https://www.gordonmclean.co.uk/blog by @snowgoon@mastodon.social
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Dear Self, You visit Bubbles every day, and with good reason. You are finding new voices, interesting sites, and realising that the internet you loved all those years ago is still out there, you’d just forgotten how to look. It’s a great resource. And boy those upvotes are addictive. Thing is, you’ve lost your focus. You’ve let that little bump in your stats —the one you get when you’ve posted something new— go to your head. You are writing posts with half a mind on getting upvotes, rather than…
Half way through the year already, and it seemed like a good time to look back at my New Year resolutions. I’m not normally one for resolutions, but avoiding them hadn’t exactly been a winning strategy either, so I thought I’d give them a try. As I said in January: Given that I remain unfit and overweight, and have spent the last 4 years trying a variety of different approaches, none of which have worked, I’m thinking that maybe I should just try New Year resolutions? What’s the harm, right? If…
One of the Summer Sessions gigs that takes over one part of Bellahouston Park, last night saw Alanis Morissette headlining a line-up of amazing female led bands. Local Glasgow band Lucia and the Best Boys were already on stage when we arrived and delivered a stripped back set. First time hearing them and already eyeing their Barrowlands gig in October. Great voice. Then one of my favourite bands took to the stage —Skunk Anansie. Big riffs, huge energy, and Skin was her usual mix of heavenly…
Since late last year I have been slowly (very slowly) removing digital artefacts from a few places in my life. It partly goes hand in hand with the death plan I’m building —more on that later— and partly just a reaction to my loathing of having too much clutter, something that feels like a constant battle with a 4 year old in the house! At least my own digital artefacts are within my control. I’ve tried to explain some of my thinking about this before but ultimately whilst it was separate…
Moments, a beautiful photo sharing, quiet community, site has revealed their pricing. As an early member —sorry Founding Supporter— I get the opportunity to pay $89/year for some additional features. Is free still worth it? Is their paid for tier good enough to stump up the cash? I’ll admit when I first signed up for Moments I thought it was far far too polished to be a free service and, I was right, it is of course being monetised. I knew it was coming, it was literally too good to be true…
“Hate is a strong word”, my mother used to say. The irony of my choice of post title isn’t lost on me. Here I am writing about the dangers of reducing the world to simplistic opposites, and I’ve deliberately given this post a title that does exactly that. There were gentler alternatives. “I dislike binary thinking” would have been more accurate, but considerably less clickable. Perhaps that’s part of the problem. I have three or four different posts sitting in my drafts folder and, on…
Life Notes Survived the heat wave. We got to the high 20s here which, frankly, is both scary and so totally out of our norm that it was a struggle. I do wonder what kind of world my son will grow up in. Speaking of, I had a day at Blair Drummond Safari Park on Saturday with Jack, got there at 9:30am, left at 4pm. He loves the play areas, and the animals —we spent 20 mins at the giraffe house alone. He’s just the funniest, curious, most lovable wee guy at the moment! Long may it continue. Vera…
Sad news indeed. I traded emails with Om many years ago, it was no doubt on the topic of the nascent blogging boom that was happening at the time, and whilst I don’t recall the specifics, I do remember the kind consideration. Always a sensible voice, there was a balance to his writing, a gentle worldliness, that I always enjoyed. My thoughts are with his friends and family. Thanks for reading and keeping RSS alive. Visit my site for more.
