File Sharing Roundup - The Best Ways to Move Data Between Devices
There are many reasons sharing files between computers for even the most basic of home users:
- Backup
- Moving documents to a computer connected to a local printer
- Information shared between your and your partner or spouse
- Installation files for programs you want on more than one computer
- Consolidating a family photos album
- Moving downloaded movies or music to your home media server
I got an email from a friend today who explained to me that he's used a particular method to create a folder on his parent's computer into which they can drop their various tax documents as they receive them so that he can access them all when it comes time to fill out the forms. For them. I just set up a method of file sharing to copy nothing but downloaded video files from my laptop to my iPad in preparation for traveling when I need something to watch.
Here are a variety of ways to share files, both temporarily and continuously connected.
Blip - this app transfers individual files between two devices no matter where they are located using end to end encryption. Files can be as larger as 2 GB. It works on Macs, iOS and Windows devices. Free. Blip - Free Cross Platform File Transfers | AppAddict
Local Send - this works like Blip but is limited to devices that are on the same network, like your home Wi-Fi, or between you and your partner in a hotel. It works on Mac and iOS. https://appaddict.app/post/local-send-easy-to-set-up-and-easy-to-use
Native File Sharing - File sharing has been baked into Macs since the first version of OS X. Most experienced users can set it up easily enough. Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support
Cloud Services - If you use iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or a similar service, sharing is built in, whether the recipient has the service or not. You can generate links. In a case where you want to share between two computers that you own, you can install the client or sign into the same account in the case of iCloud on each of your computers. There are Windows and iOS clients for most services.
Nord VPN Meshnet - If you use Nord as your VPN, you can use Meshnet. Meshnet is a way to safely access other devices, no matter where in the world they are. Once set up, Meshnet functions just like a secure local area network (LAN) — it connects devices directly. This makes Meshnet a great fit for activities that require high speed, low latency, and advanced security — activities like file sharing, active work collaborations, and intense multiplayer gaming. - Meshnet explained | Meshnet docs
Syncthing - You can set this up between any two devices and automatically and securely keep an entire directory of files securely shared. Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing | AppAddict
Email - You can just about always use the modern equivalent of Sneaker Net, like a caveman and just email files in a pinch. it's the the fastest or the most secure or the most efficient method, but it will do in a pinch.
To tie these different methods together, a good file manager comes in handy. If you want to upgrade Finder on your Mac, my recommendation is Qspace. Qspace
For file management on an iOS device, you can't go wrong with FileBrowser Pro. - FileBrowser Pro - For File Intensive Network Connected Workflows | AppAddict
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Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing
I first heard about the free and open-source file syncing app, Syncthing, when I started using
Obsidian and may people were suggesting it as the back end of their DIY
vault syncing strategy. I ended up using another method for Obsidian,
but larley I have been exploring numerous ways to share files in my home
lab setup, which features Macs, iOS devices an Ubuntu Linux box and VMs
of all different sorts, including Windows.
The aptly named Syncthing Foundation is behind the app that they describe thusly
Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, whether it is shared with some third party, and how it’s transmitted over the internet.
Syncthing is private and secure.
- Private - no central server. Your data is only on your machines
- Encrypted - secured using TLS
- Authenticated - every device is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate.
Open
- Open Protocol - Adheres to a documented specification
- Open Source - All code is available in GitHub
- Open Development - When bugs happen, they are dealt with and not hidden
- Open Discourse - In the Syncthing Forum
Easy to Use
- Powerful - Sync unlimited folders with different people or just between your won devices
- Portable - Administered through a web browser
- Simple - "Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how."
My first use case with Synthing is going to be loading downloaded videos from my Mac onto my iPad for use when traveling. I'll let you know how it goes.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
Oh Death
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” ― Joseph Stalin
During the pandemic, while half of America was arguing that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, the city government of New York was hiring refrigerated trucks to keep bodies in because they ran out of space in their morgues. I've known may people who've been sick with COVID-19, but only one who died from the illness, a man I'd known since childhood. He was a retired judge, the father of a childhood friend and the wife of my former boss. While Wonder Woman and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, he and his wife picked us up and took us to their Western North Carolina vacation home for a couple of meals and a shower. The next day they hiked with us almost to the Tennessee line. His fight with COVID-19 was short, One day he was joking with his family about not being able to talk and the next day he was gone. Forever.
