Been testing out Garnet for roughly the last week, and oh boy, XMR tipping is such a good feeling! Even though I've got my lightning wallet hooked up as well, I've just completely stopped using it. Why give BTC, when you can give XMR? Now obviously using a mainchain comes with some tradeoffs, but those essentially got fixed in the last update of Garnet, since you can now use external wallets for tipping. On the Monero chain it takes roughly 20 minutes for a transaction to be fully confirmed and thus you can't send another transaction for those 20 minutes. So with the one built-in wallet for Garnet, that was one tip per 20 minutes. But now that I can use my external wallet, where I have a bunch of sub addresses, I can pretty much tip non-stop. For those waiting before trying something so new, I can report that I've had a bug-free experience thus far (I'm sure now that I've said that something will happen!), it just works like Amethyst. And also I haven't really seen this discussed, but my tipical Monero tip has been 0.001, which is about $0.16, which seems enough for a micro transaction. If you want to try it out here's where to get the apk:

GitHub

Releases · retrnull/garnet

A fork of Amethyst with Monero tipping support. Contribute to retrnull/garnet development by creating an account on GitHub.

#garnet

Had a dinner party last night and made a deconstructed beef Wellington. I am now convinced it's the best way, every ingredient gets to reach perfection without being held back by the others.

Got my fall/winter/spring garments ready: a pair of wool pants, and a denim tunic/robe type thing. I decided to go with a bag instead of pockets, which I'm liking so far, though pockets may happen eventually. The patterns for these two garments are zero waste, pretty much all rectangles and squares. I cobbled them together from various things I found online, and I am working on drawing up what I ended up doing, but it's not ready for posting yet. It's insanely comfortable, kinda just want to wear it now, even though it's over 90 here. The sleeves are the best part, baggy sleeves are the way to go! I want to make some straps in the sleeves to tie them up into short sleeves, and I've got a few other little details to finish, but it's finally wearable! #handsewing #sewing #zerowaste

The Gospel today seemed particularly poignant.

# SSB: King of the Mountain This began as an appreciation, and I wanted to just focus on the positives of SSB, but it is difficult to express those without expressing the negatives that throw those positives into sharp relief. So to begin, the main problem: being online and server first. I'm going to talk about Nostr and the Fediverse together, since the former is an improvement of the latter. They both suffer from the same critical problem, data is stored in a central location. For Nostr: the relay, Fediverse: the instance. It's someone else's computer. And when that computer goes offline, it breaks the network. A central point of failure. Now here's where Nostr pulls away a bit, I've seen plenty of projects aimed at providing a local relay to serve as a backup, which is cool. But the fundamental problem, is that the structure is thus that a central server is where the data lives, and the intermingling of accounts happen. This server is going to get fat, it's admin will have to consider legal issues, and due to it's necessity for the network to function, must minimize downtime. SSB had the same problem at first: pub servers. Essentially an SSB account, that followed other accounts, thus keeping a complete copy of their posting history on the server. New accounts could connect to this pub and easily get integrated into the network, updates were quickly propagated, but again, everything was in one place. Now, that wasn't as much of a problem for SSB. Accounts can sync over a local network, so even if a pub server went down, the network could still function, it would just be slow, and literally peer to peer. This was solved with room servers. They don't store any data, just facilitate the handshake between peers so they can sync directly with each other. The legal problem was taken care of for room runners, the necessity of being constantly up was already lessened, but now that it was cheaper and easier to run a room server, there could potentially be more rooms than there ever were pubs, thus granting a redundancy not previously possible. But technical capability and resilience cannot overcome burnout. There's a handful of SSB passion projects still in development, but all the big ones have died out, for various reasons. The major reason is you can't make a living doing good stuff for humanity. It's tough getting funding for something that will make people less reliant on corporations and governments. Crowdfunding can only get you so far. And yet, SSB still wins. Despite how difficult it is to work with, being offline and local first is going to win every time. There are other reasons as well, one of my favorites, is community moderation. I'll see a flurry of block events from people I follow, and go to check out the offending account to see if I should block it as well, and there's already nothing there: it was blocked out of replication range. This leads to small, (sometimes) interconnected, communities. There are pockets of the network I will never see, and those far outside the norms of my community, who will never see mine. It brings the noise to signal ratio down to manageable levels, spam gets swatted fast, trolls get blocked so they can be in their own community of one. True freedom of speech, in that you will suffer the consequences of your words.

