Jon Dubovsky @jond@mastodon.social

General request: if you post pictures, please please include alt text describing the image so that everyone, regardless of visual ability, can enjoy your toot.

Please consider asking others to do this. Optionally, reconsider boosting toots if they don't have alt text.

We all have an opportunity to help shape the culture of this place and I'd love, love, love if it were "oh, everyone posts alt text with their images because that's just what you do."

Did you know that you don't need to use link shorteners (bit.ly, etc.) on Mastodon? All links, no matter how long, only count for 23 characters against your 500 limit!

(And since link shorteners are bad for user experience and break the web, there's almost no good reason to use 'em! 😄)

Please consider writing your hashtags in upper camelcase so screen readers have a chance at figuring them out.

#whyistayonmastodon sounds like an giant undecipherable mess of sounds.

#WhyIStayOnMastodon reads out "Why I Stay On Mastodon" 😄

(Reason #44 I stay here: my previous requests like this have been generally well-received, proving that most people are awesome.)

Junction box with four cat-5e cables running in ... and only three quickport connectors on the face.

I hope whoever cabled this place got some counseling.

New River Trail, #cycling end-to-end, with a great group of friends. There's something lovely about ending up near a town where you can dinner and breakfast.

Shout out to the folks at Creekside Cafe who were exceptionally helpful in getting us fed and launched in the morning. You know you're in the Appalachians proper when you can order livermush five ways.

Virginia Creeper Trail, #cycling towards Abingdon

Self-supported Tour de Mount Rogers: four categorized climbs, finishing with an 18 km long cat 1 to Mt Rogers park proper. (!!!) 🚲⛰💪

Big thanks to my #cycling companions for the planning, support, and fun!

(And then, later in the week, the usual lovely 13 km hike amongst the ponies to the peak of My Rogers itself.) 🐎

I don't get down to the New River Trail all that often but it's always a lovely diversion from #cycling over mountains. We got completely filthy and had to rig up a brake repair mid-ride... but there was an ice cream cooler at Foster Falls!

Opened up some code from an open-source medical equipment project:

First file I open: 3 explainer comments in the whole file. Hey, there's a divide-by-zero. There's a buffer overflow because that's not how snprintf's return value works. Etc. :[

I work in a safety-critical systems and stuff like this makes me despair. I don't blame the programmers or look down on them, but, for @#$%'s sake, get some expert help.

We all make mistakes. Shape your process with that belief in mind!