You should be using custom feeds on bluesky

Custom feeds are an underused feature on bsky, and can really improve the experience.

Yes, a chronological feed is nice, but so is an algorithmic or limited feed you understand clearly.

In particular I use…

OnlyPosts: Top-level posts from accounts you follow, no reposts or replies
For You: It finds people who liked the same posts as you, and shows you what else they’ve recently liked
Mutuals: What it says on the tin, just posts from your mutuals
Quiet Posters: Highlights posts from people who don’t post frequently

Right now “OnlyPosts” is my default view, and I check out “Mutuals” regularly to make sure I don’t miss things from those folks. “For You” is for when I want to vary it up, and “Quiet Posters” is checked occasionally to surface things I missed.

My Following feed is demoted to the end of the list, and I’ve completely removed Discover.

There are a ton of custom feeds out there, and they’re worth checking out. It turns out algorithmic feeds can be helpful, but it’s nice to understand how they work and even better when they aren’t trying to sell you anything.

Twitter, social media, network effects, and me

Back at the end of October, when Elon Musk announced that he was really actually going to buy Twitter, I did what a lot of other computer nerds did. I spun up a cloud VM, bought a domain name, installed a Mastodon-compatible “Fediverse” server (Pleroma), and started exploring the wide world of federated social media.

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Trying to write more, with less pressure

I’ve been pretty bad at blogging for the past *mumble mumble years*, but it’s not for lack of writing.

The thing is, I like writing. I have a rather large drafts folder filled with work-in-progress posts, not to mention all the various brainstorming docs I have for work, D&D, and other writing tasks. Those WIPs are frequently five or ten pages long, with lots of little notes on extra bits I should add to avoid missing things.

Like plenty of other folks, my problem isn’t writing, it’s finishing things.

However, this blog is titled “thinking out loud”! I don’t need to write the definitive article on a given topic, or at least I don’t need to do it here. Instead, I want this to be a place where I can get thoughts out in front of people (and myself!) so I can make them better.

To that end, I’m setting a goal for 2022 to write here:

At least once every two weeks
With only light editing
At most two pages of text in a post
And being willing to delete anything I decide I hate! 😅

To make my life easier, I’m cheating a little: I’ve written four short posts in the past week, and set them to auto-publish every two weeks!

That should get me through February. In the mean time, I’ll keep writing — with any new posts either being added to the queue, or potentially posted live if I have a particularly hot take. With luck, this process will help me stick to my goal despite any temporary crises or fits of ennui, and keep my momentum up.

Happy New Year!