Morning Folks! In the great roulette that is post-Twitter social media, I’ve largely thrown my hat into the ring with Mastodon. I’ve been there long enough at this point that it just feels the most comfortable. I pretty regularly poke my head into Bluesky as well, but it feels very much like I am a visitor rather than a resident. Largely I say this in part to make sure my biases are known. Yesterday Mastodon, the primary branch of the fediverse hit 15 million total users which of course caused a round of congratulatory posts as a result. Thing is… I am not sure that number means what the general public seems to think it means. From my understanding that is 15 Million total accounts signed up on Mastodon servers, not necessarily 15 million unique people.
That led me to joke that likely 10 million of those accounts are accounts that users had migrated away from. The thing is… migration is common in the fediverse and folks pop back and forth between instances for all sorts of reasons. This is a feature of the software and part of why I am so comfortable here. While I actively participate and help administer Gamepad.club, I know that if something were to happen down the line, I could just move my chair to another stall and keep trucking on like nothing happened. I don’t have to worry about some tyrant buying up my social media of choice and then enacting all manner of stupid changes because, in a worst-case scenario, I can just create my own private instance and still keep communicating with everyone as if nothing happened.
Someone might misinterpret my joke as throwing shade at folks who migrate servers regularly. There is this one couple that in the time I have known them… have migrated almost once a week for the last year. The thing is I have no ground to stand on as I have migrated around my own account quite a number of times. However because of the way that migration works… most of those older accounts are still out there and still being counted in the total census of accounts. I thought it might be an interesting thought experiment to walk through my own migration history and talk about each of the hops.
@Belghast@Mastodon.cloud
This was my very first account on the Fediverse and I joined on August 16th of 2018 during what was at that time the first big migration wave. I don’t remember exactly what the hubbub was on Twitter at the time but there were a number of folks packing up their stuff and moving to Mastodon, the most famous of which was Wil Wheaton. That did not go well for him… and he was pretty much harrassed off the platform. I had no clue about anything and signed up on the first instance that seemed to have openings, not understanding that accounts were bound to a particular instance and that I was not actually joining mastodon.social the flagship instance. I was on this server for I think three days in total, but here it is out in the void taking up space as a unique Mastodon user.
@Belghast@Elekk.xyz
On August 17th of 2018 I signed up for Elekk.xyz but since the server was “approval only” I think it took me another day before I completed the migration. It took a couple of days before I realized that different servers specialized in different things. That isn’t necessarily a hard and fast thing, but at the time Elekk was the only server specifically advertising itself as gaming-focused. Noelle the admin was super awesome so it seemed like a no-brainer to migrate especially since I had only actually been on the other server for a few days. A good deal of your relationship with a specific instance is tied to whether or not you are aligned with the admin that runs it. This will come up later, but Noelle seemed drift compatible with my interests so I moved and was pretty happy there. I was considerably more active than the average user and the self-identified “gamers” were a bit more casual than I was used to but it still felt pretty comfy.
@belghast@nineties.cafe
Friends… I bounced around a LOT in that first year. Honestly I bounced way more than I even realized prior to sitting down to write this post. Time is largely meaningless when it comes to memory and I thought the events of Nineties.cafe and later MMORPG.social played out over a few years… but alas that is not the case. On August 25th 2018… I migrated to Nineties.Cafe so initially it appears that I was only actually active on Elekk that first time for a little over a week. Essentially my blogging buddy Liore decided that she was going to throw her hat into the ring for site hosting, and I joined along as a moderator to help out. The server was hopping for awhile but largely died down after a couple of weeks. It was a cool idea but there were only a handful of us that were ever active on it. Sadly the only way you can see this instance now is through the Wayback machine and as a result, this is not counting towards that 15 Million account total.
@Belghast@MMORPG.Social
In December of 2018 a friend of mine Gazimoff, who you will probably note is the current owner of Gamepad.club… decided to create a Mastodon instance targeted at MMORPG players. This was a really fun instance and I moved over once again to help moderate. Once again it was new and exciting… and extremely active for a month or so until the shine wore off and folks ended up going back to Twitter. I was still active here for quite a while and considered it my active home on the Fediverse. More than anything Gaz learned a ton of lessons on how he would not host a server in the future, as MMORPG.social became unsustainable. It folded in June of 2020 but I was “maining” this server pretty much its entire lifespan. It was a good year and a half and I had a lot of nostalgia over that time. Once again the only way you can see this site is through the wayback machine and as such it is not counting toward the 15 Million users.
