Speaking of Tinderbox

10:11 Friday, 20 December 2024
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Words: 424

There's an active community around Tinderbox, which is a rewarding social interaction outside the normal sphere of "social media" apps.

I enjoy dropping by the forum to see what other people are doing with the app, even though my applications are fairly modest and unsophisticated. The marmot is far more "sophisticated" now than it was when I started it back in 2013, and that's largely a function of becoming more involved in the community, and leveraging its knowledge and experience.

I'm happy to say that I've learned enough to be helpful. I'm usually the guy asking for help.

Here's a thread that made me feel pretty good this morning, and it's an example of the kinds of things you can do with Tinderbox, and the kinds of help you can get at the forum.

Tinderbox is on sale as part of the Winterfest promotion. It's not a "subscription" app in the sense that if you stop paying, it stops working. You pay each year for that year's updates. If you skip a year or two, you can pay the update price and get the current version and another year of updates.

But Mark Bernstein is actively developing Tinderbox, so new features and modified ones are rolled out pretty regularly, along with bug fixes. So, in my experience, it's been worth keeping up with the updates. I've been using Tinderbox for over 20 years, so I'm pretty invested in the app.

But you're not just getting the app and the updates, you're also getting this whole community that has grown around it. Since Tinderbox has been around for a long time, many of these community members have been around just as long. There's a deep resource of experience that is pretty generous and patient to accompany you as you begin to discover Tinderbox.

One of those members, Mark Anderson, even maintains an encyclopedic reference for Tinderbox at aTbRef. I have a link to the site in my Favorites bar in Safari.

This isn't a paid promotion or anything like that. I'm just writing this because I felt a nice feeling of reward this morning when Dominique wrote that his script now works. You have to take your rewards and satisfaction where you can find them these days. And I've enjoyed using Tinderbox ever since I first launched it. To be sure, I've had my frustrations as well. And it isn't always "easy," but it is rewarding.

It keeps me in the blogosphere and out of the "platforms," and all the bullshit that accompanies platform politics.

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Illustrations

08:37 Friday, 20 December 2024
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The preceding posts were illustrations of my impressions of doing your own thing with static HTML, and living in a "platform" ("walled garden") like Wordpress, or any other "social media platform."

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Tinderbox

08:37 Friday, 20 December 2024
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Words: 28

("Tinderbox" in this post refers to the app, not some reference to fire risk.)

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WordPress

08:36 Friday, 20 December 2024
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Words: 14

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No Drama

08:23 Friday, 20 December 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 52.23°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 121

One of the very best reasons for maintaining a blog in Tinderbox, and paying for hosting (almost wrote "self-hosting," but that wouldn't be accurate), is that I am completely and utterly immune from the inevitable drama that accompanies "platforms."

A significant amount of the text that passes through my subscriptions in NetNewsWire deals with "federation," Threads, Bluesky, X, Wordpress, Mastodon, and probably any other platform you could name. (WordPress, since that's what prompted this.)

I mean, it's like being vaccinated. I'm exposed to all this sturm und drang around this bullshit; but I don't really care. I don't get infected. Apart from the wasted time and bandwidth.

These platforms are like HOAs.

They suck.

("But they preserve our property values!")

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Like a Hawk

08:16 Friday, 20 December 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 52.23°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 101

Headed out this morning for my walk without a camera because it was solidly overcast. But there was a pretty stiff breeze, and about a third of the way around the skies cleared.

Got to the back gate and spotted this guy. He (she?) sat there patiently while I walked beneath it twice, pausing to take shots with my iPhone each time.

Oh well, it was a good walk. Faster without the camera, and because it was a bit chilly. Still ended up breaking a sweat though.

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