Finished another hand sewing project, used an old bathrobe for a pattern, though I added buttons and changed how it closed in the front. Wanting to do some cool sort of wide belt to finish it off, but will need to explore fabric options for that first. On this project I also did 99% of it without a table, seated and sewing on the floor. I can't figure out how to lay the fabric out and cutout the pattern pieces without a table, though I guess the answer there is the floor as well. I have a feeling the cats will make that a nightmare. #handsewing #sewing

# Return from Vacation I've been on vacation for roughly the last three weeks, and it's given me much to write about. It was wonderful to slow down, no alarm clock, no schedule, surrounded by friends and/or family. The major focus each day was food and recreation, a far cry from my normal daily grind. Deep conversations, stretching long into the night. Pipes and cigars. Bourbon, gin and tonic, and some really good chocolate. And singing! We tried to sing all of American Pie, and realized we didn't quite know it well enough. But Wagon Wheel and Country Roads went off without a hitch. I even sang my attempt to turn Numb into Gregorian Chant (it's not perfect yet, but it's getting there). I rarely checked social media, because I didn't want it. I didn't check the news either, because I had people to talk to, and that's always better. We watched a few movies, but less than we did last year. A few times we cried, over innocence lost, friends who faded away, and the cruelties of this life. We knew the depths of sadness, and the heights of joy. I received a lot of compliments on my homemade overalls at the restaurants and other places we visited, typically followed up by the question: "where did you get them?" And then the response to their handcrafted origin was some variation of: "you should start a company and sell them." A reminder of how deeply consumerism runs in this culture. And that's really the thing I want to bring back from vacation: the best things in life are friends, making things, and singing. I want more of all that, and whatever that costs, it's worth the price. ### And just because I'm curious, what are some songs y'all sing with your friends?

Found a cool thing: a scrabble game that is statically generated, and the game state can be shared by url. Here's the link to a new game:

Untitled Word Game

For an example, here's the link to a game I've been playing with a friend to test it out:

Untitled Word Game

And here's a writeup about how it works:

Ross Wintle

Static not-Scrabble. - Ross Wintle

I made a server-less Scrabble clone that saves data in URLs. This post explains why and how, including a primer on binary data representations, and...

Hey @Vitor Pamplona , not a feature request, know you are busy maintaining and improving this wonderful app, but just wanted to draw your attention to something a few of us were discussing, in case it makes sense to pursue it at some point:

#memes

Some new ground for me in my mending attempts. Up to now it's all been woven material, but this pair of athletic shorts had a seam come undone, and figured no better time than now for trying out the herringbone stitch (the one you're supposed to use for knits and stretchy material). Stitches are not even, but seem like they will hold, and they stretch beautifully. I also love the contrast between unbleached linen thread and synthetic material. #mending #sewing

My 16 yr old camera came in clutch for the eclipse, not the best picture, but I love it:

Testing out a new camera: The camera is a Canon G10, at this point a 16 year old camera: In my overall move towards treating my phone as a redundancy, I started carrying around my Sony a6400 for taking pictures. But it's so precise and expensive, and a little too large, so I didn't use it often. Found this used G10 for cheap, much lighter, smaller, and I don't care if it gets lost or broken. Still need to figure out all the options and everything. The top picture was one of my tests, while I like how the colors came out, sharpness is lacking. Will need to play around with it some more.

# Continued Adventures in Archiving ## SingleFile After trying out a huge number of archiving tools for webpages, have finally landed on one I like. SingleFile is a browser extension, it archives the webpage exactly as you see it, and generates a single html file. The file is a little bloated compared to what other tools will generate, but it will look exactly like what you originally viewed, and it is responsive to different screen sizes (at least that's what I've found in my tests). If you want to explore further, here's their Github:

GitHub

GitHub - gildas-lormeau/SingleFile: Web Extension for saving a faithful copy of a complete web page in a single HTML file

Web Extension for saving a faithful copy of a complete web page in a single HTML file - gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

Just read a cool essay by Ploum, nothing earth-shattering, but I loved these lines in particular: > The world we are living in is that same chess game on the easiest setting. Everything happens immediately, all the time. White-collar work can now be summarised as trying to reply as fast as possible to every single email until calling it a day and starting again in the morning, a process which essentially prevents any deep thinking, as pointed by Cal Newport in his book "A world without email". > As we don’t have the time to think anymore, we masquerade our lack of ideas with behavioural tricks. **We replaced documents with PowerPoints because it allowed lack of structure and emptiness to look professional** (just copy paste the data of the last PowerPoint you received in a text file and see by yourself how pitiful it is. PowerPoint communications at NASA were even diagnosed by Edward R. Tufte, author of the "The cognitive style of PowerPoint", as one of the causes that led to Space Shuttle Columbia’s disaster). > The root problem is that, for the first time in human history, our brain is the bottleneck. For all history, transmitting information was slow. Brains were fasts. After sending a letter, we had days or months to think before receiving an answer. Erasmus wrote his famous "Éloge de la folie" in several days while travelling in Europe. He would never have done it in a couple of hours in a plane while the small screen in the backseat would show him advertisements. > In 2012, the French writer Thierry Crouzet had one of the first recorded "online burnout". Being connected all the time with interesting strangers and interesting ideas to which he wanted to reply quickly was too much for his brain. One night, he had a strong panic attack and decided to spend six months without the Internet, an experience he told in his book "J’ai débranché". I also love that in just a few paragraphs, got like 3 things to add to my reading list. Can find the rest here:

A Society That Lost Focus

A Society That Lost Focus par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.

