Jamie Thingelstad

First fire of the fall and first time using the Solo Stove Yukon. 🔥

I signed up for Twitter on Wed Dec 20 21:25:24 +0000 2006, claiming user number #82,903.

Twitter quickly became one of the services that I used multiple times everyday. I published thousands of Tweets over the years and followed hundreds of people. I got so into Twitter that my blogging suffered. Over time I became very critical of social media. My opinion has only gotten more convicted about that. For years now I’ve blocked every Facebook property to avoid their surveillance ecosystem. I’ve deleted or disengaged from nearly all social platforms.

Except for Twitter.

I experienced Twitter in the early days when it was so fun. I used Twitter over SMS posting and receiving updates (they weren’t called tweets yet) via text messages! Twitter was such a fun and playful place. I made a Twitter Bot that shared the temperature in my attic. In fact, at one point I had at least eight different Twitter accounts for various projects.

I tried to quit Twitter, multiple times. I’d delete the apps from my phone. I deleted all my tweets. I even unfollowed everyone, destroying my social graph. I still kept a little trickle of Twitter by using an RSS feed to track some key people. Then I would get sucked back in.

Until now.

Thank You Elon! Truly, you have helped me get out of a 17 year addictive relationship with Twitter. I had tried so many times to disengage from Twitter, but it never lasted. But now, it is easy.

There is no Twitter.

I can’t tell you how much easier it is when the thing your addicted to just goes away.

I realize there is something now called X. I have no idea what that is. I didn’t sign up for it. The logo is ugly. I have no interest at all in X.

Twitter though, that was one heck of a drug. Thanks for helping me to kick the habit.

PS: Thank you for making Tesla because it is a great car and has moved the industry along. I’ll likely buy another in the future. ⚡️

PPS: Also thank you for SpaceX cause that is changing the game for space access. 🚀

Some data on this summers heat.

The past three months have been the hottest ever measured, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an EU-funded programme. Last month was the warmest August on record — and the second hottest month ever, after July 2023 — with temperatures an estimated 1.5°C above preindustrial averages. In August sea-surface temperatures also hit 20.98°C, their highest monthly average. — Economist Espresso, Sep 6 2023

Tammy and I had a delightful dinner at Colita tonight and I had to gawk at this McLaren 720S in the parking lot. Don’t see cars like this often. Wow. 🤩

Experiencing first power outage since moving into current house which has generator. Everything went off for about 2-3 seconds and then generator fired up and most of the main floor came back online. Generator stuttered briefly when AC compressor came back online.

Recently WordPress.com announced a profound new 100-Year Plan for hosting websites. I’ve thought a lot about how to keep websites (mostly personal blogs) alive after the authors of those blogs are no longer here so this is something I was curious about. I’ve written about preserving your writing as recent as July.

Love This

First, I applaud what WordPress is doing here and think that we need more organizations providing technology, infrastructure, and logistical solutions to help content stay online for a very long time, preferably many hundreds if not thousands of years. This offering strikes me as the most significant, and from an organization that I would be comfortable trusting, that has ever been provided.

I hope this urges other tools and organizations to consider ways that they can provide similar capability, or even slightly different since this 100-Year plan doesn’t seem to differentiate between an active site versus an archived site. I would think that if you make a clear decision that a site is now archived and new content isn’t being created you could reduce the hosting costs dramatically.

Cost

Much has been made about the fact that this 100-Year Plan costs $38,000. I think a lot of people are just looking at this number and reacting without parsing it through. Let’s break it down.

This service is provided as part of WordPress VIP hosting solution which is their more advanced service. Your domain name is also baked into this. A domain costs approximately $12/year, or $1,200 for the duration.

That leaves $36,800 for hosting, or $368 a year, or about $30/month of hosting cost. That seems like a reasonable cost for WordPress VIP.

This also all has to be paid up-front, which makes sense since the paying entity is going to “disappear” at some point during the 100 years, and it isn’t predictable when that will be.

Is $38,000 a lot of money? Very much so. But I don’t think this is terribly priced for the components that you are getting, and the need to pay up front makes logistical sense.

Probably Not For Me

So, am I going to use this? Probably not, or at least for now. I don’t host on WordPress and I’d rather not start. The idea of having your content in a database with all of that complexity for 100 years seems like an odd approach. Of course that also depends on the use case. If it is a website that is meant to outlive you, a static site seems like a better solution. If it is a website that you plan to evolve and change for 100 years then maybe.

I’m happy seeing innovation here. Lets hope for continued activity to create even better solutions.

Mochi Donuts at Mochi Dough at Asia Mall.

I have been blogging for nearly 20 years and have created thousands of blog posts in that time. I’ve hosted my blog on several platforms over the year, and my writing style has evolved over those decades. I have every intention of continuing to blog for the rest of my life. And in fact, will hope to have my blog last well beyond that.

As a long-term blogger though I’ve noticed that tending and curating my archive is both difficult due to the size, but also entirely satisfying and rewarding to do. I’ve come to think of this like digital gardening. You tend to the plants, pull the weeds, clean up things.

Once you’ve gotten past the hurdle of regularly posting on your site, I highly recommending taking 5-10 minutes each day to do some small thing to curate and improve your blog.

My gardening routine in OmniFocus.

Here is how I do it.

I visit my On This Day page every day. This is perfect for me as it divides the thousands of posts into 365 slices so I’m typically only gardening around ten to twenty posts. My gardening typically involves:

• Fixing a typo in a post.
• Cleaning up a hyperlink that is worded poorly or with a broken link.
• I shouldn’t have broken images, but sometimes it happens and I fix those.
• Sometimes a post lacks the context to understand it now, so I might add that.
• There may be two short posts that would be better merged into one.
• Adding a post to a Collection or a List, as well as adding a link to those in the post itself.
• Adding links to other posts, particularly links to older posts to new ones that were written after the old one was published.

It makes me happy to make these small fixes. I bet it is like a gardener that pulls some weeds in their garden. My website will be some part of my legacy, and this small daily task makes that legacy a little bit better all the time.

Funny UX thing I’ve noticed with micro.blog.

I use the “Reply” feature way more on the web than the macOS app.

I suspect it is the difference between the “inline” interaction on the web opposed to a new window which macOS uses. I much prefer the web interaction. FYI @manton.

Homemade pasta night.

Without a question this was the best concert that I’ve ever seen at the Minnesota State Fair, and for Brandi it was one of the best shows of hers we’ve been to. The night started off different with Brandi singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, not at the end in an encore, but instead it was the 2nd song of the night. An early nod to the set list ahead and the special night.

Brandi recounted how 15 years ago they performed free shows at the Minnesota State Fair. She also shared her love of fairs and highlighted that her very first concert was seeing the Judds perform (Wynona Judd opened up for her!) at a fair in Washington. The set list went deep. Her wife Katherine came out for a song. Wynona came up for three different songs. It was an epic night filled with love.

See list of Brandi Carlile shows.

What do you do when the only opportunity for the State Fair is to arrive a couple hours before the Brandi Carlile concert in the Grandstand? There is much to do, and not much time. Move fast!

✅ Sweet Martha’s Cookies
✅ Meet old friends at Lulu’s
✅ Dinner at Baba’s
✅ Giant Sing Along
✅ Fine Arts Building
✅ Prize winning student art in Education Building
✅ Cheese Curds from Mouse Trap in Food Building
✅ Crop Art in Horticulture Building
✅ Butter heads and Ice Cream at Dairy Building
✅ Giant Slide