Re-Entry.... yet another, more focused intro?

Well, I'm not quite aware of how folks organize things here. I've chosen some tags, at least one aligns with a community I think, but just chose the My Blog category. I'm hoping it's a good restart.

Actually, I'm hoping I'm actually able to post this. The first time around that wasn't possible, since I didn't have enough HIVE or HBD, or something along those lines...

Well, here goes :)

Following my tenure as a contract engineer with GoDaddy I went up almost a thousand miles North of Los Angeles to Humboldt to wire up (wireless up, actually, with Ubiquiti Nanostation radios) a friend's 160 acre mountain property with various types of cameras so she could monitor the entire area remotely using a #FOSS product called #Shinobi. I was enthralled with the beauty of the harsh, virgin wilderness of the mountainous landscape, redwoods, wildlife, and isolated solace of the area. I spent over six years there, 4 years of it completely off-grid and basically living like Jeremiah Johnson in those mountains until I was evacuated, narrowly escaping incineration.

My luscious garden from which I derived much delicious sustenance from the rich mountain soil in the geographically remote wilderness of Humboldt. My beautiful cabin (lost in the August Complex fires) is in the background - completely #off-grid, with solar powered battery banks, inverter system, gasoline and diesel gensets, and a #Stanley wood fired stove/oven/water exchange heater (I also had a propane on-demand water heater).

Initially, while still living up north, I literally stumbled upon HIVE while researching and evaluating different blockchains and cryptocurrencies for utility - not speculation/trading. I've been using several cryptocurrencies as actual money in everyday commerce for buying and selling goods and services for quite a while (NOT Bitcoin or Ethereum), but never engaging in any sort of #gamification, wasn't impressed with #NFTs, or other uses that #blockchain technology is also used for. I dabbled some in the past w/LBRY but that ended up being less than fulfilling following the shift to Odysee, and then searching for other streaming solutions HIVE just kind of fell into my lap. I know nothing about Steem (or is it Steam?), gaming (I really, literally know nothing about gaming), but was already aware of memo.cash and read.cash.

I've been a longtime #FOSSie, advocating for the adoption of free and open source software for about three decades now, a stalwart supporter and zealot of #privacy conscious computing, working diligently towards bringing awareness of insidious data mining practices to the average, everyday person in their day to day online activities.

A friend of mine has created a popular #ActivityPub powered #Fediverse publishing platform, written in #Rust that features cryptocurrency enabled, subscription based blog and news authoring - think #Substack but without the intervention of big credit card companies. To this degree, I'm gleaning that the HIVE community is similarly juxtapositioned in the blockchain space of social networking. I find that impressive.

Winters could be extremely brutal for a native #SoCal boi ;) Especially considering that I had little experience actually living in a place that could get waste deep in snow, and my wood furnace would, in the winter, only get the cabin up to about 47 degrees. People in Minnesota or Alberta will probably chuckle when I lament 17 degree weather, but to me, having grown up along the beaches of #SuperSunnySouthernCalifornia where it's often mid-seventies at the beach in the winter, it's my belief that water freezes below 60 degrees 😜 During these months, I was almost always completely sequestered, with the nearest humans being more than five miles away, and not seeing anyone for often six weeks at a time.

A particularly dramatic view from my backyard on a particularly serene day. The Pacific Ocean is about 35 miles off in the distance, which I was never actually able to really see, but at times, I could, and did, imagine that I could. Human contact and interaction is absolutely necessary for people. Your mind starts doing really funky stuff after prolonged periods of no contact with other people, and living #off-grid certainly is nothing like what you see on YouTube with those folks having camera crews in tow and helicopters delivering their building materials.

Being someone who enjoys leveraging #Markdown in #publishing and software documentation related activities, I'm now researching in earnest the differences between some of the HIVE platforms such as Ecency (from which I'm working at the moment), Hive.Blog, and PeakD in that regard. Their featureful editors are truly a joy to use, rivalling that of #WordPress, #Ghost, and a limited few others, but without having to concern myself with the vagaries of #SEO or other industry considerations. Perhaps the best part is that people don't even need HIVE accounts in order to visit links and read content.

Fun with #chainsaws in the rain - bucking up and splitting logs is a never ending chore, much better when it's cool outside. This huge oak was felled under it's own weight after a good soaking over several days.

