The Male Hysteric

I have been using my bearblog more (bearblog.dev, mine is at punkthefrog.bearblog.dev) and I guess I am starting to have some thoughts on it. There are some blogs that are very well set up and some that have more there than others. The discovery features are very basic, the lack of “follow” is unintuitive for me, and probably the biggest problem (thought it’s probably not a real problem) is that certain things that would probably be considered basic elsewhere (ability to be on the discoverable main page, inline media at all, it seems like?) are paid features. And to be honest… I am not sure I want to pay. I haven’t even paid DreamWidth anything (yet) and I feel like DW is more deserving of my money, and BearBlog is very small to the point that a good chunk of the posts seem to be “how to blog” posts.

Someone recently posted that BearBlog isn’t social media and I would have to agree. It is really “for” something different than DreamWidth and probably my feelings of needing to have ‘loyalty’ to DW is misguided. Like I’m tempted to try out the paid features on BearBlog but I think DW needs my money more or should have it first but I don’t think especially right now I can afford both subscriptions. Or, well, whatever. I don’t know. A zonelets would probably be freer and more customizable, but also… I don’t wanna? I dunno.

However there is one thing that I definitely like about BearBlog vs DW and that is on the discoverable page it only gives titles with links rather than the full blog posts. I follow a lot of people that I do not necessarily want to unfollow on DW but also like… certain posts feel very ‘cluttery’ and I’d like to be able to scroll past them faster, or have them not take up as much of the page. If that makes sense.

This isn't a full review of the xteink but having it on hand I'm starting to remember how much better it feels to read things that people actually put thought into, like books, rather than posts*. So that's something.

*not you DWers, especially not my followers, though. You should post away and are excellent.

A few days ago I impulse purchased the XTEink x4. For those who don't know, the x4 is a tiny ereader that is smaller than most phones, and is in fact advertised as being able to stick to the back of your phone with a magnet, though because most people conceptualize it as an anti-scroll device I don't think most people use it this way. Anyway, a main reason I got it was because my current ereader is a Kobo Libra Color which, while very nice, is also a larger model and pretty frequently I find that it's too large to throw in a pocket or fanny pack. So enter the XTEink x4:



As you can see, very tiny. Also I went ahead and immediately flashed it with the CrossPoint firmware which I heard was better than the original, which is super limited. But the device is limited anyway. It is not a touch screen device which is rare nowadays, and doesn't read PDFs at all (which would be super difficult, given the size and again no touch screen). Unlike most ereaders in my experience, you can't just plug it in and access the file system. You either need to take out the SD card and plug that into a reader and into a computer, or you can send things through the local network, either over a browser or there are multiple apps to do that. The CrossPoint-compatible apps have a nice feature that lets you clip articles from your browser and queue them up to download onto your device when your device joins the network.

Before I realized this, I was trying to get my raspberry pi to work as an ebook server. I set up calibre, set up a news source out of my Instapaper feed and managed to push it to my device, though I was looking at how to automate the process to trigger whenever it found my ereader on the network, which might be a big ask. My instapaper feed is mostly articles that I find and want to read later, and I put them in instapaper because that means they go to my kobo, but I never get around to reading them. So I thought that I would finally get around to reading them if I put them on the smaller, more portable device! And I started reading them! and after a few articles... I realized the reason why I had been putting them off was because they were a bunch of downers!

Anyway. I've been experimenting with putting things on the device. Sometimes the CrossPoint web clipper works better than others, so I need to figure out the conditions under which it works well. There is apparently a way to sync up an XTEink x4 with crosspoint with a kobo through KOReader and calibre but I'm not sure I want to fuss with that because I don't use KOReader and am not sure I want to start. So I think I may just end up using both devices separately.

It's a little early to make any grand proclamations about this device but it is seriously stripped down to the basics and one thing I do miss is a backlight, because it does feel like a perfect device to read on right before bed. I do have a book light that I'm hoping I will be able to clip onto the case when the case arrives, or, failing that, the company does sell a magnetic book light for the x4. There's talk of a new XTEink device coming out soon that may be upgraded but I went ahead and purchased the x4 now because the new device looks to be android based and I preferred something without android.

