Monthly Recap: September 2024

Posted • in life

Tagged: personal now site updates

What’s going on, Internet? It’s been an interesting month starting back at work after being off for four months on parental leave.

After three weeks, it’s almost like I never left in the first place. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not…

Here’s what I’ve been up too!

Blogging

Reading

  • Power Play by Cheri Baker was a fun easy read. The second book of three. A fun take on what a modern day “spy” would be. You can grab a copy directly from her website.
  • Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton was a huge book to get through, 30 hours all up. A brand new universe and detached from anything he’s written previously. It has everything in it that I love about his books though.

Music

No new vinyls this month. Still waiting for those The Death Of Slim Shady records to arrive. I have been listening to a lot of Alchemist projects though.

Gaming

I’ve played nothing but Warcraft recently (sorry Cyberpunk). We’re three weeks into Season One of The War Within and we’re progressing through the raid easy. We’ve got three full clears of Nerub-ar Palace on normal and sitting on 7/8 heroic. With reset tomorrow we’ll be going straight into heroic and I’ve got high expectations that we’ll clear it by our second raid night on Sunday.

Outside of raiding I’ve been enjoying getting stuck into Delves, a new experience introduced in The War Within that can be completed solo or as a group. Personally, I’ve found soloing these the way to go. What I like about Delves (especially when solo) is that I can park my character up and afk for however long I need if something comes up.

I’ve managed to clear all the difficulties, they range from Tier 1 to 11 with 11 being the hardest and have also cleared the secret 13th Delve, Zekvir’s Lair. Zekvir being the Delves big baddy who empowers enemies throughout the Delves and sometimes makes an appearance, and either kills you or runs away if you get the better of him.

I’ve run a few Mythic+ keys, but haven’t felt the urge as I’m getting better gear from the Delves and wasting no time forming or trying to join groups. Once raidings finished I’ll take a look at finishing the Key Stone Master achievement for completions sake.

Bookmarks

Some good reads this month.

Website

I’ve done pretty much absolutelty nothing on the website this month. I did manage to make a start on an Interests, and Favourites page while sitting at the airport while travelling for work.

Now that Eleventy has hit 3.0.0 Stable I’ll be making the upgrade soon.

Happening around the web

At the Cafe

Over at the 32 Bit Cafe we’re hosting our very first Web Weaving Workshop. It’s happening October 6th at 2 PM ET / 7 PM BST / 11 AM PT or October 7th at 7 AM NZT! If you want to jump on a video chat and talk about making websites and the timings work for you, come check it out.

If the timings dont work for you, don’t worry, we’ll be looking at hosting more workshops at different times to include as many people as possible we can!

The second issue of the 32 Bit Cafe Bytes just went out packed full of happenings around our little community of website makers. If you’re not subscribed, head over here and sign up.

Everything else

Big drama playing out between the Wordpress cofounder and WP Engine that I hope doesn’t leave innocent websites stranded. The Verge has a good overview if you’re interested.

However, closer to home a new foundation, The Social Web Foundation has popped up to take the helm of directing the Fediverse to new heights while also claiming to have started the social web in 2008 (lol). Consensus across our circles has been outrage (lol) at taking the term “social web”.

I’m with Starbreaker that our web is just the web and we shouldn’t have to label our parts of the web differently. The corporates should be differentiated, I mean, if they had their way their “users” would be stuck in the confines of their “apps” and wouldn’t be able to access through the browser right?

Anyway, I don’t actually mind that members of the wider community like to identify as being part of the various webs, whether its a social web, the small web, the open web or the indie web. What I do mind is when these organisations pop up and take these terms that have been used in good faith within communities and take them over for their own end means, whatever they may be. It’s like when brands appropriate pop culture, it all ends up being a bit cringe for lack of a better word.

So, I shared my thoughts the other day but others have said it better, and some going into deeper detail. Here’s the ones I’ve come across, let me know if you’ve written one yourself:

At the end of the day I don’t think social media is required to be social on the web. We’ve been conversing through our websites for decades at this point. If anything, like I’ve said before, the barrier to creating a website needs to be easier and we’d have less reliance on these corporate platforms.

Sweet, catch you up, laterz 👋

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