Back to Elekk
With the death of MMORPG.social I needed another home on the Fediverse and since I didn’t really have any negative feelings towards Elekk I went back there. I honestly would have likely have stayed there were it not for assisting two different friends as they attempted to run their own instances. I migrated back in June of 2020 and was there until April of 2022. For a few years it was a great little home that gave me a window into the larger Fediverse. I never had any issues with the users of the instance, but I was starting to feel a bit stifled by the administration of the server. It had changed hands since I was first there, and while I adore the new admin… they were a bit quick to defederate from instances instead of limiting them. I get that there were some legitimately serious attacks on the server from hostile actors, but also defederating from the flagship instances like Mastodon.social can be frustrating for the individual users that have friends there. I wound up shopping for a new home in large part because I did not love being disconnected from friends I still wanted to talk to.
I hold zero ill will towards the admin or the users because you gotta do what feels best for your community, but I needed to get to someplace a little less cloistered.
@Belghast@Mstdn.social
Stux is an admin that runs a number of instances: mstdn.social, masto.ai, mastodon.coffee, and a bunch of other side projects like a Pixelfed instance. He seemed like an admin with a very steady hand that was not prone to isolate instances from the bulk of the network, so in April of 2022 I migrated there and had a lot of fun. I met a ton of people that I still communicate with on a regular basis thanks to the local feed on this server. It felt like a giant instance but had a bunch of really friendly folks who were very active, and when I joined I think it was prior to it hitting 10k users. However the mass migration in November of 2022 wreaked havoc on this server as it ballooned up to around 120k users… and at that point, it was a constant struggle for Stux to keep server resources online. He reached a point where he literally could not buy any more resources from his server provider and while he had shut off new sign-ups at 100k users… thinking that would help… he forgot to shut off the ability for users to send invite links that circumvented this. Legitimately over the course of a few days, we shot from 100k to 120k, and things ground to a halt. This account still exists in a tombstone state but is still counting towards that 15 million.
@Belghast@Masto.ai
I had legitimately planned on sticking with Mstdn.social for the long haul, but Stux fired up a new Mastodon instance in an attempt to handle the overflow. There were a lot of us who were more active users who decided to help lighten the load and migrate over to Masto.ai, and I did so on November 7th, 2022. It had the same vibe as Mstdn.social and a good number of the folks that I was talking to regularly made the jump as well. It was a great little place and quite honestly I would probably still be happy there had some other events not transpired. Some folks have an axe to grind against Stux due to his fairly public drama with the admin of Mastodon.art… but honestly, he was always a super chill admin as far as I was concerned. This account is still out there and active in a Tombstone state, so it will be counted in that 15 million.
@Belghast@Gamepad.club
So there is a whole situation that went down with another site and its admin… and I think in part it prompted Gazimoff to seriously consider starting an instance again. MMORPG.Social was a lot of work but also in the process of running that site for a year or so… he learned a number of important lessons. Mostly it seemed like he wanted a nice cozy gaming instance that would be a safe place for friends to gather, and as such in January of 2024, we started Gamepad.club. I officially migrated on the 24th of that month and have been there ever since. It has been impressive to see the site grow over that time and always seems to hover around 100 active users and a little over 200 total accounts on the server. It is legitimately my hope that this is my final resting place on the Fediverse, but if something changes down the line I will pack my bags and move again as that is just the nature of how this platform works. I’ve also got an account dedicated to Blaugust on this server, so technically I count as two different users in that 15 million number. Technically I also have an AggroChat account over on Botsin.Space which counts as one of those users as well.
What About Other Server Types?
So while I am throwing a bit of shade at that 15 Million number… thing is there are a lot of people on the network who are not being counted in it. That 15 Million users are just folks who are using Mastodon as a platform and not counting all of the folks on the larger Fediverse made up of a bunch of different server types. The above tree has become popular as a representative of what the Fediverse is versus Mastodon, but there are a number of platforms that are not even represented there. For example, I use Bookwyrm to track my reading so that account would not be counted towards the 15 million. All of this is why it is really hard to pin down how people are actually on the Fediverse in one form or another.
So while I am not entirely certain about this milestone… it is nonetheless impressive. The fediverse is way more active than anyone seems to think. I have no clue what the total active population would look like if you filtered out all of the dupes, but it would still be a large number. I think that is really the aspect of why I like Mastodon and the larger Fediverse so much is the interoperability of everything. I could in theory use my Bookwyrm account as my main account and still have access to talk to everyone on the platform. Similarly, Lemmy is a Reddit clone, and I could use my account on Lemmy.zip for all of my Fediverse needs. The result though is you end up creating a bunch of accounts on a bunch of different platforms… only to use a handful of them. I enjoy the concept of Pixelfed but never really use it because it is separate from my preferred Gamepad.
