We rode over to Cotta Nostra, a new-to-us matcha/coffee place, for ride 6 of #coffeeneuring2025, then enjoyed our coffee at the adjacent pond.
Another enjoyable Friendsgiving in the books. 🍗🍽️🍺
Matt says:
The most powerful button on social media is “Delete Draft.”
I disagree.
The most powerful button is “Log Out.”
Yep!
I made it down to Arizona Wilderness Brewing on RoRo for my birthday beer! A special 52oz stein pour—I chose Moving Buddies, a hazy IPA collab with Dark Sky Brewing in Flagstaff.
Finally got doctor clearance for a desert walk in South Mountain Park. Man it felt good to get back out on the dirt. 🥾🌵
What’s been your favorite purchase so far in 2025?
I think mine has been this pen. It was a rare splurge, but I really enjoy using it and it’ll last forever. I forgot how nice it is to have a favorite pen (I bought it after purging several old “favorites” I’d kept since high school).
We officially rescheduled next week’s trip to El Salvador/Honduras until February—another casualty of the shutdown.
Don’t be defined by what entertainment you consume. Be defined by what you do, what you accomplish, who you help, and what dent you make—not what commercial fandoms you adopt.
I feel like I’m finally making progress with these doctor appointments, so I decided to celebrate on the way home and pop by the new Fuzzbot Brewing in Ahwatukee. Still only 3 Fuzzbot brews, plus another dozen guest taps, mostly from 12 West and other AZ breweries. More people here than I expected.
Not too surprised that the wifi network here is still named Whining Pig…
After seeing some friends discussing retirement destinations they were considering, I decided to write up how we approached that decision. It’s taken much longer to write that post, in part because we were due to update our Life Block Planning. Still hoping to get it published this week, though.
Enjoyed this hour-long PBS documentary on the Rails to Trails movement.
Rode over to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for coffee with my mom as ride 5 for #coffeeneuring2025. Forgot to take a photo of said beverage, but here are some outdoor shots.
Scored all this candy while trick-or-treating tonight. 💪
Micro.blog improvements I’d like to see
Micro.blog is an indieweb platform I use as an interesting melding of blogging and social media. I’m a big fan of its approach to an online presence. As it continues to get better and better, I wanted to toss out some improvements I’d like to see.
Highlight titled micro.blog posts in the feed
Perhaps using a light background color, to make these longer posts stand out more in the feed. Right now, they’re completely de-emphasized, especially compared to quick photos with four photos, and therefore very easy to miss. That’s a shame, as those posts are nearly always longer, well authored blog posts that deserve more attention.
Show Bluesky photos
I know there’s some issue with how Bluesky (or AT Proto?) deals with photo attachments that makes this hard, but it very much detracts from following bsky accounts/conversations within micro.blog, especially replies to crossposted posts. Fixing this, if possible, would allow for following Bluesky posts from within micro.blog, which is just too problematic without image support, at least for me. At minimum, I’d like to see a placeholder or some other indicator that an image is not being displayed.
Multiple photo upload
This would make micro.blog much better for photo-rich and travel blogs. Uploading them one-by-one feels like unnecessary friction. I’d especially appreciate a feature that allows you to insert markdown/html for all items uploaded at the same time, as Mimi Uploader did. Multi-select uploads makes it so much easier to scroll through my photo album, pick which ones I want to share (which often involves selecting and deselecting until I’ve decided on the four that work best together), and upload them all at one time. Right now, I end up uploading unnecessary photos because I add one that I later decide doesn’t make the “top 4 cut”…so now I have to go back and delete that unintentional upload (haha, no I don’t, I just leave it there as clutter because I’m too lazy to spend more time trying to fix it).
Reorder photos prior to posting on iOS + MacOS app
This would make things much easier for a similar reason as above. Because the first photo is often used as the image in social media previews, you might want to decide on the photos to be shared, then rearrange for the most appropriate one to be highlighted in the social preview. Right now, the easiest way to do this is to simply start an entirely new post and then go copy pasta each of the individual uploads in the new order. Or, like me, you just say fuck it and start a new post and re-upload each one because that’s less.
Select multiple photos on upload page
I’d like to be able to batch add to a collection, or copy markdown for a post. Again, selecting one by one and pasting into a post is frustrating—just so many extra clicks.
Allow replies with photos
Disallowing photos in replies actively inhibits substantive replies, imo. And while I know about the upload/markdown workaround, about 80% of the time that’s enough friction to dissuade me from commenting.
Make the category field persistently visible in apps, if desired.
I understand wanting to keep a simple interface for writing, but for those of us who want to categorize each post (without having to use workarounds for filtering) it’s just unnecessary clicks/taps for no good reason. I love sharing a number of posts while traveling, for instance, and would love to add each of them to a specific trip category. But this requires a bunch of extra clicks each post. And because it’s “invisible” at the time of posting, I’ll often be in a hurry or simply forget and then that post is orphaned from the rest of the category. I’d love for the category field to remain persistent based on your last choice in displaying/hiding it.
Better documentation
There are so many great, but slightly hidden, features in micro.blog that don’t seem to be documented. For instance, one of my items above was going to ask for a link to all the photos that aren’t in any post. But before publishing, I went to doublecheck that it didn’t exist—and just discovered that on the uploads page, a linked date means that that upload is associated with a post. Well, that’s definitely not in the documentation.
That’s my list!
The best platforms are the ones that continue to improve, and micro.blog definitely continues to get better and better. I’m a happy member and am always excited to share its vision with friends.
I hid a small bin with all my SSDs in it when we traveled last. It was a new hiding spot that I thought was much better than my old spot. I cannot, for the life of me, remember where the hell it was. Ain’t no burglar finding it—nor me apparently.
This must be where Oreos come from
Killing off an old project today. RIP BetterAdventures.Club. Great memories—I still gets the feels. Started its predecessor (my first sole entrepreneurship) six years ago as a hedge on a mobile questing app I was working on with friends. Life intervened, of course, and I’ve since moved on.
If you’ve followed along on our window replacement that began back in July, we’re still waiting for a replacement one to be installed. Looks like the shutters may arrive even before it’s ready. Sigh…
