Amanda Unvarnished

Blog

  • becoming ungovernable

    —@vegetablegremlin

  • The @thunderbird betas have a rewritten main window UI. This has a lot of accessibility problems. Unfortunately, I currently don’t have the energy to file the bugs myself. Here’s what I found:

    1. Too many tab stops. Toolbars should definitely be a one-tabstop container and employ the ARIA toolbar design pattern.
    2. Speaking of which, the containers should all be made into proper toolbar containers in the process.
    3. The main messages list should be a tree with tree items, since they are collapsible. List and list items are not. Also, there are a lot of focus issues still remaining when deleting messages/threads or when the view refreshes from the IMAP server.

    Perhaps someone on the team can convert these into proper bugs in Bugzilla, or maybe most of these are already filed. Like I said, I unfortunately currently lack the energy to do so myself.

    —@Marco

  • Once a month, I buy fresh raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries in bulk, put them on cookie sheets, freeze them and put them in the freezer in the garage, and then bag the frozen fruit for the kitchen freezer. (I eat it for breakfast.)

    I store the frozen fruit in quart-sized freezer bags.

    When I’m bagging the fruit, two of the dogs hang out in case I drop some. (I rarely do LOL.)

    Here’s last night’s view.

    —@CharJTF

  • Love that so many toots from #btconf that have images also have image descriptions. Makes me feel more included even though I am not there in person. Thanks to all who put image descriptions in!

    —@marco

  • In reply to @cade.

    @cade The federated timeline will show you what you're looking for.

  • Could we maybe stop shaming people for reading kids’ books? Adult books are full of sad people having affairs while kids’ books have magic wardrobes and worms driving around in apples; you tell me who’s winning.

    —@MostlyHarmless

  • The purpose of Substack is

    1. to make investors money and

    2. keep journalists siloed, fragmented and controllable

    —@maria

  • Fellow North Carolinians, if you want to follow a bot that reproduces info in text from the National Weather Service’s Raleigh office (#ncwx info), follow @iembot_rah. If you are in southeastern NC, substitute “ilm” for “rah” to get the Wilmington office. In Charlotte and elsewhere in western NC, follow the Greensboro-Spartanburg, SC, office at @iembot_gsp. You’re welcome, and thanks to the unpaid but dedicated #weather geeks who set up these bots.

    —@panamared27401

  • In reply to @dangillmor.

    @dangillmor I'll suggest that if you have to name the generic thing you do, (newsletters in this case), after your software, you're not very confident in your software.

  • I don’t care for the company, but give Substack credit for clever marketing. It’s somehow persuaded a lot of people that newsletters should be called “Substacks” — when they’re just one of many newsletter offerings, albeit a popular one.

    No one calls anyone else’s blog a “WordPress” — even though the vast majority of blogs are written on that platform.

    It’s understandable that people who publish on Substack do this.

    But if you aren’t and do it anyway, you’re doing free PR for the company.

    —@dangillmor

  • You don’t need to use link shorteners on Mastodon!

    All links on Mastodon count as 23 characters towards your post limit, no matter how long the links actually are.

    Link shortener services like bit.ly, t.co etc track users who click on their links. This is really bad for privacy. If you use link shorteners on Mastodon, people may assume you are just doing it for tracking purposes.

    More info at https://fedi.tips/you-dont-need-link-shorteners-on-mastodon

    —@feditips

  • Greetings!

    For those wondering how to create a Friendica community/group, check out this page from the official web site:

    https://wiki.friendi.ca/docs/groups-and-privacy

    —@queenslight

  • In reply to @summersun704.

    @summersun704 @queenslight Not as of yet, but I'm sure someone will whip up that ability shortly. And by the way, welcome and I hope you and Tyler and the kitty are doing well!

  • In reply to @queenslight.

    @queenslight Yeah my next post is going to be that Mastodon is just the beginning of the fediverse and there's a lot more out there that can all interoperate with Mastodon.

  • In reply to @SingingNala.

    @SingingNala @cordova5029 OK thanks!

  • It’s been a while since I’ve written something for my blog, and just posted about my journey into #TactileGraphics and #TactileArt after having gone #Blind almost a decade ago. I never thought I’d draw again, and here I am helping to teach other blind and low-vision folks how to create drawings both physically and digitally! https://marconius.com/blog/index.php/2023/04/16/on-drawing/

    —@Marconius

  • Episode 224 of Living Blindfully is now available to Living Blindfully Plus members, and features plenty of detail on the SensePlayer from HIMS. You can gain instant access, and keep the podcast viable, by joining Living Blindfully Plus at https://LivingBlindfully.com/plus. It will go public in 72 hours. Hope you enjoy it.

    —@podcast

  • Get in losers, we’re chasing a tennis ball

    —@ancient_catbus