All that said… I love knowing that no matter what curveballs might be thrown at me… there will always be a place for me to participate. There is never going to be a time when some billionaire buys the network and takes it over to skew to his particular sensibilities. The side effect of that freedom however will always be that there is some friction to getting started. That friction is a bit more than most users will want because it isn’t ever as simple as just going to the app store and downloading something. In fact, doing that… is almost guaranteed to give you the worst possible experience as the official app is awful and the flagship server it connects to… is isolated from large swaths of the network. I realize none of this is going to win me any more converts… but it is still where I feel most comfortable.
If you are looking for a good home though… Gamepad is a great place but many other servers are equally good places. It is also perfectly normal and just accepted that folks are going to migrate for various reasons. I have no clue WHY I went down this rabbit hole, but if you have made it this far in the post I appreciate your tolerance of my nonsense.
The post Migration as a Service appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
For a post that I did not share publicly… I am somewhat shocked by how much traction my Wednesday post managed to get. Sometimes, I forget how many of you will read this blog regardless of what I do to promote it. I appreciate all the people who reached out to me in private… and there were so damned many of you. As a result, I thought it was probably a good idea to talk a bit about the situation I found myself in and what the resolution is looking like thus far. Yesterday I had my follow-up visit with my primary care provider, and essentially I now join the legion of folks on a daily blood pressure medication. I also did not fully realize how much it was impacting my life until after being medicated. There were a lot of things that I had just chalked up to getting older… that seemed to have magically gone away within roughly two hours of taking the meds for the first time.
For literally a decade or more… I have dealt with pretty much a constant headache. I even went so far as to have assorted tests trying to figure out what was causing this. I tried migraine medication even and it never really seemed to help so I kinda of just assumed it was something that I would have to live with. Just doing normal stuff would make me out of breath sometimes… especially bending over for long periods of time… which I just assumed was my sedentary nature and being as big as I was… and also just a sign of getting older. I would have dizzy spells and was a bit wobbly on my feet, which I just assumed was more wear and tear on my body from being rather large. Additionally, everything sorta ached all of the time and I just didn’t really seem to have any energy. This had been the background noise of my life and it is shocking how much you can get used to it and just assume it is normal.
Legitimately by the end of yesterday… almost all of this went away. I am more clear-headed, nothing hurts anywhere near as bad as it did… and my headache essentially disappeared. This is trite but it legitimately feels a bit like I am a new person. So I said this the other day but when I was in the ER my blood pressure was 210/110 and even after sitting there for a few hours it was only down to 180/95. In the Doctor’s office yesterday it was 165/90, and then two hours after taking my new blood pressure medication it was down to 130/80 by yesterday evening I took it again and it was down to 104/70. I am shocked that it worked that quickly… and caused such a wild result. I am partially kicking myself for not taking all of these little things more seriously and secondly wondering just how close I was to having a stroke. That prospect seems all the more scary in the rearview mirror after seeing how radical the impact of being medicated seems to have been.
I think on some level this latest round of crisis was brought on by some events happening in my life. A bunch of stressful situations have collided at once to push me beyond my normal limits. I spent some time venting about it to a friend yesterday, and once that dam cracked… a deluge came rushing out about all of the effects it has had on me. I think on some level I had not even realized fully the toll it had on me. So all of this… the pathological, the emotional, and the mental wear… seemed to just culminate in a medical crisis. I guess I am thankful that per the doctors and my otherwise clean bill of health… I did not seem to do permanent damage as of yet. I am shocked that was the case though given how much I had seemingly stressed my systems.
The hardest thing right now for me to get used to… is the absence of all of the things I was just dealing with. I’ve had a constant headache living in the back of my skull for longer than I can remember… maybe even for the better part of two decades. I’ve also just dealt with subtle aches and pains that I assumed were just the toll of the poor shape that I am in and carrying around as much weight as I do. But with all of that gone or at least lessened to a point where it does not even feel like it exists anymore… it is just surreal. I keep expecting reactions from my body to the things I am doing that are no longer there. It will take some getting used to everything and developing a new baseline.
Anyways! Thanks for everyone sticking with me through this and checking in on me. It meant a lot.
The post Health Update: On A Good Path appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good morning friends. I had a bit of a stressful weekend. So we have a bathroom adjoining our main bedroom and for a while now the toilet has been a bit wobbly. Saturday morning I noticed that it was more wobbly than normal. I thought maybe the bolt just needed to be tightened a thing that I could in theory do for myself because I have the barest modicum of mechanical aptitude. When I reached down to pop the plastic cap off that covered the bolt on the right side… the entire apparatus including the head of the bolt came off in my hand. The bolts themselves were just corroded and rusted messes and seemingly disintegrated. Like I had not put any effort into it… I could have just brushed it lightly aside and had it come toppling off the base. Turns out that the same thing was happening on the left side and essentially the toilet was not securely bolted to the floor anymore.