My personal encounters with death have been just that, personal. I cam home from school one day in the ninth grade to find out that the matriarch of the farm I lived on had dies during the previous night. As a result, my entire family had to move to the home of my aunt's father. It was on the same farm, only 50 yards or so from where we lived.
During my school years, my class was lucky. We didn't lose anyone in the way that I witnessed numerous cohorts lose members during me educational career. As soon as we graduated, though, the toll started to mount. Within a year or two, car crashes claimed lives. A fiery plance crash in Gander, Newfoundland with nearly 300 members of the 101st Airborne Division aboard claimed the life of the trainer from my high school football team along with everyone else on board. Cases of cancer and sudden heart attacks took some of the star athletes we had as well.
My father talked about death often. Having spent two years in Vietnam, he'd witnessed too much of it. His generation died in that war in the tens of thousands. Additionally, since he was a pilot, he knew too many other pilots who had died in accidents at the hands of flight students or just by stupid bad luck when their helicopters hit unmarked power wires.
Even those of us who are not wrapped up in celebrity culture can still be affected by the deaths of famous people we never knew. I remember the August morning when my mother told my brother and me that Elvis Presley had died during the night. It seemed like that was a big deal for a long time, especially to the hucksters on television selling tribute albums and all the people who wrote books about The King. I remember when presidents Truman and Johnson died, pretty close together. Then it was Pope Paul VI and a month later his successor, John Paul !. I learned more about Catholicism during that period than I had ever know, mostly because there are so few Catholics in the small southern towns where I grew up.
John Lennon's senseless murder also impacted me. It seemed like so much of the 60s culture was gone before I could grow old enough to appreciate it with so many influential musicians dying young Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, John Bonham and more.
All of my grandparents survived until I reached adulthood. I was 40 when the last one passed away. The fact that my children got to know them is a source of great joy to me. Now that my oldest grandson is entering his 20s, I have hopes that my Dad will live to be a great-great-grandfather.
Some deaths are seemingly impossible to recover from. My youngest daughter isn't my biological child, but she is mine nonetheless. Her mother and I were married for 18 years. Four years after we separated, she died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. My daughter has struggled with it ever since. Today is the anniversary of the death of the father of my two step-daughters, who passed away only a year after his marriage to their mother ended. It was a tragedy and one that is still painful for them.
I try not to think about my own remaining years too much, or those of my parents and senior relatives. Yes, I know it is inevitable, but there is little I can do to prepare for it, and I'd rather just deal with it all when the time comes. It's a beautiful day in my corner of the world today, and I think I'll go outside and enjoy it for a while.
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Cooper River Bridge
One of the largest races in the world is the annual Bridge Run in Charleston, SC
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Probably the most influential time in my life were the years I lived on my uncle's farm, roughly 1979-1983. Although both of my parents were the children of farmers, I didn't have much exposure to agriculture before a fateful Easter vacation I spent with my uncle at an industrial pig farm he was managing. I was in the eighth grade, years away from being able to drive on the road. On the first day of vacation, he showed my brother and me how to operate his 1976 Ford Ranger pickup on the dirt roads of the farm. We also got to use a pressure watcher and assist in all kinds of chores, including a day in the breeding barn.
The following fall, I decided it would be a good idea to use my saved up lunch money to buy my very first joint. I couldn't wait until after school to smoke it, so I went out on the playground, in full view of an entire wing of classrooms, where all of my matches were blown out by the wind. Dejected, with no buzz, I went back into the school building, where I was immediately accosted by a teacher who'd seen me out her classroom window. To make a long story short, the school took a dime view of marijuana possession. The next thing I knew, I was on my way to a new life in a new town where they might let me go to school. That's how I ended up living and working on a farm.
My aunt and uncle treated me and still treat me like one of their sons. Their capacity for love seems limitless. Since I had a knack for getting into stupid amounts of trouble, my uncle decided to keep me too busy to get into mischief. If I weren't busy, I'd be too exhausted. It worked after a few spectacular missteps on my part. By the time I left that farm, everything else other people considered hard work seemed easy to me.
Now, I'm going to get to my point. The one thing I was bitter about in those days was a lack of praise. The old man just didn't believe in handing it out except in small amounts and on very rare occasions. I could spend an entire Saturday splitting multiple cords of firewood—some of the hardest work I've ever done, and he couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. It drove me nuts. I respected (and feared) him too much to complain much, but every once in a while, I would say something. His standard answer was, "Do you want me to pat you on the back for getting out of bed?"
