Motivation
Austin Lane
I think as I get further into this I really am starting to see a purpose in taking ownership of what I put out on the internet. There are so many options to explore and it sparks just a little bit of optimism when I see that I can have photos, music, code, and whatever else on something I control. No one selling my data on the side, or training some new obnoxious LLM with my output.
It also feels a little more permanent than the cycle of deleted Google services or current popular social sites. This will be here just as long as I feel like it, even if the project I’m building on gets abandoned and never gets another update. That said, I was surprised to find old blogs on both Blogger and Wordpress that I had started at some point. I was thinking of archiving them on pages here for posterity, before those eventually get wiped to save some space. I like the idea of federation, where I can run a service and hold the keys to my identity and data, but still allow it to be shared in other places. I set up a BlueSky PDS which essentially serves my profile and posts.
I’m federated!
— Capndan (@capndan.bsky.coffeesec.com) 2024-11-11T20:46:36.174Z
I can still use https://bsky.app or the phone app to follow others, even if I’m not using their identity server. I might set up a Mastodon equivalent if I can do it just as easily, or maybe eventually the protocols will be interoperable enough that I can just stick with one. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this, I’m not a prolific poster on social media, but I just like the idea of at least holding the keys to all of it when I can. I would love to see this kind of functionality in other ways, like if I could create and manage the photo albums in my PhotoPrism instance, but share to a site like Facebook and not have to choose between re-uploading through them or just a simple link that brings people back to my site (where they can’t comment or interact unless I’ve also set up an account on my side for them). It’s hard to beat Facebook or Google Photos when you just want to share some photos with family. I’ve been playing with recording music from time to time, and am fairly pleased with some of the results. I felt like if I was going to share any of it, it would be smart to do it with SoundCloud to have some kind of copyright on it, in case I ever decide to do something more serious with it. For now, not so serious =)
Today’s header - My old RackBrute full of home-built modules. With a couple exceptions I had managed to fill it with all DIY kits