2023 Retrospective

Well, January 2024 is almost done, so I might as well write a summation of how I recalled 2023. In short, it was a tepid year. Activism Work I rolled back a lot of my activism work, mainly because of other committments that were overly pressing, and kept taking up my time. I still try to keep tabs on the happenings, just not activley participating in most of them. Its one of those things that often happens with activists: Our lives are split between work, home, etc.
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antiX

So, doing some “Distro Hopping” to find a linux distro that I don’t have to assemble, to run on an old 32 bit netbook, that is, quite honestly, the perfect size for me. Hardware is dated, very much so, so one of the requirements was extremely slim. THis turned out to be not so difficult, as most distros that will still run on 32-bit (ie, not Ubuntu) are all pretty light in and of themselves.
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Streaming!

So, just wanted to post, because I just created a couple of new streaming stations, for myself, mainly, but free for others to listen to as well: Roaring 20s 78s! So, it started with replicating a 78s project that used to be ran by ajroach42, but he had to take it down, for whatever reasons. But, its back, sorta, a smaller set for now; but I added a Roaring 20’s stream, just for music from the 1920s.
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More Fediverse

So, the fediverse has become basically about half of my social media uses, with reddit, facebook, and twitter occupying the balance. One thing I’ve noticed on the fediverse, is a lot of people who really think that “Mastodon would be so much better if…” and their wants are things that well… Aren’t all that important to people who use mastodon (Or the larger fediverse, if we’re to be honest). And many of them are in fact what people ran to the fediverse in order to escape from.
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Wireguard

Wireguard Wireguard is a fast, and very lightweight VPN solution, that has the benefit of being cross platform. One of it’s drawbacks, though, is you need to manage all ends of it: Key generation, key distribution, addressing, etc. Which is fine for more technical people such as myself, but for less skiled individuals, a solution like Tailscale (Which is based on wireguard) is probably a better way to go. However! If you are up for it, you can totally manage this all yourself.
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Buffalo Blizzard

So, we’re out of our second blizzard this season already, and we’ve mostly fully recovered by now. I loved how the people of the city (Politicians not included) came together, and pulled through it. But, a mass shooting, two blizzards, and then one of our football players dying (Literally, and revived), really… I think I’m ok with us not hearing “Prayers for Buffalo” for all of 2023. We could really use a break from another generational trauma.
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Fediverse

So, whatever your feelings about the happenings over on Twitter, a new social media network is surging in popularity: The Fediverse. Yep, I’ve been on there since circa 2017, but really just started migrating over with the hostile takeover of Twitter. I did not realize how toxic twitter is, and doing more reading into it, how it’s engagement algos actually promotes that. Originally, I got interested in the Fediverse for more technology-related reasons: I am a big proponent of Free and Libre Open Source Software.
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New Faces

So, UB has been on a bit of a hiring spree as of late, with two factors being the largest. One is the pandemic being over with. The other is we seem to have hit a retirement cycle. Both are great, although I’d debate if the pandemic is over or not, but that’s a topic for a different discussion. But the retirement thing I think should be seen as a good thing!
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My First Post

Well, just wanted to make use of the public_html space on ubunix here at SUNY Buffalo, so writing my first post here. I started at UB back in April of 2022, so working on my first year so far, and I’m loving it. My team is very knowledgeable, and we’re working on some cool projects. As I get to them, I’ll write about the projects we’re currently doing here, as a kind of “Publicity” thing or something.
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