Micro Monday

This week’s guest is Rom. According to his bio on Micro.blog, he is “geek to the max.” He is also an avid photographer, and especially enjoys sharing food photos. He shares a lot of photos on Flickr, and we talk a bit about how online communities evolve. Finally, we talk about a local delicacy, the purple yam, which can be used in many tasty dishes and condiments. Purple yam cheesecake, part of Rom’s Flickr photostream

This week’s guest Jess shares her wide variety of interests, including linguistics, the indie web, a revealing Harry Potter sorting quiz, and her tabby cat Gidget.

Mandaris Moore, aka Manny, is this week’s guest. We talk about his journey from AIM to MySpace to Twitter before he landed on Micro.blog, a place that makes him happy. Check out his series of Swift Slowly posts, where he shares his journey of learning, and his photos of Lillie the adorable pandemic rescue dog.

This week’s guest, Nell is a literacy tutor based in New England, who enjoys exploring new worlds via books, blogs, and virtual realities. We share our favorite reads in science fiction and mysteries, as we acknowledge the many tangents our discussion could take. A couple of Nell’s recommended books: Connie Willis, To Say Nothing Of The Dog (Oxford Time Travel) Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle (World Of Howl #1)

This week’s guest, Greg, shares some warmth from the Gulf Coast of Florida. Greg tells us why his microblog is really his first blog, despite his years of experience building and maintaining websites. We talk about whether the notion of a “challenge” is helpful when it comes to maintaining a blogging streak. At the end, we nerd out a bit about Star Trek: Voyager.

On this week’s episode, Mario (@mariovillalobos) talks photography, social media pros and cons, finding Micro.blog by following Alan Jacobs’ (@ayjay) work, and the surprise that folks in distant places appreciate his photos of leaves in Montana.

Dominik has a lot going on. And we don’t even talk about the house he is building or where he got his internet handle @ohBananaJoe. (But you can check out the song on YouTube.)

Tyler talks about what it means to hit the sweet spot with his microblog, his main site (Parenthetical Recluse) and his newsletter. (He recently started a podcast too.) We also talk about dogs as a very good reason for microblogging, and Tyler explains what the difference between a Morkie and a Jorkie is.

Kicking off the new year with a chat with Ana, who lives in Portugal. It’s the third in our unintentional series of visits with microbloggers in that country. Ana talks about why she likes Micro.blog and what she’s learned as a member of the community, including the fact that there are more than a few introverts.

This week’s guest is Helge, a Norwegian living in Portugal. He’s been on Micro.blog since the Kickstarter launch in 2017, but he has become more active on his microblog during the pandemic. He has many interests and hobbies, from photography to German cinema to smoking meats. We try to cover them all in this episode.

Maique joins us this week from Lisbon. He worked for two decades as a photojournalist before becoming an independent photographer. He talks about the challenges of doing photography when you can’t travel, and how he copes as a new dad with the flood of baby photos. We also chatted about the upcoming A Day In The Life global photo challenge and why we shouldn’t overthink our contributions: I don’t think we can compete with a professional book made by 100 professional photographers, but at the same time, I don’t think 100 professional photographers would be able to do a Micro.blog book because they’re not part of this community.

Manton answers questions from the Micro.blog community: Will there be new themes? Do the native apps do everything that you can do on the web? What are the benefits of the Family Plan? and more! What’s new in Micro.blog 2.0 on Manton’s blog Micro.blog 2.0 press release Follow Manton on Micro.blog

Besides train travel, curry snacks, and photography, Bharath and Jean manage to talk a bit about microblogging and how it has helped Bharath reinvigorate his writing practice. It’s given me the confidence to write more and to put myself out there more. It kickstarted a new creative phase in what I want to do. Follow Bharath on Micro.blog.

Do I really want to spend my day looking at Facebook? Do I want to spend my life looking at Facebook? No, I do not! And yet, Micro.blog serves the purpose of feeling connected and getting new ideas, but it’s so much more manageable. It isn’t so addictive, and there aren’t the ads. You don’t feel like your supporting something evil by looking at it. It’s just enough. It’s just right. Lisa Sieverts is a project management professional and teacher in New Hampshire. We talk about what you gain when you consciously give up a time-wasting habit (ref. Annie Dillard), and whether the time-honored art form of contradancing could be preserved during the era of social distancing with a microcast.

Jon Hays comes back to the podcast for the first time since Micro Monday Episode 6 in April 2018. We talk about the new version of Sunlit, soon to be released, and how photoblogging has encouraged more social interaction in the Micro.blog community.

Jean and Manton do a quick review of 2020 so far, including: Photo challenge IndieWebCamp Austin Free podcast hosting for all accounts through April Six months free hosting, including podcast hosting, for teachers Categories and category feeds Hosting replies Updates of iOS and macOS include post editing Sunlit updated

This week’s guest is Jeremy Cherfas, a biologist and a science journalist based in Rome who is particularly interested in food and agriculture. He produces Eat This Podcast and even did a 32-episode microcast series about bread and wheat called Our Daily Bread for a daily podcast challenge. We talk about the IndieWeb and share some ideas on how to get started in podcasting.

Joel Mearig celebrated the 101st episode of his microcast I’m Talkin’… this week.

Chris Aldrich is a modern-day cyberneticist, a trained biomedical and electrical engineer, and a talent manager/producer who has a “horrible IndieWeb hobby that probably takes up more time than it should.” We talk about how he got into the entertainment business by building a 3D heart, and how he came to the IndieWeb via one of Leo Laporte’s shows on TWiT. We commiserate about the difficulty of getting people to move from Facebook to the IndieWeb, especially our parents. Chris’s About page

With some effort and discipline, we managed not to turn this into a Buffy The Vampire Slayer podcast. Scholar-librarian-doctoral candidate Kimberly Hirsh talks with Jean about how a blog post about being nice on the internet led her to a comment by Chris Aldrich, which led her the IndieWeb and Micro.blog, and… well, she fell down a rabbit hole and stayed up all night figuring out how to make her site follow IndieWeb principles. We also talk about her dissertation, and how Final Fantasy has inspired her. Doing my part to fix the internet, March 19, 2017 on Kimberly’s blog