These days, he's very much a different man when it comes to handing out compliments. He makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is proud of me, proud of my kids, proud of Wonder Woman. He even brags about teenage me and the things I did way back then.
As a result of my feelings of being unappreciated back in the day, I resolved early on to make it my life mission to hand out props whenever and wherever I could. In the years I worked in public schools, if I saw a teacher doing a good job, I'd tell them how awesome I thought they were. I'd tell the custodians, secretaries, nurses, and lunch ladies the same thing. My children have never doubted that their dad thinks they are superstars. I don't do it insincerely or to be flattering. I just think it is a nice thing to do for people in a world that can often seem cruel and uncaring.
I even hand out real compliments on the Internet to people who have been friendly and helpful. I know how good it feels to get that kind of feedback, even from faceless Internet strangers. That's why I am out here, just waiting for you to do something cool so I can let you know how much I liked it.
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Can You Help Me Find the Photos App I Need?
I'm going to turn the tables today. Instead of giving YOU
information on software, I'm going to ask you to give me some
recommendations. Specifically, I am looking for a photos app. Since I am
eliminating Google and Amazon from my online life, I won't have access
to their photo management tools, which, I will admit are pretty good,
considering that both companies will mine every bit of data they can
from my images in an attempt to extract money from me for their
billionaire owners.
Here are the features I'd like to have:
- Facial recognition to be able to identify people in photos and to be able to group photos of the same person together
- Object search (e.g., dogs, landscapes, babies etc)
- Being able to search by dates is a must
- Tagging
- Smart folders/albums
- The ability to use photos in my file system without the need to enter them into a proprietary system like Apple Photos Library
- The ability to at least read EXIF data and ideally to be able to (batch) edit it.
- A free trial or money back guarantee
- A companion iOS or iPadOS app would be awesome.
Potential Apps
So far, these have been suggested to me, but not buy anyone who actually has any experience with them:
If you know of or use a photo viewer or management program with all or
most of these features, please use one of the contact methods at the
bottom of the page to let me know. I appreciate it! Thanks for reading
App addict!
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly
collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. -
✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou
Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
Dawn on the Blue Ridge Parkway
If you ever visit western North Carolina, it’s worth getting up early to catch views like this.
My Enemy, My Friend
One of the fat ass squirrels from my backyard. I tried feeding them directly in an effort to get them to stop robbing my bird feeders but the greedy little bastards just laughed at me.
Advice for Grandparents
I'm lucky. All four of my grandparents lived into my adulthood. They were each wonderful people in their own way and each had a tremendous influence and helped me become the person I am today. I loved them all obviously and rarely does a day go by when I don't think of them in some way. My parents were teenagers when I was born, as was I when my kids came along. Mom and Dad were only 36 when they got into the grandparent game. Thankfully, my kids gave me a little more breathing room, but I've still been at it for twenty years now.
My personal advice to grandparents is to have as many adventures with your grandkids as you can. If circumstances permit it, give them the gift of your time. Take them camping, to fall carnivals and Polar Express Train Rides. Take them to see new Disney Movies. Remember their birthdays. Create some rituals. My kids know that every car trip with Wonder Woman and I involves a stop at the store for a snack and a drink. They know when they come to our house that we will have their favorite treats. We have always had a toybox in our house too.
Here are some more suggestions from around the internet.
10 Tips for How to Rock as a Brand-New Grandparent
Grandparenting Tips: How to be a Better Grandparent
How Can I Be A Fun Grandparent? 16 Tips For Grandparents – Retirement Tips and Tricks
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Don't Make Me Learn Something New!
I was directly involved in supporting education in a K-12 environment for a couple of decades and the in higher ed, at the university level, for a few more. My customers were the people who conveyed knowledge and, indirectly, to their students. I listened to plenty of enthusiastic teachers talk about teaching strategies, from the ones who were helping first-graders learn to read all the way through to physicians teaching medical students. Obviously, these instructors understood the importance of learning — for other people, but seldom for themselves, unfortunately.
