Fediverse user “c0debabe” posted thus, this afternoon:
Bad logging is worse than no logging because then there is false hope that the info you want might actually be there.
https://hackers.town/@c0debabe/109667298320413659
And that inspired me.
It’s unusual for me to use an existing, well-known template. Enjoy this rarity.
Look, I am a delight, okay? Also, I might as well get something useful out of that year I spent living deep in “spotted owl makes good eating” country as a teenager.
I got this done, start to finish, in the span of about a week. This included taking yesterday off from work (as an ostensible mental health day, which I definitely needed) to hunker down & finish adding clips, editing footage down to a somewhat-reasonable 39 minutes, and recording my voice-over.
This meant listening to my recorded voice bits repeatedly until everything was trimmed down and slotted into place. It was every bit as cringe-inducing as you suspect.
At any rate, here you go:
All things being equal? I’m actually proud of this one. I took the fact that the game loaded in with a reset/default player avatar and used that to create a kind of narrative path for the video to follow. During the edit, I discovered a couple of other fun things to do along the way.
It could be better, but I could’ve done much worse, too. Go, me.
I’d follow that title with an “I can quit any time” but if I quit having domains on Hover then this website would vanish. So, let’s not do that.
After days of pondering and puttering and such, I made some decisions:
I don’t want to join one of the really big Mastodon instances. I like things cozy.
I can’t find a cozy Mastodon instance that isn’t geared toward hyper-niche interests.
I don’t want to spin up another VPS on Linode to run my own. Last time I tried administering a Mastodon server it blew up during an upgrade and I couldn’t get it back.
I’m willing to pay a few dollars per month to make this someone else’s problem.
It’s been a while since I bought a new domain for a silly project, hasn’t it?
And so, a trip to Hover and to Masto.host later, “Well, Duck Me” is up & running. I don’t yet know if I’ll open it up to other users, though if you’re a friend and have some interest I’ll probably let you join. Just give me a heads-up.
Given the Muskrat shenanigans taking place over at “the birdsite,” it’s probably a good idea to have this link handy: How Does Mastodon Work?
I’ve put a lot of time & energy this past couple weeks into being “the Mastodon guru” for friends online, mostly on Discord servers, so if you have questions I am happy to answer. My qualifications are that I ran a Mastodon instance for a few months and have been a regular boring user for several years now, and that I’ve read a lot and listened to both praises and complaints along the way.