I don’t think the ActivityPub plugin is going to work on my blog. The cron job should have sent the post by now.

No matter, I’ve lost nothing by trying it.

I can’t help messing around with stuff. This post is a test of a WordPress ActivityPub plugin – my blog directly linked to the Fediverse at bt3.com@bt3.com!

I don’t know if I’ll keep it going but I’m following the new account to check if it works – mainly so I can see my blog posts independently of my toots. As I’ve already got WordPress posting to my Mastodon account I’ll be seeing double. 🙂

Limitations:

Blog posts made before this one are not visible, which is not ideal but it is what it is. I am wondering though if re-publishing, if it’s possible, might be a way round this.

The plug-in uses a cron job to collect and distribute posts, so I’ll be nervously pacing until the first (this) is delivered.

Stuff:

The photo below, of a Bristol Stool Scale with images and text aimed at children, was IMG0031 on my iPhone 5. It was taken in January 2013 and is the earliest I’ve retained.

Can’t sleep so I just fixed how the blog permalinks look; who wants to see ‘…/index.php/…’?

Next up, fixing the image appearing with the post into the fediverse.

From https://www.earthhour.org:

Switch off & Give an hour for Earth this Saturday, March 23rd at 8:30 pm your local time. Together, let’s create the Biggest Hour for Earth!

The Worldwide Fiund for Nature (WWF), 2024 website main page headline.

We participated.

The thing is, if you want to save energy and set a trend it doesn’t really matter when you do it, as long as it’s done.

I planted and grew an onion, and harvested it (I think this is the word despite some misgivings based on the scale of this operation) a few days ago.

It started out about 2-1/2 months ago as 2 stems and roots split from one onion which was going off. One stem eventually flowered and was subsequently eaten by our local wildlife, but I somehow got one to grow.

I’m probably going to prepare and eat it later today, or sometime this week.

And here it is!

Needs to be said: my wife planted and nurtured the tomatoes, with a little help from me (building the planters and filling them with soil & compost last year). The onion though, my tending consisted of occasional watering once a week and repositioning it when the stem drooped.

Now I was going to use this as a metaphor for and then mention stuff that’s happened to me in the last 5 years since I involuntarily absented myself from the pnut.io social network – enjoying its 7th anniversary today. But naah, this blog post will stand alone as a metaphor for growing plants without a clue!

I’ve just watched a recording of this week’s BBC Question Time, a Thursday evening tv show that assembles a few people who can speak about whatever subjects the audience (both in the studio and having submitted questions beforehand) think are newsworthy. It doesn’t matter if they know nothing provided they can speak convincingly.

Gary Lineker is an ex-English football player who transitioned seamlessly into the profession of sports presenter. He’s articulate, witty, and universally liked. Well, pretty-much. He tweets about issues affecting the disadvantaged, i.e. those without a voice, who battle against a political and social system set up to deny them often basic human rights. He tweets about politics.

Some of his latest tweets mentioned the UK Conservative (right wing) government’s proposed law to prohibit people claiming asylum if they enter the country using any illegal means, with a policy to then deport them to another country without hearing any asylum claim. Crucially, when they are deported the UK will bar them from ever again applying for asylum.

Now of course this ignores the United Kingdom’s international legal obligations to treat asylum seekers fairly. And it implicitly defines ‘illegal’ as whatever the government says it is. And it makes things legal in this country that will be frowned upon by other more tolerant countries, and ignores the people who drew up our once world-class democracy.

Gary Lineker works for the BBC. His contract is as a freelancer so his political views are irrelevant when it comes to what he says outside work, a fact established as far back as 2016 after one of his Brexit tweets. But neither the assembled Question Time panel nor the chair (who also works for the BBC) mentioned this, or even alluded to it. Instead, speculation and opinion were allowed to muddy the waters. I’m certain the producers of the show would have the facts to hand, but to stifle the question at the outset wouldn’t have been as entertaining would it.

If he was a political journalist the rules would be different. But he’s not.

So what did he say when accused of having inflammatory views?

“There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”

The right wing backlash was immediate, from government ministers to the right-wing press. It actually surprised me how many people from all parts of the political spectrum espouse the concept of free speech for everyone whilst making it plain that Mr Lineker isn’t entitled to any.

And so, because the right wing now runs the BBC, the BBC told him that he can not resume his broadcasting duties until the matter is resolved. It “decided that he will step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media”.

There was a clear position, a precedent set in 2016 after his Brexit tweets, but the BBC ignored it this week.

And all of his colleagues, and everyone conceivably able to present, when asked to step into his shoes, declined. Because that’s the right thing to do. (More here).

It’s 1997, March the 23rd to be precise. A Sunday afternoon. I’ve not long returned from PC World in Stretford England, the closest store that I believed would stock everything I need.

Everything I need: a US Robotics Sportster Flash “modem” & cables, and an Internet for Dummies book.*

I’ve plugged everything in, installed the driver software on my PC, and I’m ready to open the icon on the desktop: MSN, the Microsoft Network.

I’ve chosen the closed infrastructure of MSN just because it seems easy to get into, I don’t really care, I mean, it’s right there on the desktop! I’d read about the other United Kingdom “Internet Service Providers” (ISP) so I’m not totally in the dark. And I reason, once I’m running at a speed I like I can choose another ISP to suit my needs, at my leisure.

“ISP”. I’m one of the few people I know who understands what those 3 letters stand for, both as an abbreviation and as a concept.

This is a big moment. Big. I’m about to step into the slow lane of the Information Superhighway, to begin my small participation in the start of a golden era of unprecedented access to information, an era in which I know for certain it will be no longer possible to feign ignorance of a subject or to pass disinformation off as fact.

I’m breathless with anticipation, can’t you tell?

And after a few dings or dongs and a squawking raspy noise as the modem connects to the remote server, it works first time.

Now what?

Yes, I’ll browse the communities in Microsoft Chat, that’s what. “Browse” like in a shop, not like with an “Internet browser”, I’ve not used one of those before!

Looking in a couple of chat rooms I’m ignored, how rude! And then a third “What’s Cooking Online”, abbreviated to “WCOL”. I’m instantly welcomed by Norma (her real name) from Texas, one of the regulars and I guess a moderator, who throws a wall of text at me explaining the room’s purpose. I try my best to read that but the chat roils about me and it’s gone.

She’s from Texas, the USA, and I’m chatting in real time. Practically real time.

But I make my excuses and leave, I’m paying per minute for the privilege of connecting via the phone line, and while I’m “online” it stops all incoming calls.

Wow. It’s past midnight already, I’ve absolutely no sense of the passage of time. I’ll need to be careful how I manage things in the future.

Nothing productive happened the next evening either. Or the next.

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*2023, February 22. A Wednesday evening here. Now.

I bought another book that day, the name of which escapes me now, but the Dummies one, wow, I learned a LOT from that one.

What’s just struck me, how did I know where to go and how did I know what things to buy to get online? It’s not as if I could open a browser window and search is it.

Magazines. Glossy, flappy papery things.

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This post is prompted by Terence Eden‘s post Necroposting – blogging from before you started blogging – Terence Eden’s Blog I’m eventually going to change the posting date to the one you see right at the top.