• πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 21: Fall!

    Wooden bench in a park, with yellow leaves covering the ground and some on the bench. There is a paved trail in the background, with yellowing trees throughout the photo.

    There is nothing like the crunch of leaves underfoot as you’re strolling around a local park during the Autumn / Fall season. πŸŒ³πŸ‚ The only thing missing is a pumpkin-spice flavored drink. πŸ˜†β˜•οΈ #mbsept

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 20: Disruption!

    Red stop sign in the foreground, with road names mounted on top: 'Rozier St' and 'Linn Dr'; a True Value hardware store is in the background, the parking lot right behind the sign.

    It’s always good to stop when see a sign, unless you want to cause a dangerous disruption. πŸ›‘ Bonus points when the intersection contains your last name… 🀣 #mbsept

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 19: Edge!

    View of the sky and ocean, from an airplane; the ocean is a deep blue/purple below, with a hint of sunlight appearing on the water from behind the clouds, while the white wing of the plan is across the middle of the image.

    Any time I fly, I always feel like I’m at the edge of the world, especially when going over large bodies of water. This is the sunrise from my first trip to Europe, ten-ish years ago, flying into Amsterdam. πŸŒ₯️✈️🌊 #mbsept

  • Trying out the “Micropost” feature on MarsEdit

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 18: Fabric!

    Projection of the TV show 'Seinfeld' onto a sheet, outside, during the end of twilight / the start of evening. The sky is a deep purple, fading to black, with some fairy lights strung up in the right of the image, while the sheet with the TV projection is in the middle, attached to the roof of a house with white siding.

    Taken during the first summer of the Pandemic, when we were all having backyard gatherings, the friend who was bringing over their projection screen couldn’t make it so we used a sheet instead. πŸ“ΊπŸ˜· #mbsept

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 17: Intense!

    Person holding onto wire attached to to the rock behind him, on a trail in the mountains, leaning over the steep hillside off the trail. Trees in the back of the photo, long with the clouds and a view of distant mountains / hills.

    It was rather intense watching my friend pose for this photo, I was panicking the entire time but he really wanted that photo while we were hiking in the Smoky Mountains. β›°πŸ˜± #mbsept

  • Really wanted to try out some of the new watchOS features, so I downloaded the beta tonight. It was taking a very long time but on a hunch, I turned off the bluetooth and bam! The download time went from two hours to twenty minutes.

    Screen grab of the Apple Watch, on the 'Software Update' screen, with 19 minutes remaining for the download.

    Happy nerd alert! 🀣

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 16: Oof!

    Fire contained within a metal fire-pit, with glowing embers and a few logs with flames licking upwards.

    All I can say is that falling into a glowing fire-pit would result in far more than saying “oof!". πŸ”₯ #mbsept

  • Micro.blog September Challenge

    I’ve been toying with Micro.blog for years, playing with it (and paying for it) but never really committing to using it. …but then came the buyout / take-over of Twitter (I absolutely refuse to call it “X”) and it seemed like a ton of folks online were looking for alternatives. I’ve always been a fan of supporting software (hence never complaining much about paying for Micro.blog) developers and as I was already paying for it, I decided to give it another go.

    As I predicted, it ended up being more a direct Twitter replacement than anything else, becoming a place for rants, observations, etc, but then I saw a post about the September 2023 Photo-blogging Challenge and decided it might be fun to participate.

    I was right, it’s been a lot of fun. πŸ˜€

    The premise behind it is to post a different photo, every day, following the same theme / idea as everyone else. I thought it would be cool to see if I could post a photo each day from my own photo library and with a few exceptions, I’ve succeeded. It’s been a great time, going back in time in my library, looking through old memories, to find something that matches the daily topic.

    If you’d like to see my entries for the Challenge, they can be found under a specific tag, in my Micro.blog instance (the tag: “Photo Challenge: Sept 2023”).

    I’m looking forward to the rest of the month.


    In the end, I think Micro.blog is going to continue to be my Twitter replacement. I thought Mastodon was going to be it but I really enjoy the fact that I control my own subdomain and could migrate away if I wanted down the road. With Mastodon, at least currently, that isn’t really an option for me. So…I’ll continue to use Micro.blog for Twitter-like functionality and keep my existing blog for longer-form posts (like this one).


    Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.

  • On a lark, I fired up the VPN connection on my iPad to dump my internet traffic out to Berlin, just to see which podcasts would give me advertisements in German. πŸ˜†πŸŽ™οΈπŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ

  • It’s only taken nineteen years but I’m finally watching the series finale of Frasier tonight. πŸ€£πŸ“Ί

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 15: Red

    Rectangular shot-glass made out of ice, with red liquid inside, in front of a teddybear-like ice sculpture on a bar made of ice, sitting next to another ice sculpture (a random carving) and the '2' and '0' also made out of ice.

    Taken back in 2020, we got in / out of QuΓ©bec right before the Pandemic lock-downs in March of that year. Whilst visiting the Great White North, we stopped for a drink in the Ice Hotel and had some Caribou. πŸ˜‹πŸ₯ΆπŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸ‡«πŸ‡· #mbsept

  • Discovered book 8 in “The Magician’s Brother” series came out this month and as it’s been a while since I read any of them, I think a re-read of the series is in order. So, firing up my favorite eReading software (Yomu) and starting on book one, conveniently named: The Magician’s Brother. πŸ“š

    Book cover for the Magician's Brother.
  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 14: Statue

    Stone statue in a tai chi pose, with public bikes in the background on the left and cars parked along a street going up a hill in the background on the right.

    While wandering around MontrΓ©al back in 2014, my partner and I stumbled upon the Tai Chi Single Whip statue in Victoria Square. πŸ—ΏπŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸ‡«πŸ‡· #mbsept

  • πŸ“Έ September 2023 Micro.Blog photo challenge. Day 13: Glowing

    Sunset on one of the Great Lakes (the sun covered by clouds, casting a yellow-orange glow across the sky), with a sailboat in the distance and a fishing boat in the forground.

    Nothing like a glowing sunset on one of the Great Lakes. 🌀️πŸ›₯️ Took this on my summer vacation. #mbsept