Anyway, it's interesting. I'm hoping that it will get me to read more.

The internet (or, well, maybe, mostly social media) is quickly becoming unusable for me because of the rampant amounts of antisemitism literally everywhere. It is honestly worse than my experience with transphobia online and I say this as a trans person.

My other thought right now is about the indieweb as an alternative and there seems to be significant problems to the point that I'm thinking of writing an essay. As with most things in tech there seems to be a major disconnect in what people want and what tech people want to do. So much of the face of the indieweb is retroweb material built by high school and college kids who can design beautiful retro aesthetic layouts because, frankly, they have so much free time on their hands and no real responsibilities. We know right now probably more than ever that grown up adults with jobs and such have interesting things to say and especially because the indieweb does not generally have straightforward monetization opportunities, they should be able to publish simply without sacrificing all of their precious free time.

And in saying this I think there needs to be more focus on really simple text-based websites that people can just bang out if they have something to say and just need somewhere to put it. The competition with non-indie sources is really fierce for this niche but I think at least some people can be pulled, especially given the privacy garbage happening on social media. While I know the back end of, for example, Ao3 is quite complex, the front end being well-formatted text shows that sites that are simply well-formatted text are worthwhile in themselves. I feel like Zonelets is probably the most complexity one can realistically ask of people, and even that might be too much because it is still Javascript. But still having packages like that for people who aren't super tech-minded to be able to deploy simple, text-based static websites that are usable on mobile to a host of their choice should probably be the priority.

I finished the last four novels of my challenge, just in time, and delayed writing about any of them until the last minute. Really so like me. So, I am going to keep this short:

#9 Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland: this is a cozy M/M romantasy novel with an emphasis on cozy. For some reason it took me a while to get into, but I did get into it. The fantasy elements seemed a little underdeveloped, but that may be because it is a part of a larger universe(?), and I am not sure if 'cozy' is really for me. Everything feels a bit too safe. It was not quite to the point of 'educational hugboxing' but it felt a bit close for me.

#10 Harrow The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: This is the second time I've read Harrow The Ninth and I read it along with the Frontline Fifth Podcast which was a fun experience. Reading through it again, I definitely feel like I mostly experienced the first readthrough on vibes and have a much better understanding (and appreciation) of the book.

#11 Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett: I've read a decent amount of Discworld novels but not this one before. Me and my husband were discussing collecting all of the Discworld novels in mass market paperback (which are getting harder to find) and we've started a decent collection. Guards! Guards! however was one of the books my husband still had after getting rid of many, so that's the one I started with. It's interesting because even though Discworld generally holds up, it's blaringly obvious that a project like Discworld would be almost impossible to publish right now, as a vast, sprawling, loosely-related series with little romance. And also reading it today, much of the stuff being directly parodied in the books is quite vintage now to the point that many younger readers probably wouldn't even recognize it now.

#12: A Gentleman's Gentleman by T. J. Alexander: I really enjoyed this one, and if you could only read one book of my 12 it'd probably be this one -- it's a Regency romance with a trans man as the main character. Now, I know that apparently all m/m Regency romances are the lord of the house and the valet to the point that people are tired of it but I am not completely burned out on it yet, and you should definitely read this one before you are, too.

Whew! I managed to get to 12. I think considering I almost missed 12 this year, I will keep the 12 for next year. Maybe I will add in a few nonfiction books, not just novels? Who knows. I have a day to think about it.

I ordered some zines and was thinking hey I should make a zine but was at a loss of what to make and my husband suggested I make one on how to deSpotify, which would probably be a good idea because it's actually a pretty complex topic. Spotify both maintains a music library and facilitates music discovery, and maintaining a library by yourself is not easy in itself but music discovery since Spotify has been made more difficult by Spotify killing off alternatives. So it would probably be useful, even though I guess I am not entirely deSpotified myself (I am on a big family plan with friends and acquaintances, but rarely use it).

