In light of recent news, and following my (regrettable and hopefully brief) return to Facebook, I made the below post as a comment on a forum I’m a part of, in response an article that had been shared about Facebook putting profit before public good (also: 9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower). I decided that, despite a lack of polish, it was worth me re-publishing here: So this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart and makes me very ranty.

This post is a form of procrastination. I’m not sure of its purpose, but it feels right to write it. Possible purposes may be: To distract me from other work To foster some accountability To share my experiences in the hope they help others, if only be showing them they’re not alone To receive empathy from others To get feedback from others with similar experiences Whatever the case, here we go.

“Keep the doorstep clear, please,” The tram driver intones over the PA for what must be the tenth time during my commute. The doorstep remains crowded, along with the rest of the tram. Standing, back against the window, occupying as little space as I can, I crank up my music and try to relax. My day starts well: I wake relatively well rested with plenty of time to shower and breakfast before leaving home.

2016 was a struggle for many of us, with some pretty unpleasant stuff going on all over the world. To combat the feeling that 2016 was nothing but a huge trash fire, several of my friends have published lists of their 2016 highlights, and reading them really warmed my heart, as I felt so pleased for them having some wonderful experienced (there was much compersion to be had!). So, in return, here is my list of things that were awesome about 2016.

For years, I’ve pondered the idea of starting a blog. It never seemed worthwhile, and there always seemed to be plenty of hurdles. Hosting Where would I host a blog? As a big supporter of data sovereignty and data liberation, I didn’t want to lock myself into a particular service and so considered self-hosting. On the flip side, as a systems administrator, I didn’t really want go have to deal with the maintenance of yet another service on one of my servers, particularly something like WordPress with I get the impression needs regular updates applied, which aren’t necessarily available in a timely manner from my Linux distribution’s package manager.

First post! Hi folks, and welcome to my blog. Please have a look at my About page to find out who the heck I am, and hopefully that’ll give you some context for what to expect here. Hope to see you back soon!