Ross @ottaross@mastodon.social

Currently - redoing old sump-pump, now that new one is in good shape.
Old one just needs a nicer lid, and re-positioning of outflow pipe.

Debugging session completed.

Maybe I'll shift to basement sump-pump upgrade work for the balance of the afternoon, as I seem to be getting out of holes today.

My goal used to be:
- get rich enough to open a little used book shop and don't care if anyone ever comes by.

But may have changed to:
-become rich enough to open a little shop of Arduinos and RaspberryPis and not care if anyone comes by.

Interruptions when you're firing on all cylinders are unfortunate.

#Flow #interrupted

So Gary Larson is bringing back the 'Far Side' strip soon?

Sounds like fun - the king of absurdity should have a field day with the modern zeitgeist.

#FarSide #Larson #Cartoons

Took off my regular glasses and put on my debugging glasses.

I assume my batteries are dead or something, 'cuz they aren't highlighting any bugs in my code.

A little 'Count of Monte Cristo' before sleep.

If I don't zonk right out I also want to crack open the #Orwell biography I picked up.

Long walk over to pick up an old school analog book from the library. An Orwell biography I want to read.

Nice cool morning for a walk, so nabbed 6500 steps for my trouble and got away from a not-so-productive morning.

Let's try this afternoon on for size.

#ThinkingOutLoud

Current stats on Medium: about 10k reads per month, and on average about 175 visitors per day.

Clearly that's fallen off somewhat with Medium getting worse and doing the paywall stuff. That 66,000 subscriber base clearly has a lot of abandons now.

Currently I publish 100% of submissions that meet my lengthy contributor guidelines.

For a monthly, more curated publication, I'd probably begin declining based on quality as well.

That would ALSO make it more effort and hassle if needy/irate contributors need extra handling upon rejection.

Still, monthly and quality-based might be kind of a nice change.

Lots to consider.

I'm quite close to shutting the publication down now thought I think. It's just too much of a hassle.

Playing with the idea of a stand-alone poetry publication that publishes once a month or something.

Only a tiny portion of my 1000 contributing writers would participate, likely, but that's not so bad, perhaps.

Still the HTML/template, hosting, platform stuff is tedious on its own.

Thinking carefully before I go that path. Do I want the effort?

I've run a Medium-based publication for many years now. Have lost count - maybe six years?

I built it up to 66,000 subscribers and it was a daily publication - that takes a lot of work.

But they've really degraded the platform as they try to monetize it. The publishing role is a huge battle now.

I've had to write python processing scripts to make the management of submissions and selection for publishing manageable.

That feeling when you reach to have a sip of tea and realize you didn't make any.

It's a Monday morning thing here now.

Facing the day's goals, challenges, angst, enthusiasm and disappointments head on.

Weekend wrapped up. We got a new light rail system (long delayed) this weekend, so went out for a ride on bike, caught a train, and explored the other side of the city.

Bike-on-the-train scheme works okay, but it could have better signage.

Call went well. Prospective client talked to prev client who said wonderful things, so bodes well for a new engagement to save the planet a bit more. lol

Reading a bit about #SeaMonkey. Hadn't known about this project to continue on the legacy Netscape Navigator dev path.

Bookmarked for further exploration someday.