Since the 90s, when technology started to become ubiquitous in the workplace and computer literacy became necessary in most professional level jobs, there have obviously been many changes. Just the way we store data has evolved from different sized floppy disks, to Zip Drives, writable CD-ROMS, larger hard drives, USB thumb drives to the cloud storage most people use today. Installing software went from typing esoteric commands into a terminal to merely clicking a single button in and app store. Yay for progress!
The problem is that the changes in the technology come too rapidly for many. It seems that there's a certain class of people who wake up one day and just decide they are done learning new things. They are just over it. It's like their brain is full and there is no room for any new information. I've been to countless meetings where I've listened to bosses agonize about how to implement something new while fooling end users into thinking nothing has changed. Bosses get to be bosses numerous times because they are people pleasers, and making people mad goes against the official boss code of conduct. When Microsoft decided to move the Start button from the lower-left side of the screen where it had happily rested since 1995, to the middle of the taskbar, there were millions of IT departments Googling "HOW TO MAKE WINDOWS 11 LOOK LIKE WINDOWS 10."
Doing something as simple as changing the naming scheme for network printers caused numerous professors, supposedly highly educated people, to lose their minds at my former job. They acted like the IT department had a meeting to see what we could do to make their jobs harder. In the early 2000s, Apple moved the power button from the right side of the original iMac to the front of the next generation of educational computers, the eMac. People freaked out about that too.
It's funny. When people go buy a fancy new car or the latest big screen television, they seem to have no problem learning the ins and outs of that tech. Some of that equipment can be pretty complicated, too. Those same people, however, are the same ones who can't seem to remember which password to use in the correct situation to effectively do the job their employer pays them for. Hell, there are more people than you probably want to know about who simply cannot create a password to save their lives following modern conventions. I've wasted hours of my life that I will never get back waiting for people to think of a usable password. Often, I would just have to step in and do it for them after they failed numerous times.
Huge numbers of people never read another book after they finish their formal education. Being entertained becomes the official purpose of life. That's why I get such a crush on anyone I see reading a classic novel or taking a night class at the community college just for the joy of learning a new skill or hobby. I have a long list of things I am interested in learning now that I have leisure time.
Thanks for reading. I'm sorry I missed a couple of days this week. Life gets busy.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for my tech blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
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Keyboard Centered Apps for Power Users
A global keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys you can press
while in any application on your Mac to execute an action belonging to a
background process. I typically have a half dozen or more apps running
in the background that use glocal keyboard shortcuts. Some of these
include:
Keyboard Maestro
Keyboard Maestro is an automation app that allows you to initiate or control just about any repetitive process. Don't let the name fool you though. Keyboard Maestro can execute actions based on two dozen triggers, not just keyboard combinations. Some of the actions I launch with the keyboard from Keyboard Maestro include typing in extra long passwords with a shortcut, launching apps using keyboard combinations, launching a shortcut that queries OpenAI using my API key, activating templates in Drafts, running AppleScripts and more.
My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro Macros
Raycast
Raycast is a keyboard app launcher with over 1000 available plugins, including an emoji picker, window manager, clipboard history manager, notes, passwords and many more. You can assign hotekys to any action. Some of the ones I use most frequently are searching Kagi, generating alt-text for images I post on the Internet, opening my downloads folder, searching social media sites, searching Reddit, searching YouTube, sending clipboard text to Drafts and Obsidian.
My 10 Favorite Raycast Use Cases (and all the apps it replaced) | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
Things 3
Things 3 is a task manager with clients for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. It has two built in global keyboard shortcuts: 1) The Quick Entry window lets you enter new to-dos into Things from anywhere without having to switch applications. Use the keyboard shortcut to make the window appear. 2) With Autofill, the Quick Entry window is automatically pre-filled with useful information from the application you are working in. From Mail, for example, it will create a link to the email you're reading. In a browser, it captures the URL of the page you are on.
Things 3, Maybe the Pinnacle in App Design | AppAddict
Dropover
Dropover is the king of shelf apps. Shelves are mini-platforms to hold files while you wait to move them or perform actions on them. Some of the actions you can accomplish from Dropover include sending a file to cloud storage and sharing the link, converting or resizing images, sending a file by Airdrop, in a message or email, attaching a file to a note. You can invoke Dropover when you are in any app, which is very convenient for grabbing an image from a web page or some text from any app. Dropover works well with Apple Shortcuts too, making it easy to move and manipulate files.
