-planting-tag-flag-vancouver-bowen-island-canada-49907fa370c" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Akasha decentralized blogging platform</a> that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, and I’ve also poked about with <a href="https://beakerbrowser.com/" data-href="https://beakerbrowser.com/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Beaker Browser</a>, which runs on the <a href="https://datproject.org/" data-href="https://datproject.org/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">dat protocol</a> underneath.</p>-<p name="ab94" id="ab94" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">It was a lot of work to setup an instance of mastodon on Heroku. For someone that has tinkered with open source tech and servers for 15+ years and has a computer science degree.</p>-<p name="2be1" id="2be1" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">And with that, I’m still paying a relatively high amount (I don’t think I could justify $15/month or $180 years for just my personal usage), never mind “renting” a domain name from the DNS system. mastodon works in a mobile web browser or with some iOS or Android apps, but I don’t think I could have completed the entire setup and install from my phone.</p>-<p name="43c3" id="43c3" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">As I <a href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/self-hosting-doesnt-help-more-people-self-publish-b6bde64d2bcb" data-href="https://medium.bmannconsulting.com/self-hosting-doesnt-help-more-people-self-publish-b6bde64d2bcb" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">wrote before</a>, I think the list of things we need to aim for with these future decentralized apps is:</p>-<strong class="markup--strong markup--li-strong">Publish from a smartphone:</strong> the smartphone will be the only computing device for most of the world going forward. Focus on it.</li>-<strong class="markup--strong markup--li-strong">No server hosting:</strong> fully decentralized / peer-to-peer. There may still be various semi- or fully-centralized services for discovery, naming, trust, or other convenience functions.</li>-<strong class="markup--strong markup--li-strong">No domain names:</strong> let’s not rent our identifiers, and let’s not build financial barriers to anyone “owning” their content online</li>-<p name="259a" id="259a" class="graf graf--p graf-after--li graf--trailing">I’m going to continue exploring in this space. In the meantime, it’s great to see mastodon bringing a bunch of discussion forward, and for us all to think about federation, decentralization, and what that means for designing interactions.</p>+Kind of contrary to that, I wrote a response to <a href="https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e8abb1">Mastodon is Dead in the Water</a> saying that people should <a href="{% link _posts/blog/2017-04-09-run-your-own-mastodon-instance.md %}">run their own Mastodon instance</a>.+I was still in Toronto at the time, and actually got Mastodon setup using just the browser on my phone with the <a href="https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Heroku-guide.md">Deploy to Heroku button</a>. This is a feature of Heroku I love, and I’ve created several of these buttons of my own to help people get apps up and running.+This Easter weekend (it took me a solid half a day yesterday) I finally did the work to fully setup a Mastodon instance. I set one up for [[Frontier Foundry]] my new venture. I thought we might use it for links and tweet-length commentary for us and our portfolio companies. Or it might just be something to experiment with for a couple of weeks.[[This Mastodon server is no longer around, so it was a relatively short lived experiment.::rmn]]+<img class="graf-image" width="700" height="340" src="https://microblog.bmannconsulting.com/uploads/2020/8831df6ccf.jpg">+My profile on the Frontier Foundry Mastodon instance lives at `mastodon.frontierfoundry.co/@boris`. There’s even an RSS feed for each user which enables interesting re-use — I’ve setup an IFTTT recipe that posts anything from that feed to my Twitter account if it contains the keyword “share”.+* a domain name and a registrar where you can edit DNS settings: I tend to use [[Namecheap]], while [[Hover]] is my “regular user” recommendation that also happens to be Canadian. Domains tend to be about $10USD per year, although there are also much cheaper ones and specials.+* an Amazon AWS account: accounts are free although you will have to have a credit card attached. The S3 file storage here will cost perhaps $1USD per month at most.+* Heroku account: accounts are free, you’ll need a credit card attached to your account, and I am currently paying what will amount to $14USD per month for hosting+Next, you may very well need to have a desktop computer setup with Ruby, Node, git, and a full suite of developer tools to be successful in getting everything working.