Otherwise when it comes to actual devices, apparently there was a big snit with the Innioasis Y1 community. The guy who developed the app that drastically simplified things (I could not get the original alternative, MTKClient to work, because I'm Not Good At Computer) was kicked out of the Reddit community because he was harassing people and I'm not really sure where to go from there. I have been using my Snowsky Echo Mini more often now even though the Y1 is clearly a more versatile device, but what am I going to do if I can't actually maintain the Y1? It makes me wonder if I should get one of the more upscale devices like a HiBy R4 or whatever even though they're basically phones, just because this is kinda nuts. I don't know. Apparently the chip shortage is going to make DAPs, especially low price ones, harder to get. Snowsky is releasing a new player, the Disc, that I'm not really that hyped about but we'll see. I wish they would just put bookmarking and playlists on the Echo Mini, that would fix most of my problems.

So today I went to a recipe site that was pushed to me by Firefox. It was about how to dry brine a turkey which my husband was thinking of doing for Thanksgiving, so, you know, normal article to be pushed on me this time of year. I tried to read the article and I was immediately swarmed with ads, leaving even my proper laptop screen little space to read, and then. Then. An ad popped up in the middle of my screen. Right in the middle. An ad I could not click to close, right in the middle of the screen, right in the middle of the text, there was no way to move it. It left me able to leave like one line of text on the whole friggin laptop screen. I thought this had to be some kind of mistake so I refreshed the page, and the ad went from a square in the middle of the screen had expanded to a full stripe in the middle of the page, making the entire text unreadable, with no way to close this ad, no way to wait for the ad to finish, it just made the entire article unreadable.

I am done with the internet. Throw the whole thing out.

I am not sure if anyone is aware of the drama ongoing at BlueSky, but uh... essentially, Jay has been dismissive and making fun of users who do not want Jesse Singal on the platform, and moderation has gone on a spree of banning people who criticize her, including permabanning original long-time users. So naturally people are talking about alternatives.

And it's very disconcerting because the lifecycle of these sites are getting shorter and shorter, and people are pointing out how BlueSky is meant to be a protocol that can be used by other servers (? I am still not quite sure how this works and how it's different from Mastodon in that respect, but we will see) but lots of people are talking about jumping ship and going to Tumblr or even DreamWidth and the thing is these people seem to want microblogging and yet microblogging platforms continue to prove themselves to be terrible, and it's like... maybe there's a reason why microblogging platforms, specifically, tend to be terrible.

There was at least one user recommending microblogging from Dreamwidth (I guess several short posts per day on DW?) which I guess is possible but I'm not sure how that wouldn't drive people nuts. I do follow one person who does this, which I appreciate, but if everyone on my feed posted that way I think it would become unusable. I haven't been using my bearblog but I'm wondering how much it could be used for microblogging... as in, I am wondering if it would be worth it to test the character limits of the titles, and maybe it could be done. It definitely wouldn't be the same as BlueSky or even Dreamwidth at all but it could possibly be something?

I don't know, microblogging has created a unique niche in the ecosystem that I'm not sure can be replaced, and it's easy to question whether it should be replaced and even if I hate it I'm really not sure it should be.

I have been messing around with the Innioasis y1 and while it's definitely got bugs I have been enjoying using it and have been generally filling it with lots of stuff. So, instead of keeping everything to myself, I'm sharing these:

Listen Notes is one of the few podcast streaming websites I've been able to find that still has an audio download link on every podcast and does not take you to an app (Podbean does this for most but not some -- I have not found any feeds that do not link to actual mp3 files on Listen Notes yet). So, if you're using an mp3 player without apps, this is a good choice to download your podcasts from. I generally use Swinsian (not free) to clean up the metadata before I upload it but that's definitely not strictly necessary.

The Current radio station allows free downloads of The Song Of The Day going back five days. A long time ago iTunes used to have this feature, where they had a free to download song every day, so this is similar. The Current is an alternative station but they're pretty eclectic so it's worth checking out even if alternative specifically isn't your jam.

And a pay-what-you-want album, Blank Banshee 0 by Blank Banshee, which has been in my heavy rotation for me for a while, though may partly be because it comes up early in the album listing, haha. It's considered pretty foundational vaporwave with other influences. I had the surreal experience a few nights ago listening to a song on the radio that was very clearly sampled in here.