Or on Gemini here: gemini://ploum.net/2024-03-18-lost-focus.gmi

A nice and simple thing to share: my cat Heloise is stealing the show, but I'm really excited about my new 100% wool socks! Took me a while to find someone who makes size 14. I've been trying to make as much as possible of my wardrobe myself, but decided to go with someone who knew what they were doing for socks, don't trust my knitting skills that much. So far they are amazing, fit perfectly, not too warm, and made of worsted weight yarn, so I should be able to repair them no problem.

Made a quick little vid on how I'm already using LogGit with presently available stuff, which of course you can LogGit here:

Forgejo

techpriest_tv

techpriest_tv

Or watch it on Youtube: Or Odysee: https://odysee.com/@davidbaunach:6/lets-loggit:6 #LogGit

# LogGit ## Using Git to distribute digital media. Right off the bat I want to set expectations: I know almost nothing about programming or dev work, all I can really do is html, and if I want to make myself hate the world, I can do some css. So essentially I format documents. That said, I love offline-first, p2p, smallnet, and all that good stuff. So when I saw Solderpunk's article on using Git for p2p distribution (

SmolNet Portal

and then saw Degauss's project gwit (https://sr.ht/~ivilata/gwit/) that was inspired by it, I wanted to help. But I quickly realized there wasn't much I could do to help build out gwit, quick look at what Degauss was doing, and realized it was above my head. Decided to go in a different direction, lean on my strengths as an artist, and just give the idea (of using Git to publish stuff) a name and an image. Started with the name, after a few different iterations, settled on LogGit. Wanted the name to express the intention of using 'Git' as a 'log' to track changes to files over time, thus allowing for changeable content. Then the image, drew inspiration from the Git logo, but kept it simple and small (32x32 pixels): And then the idea: use Git to distribute stuff. For anyone who is comfortable with computers and has some basic understanding of Git, we can start doing this now. I'm testing out the idea in my free time, using a Git gui on my computer, and cloning static sites whose author's have made their Git repo public (many thanks to 100r.com and j3s.sh to making their repos easy to find). I also added the LogGit image and the link to clone from the public repo for my personal site and a few other projects I work on. Cool thing I've found already, is that rss is no longer needed, whenever a change gets made to a site, I can pull the changes, look in the Git history, and see what was added or deleted. What I like about this, is that nothing needs to be built, nothing major needs to change, just need to publish a link to clone the repo. I also like that you can use the infrastructure of the enemy to publish. Go ahead and host the repo on Github or any other major git forge, can typically do it for free, but the original always remains on your device, and you can move it elsewhere whenever you want, and leave your new location as your last commit. Next level would be to self-host it on a Forgejo/Gitea/whatever instance, or what I haven't tried out yet (but plan to soon) is host it yourself on Tor and keep things really sneaky. I threw together a basic site with the info here:

LogGit

but you can also LogGit here:

Forgejo

loggit

Proto-LogGit app

to get the most up-to-date version (I won't be adding updates to the Gihub version unless they become necessary). Lastly, here's the repo where I'm trying stuff out, so far, have just been messing around with the idea of blogging, seeing how easy it would be for people to comment on posts via pull request:

Forgejo

LogGit_stuff

A place for LogGit projects and experimentation, nothing serious, just fun.

Probably will test stuff out there, and if it seems promising, move it over to Github so it will be easier for others to interact.

Had a fun idea the other day, of a cathedral built on the back of a Strandbeest. Tossed it in an ai as a prompt to get some starting points for a sketch, and low and behold, there must not have been enough Strandbeest images for training, the images were useless. Which was a blessing in disguise. Having to do some research, merge together some stuff in Gimp, and start some of my own rough sketches in order to brainstorm has been a fun process. Below is my furthest along wip: I'm going to finish this sketch,  but I already have a ton of ideas for the next one. And my end goal is a thought me and my brother came up with while discussing it: a nomadic group of shepherds, living in yurts built on the backs of smaller strandbeests, following their chapel wherever the winds blow over the great plains. When storms come, they lower the sails and stretch them over the legs of the strandbeests as shelter for their sheep. And of course they will have anchors to keep their beests steady in the storm. I can picture it in my head, will be a sweeping scene. Hope I can do it justice. https://image.nostr.build/670d34d7a0d22f3e2b73311d4862683f91d13f35bed90a6e1ff5983d68ede936.jpg#m=image%2Fjpeg&dim=1920x1440&blurhash=%239R%7BDJtS%3FvWCx%5DxuMyRjof%3FwazIUofM%7BRjx%5DogWBWDazbbfkxubHRPj%5BfQR*ofxaR%25Rjt7WBWBt7%25MWBM%7Bt7ayRjt7ofWBM_fkt7ayt7j%5BRPf6fQxvofaeWBM%7Boet7WCs%3A&x=d74e364ce73cb3e14eb83e9c388888dfcdd875f8c611ef9fbf7db8f06c56e8de