Of primary interest here is being able to publish just everyday IRL stuffs, providing help through publishing articles, #Howtos, and cookbook style #Tutorials on using and self-hosting FOSS based software, as well as just finding my potential place engaging the community here and making friends in the process.

Feel free to boost this article, or maybe it's called reblogging here at HIVE? I'm used to the terminology we use in the #Fediverse, having abandoned those privacy mining, deprecated monolithic silos like Faceplant, InstaSpam, Twitter, and Reddit so long ago. When I have to share things from YouTube and other data mining platforms, I almost always try to sanitize those links with tools like #Invidious, #Teddit, #Nitter, Etc., so that the things I will share with you cannot track you and disrespect your privacy.

I'm back in #SuperSunnySouthernCalifornia again after more than six years, and have the time at my disposal to pursue these community focused pursuits - my way of giving back to everyone... in between my excursions hunting down #sheepshead and #calico_bass in the #kelp_beds at the bottom of the cliffs that are walking distance from my home along the coast; they make for yummy fish fry's and barbeques after a relaxing day of #spearfishing.

Hermosa Beach, California. It just doesn't get much better than this!

I like to use #hashtags a lot too in the course of writing what I'm going to publish, and have noticed that my "Pascal Snake Case" style of joining tagged items with underscores isn't supported here, but I don't expect that I'll change that idiosyncrasy of mine ;) Being old school, I also incorporate #emoticons, and I'm glad that this platform doesn't try to convert those into emoji's, which I also like to put into the mix.

I can't remember which HIVE platform source I found at one of the popular #Git repos but I might even like to spin up my own to spread the wealth around a little bit. If I do, I'll certainly be sure to publish a detailed #HowTo on that for folks who might be inclined to #self-host their own as well. Please Do hit me up if you have any info on that sort of thing, okay?

My homeward journey to the #South_Bay was undertaken Memorial Day weekend. When I awoke on that morning in my new bed, lying prone and looking up through my bedroom window, this was the view awaiting me. I laid there for a time admiring those eight, some seemingly a hundred feet high, towering palm trees, taking it all in and feeling such a relief knowing I was back in my homeland... Then it suddenly occurred to me: I hadn't actually seen a palm tree in almost 7 years! 🌴

One thing that is kind of eluding me however, and which I am pleasantly surprised by, I've noted that HIVE enjoys participation from a very large sector of regular, everyday people, which is a bit surprising because the Fediverse has experienced what many have complained is a steep learning curve by onboarders; many folks have stated they just don't understand the #decentralization model there, while to me, I would think that a higher barrier to onboarding would have been managing several key pairs attached to their identities here at HIVE, yet that just doesn't seem to be the case - and it is very good to see :)

I also see that one can create a community group themselves too, and I don't see one that neatly fits into the niche for some of the topical publishing and conversation that I'm looking forward to, so maybe I could get a little guidance on how that works too?

My next post might be a somewhat comprehensive article, or part of a series, on my saga that took me all the way to #Humboldt, California, and ultimately, brought me back home after that phenomenal sojourn of many years.

Yeah... Digital Rights Management. Research studies and polls have overwhelmingly shown that #DRM encoded media, such as books and audio-visual, and music products are much more likely to be pirated when they're encoded with this draconian technology. There are actually collectives of people who go out of their way to do so, and even distributed those DRM stripped works far and wide, just to spite those technologically amoral restrictions. Why is this so? Because when you trust the users who pay for such works, they tend to respect that confidence placed in them and help to protect the works by adhering to the terms of the licenses they're asked to respect. So when you purchase books and music, etc., I hope you'll consider taking a few moments to ensure that you give your business to outlets that show you the respect that you deserve too, without such draconian impositions placed upon you - I'm just sayin'.

Until then, I think I'm going to play with the different editors on the HIVE platforms and test out the superior inline image posting I've noticed, and so maybe I should end up with a question and ask if anyone knows how (and if it's possible) to include Alt-tags for #A11Y accessibility. I think it's important to include those for our less sighted readership - so... how do I include those with uploaded images in my articles? Can I just code that into the links in Markdown?

To contact me directly, I can be reached anytime at the following places:

Matrix: @tallship:matrix.org
XMPP: [email protected] (Use OMEMO, please - I do)
Fediverse: @[email protected]
On the Web at: https://CointTr.ee/tallship

Well, it's time to close now, and so I'll do so, wishing all the very best for everyone, in health and happiness,

#tallship

⛵

.