Previously, I admitted my mastodonian ignorance as to hoe people enthusiastic about Bluesky could ignore the risk of the service following in the footsteps of Twitter toward … being a garbage dump.

The answer was just as obvious as I should have expected it to be, and just the kind of glaringly obvious that is so easy to miss when your mind is coming at it from the wrong angle.

I was listening to the latest episode of Modermodemet where Bluesky was discussed - in positive terms - and right at the end they addressed and answered my question head on:

No, of course they do not expect Bluesky to remain good. But they will enjoy the good while it lasts.

Wow, what a magical mindset of detachedness and finding joy in the present. Of course. People are just starting to migrate off of Twitter, that was not so hard once we got started, we can easily do it again when needed. It makes complete sense.

Kicking the tires, I have set up both Bluesky and Threads accounts for Kodsnack, and I was surprised about how joyless I felt even though the process in both cases was as easy as could be.

Threads was easiest to pin down: it feels like a text version of Instagram, timeline algorithmically pre-flooded with crap. All I could think of was looking up a few accounts I already follow on Mastodon. Then I realized that for one, the Kodsnack account is not personal and has nothing to do with those accounts, and for another that I already follow those accounts on Mastodon.

Bluesky on the other hand, feels nice and calm in itself. It feels like a older version of Twitter to a fault, polished, calm, and rather well thought out. It made me think that a second social network of the same type is a lot less valuable and a lot harder to feel invested in than the first. In my case, I have Mastodon as my first, so what do I want with Bluesky? I think the thing to do - apart from of course posting Kodsnack news and commentary - would be to follow different people and topics. Try to build something different and see how it works out. But, and this is a big but, I do not need more things to read. I read too many updates already, the last thing I need is a more active Mastodon.

So, interesting options to explore. But it was fun to connect the Bluesky account to my own domain, and I am sure it will all come in handy at some point.

Somehow.

Still, my reading and focus remains with Mastodon.

People are yelling past each other about Bluesky on Mastodon.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are arguing with someone when in reality you are just talking past each other, pushing on completely different things which do not intersect at all.

The pro-Bluesky people talk about how the onboarding experience and various other technical and user experience things are so much better. They sometimes say that Mastodon has missed its shot, has chosen the wrong way to support itself, and sometimes that Bluesky feels like "old Twitter" in a positive way.

The Mastodon people, in turn, talk about how strange it feels to be so enthusiastic about another venture-funded social service with no clear business model. Why would we want to abandon Mastodon for another one of those, when we are still living through just how wrong those things can go? The fact that Bluesky is not yet there provides little comfort. Also, do we need everyone to be on Mastodon? Do we need to rank social services and which ones people prefer?

The really interesting part about these types of … discussions … is of course whether people on each side realize what is going on, and whether they even hope to get a point across to the other side. I guess the blueskiers are hoping to catch the users who left Twitter for Mastodon and just did not feel at home? Perhaps? The mastodons explaining why they like Mastodon I can relate to, but they still are mostly talking past the blueskiers' points. Each side can easily read the other, go "yes, but", and repeat their own points again.

Same procedure as every year. Sigh.

I am firmly in the Mastodon camp, in case that was hard to guess. Had I not had Mastodon or something similarly decentralized to move to after Twitter, I am not sure I would have gone to a new service at all.

I might still add more services to see what they are like, but why would I like to make my primary home on a venture-controlled service again now that I have taken the step out to the open web version? It would be a bit like giving up this little website and setting up a account on wordpress.com instead. Probably a great move for many, especially if they have not had a site before, but for me it just holds no appeal.

The saying "quantity has a quality all of its own" definitely holds true for running as well.

A large part for me is that I have learned that it sometimes takes me a while to really get into a flow. The most extreme case I can remember is a time I went for a 21 kilometer run and did not feel like I really got myself in order until about the halfway mark. That is the extreme case, but five kilometers is not unusual at all.

About two weeks ago, inspired by a friend who is in a really good running flow, I made a point to make myself run ten kilometers instead of my recent regular of seven or eight. I have kept it up since then, and even on the second and third runs it felt like I had broken through a barrier to higher speed and better flow.

I think much of that is down to those few extra kilometers. On days where it takes me five kilometers to find my flow, the majority of a seven kilometer run will be the boring non-flow slog. But now that I extend it by just three kilometers, I get at least half the run in the flow zone, where I feel better, enjoy myself more, and I suspect also run a little faster and better. All those positive things build on each other, plus the added distance adds that nice little glow of good physical tiredness afterward.

I feel better all day, all through the week even, thanks to those few extra kilometers.

Three kilometers to a better person.

Not a bad deal.

One nice thing about phones being slimmed down in themselves is that you can add things to them as you like, building them out in personal ways.

I have mostly been a naked robotic core person, using a bare Iphone without a case or other additions.

The exception was my Iphone 6, which I kept in a case and also broke harder and more often than any other phone. Cases are clearly not meant for me.

Not for protection, at any rate.

But I do like to try new things as well. And when I do, I tend to go all in.

So, now have my largest phone ever, and today I added my largest case ever to it.

But it does bring something special to the party.

This is the Clicks keyboard, and I am childishly excited about having tiny physical keys for a phone again.

(I may also need to get a purse or something, even though it still is somewhat pocketable it is not a very comfortable or well-fitting event.)

To the phone, Clicks is like any external keyboard. It plugs in to the lightning or USB-C port depending on model, so no pairing or battery is required. You just slide the phone into the case and start typing wherever input is required. Just like the Ipad, the phone does not display the on-screen keyboard when a physical one is connected (but you can still bring it up if you wish). That means you get quite a lot of extra space on the screen as you type. Chat apps in particular take on a completely different look, but text apps like Obsidian where I am currently typing also change in appearance. Things look a bit ... cleaner and calmer, if that makes any sense.

Typing itself also feels a bit calmer, and of course much more tactile. So far I am slower like this, but I would not be surprised if I catch up speed-wise over time. Not least when you take correction of mistakes into account. Just hours into clicking, I am already starting to be able to find some things without looking, and when I do make mistakes they are the single-letter ones of physical keyboards, rather than the confusing messes of getting misinterpreted or even worse auto corrected by on-screen "smarts".

The keys feel good too, as good as any key this small can possibly feel. Depending on how you angle your finger, the keys can feel a bit stiff, but I think they have the right firmness to avoid accidental presses and to provide clear feedback when a press is registered.

This is literally my first day with Clicks, so all impressions are of course assumed to change and evolve. And that is a huge part of the fun.

My home screen from the last post? It still looks just like that, and I still enjoy it.

I spend too much time in the app library, and too much time on the phone in general, but I have also been on holiday for most of the time since the last post so I try not to read too much into that.

And hey, the Kodsnack episode with Bebop's creator Jack Cheng is finally out! As someone who generally tends negative to everything involving LLMs, it is great to hear about someone making heavy use of them to create things, and feel that they actually would not have got the thing started at all without these tools. More and better perspectives make Jack a less dull boy.

I am also very happy with how the cover image for the episode came out. All human-drawn, as usual, in Procreate, as usual, and one of those times where the feeling of the final image actually came pretty close to what I had in mind as I was drawing it. One of the positive sides of LLMs is that they make me appreciate plain old human-created things that much more, including my own drawings.

So, summer holidays are over, work and school has started. There is a degree of settling back into regular routines, and a refreshing coolness in the air. I would very much enjoy a long autumn where it feels like things are rolling along slowly and calmly.

Then I will blink, and it will be December. Again.

But for now, it is still the end of August, and time to slip over into work mode.