+Reading <a href="https://ashfurrow.com/blog/running-mastodon-on-heroku/">Ash Furrow’s Running Mastodon on Heroku</a> meant that someone had hit many roadblocks ahead of me and figured out some of the workarounds, which was great. The setup I ended up following was two Heroku installs to get the Streaming API working, as per the <a href="https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1119#issuecomment-292816340">comment in this issue by ecmendenhall</a> (thanks Connor Mendenhall!).+I wasted a lot of time setting things up from scratch with a fresh clone of mMstodon, when starting with the Deploy to Heroku and just adding the second streaming server would have probably been a better decision.+The other thing that took a lot of time was setting up the Heroku Mailgun add-on. After you add it, you need to verify yourself, and then take a whole bunch of other steps in both Mailgun and your DNS / MX settings for it to be fully working. Do this right at the beginning.+I’ve still got one piece of troubleshooting / bug to figure out with Amazon S3 settings where S3_BUCKET and S3_HOSTNAME duplicate each other (and even there I’m not going to bother doing SSL with Cloudfront, which means there is a mix of secure content and insecure images).+In short, the answer is no. The level of expertise — and I’m not even talking digital literacy, I’m talking learned, professional expertise — that someone requires to run, maintains, and secure software is very high.</p>+That’s one of the reasons I run as many things as I can on Heroku. I don’t have to worry about the lower levels of an operating system at all.+Docker is the other newest kid on the block, and Mastodon is setup to work well with Docker. But Docker and various places where you can host docker containers don’t solve the fact that you are still exposed to the entire operating system stack of a server, which is where many security and backup issues lie.+With Heroku, database backups are included, it’s just a snapshot of code and configuration, and Amazon S3 backs up the files automatically, too. Heroku even handles SSL certificates automatically for paid accounts.+The folks building mMstodon are helpful to a point in getting things running on Heroku, but ultimately are focused on maintaining a more traditional software stack that they use for their own development and deployment. I think that going forward, applications need to be designed to be deployed in simpler fashion, with less of a “stack” and more pluggable components.+I’ve been working a lot with blockchain and other decentralized / P2P applications lately. I wrote about the [Akasha decentralized blogging platform]({% link _posts/blog/2017-02-13-akasha-cross-post-planting-tag-flag-vancouver-bowen-canada.md %}) that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, and I’ve also poked about with [[Beaker Browser]], which runs on [[Dat Protocol]] underneath.+It was a lot of work to setup an instance of Mastodon on Heroku. For someone that has tinkered with open source tech and servers for 15+ years and has a computer science degree.+And with that, I’m still paying a relatively high amount (I don’t think I could justify $15/month or $180 years for just my personal usage), never mind “renting” a domain name from the DNS system. Mastodon works in a mobile web browser or with some iOS or Android apps, but I don’t think I could have completed the entire setup and install from my phone.+[As I wrote before]({% link _posts/blog/2016-08-01-self-hosting-doesnt-help-self-publish.md %}), I think the list of things we need to aim for with these future decentralized apps is:</p>+1. **Publish from a smartphone:** the smartphone will be the only computing device for most of the world going forward. Focus on it.+2. **No server hosting:** fully decentralized / peer-to-peer. There may still be various semi- or fully-centralized services for discovery, naming, trust, or other convenience functions.+3. **No domain names:** let’s not rent our identifiers, and let’s not build financial barriers to anyone “owning” their content online+I’m going to continue exploring in this space. In the meantime, it’s great to see Mastodon bringing a bunch of discussion forward, and for us all to think about federation, decentralization, and what that means for designing interactions.
-15
_posts/blog/2020-10-08-joining-social-co-op.md
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_posts/blog/2020-10-08-joining-social-co-op.md
···-They use [[Open Collective]] to collect monthly or annual funds, where the member can choose what amount to fund.
+1
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_posts/journal/2020-10-08-journal.md
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_posts/journal/2020-10-08-journal.md
···-So I confirmed this morning that my [[Rad Runner]] bike wheel tubes are sold out even on the Rad website. I guess this weekend.+So I confirmed this morning that my [[Rad Runner]] bike wheel tubes are sold out even on the Rad website. I guess this weekend I need to get a patch kit and learn how to fix it myself.