Wear a helmet, says Bino Seconded! Before I met her, my wife came off her mountain bike whilst and even WITH a helmet on was in hospital for a few days and now has a metal plate in her head, and no memory of the incident at all. I’ve always always worn a helmet, I don’t differentiate between ride types. As Bino also states: While we’re a country with a strong cycling culture (behind the Netherlands & Denmark) a helmet is not mandatory. The focus is rather on safe infrastructure and traffic…
Last night I deleted my Threads account. I have beenmostly avoiding Threads/BlueSky/Facebook for a while now but occasionally dip in to check… nothing of real importance. I only popped on last night ahead of the Scotland vs Brazil match —a match we are not gonna talk about— to share the camaraderie and whilst I was there I did a little scrolling and replied to a couple of threads. A few minutes later I got a not so nice response to my reply, then another backing it up. I’m a reasonable guy, and…
This was never the plan. In fact, if you’d asked me at almost any point in my adult life where I saw myself ending up, I’d have confidently told you it wouldn’t be here. And yet, here I am. Must Get Away Growing up in a medium sized town, near a vibrant big city (Glasgow), is nothing unique, satellite towns exist all over the world and no doubt inspire the same emotions of their teenagers: I must get away from this small place. I can’t remember exactly when that feeling began. Somewhere in my…
My first memories of World Cup football are Mexico ’86. After Jock Stein died at the end of the qualifying match against Wales the previous year, some bloke called Alex Ferguson took over as manager. Not sure what happened to him after that though. Scotland, as usual, didn’t make it out of the group stage back then, in fact the closest we’ve managed was in 1974, the year after I was born, where we lost out on goal difference by one goal. We were unbeaten in the group stage though, one win, two…
10 years ago I woke up in a tent in Glastonbury and realised that the utterly unthinkable had happened. We spent the morning, we festival goers, wandering around in a daze. It can be true?! Can’t it? It was. The magical otherworldliness of Glastonbury faded quickly that day as the real world, the horrible hateful reality, crashed over us. You can track back a lot of what is going on now in the UK to that point. The single most stupid, selfish, ill conceived idea for a referendum. There is…
I mentioned this before but I thought I’d expand on this a little. I head to Madrid for the Grand Prix in September. That’s not what this post is about but is what, by happenstance, gave me a focus. I need goals I look back at my athletic achievements (wow, that’s an odd phrase to even think about, let alone write) and they are all usually something I’ve had to plan for, something I’ve signed up for in the future knowing it will push me to exercise and give me a focus. Regardless of the reason…
I’ll leave it to Ed Davey, of all people, to sum up what I think. “The British people are sick of being let down by an endless merry-go-round of prime ministers while nothing really changes,” Davey writes on X.“This time must be different. It can’t just be about changing who’s in Number 10, it has to be about changing our broken politics so we can fix our country.” Amen. Once again the UK will be led by someone NO-ONE VOTED FOR. Yes yes, you vote for a party but let’s be honest, you vote for…
It was the Northern Solstice last night. Did you notice? There were only 4 hours of ‘night’, and yesterday was the Longest Day. Which means it’s all downhill from here until my favourite season —Autumn— before we plunge into cold wet Winter. I believe there are still some warm days ahead though and, once again, I am thankful I don’t live in the South of England because I do not envy anyone having to go about their day to day in that kind of heat. That’s HOLIDAY heat, not WORKING heat. Anyway,…
Life Notes Jack had his Nursery Graduation on Friday, cape, tasseled mortarboard and all. I still feel a bit emotional about it, a milestone and all that. He is still very much not into participation and performing though, which is a-ok because neither is his Dad! Scotland vs Morocco was excruciating to watch. At least we showed some attack intent, even if the result didn’t go our way. A draw with Brazil? I don’t see it. It’d have to be a 0-0. But then, stranger things have happened. Ditched…
A quiz! About blogging! Count me in. Apparently I’m: You are a AuthorYou love writing and have a growing backlog of posts on your website! Words are your best friend and you’re always thinking about what to write next. And… You are also a ExplorerTo you, the web feels like a library that’s open all hours and has everything you could ever imagine! You love reading others blogs, and know how important readers are to the whole of the indie web community! What type are you? Thanks for reading and…
I read a post the other day about why many men don’t want to celebrate their birthday. I am one of those men. I’ve never really given why I feel that way much thought. I’m pretty sure it’s not related to any traumatic birthday from years gone by, so it’s definitely wrapped up in a general dislike of being MADE the centre of attention and/or a dislike of enforced participation in “fun”. That makes me sound like a miserable sod, which I am not. Fathers Day holds the same kind of focus, a…
