My little corner of the internet

I’ve mentioned the Mullenweg Skirmishes already in my re-introduction post. However, I first started out with Wordpress in the early 2010s and even won a Wales Blog Award for the technology category in its inaugural year.

However, it was in essence a second phase of maintaining a home on the internet. The first phase was in the days of Netscape Communicator and Frontpage. I would build static websites before they were cool. Sure, they looked dreadful by today’s standards, but they were mine.

The decision to give up my own little corner of the internet was one borne out of despondence more than anything. I was getting frustrated with the LLM fad, the flagrant disregard of platform holders –particularly Wordpress, to respect the efforts of their users in the pursuit of training materials for Grand Theft Autocomplete.

At the time it felt easier to just walk away entirely. I nearly did, but not having a place to call my own didn’t feel right somehow. I hope that Micro.Blog will serve me well.

As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated “content” in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels. - Cory Doctorow - The Coprophagic AI crisis

I’d like to think that humans continuing to write or create art solely for the benefit of other humans is something worth clinging onto, however futile it may seem right now.

The Sunlit app

Trying out Sunlit…

A photo of a public house on a gloomy evening.

One thing I hadn’t appreciated when I signed up to Micro.Blog is the variety of apps that are available in addition to the main Micro.Blog app. One of them is called Epilogue and is a way to track your books –the ones you are reading, the ones you want to read etc.

The other one is Sunlit, which is for sharing photos. It seems a bit short on features right now, but I like the idea of a separate app that feeds into your main blog.

An introduction of sorts

Photo taken on St David’s Day in Cardiff, Wales. Shot on a Nikon F80 with 50mm F1.8, Ilford XP2 film.

Those of you who may have known me from Mastodon, or from Wordpress before the Mullenweg Skirmishes --that’s what I’m going to call it from now on. I found myself in a place were I didn’t see much point trying to carve out my own little space on an internet I was convinced would be overwhelmed by AI Slop before the decade was out.

The Skirmishes gave me a plausible excuse to get out, save a bit of money and spend some more time in the real world.

I then had this crazy idea about making an online music magazine. But then I remembered I quite like music but didn’t really want to make it feel like a job. So, I binned that. Besides, I had started building it in Ghost, which is great but much more than I really need.

So, then I was then pointed towards Micro.Blog by someone on Mastodon and...it’s five bucks a month and seems like a far better fit. I still had the domain there waiting to be used so, here I am.

I’m Gavin, a middle-aged guy from Wales. I like taking photos, I like technical death metal and its softer, brassier cousin, jazz. I’ve also had a long time love-affair with Paradise Lost. No, not the John Milton poem but the doom metal band from the north of England.

Pleased to meet you.