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_posts/journal/2020-10-10-journal.md
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_posts/journal/2020-10-10-journal.md
···+Rachael's [[Rad Mini]] arrived yesterday. So now we have two [[Rad Power Bikes]]. The [[Rad Runner]] is a bit too big for Rachael, especially with the center console blocking the "step through".+Today we got her out on the bike and she got used to riding it around the park, and then went off to go up and down some hills. She hasn't been a regular bike user for quite some time. We both had free / trashy bikes that got stolen from our building at some point, and never really replaced them. I've been thinking about writing about what it means to be a 'biker', both in the context of that being an identity, and different kinds of bike usage. I think Rachael and I partially identify as "non car users" -- we don't have a car, and walk or take transit most places, plus some car share usage. Anyway, I'll leave that line of thinking for a future post.+I went to [Dream Cycle](https://dream-cycle.com/) on Commercial Drive to ask about a patch kit. Bought a handful of "regular" and a couple of pre-glued, since they're cheap and I have had multiple flats on the Runner already. Why? I'm not sure. Both other times I had them fixed by Rad Mobile Service. I _have_ put a lot of kilometers on the bike so far!+So in the afternoon I took the Rad Mini and biked it over to Main Street where I had ditched my bike at last week. Rad has Youtube videos for pretty much all of their bikes and different things that need doing, so I just watched the [RadRunner Rear Wheel Removal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3TU1r-Cv_c). The little toolkit that comes with the Rad has all the pieces that are needed, which was great.+The tricky part was the way the chain has to be manuevered around to get it off, but I got it done. Yes, this is the first time I have removed the wheel of a bike.+With the bike wheel off, now I couldn't get the actual tire off! Watching other videos, they pretty much say "don't use a butter knife" -- that you should use a bike tire lever. Dear reader, I tried to use the handle end of a butter knife. The Rad Runner has really thick, wide tires, and I couldn't get them off.+Luckily, there is [Ride On Bike Shop](http://www.rideon.com/) on Main, around the corner from the office. I took the tire over there. They told me that they didn't have any patch kits so I gave them the one *I* had and asked them to take care of it.+Rachael had met me there at this point, and got her hands dirty (literally) helping put the chain back on. My first tire change!+Then we did our first joint ride. East on 6th, down to Great Northern Way, left on Clark and then back on the Woodland bike path north. Right on Adanac heading east to Lakewood, turning left to go north until Wall Street. East along Wall until New Brighton Park, then south along the paths by the PNE until East Hastings / in front of Playland. South until Adanac, and back home west along Adanac.
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_posts/journal/2020-10-11-journal.md
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_posts/journal/2020-10-11-journal.md
···+Ugh. Went to go for a bike ride first thing this morning and my tire was flat again. It pumped right up again and we went for a 25km ride to Burnaby Lake and back, but it's clear that the root cause here isn't fixed yet. I'm going to have to write this all down for Rad and get it fixed properly.
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_posts/journal/2020-10-13-journal.md
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_posts/journal/2020-10-13-journal.md
···+Both Mac Mini and OWC Memory Upgrade kit arrived today. Don't have a monitor yet, going to temporarily use+Following the [OWC Memory Upgrade video](https://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac-mini-2018-memory/Macmini8-1/), step two is having a torx screwdriver. Hmmm. Sounds like a T4, T5, and T10 needed.+OK, looks like Canadian Tire has a complete overkill [66 piece Mastercraft Specialty Precision Electronics Bit](https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/mastercraft-specialty-precision-electronics-bit-set-66-pc-0573624p.html#srp)
assets/2020/10/mastodon-bmann-screenshot.png
assets/2020/10/mastodon-bmann-screenshot.png
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journal.html
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journal.html
···{% assign journalposts = site.posts | where_exp: "post", "post.section == 'journal'" | sort: 'date' | reverse %}
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links.html
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links.html
···-<p>Recently added and updated articles and bookmarks to external content, with quoted content and notes kept here locally:</p>-<label for="rmn-1" class="margin-toggle ">⊕</label><input type="checkbox" id="rmn-1" class="margin-toggle"><span class="mn-right">These will appear in both the Recently Updated Notes and Recent Links <a href='{% link _notes/feeds.md %}'>Feeds</a>. </span>+<p>News items, blog posts, and other articles with a publish date. The title link takes you straight to the article, and the # is the local permalinked note.</p>-<span><a class="internal-link" href="{{ note.url }}">{{ note.title }}</a></span><br /><span style="margin-left: 20px; font-size: smaller;">Source: <a href="{{ note.link }}">{{ note.link }}</a></span>+<span>{{ note.published | date: "%Y %B" }}: <a href="{{ note.link }}">{{ note.title }}</a></span> <span><a href="{{ note.url }}" class="internal-link" title="Local Notes - {{ note.title }}">#</a></span>-<p>News items, blog posts, and other articles with a publish date. The title link takes you straight to the article, and the # is the local permalinked note.</p>+<p>Recently added bookmark style links to external content. Permalinks to tools and services rather than dated articles or news.</p>+<label for="rmn-1" class="margin-toggle ">⊕</label><input type="checkbox" id="rmn-1" class="margin-toggle"><span class="mn-right">These will appear in both the Recently Updated Notes and Recent Links <a href='{% link _notes/feeds.md %}'>Feeds</a>. </span>-<span>{{ note.published | date: "%Y %B" }}: <a href="{{ note.link }}">{{ note.title }}</a></span> <span><a href="{{ note.url }}" class="internal-link" title="Local Notes - {{ note.title }}">#</a></span>+<span><a class="internal-link" href="{{ note.url }}">{{ note.title }}</a></span><br /><span style="margin-left: 20px; font-size: smaller;">Source: <a href="{{ note.link }}">{{ note.link }}</a></span>