The sunlight stole softly around the edges of the blinds and drew me, gently into the morning. My son had risen before the day itself seemed properly awake, appearing at six o’clock with the certainty only children possess. It was far too early, and with little persuasion he surrendered once more to sleep. Two and a half hours later he descended the stairs, still heavy with dreams, and declared that Cheerios would be required. Obedient to his lordship’s wishes, I filled a bowl with said cereal,…
Bubbles —a site I am increasingly fond of as it’s turning up some wonderful posts and sites and people— was recently mentioned on Hackernews. I’ve followed Hackernews for a long time as a way to keep some form of view on the tech world (to which I am adjacent) but only check it every week or so. So I missed the moment when it happened, but there were signs… Can you spot when Bubbles got popular and then direct a fair chunk of traffic to my blog?? According to Benjamin Behnke, the Bubbles…
He’s almost done, big day today then only 6 weeks left then it’s time for school! Wild. Time flies and all that, and I think we’ve done a good job so far. Our boy is smart, thoughtful/sensitive, strong and healthy. He prefers outdoors to indoors, tablet time is self-regulated without us having to peel him away from it, he sleeps through the nights (mostly), he eats well, and from what we’ve heard he’s a sponge at nursery, learning more than we even realised. He is so ready for school. But first…
For those who subscribed to my RSS feeds you should, at some point, see a new title. It’s taken me far more tweaking and PHP hacking than I would’ve liked but it’s been irking me and now, I hope, it’s fixed. I’ve also removed some plugins around Webfingers, Webmentions, ActivityPub and the like, largely while I process my learnings that prompted me to write this post. Please note that I changed the title from “On the indiefediactivitymastoweb” as I didn’t want it to come across as snarky, yet…
I am geek adjacent. I lie probably slap bang in the middle of two extremes; the uber-geek/dev coder who knows internet coding and all the web server dark arts like the back of their hand, and the ‘Facebook is the internet’ person who uses the flash on their phone when taking a picture of a landscape in the dark. I have nothing against either person. Well, that’s a lie, I have criticisms of both but they are of no importance here. Who is it for? I’ve been blogging for a long time and I’ve seen…
I’ve recently been looking around for some place that isn’t Instagram, isn’t Flickr, but is a quiet place to share some of (what I consider) my better photos. I am not a photographer but I like capturing moments… So I was delighted when Peter Gombos post I wanted Bear Blog, but for my photos bubbled up into my view. I checked it out and it is both beautiful but quietly thoughtful. Here’s my photo journal and it’s safe to say I think this is a winner. It may even prompt me to upload photos more…
When I started my current job, the first couple of weeks were similar to most other places. HR induction, reams of information, sources, names, services, all thrown at me in the first few days, you know the drill. They also had set up some introductory meetings with people around the business. Not necessarily anyone I’d be working with directly, just a few people who took 30 mins out of their day to give me an overview of what they did and how they viewed the company. It was an excellent way to…
At last, I am rich!! The Coffee Saga has paid off. Thanks Manuel for the donation who, in his own words, “Donated because your post about donation was nice and also to force you to go edit it since you do have a donation now ” I have edit my post appropriately, of course, I’m all about full disclosure. Now, what to spend my riches on!! Unless someone else wants to buy me a coffee too?? Nah, that won’t happen. P.S. Manuel started the wonderful People and Blogs set of interviews (now hosted by…
Life Notes As expected, a more routine week, although I was home alone from Sunday afternoon through to Tuesday evening which meant I got to watch the WWDC Keynote on Monday evening (I skipped Tai Chi as my foot was oddly sore). An intriguing set of new stuff coming, if Siri AI works as well as it did in the ‘live’ demo’s it could finally deliver what was promised? And all the little improvements across all the other OSes will be good to see. Will I run the Public Beta on my iPhone? Probably.…
Scotland win a game at the World Cup (and top the group!!). Knicks win the NBA Finals! Sir Lewis Hamilton wins his first GP for Ferrari! Yay all round! Thanks for reading and keeping RSS alive. Visit my site for more.
I consider myself a fairly run of the mill music kinda guy. I have heard of most bands, even if it’s only a track or two. I did hospital radio for a few years, covered 60s show, 70s show, and mostly requests which were always wonderfully varied —from Jimmy Shand, to Ce Ce Peniston, via The Rolling Stones— not to mention my childhood which was dominated by the music my parents loved, Scottish folk, singer/songwriters (Sedaka et al), Status Quo and Queen. Every now and then I get a notion to go a…