Thankfully there was no leak that I could find… but in a severe panic, I called the plumber who was able to work us in that afternoon. However, the meant for the entire day the arrival of the plumber became the “main character” of that day. I am thankful that they were able to work us in but it also sort of wrecks the momentum of the day, but anything is better than a continued “precarious potty”. Everything is fixed now and the toilet is “strongk”, but the plumber seems to have used quite possibly the slickest substance on the planet when they cleaned up their work area. I have no clue what exactly they used but it had hints of Orange Oil and Anomia and feels like the floors have been permanently coated with Teflon. Despite several attempts to mop the nonsense away… we are having to cautiously tiptoe into the bathroom like we are walking on a sheet of ice so that is less than enjoyable. We did thankfully have a roll of the clingy rubber rug underlayment that we put under our bathmat so there is at least one section of the floor that is firmly anchored for when we step out of the shower.
Other than this I spent a good chunk of my time not worrying about the bathroom playing Baldur’s Gate III. I had hopes of being able to complete this game prior to the launch of the Affliction League in Path of Exile on Friday. I am no longer under this illusion because last night I finished up Act II. I realize that technically I only have a single act to go… but every act seems to get longer than the previous one. I screwed up Act II, but am mostly fine with this. Apparently, I was not spending enough time talking to Halsin and as a result, missed a critical quest chain that was required to buy off his loyalty. So basically he is no longer in my camp because he is sticking behind in the Act II area for “nature reasons”. So I am attempting to say this in the least spoilery method possible but… maybe talk to Halsin a lot so you will have a clue what this quest is and do it before leaving the Shadowlands. Also also… Owlbear Cub and Scratch are pure beyond words. I sorta wish “Owlbear Cub” had a proper name though.
I’ve continued to play a little bit of Final Fantasy XIV each day and am slowly chipping away at my jobs leveling them. I am working on Red Mage currently, and honestly… it kinda feels bad to play it in PVP. Essentially each day I have been doing a round of Elephant-Friend dailies and the Frontline roulette. This combined adds up to roughly a level, meaning that I enjoy playing a tiny bit of the game but not so much that it begins to feel bogged down. Essentially it takes me about 10 days to level a character from 80 to 90 and feels like I am making some progress. I am not really taking a logical approach to leveling, and more so I am leveling whatever characters that do not have broken gear profiles. I realize this is lazy… but I don’t want to figure out WHY the gear profiles are broken and instead just want to pop in and do my daily nonsense before getting back out and moving on with other things.
Similarly, I have been popping into Guild Wars 2 on a daily basis and playing a bit of the expansion content, and doing whatever it takes to knock out my “wizard chores” aka Astral whatever dailies. One thing that I want more than anything… is for the dumb Krait monument in my Home instance to be able to withdraw from my bank. It sucks trying to remember to pull out some Quartz crystals before I do my home instance farm for the day. I realize that a lot of the older systems of this game are prodigiously hard to update… but there are times I daydream about getting a job for Arena.net just so I can fix some of these things. The game is so fucking close to absolute greatness at times… that if you pushed a few kludgy bits out of the way it would really shine for all the world to see. Friction can be good, but the sort of friction that Guild Wars 2 has… is the unfortunate friction of “tech debt”.
Lastly I did pop back into Path of Exile since Righteous Fire may be a dead spec going forward… which will mean I have three basically useless characters from three different leagues. I had never run a simulacrum before now, and the other day Kodra mentioned that he was able to get to wave 22 and I wanted to see how far Righteous Fire could get. Essentially I gave up after wave 29. I was not going to die… but also Kosis was going to take like 20 minutes to kill and I got tired of waiting. I am certain that if I was not impatient… I could have probably cleared wave 30 because I was more than capable of surviving the incoming damage. It just took so long to rip through Kosis’s constantly regenerating energy shield and begin to whittle him down. I am still holding out some hopium that maybe there is an alternate quality version of Righteous Fire that will work like the previous one did. I don’t really want to play an Inquisitor going forward and would prefer to keep playing Juggernaut.
I am really hoping that we get the big dump of information that includes all of the alternate versions of gems. I could legitimately see them favoring the edge case for Righteous Fire and wanting to push more players toward it, but I feel like they really need to keep the current version around in some form rather than decimating the best-documented build in the entire game. For the moment though I am really leaning towards Explosive Arrow Champion and maybe muling a ranger just to make it easier to start with a bow and go Lightning Arrow until the switch.
The post Precarious Potty appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
