Darius Kazemi @darius@friend.camp

Particularly excited about the addition of the "multiple choice" toggle to polls. Did you know that Mastodon supports multiple choice polls? It does, but it's a hidden feature where you have to click the round buttons to the left of your poll choices while making the poll. It's so weird.

Anyway this makes things clearer.

CSS did not compile and somehow accidentally made #hometown look like this. I like it. I think I'll keep it.

@molly0xfff I made that tart recipe

Finally added a "Server Rule" to Friend Camp.

It's a useful feature for a big server but a silly one for a small, close-knit, high-trust community.

me talking to journalists

Playing around with Mastodon v4 (in Hometown!) and trying to change how the post button layout works on mobile web. I moved the post button and the user avatar to the same column as various timeline icons. It gets rid of the big "top bar" that takes up a bunch of space up there just for a logo.

(Ignore the emoji pencil, it is supposed to be a "real" pencil icon but I'm being lazy)

I hated the design of thread unroller apps on Twitter so much that I made my own a few years back called Spooler. It's still used by lots of people (I don't collect usage stats but people complain when it breaks).

https://tinysubversions.com/spooler/

All it does is: you give it a link to a thread, and it renders it to look like a blog post. It doesn't save or rehost the thread. It just makes it easy to read *in your browser* (for example, on a screen reader).

Another tip for fediverse admins: a lot of software (including Mastodon, at least v3, not sure about v4) lets you completely turn off trending posts/hashtags/news/recommendations for your users. Our "Explore" page is just 4 tabs of glorious blankness.

Obviously talk to your community before doing this. We were massively in favor of it, so I did it. We've had them turned off for years. It's been nice

ugh, this is pretty clearly a CAPTCHA being used to tune a machine learning algorithm. these are definitely ML-generated pictures and I imagine what's going on is they are adding some noise to a query for "cake" and then asking me to tag the cake-looking stuff.

BUT! It means that it doesn't actually matter what I select. I picked a random assortment of stuff and it let me through just fine. Take THAT, training model!!

I absolutely love this custom notification when you go to sign up for the #hometown server https://pagan.plus

Exactly the kind of intentional-growth mindset I wanna see from Hometown servers

So if any server admin types are interested, it should be pretty easy* to run an instance of my RSS to ActivityPub converter as a nice bonus for your users. It lets people with a login on your Mastodon or Hometown server create ActivityPub accounts that are mirrors of RSS feeds (process pictured in attachments). ONLY people with a login to your server can use it, because you don't want to moderate this service for randos

https://github.com/dariusk/rss-to-activitypub

*easy for linux server administration, huge lmao

Oregon Sherrifs: our "we do not condone or support slavery" shirt is raising questions already answered by the shirt

Iiiinteresting, Mastodon changed the behavior for what happens when you are viewing the user profile on a remote server and hit "follow". Instead of the often-not-working "remote follow" action, you now get this modal that says "please copy/paste this into your client and hit follow"

Here's how deep I had to go into the DOM tree to inspect text that I had typed into a text box on Twitter

My new favorite local tagger (though Penis Girl will always be queen)

Left: the lettuce I painstakingly reared from seed indoors and then transplanted

Right: the lettuce I bought as starts at the nursery

Wondering if it's even worth trying to raise from seed next year... #gardening

Had a productive #gardening morning! Harvested the last of the snap peas, way more raspberries than expected, and started my snap pea seed saving process for next year. Did a ton of weeding too.

Came across this article that describes Persian grilled corn (balal) and what makes it uniquely delicious. In short, you shuck the corn, cook it directly on hot coals until almost blackened, then give it a bath in salt water for ten minutes or more.

https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/skip-the-butter-and-dip-your-grilled-corn-in-a-salt-bath-instead/

I grew up eating this stuff and make it at least once each summer. Attached is a video of me making it a few summers ago.

<achievement unlocked>

Thanks, The Oregonian. What the fuck. These poor landlords required to keep track of "minutiae" such as... the date an application was submitted?? Sorry that you've chosen to run a business my dudes??