claudeb: A white cat in purple wizard robe and hat, carrying a staff with a pawprint symbol. (Default)
The past two months have been a blur. I've been staying busy, trying to pass the winter, both in the digital realm and outside in the sun. Bought new notebooks and started using them; even borrowed a fountain pen to try and keep a journal on paper (so far, so good). Work on the next Dream book continues apace, too. Luckily my friends are still feeling creative, because lately I didn't have much inspiration for art or fiction. But now spring is here! That should help with everyone's mood, including mine.

Elsewhere, I've been working on a new site. Joined a small web community, too. It's a good reminder not to stop posting here; it would be a shame to do that just as blogs are coming back into fashion. Last but not least, another notable thing I did since last time was upload a couple of short stories (one of them originally posted right here) to my website.

Now to go and have some good dreams again, because last night's were no fun at all. Got to air the bedroom or something.
claudeb: A white cat in purple wizard robe and hat, carrying a staff with a pawprint symbol. (Default)
I wanted to make a blog post here, but can't remember what it was about. My fault, really. Should have made a quick draft right away instead of waiting to deal with other things first. Or rather, waiting for the idea to crystallize while doing something else. Never noticed this problem before.

Blogs, you see, have a couple of better-known failure modes: one, when you don't know what to write and it fizzles out after a handful of posts, tops. And two, when you have a lot to write about, and valuable old posts soon end up buried under an avalanche of new words.

This would be failure mode #3, then: when you have something to say but don't say it because blog posts are supposed to be these long, fancy essays full of undying wisdom.

These days, I don't feel especially talkative or very wise.

That's why one of my blogs ended before New Year, while another will get its final post next month. As for this one... it can go on for a while longer. At the stately pace of five or six posts a year, it's hardly a burden.

But mostly I should let go already and learn to throw together loose posts without worrying too much about the form. I'm just ranting at friends here after all, not writing a scientific treatise. Pick them up and flesh them out later if they're worth the trouble; that's so much easier than doing all the work upfront. Been doing it elsewhere as of late, actually. Helps a lot. But old habits die hard.
claudeb: A white cat in purple wizard robe and hat, carrying a staff with a pawprint symbol. (Default)

So, it's been almost a month since I posted anything on Dreamwidth, and a look at my recent writing suggests it's time for a social media status report.

For one thing: I missed it at the time, but a couple of weeks ago FurAffinity updated their terms and conditions, with a small but essential provision: no Nazis. Yep... took them a while, but they finally did that. And from the sound of it, the service is doing well otherwise too, so they might be around for a while after all.

I'm still not so sure about Tumblr, which recently deployed an updated dashboard that almost forced me to abandon the service. To their credit, fixes appeared quickly, and now it's merely annoying as opposed to unusable. Somehow, I doubt that will be enough to stop its decline, but hey, the new owner is actually trying.

That leaves DeviantArt, which also deployed a new dashboard to go with their new Eclipse theme. At least the latter was only unneeded and unwanted; the new dash is so heavyweight it caused my defective spare computer to start acting up again after I had just stabilized it. Luckily groups still work with Javascript disabled, enough to let me recover some old blog posts: the only things I really care about there.

Suffice to say, I won't be going back, and a lot of people seem to share my feelings. Maybe I'll start over somewhere else... someday... if I can bring a few friends along. Maybe.

More likely however I'm going to do more in places that deserve it, such as right here. Won't be the same, but oh well.

claudeb: A white cat in purple wizard robe and hat, carrying a staff with a pawprint symbol. (Default)

As of this Saturday, I'll have been on Dreamwidth for a year.

You wouldn't know it from my schedule here, or the tone of my recent posts, but I love this place and hope it endures. Which is by no means a given, between things like the recent sale of the .org TLD (please help save it if you can) and the even bigger threat of Article 13 (did you forget about it? EU lawmakers haven't). The power of corporate lobbying reaches far these days. That silencing the masses also happens to suit increasingly authoritarian governments everywhere is just the icing on the cake. With efforts to decentralize the internet again far from ready, things are about to get rough.

But enough politics. I was hoping to avoid it here. For now, dangers to social media are more immediate. The other shoe has dropped for Smack Jeeves, whose redesign broke the site and scattered the community. While the dust settles on that fiasco, and it will take some time, Tumblr is one social network still plodding along just fine. Well, at least until the new owner actually takes over and discovers what mess they got for their money. That 80% of users are still there (if the list of people I follow is any indication) may not mean so much. Those who left still number in the millions, and will pull others after them.

Suffice to say, in recent months I've posted more original content here, not even counting the various groups I'm in.

It's probably time to take down the little sticky post that started this blog and make myself comfortable. For as long as it lasts, anyway. My expectations are low in this day and age when everything is slipping away like in a bad dream.

Not looking forward to 2020. How about you?

Update: as of 1 May 2020, the .org domain is saved. Guess that makes the year not a total disaster.

claudeb: A white cat in purple wizard robe and hat, carrying a staff with a pawprint symbol. (Default)

Autumn is coming, and I've got nothing to put here. Figured it's best to post something anyway, before this turns into the second skip month in a row. Trouble is, I'm not so great at being personal. Not even on social media. Speaking of which: for the past nine months, everyone's been waiting for the other shoe to drop with regard to Tumblr. As you might have heard, it was acquired after all, though by an unexpected buyer: Automattic, the makers of WordPress. A competitor of DreamWidth, and one with more market share than is healthy. Think that's great news? Wait until they figure out how many of those registered users in fact abandoned the platform, and have zero reasons to return.

Acquisitions like this seldom go over well. FurAffinity's did, surprisingly enough, seeing how it's still in active development, but otherwise? SmugMug bought Flickr, and promptly pissed off paid and free users alike with their nickel-and-diming. Sure enough, they haven't done a thing with the site in over half a year now. They're probably wondering how to close it down without angering a huge cross-section of the Internet, from artists to scholars. Smack Jeeves sold itself off a year ago to some Asian company. Their last official blog post was three months later. Another one for the death watch.

Meanwhile, can you guess which other social network I'm on is doing great? Yep... Mastodon. Which makes a point of not selling out, among other things. There's been some drama, and danger, but they're being dealt with. (Being decentralized helps.) Even those that struggle to keep the lights on, and I know a few, are at least lively, and hopeful. Funny how humanity matters, even in tech. Maybe more so in tech than anywhere else.

Because you see, just like the Tin Man, the IT industry has no heart and must be very careful all the time not to hurt anyone by mistake.

I'm tired. Should probably make more art soon. It's been a while.

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claudeb: A white cat in purple wizard robe and hat, carrying a staff with a pawprint symbol. (Default)
Claude LeChat

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