This afternoon the inner city of Utrecht slowly turns orange when the annual King’s Night starts. In and around the center of Utrecht there are parties and we have what is called the Vrijmarkt, which loosely translates to “Sell the trash from your attic and shed in front of our house”-market. These parties and the self-proclaimed street-entrepreneurship naturally transcends into the King’s Day festivities which will happen tomorrow. Not only in Utrecht but throughout the whole country. I don’t have any warm connection to our monarchy or the ceremonial traditions it tries to represent. But I find the orange-clad crowds partying in the streets, the young salespeople finding a quick buck a nice way to spend the day off.
My wife and I had a small walk through some of the streets where you can buy any old vinyl, half-broken toys, shady “second-hand” bikes, questionable “vintage” jewelry and other knick-knacks. I had the idea to find a small collection of toys and assorted plastic junk I could use to kitbash some new monsters and robots together.
Alas, no luck during the small walk tonight. We might try again tomorrow, when we will visit the terrain of the University College around the corner. There will be foodtrucks and again a children’s Vrijmarkt. But we will start King’s Day with at least one tradition at home: the orange Tompouce! A Dutch pastry that consists of two layers of crispy puff pastry with an airy, creamy filling in between, topped with a sweet orange glaze. Maybe more pictures tomorrow…
On May 17th there will be the annual Micro Camp. A virtual gathering of and by the Micro.blog community. I look forward to be present this year! When I look at the impressions of previous years, it’s quite an event with lots of talks and connections. Nice!
I am currently listening to part three of the five-part trilogy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And yet again I am highly amused at the great quotes and incredibly clever oneliners in the story. How the guide explains the art of flying once again has me giggling on my morning walk through the city center. People looked puzzled as I walked by with a daft grin as I listened to “There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.”
And yes, there is a full The Hitchhiker’s Wiki entry on the art of flying. Because of course.
Ik heb mijn About-pagina aangevuld met podcasts waar ik te gast was. Vooral om te praten over indieweb en decentrale sociale netwerken.
Cory Doctorow’s linkdump of today is so dense with great quotes and stories, it’ll keep you clicking and learning a full day.
Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today’s ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.
From the birth of ISP’s to AI snake-oil and giraffology. Happy sunday!
Patti Astor, who co-founded the renowned Fun Gallery in New York City, has passed away at the age of 74. She was known for her advocacy of graffiti and street art as legitimate forms of art, as well as for her involvement in the influential film Wild Style. In 2014 I received an autographed copy of her biography. Filled back to back with great photographs of her life in the hip-hop scene.
The STRAAT museum in Amsterdam is a continuation of the vision Patti Astor had, to show how graffiti is a legitimate form of art. If you have the chance to visit this incredible museum, you will not regret it. See my own (Dutch) review in the archives…
It is great to see all sorts of small blogging platforms popping up. I might have to take the time to create an overview in a post, but for now I want to bring your attention to Gibberish. A blogging app that looks and feels like a messaging app. It’s weird and that’s the point. We text and Whatsapp all the time. But when it comes to blogging, we stare at a blank editing screen like a rabbit in the headlights. The UI of Gibberish tricks you to go into writing mode. Just go. Gibberish is not for everyone and that’s OK. For instance, the maker states:
[…]The smaller the text input field is, the more users are willing to type text in them. Typing in a giant blank screen feels like a chore. But typing in a tiny text field feels effortless.
This goes diametrically what others are saying, like Dave Winer, who wants to eradicate tiny textboxes and have more space to write.
Whatever your flavor, just keep publishing and sharing!
I love Readwise. I don’t use it too often but I love how they create a universe for my read-later pages, PDF’s, newsletters and since a few days, RSS. I’ve been testing the new feedreader for a few days. It’s not fully to my liking yet, but I understand the roadmap of Readwise, so I’m patient. However, while browsing through a selection of my daily feeds, I was stumped to read in Readwise a post by Ben Werdmuller. Or so I thought. What happened is Ben links to another site in the title of his own post. He gives a small comment on the page, but in my Readwise Reader, it parses the site Ben links to. Which, I agree with Ben, is inspiring. But I’d rather have Ben’s thoughts in my feedreader instead of the parsed site he links to. It is pretty easy to give feedback to the Readwise, so I did. I hope this issue is resolved soon.
Elke XKCD comic is waanzinnig, maar deze machine is next level awesome! Lekker knutselen!
Ik laat nu Micro.blog zien aan Kirsten Jassies, bekend van de Podcast over Social Media
I’m halfway into @annaleen@wandering.shop ‘s The Future of Another Timeline and I feel I should’ve made my own notes on who does what with whom where in which timeline… I’m getting confused!
The first sunny day of spring and there is a long queue at the local ice-cream parlor. Totally worth it!
30 years ago today...
Kagi update #2: Well thát escalated quickly… After the glowing reviews, I also found concerns about the ethical choices of the company. It all comes down to the discussion in this forum thread. I have to be honest, it’s a messy situation. I wasn’t even aware of the issues with the Brave browser, which is my default browser for over a year now. I don’t know for a 100% how to deal with this. I still want to read some of the more thoughtful and balanced responses in the thread. I have experience working at a startup and currently work at a creative agency. I recognize some of the discussions and arguments that are given from both sides. I don’t claim to have the answers for them. I don’t even know for sure how I feel about it myself.
I only know for now, for myself, I don’t live in a vacuum. I don’t live in an ideal world. I want to be the positive change myself. I know I can’t fight every battle. I know I will not see the end of the discussion. I need to move on from day to day. I have other priorities.
So… I don’t have a definitive answer to the situation of Kagi, Brave and the intersection of tech and politics.
I read two glowing reviews about searchengine Kagi. Yesterday by 404 Media, today Cory Doctorow, who explains it as “Kagi is a heavily customized, anonymized front-end to Google” and “discovers that Kagi - the good search engine - is mostly Google with the weights adjusted to serve users, not shareholders.” I now run a free trial of Kagi as my default searchengine to see how it holds.
📚 Currently reading: The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz (@Annaleen@wandering.shop)
“The mind-blowing punk feminist sci-fi time traveling thriller you’ve been waiting for, and which our culture desperately needs. Packed with action, sass, righteousness, and danger, it just might be a perfect book.” —Michelle Tea
The Imperfectionist: The life-changing magic of not tidying up:
Impose too much order on your notes, and you eliminate the serendipitous connections that are how ideas arise.
For some reason my old Digging the Digital blog got a ton of visitors the last two days. I have no idea why that happened. I have some basic analytics from Tinylytics (by Vincent Ritter) that showed a big spike.
Looking into Tinylytics also made me decide to install it here on this blog as well. Let’s see what happens on this here little corner of the internet!
The session by @nicole@pkm.social and @zsviczian@pkm.social on the use of Excalidraw in Obsidian for tabletop RPG’s was insane. I knew Excalidraw is powerful, but what I just saw was just incredible. Really something to dig deeper into. Not only for gaming, work as well. #PKMSummit2024