I just can't get my head round people using any cloud services (that they don't own or manage themselves). I keep getting pestered to share stuff to google or Microsoft, or one of a dozen supposedly private ones, but I refuse. I know you can encrypt everything first, but its still better to buy a few hard drives and share your own files, I think anyway.

X has those "verify your age" flags all over the place now, its really annoying. Have they done this for every country now or just EU? I don't use X except for lurking, now that's useless, bye X/twitter

Using bitchat today, its OK, took a while to find the person sitting literally next to me, but once it did then it worked fine. This is going to be really useful once its developed a bit more.

They say in photography "anything that doesn't add to the picture takes away from the picture". Basically this means simplify where possible, and applies to more than just photography.

About 15 years ago, I proposed an idea to the owner of a large internet photography site. Allow us to add money to our monthly subscription fee, that we could then use to "tip" photos that were posted that we liked. The idea was to encourage people to post more, and better pictures. But also to reward photographers that you thought were posting good work, since there were really no other ways am average photographer could make any money back from shoots (outside of weddings etc, I'm talking about hobby photography). Anyway, the owner eventually said no, he couldn'timagine people just "randomly giving money away". I explained it only had to be cents/pennies, whatever, but he declined. And here we are on nostr, where people randomly zap things they find cool or interesting, including photos :) and it's a great , unexpected, thing 😀😃

I recently discovered Peter Gabriel era Genesis :) Weird as I like both Peter Gabriel and Genesis but always thought the older stuff was going to be too strange for me. And it is certainly strange, but its glorious. Selling England by the pound (with oddly relevant themes today) is brilliant, Foxtrot is wild and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is surreal. Musicianship is top notch, Phil Collins shines, They all do. I know it falls under the dreaded "prog rock", but definitely worth a listen.

I am moving house next year :) At my new place I have room for a decent size vegetable plot and....... Chickens :) I'm not confirmed on the chickens, need to check if I'm 100% allowed but I think its OK. The local village has lots of people selling home made stuff and fresh milk, bread etc, and even honey, in fact there's a beekeeper (who also has chickens) just a few hundred yards away. As someone who has lived all my life in city flats and council estates, this will be like heaven :) really hope it works out.

I think nostr is great because its pretty Normy friendly (and primal is very easy to use, as are many other apps). Its important that new apps and programs can be easily distributed to the general public as they will support something when they see the need, and lately enough people seem to be looking for alternatives. Too often "alternative" tech is way beyond what a normal person could get into using, and that's a shame. We'll never replace the legacy tech giants if we can't bring Joe public on board. I know as I am one of them.