Supercharge
Supercharge is a an that features a variety of tweaks and shortcuts for a number of tasks. My favorites are quit all apps, hide all apps, close all notifications, open Passwords and toggle desktop widgets on and off.
Better Touch Tool
Better Touch Tool is anoter automation app that can do a couple of things that Keyboard Maestro and Raycast can't do, such as use the fn key and trigger actions from text strings. I use simple double taps of modifier keys to activate and deactivate Notification Center and Mission Control.
Better Touch Tool Favorites | AppAddict
Others
- Fantastical and BusyCal both allow you to create new appointments and tasks from anywhere on your Mac.
- Language Tool is a writing aid with spelling and grammar checking. You can invoke it anywhere you enter text.
- Default Folder X has a search tool that can bu sommoned from its menu bar interface at any time.
Making It Easier
Two free apps to get to make life as a keyboard warrior easier are Karabiner
Elements for remapping keys and creating macros and KeyClu,
which gives you a heads-up display of keyboard shortcuts in any app,
allowing you to enter your own for apps that it doesn't detect
automatically.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to
your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your
life - Subscribe |
AppAddict Newsletter
Georgia Mountains
The mountains in northern Georgia, taken from the patio of the lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park, home of the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
This Week's Bookmarks - Privacy Guides, 21-Day Cyber Cleanse, Famous Resaurants, True Crime, Wild West Food, Ad Blocker Testing, Liberation Library
Privacy Guides: Independent Privacy & Security Resources - Privacy Guides is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that hosts online communities and publishes news and recommendations surrounding privacy and security tools, services, and knowledge.
Cleanse - The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life
Most Famous Restaurant in Every State - Business Insider - From fine dining restaurants to local barbecue joints, every state has at least one legendary restaurant that everyone knows about.
True Crime - Masters treasures went missing, then the FBI showed up | GolfDigest.com -
The first item the young man stole from Augusta National was a green and white golf towel. This was just after the 2007 Masters, when he had come to understand it was customary for warehouse employees to take one or two small things
What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons? - YouTube - It starts with cowboy bacon and beans and goes from there - From A Taste of History
AdBlock Tester: test your AdBlock extensions - How good is your ad blocking setup? Just go to the page to receive a grade. If you want to get a score of 99 or 100 out of 100, shoot me an email and I'll send you my setup.
Liberating Library - Liberating Library is a book distribution program and online collection of relevant radical resources run by a Pan-African socialist.
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rclone - An Easy to Use and Powerful CLI
There are quite a few apps with GUIs available for Macs that let
you connect various cloud services to upload, download and move files.
Most of them are costly. Today I needed to move files from Google Drive
to a kDrive, a cloud storage company in Switzerland, Instead of using
one of the expensive apps, I opted for a free command utility, rclone,
and in just a few minutes initiated a complete transfer of the data on
my drive.
If you've dealt with cloud storage, including iCloud over the past few versions of macOS, you might agree with me that Apple has made a mess of it. They insist on hiding your files away in ~/Library/Cloud Storage and other non-obvious locations. By default, the files stay in the cloud, making utilities like Hazel ineffective managing them. You just never know when you click on a file if you are going to have to wait to download it or not. The official clients for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com us that strategy. Even when you select the option to keep a folder downloaded, you get no notice that the download is complete and, in my experience, I have found that the settins revert from time to time with no notice, forcing me to redownload files.
So, I was really happy today to take the time to set up rclone to move the files. You can get a good overview of rclone's history and capabilities from Wikipedia.. You can use rclone with a long list of cloud services.
You can download and install rclone right On a Mac from the terminal, using the command
sudo -v ; curl [rclone.org/install.s...](https://rclone.org/install.sh) | sudo bash
Documentation
You can read the documentation on rclone at the official GitHub repository.
Here are links on how to set rclone for a few common services:
Full Compatibility List
- Alibaba (Aliyun) Object Storage System (OSS)
- Amazon Drive (See note)
- Amazon S3
- Aruba COS[27]
- Backblaze B2
- Box
- C14
- Ceph
- Citrix ShareFile
- Cloudian[28]
- Dell-EMC ECS[29]
- DigitalOcean Spaces
- Dreamhost
- Dropbox
- Enterprise File Fabric[30]
- FTP
- Google Cloud Storage
- Google Drive
- Google Photos
- HDFS
- HTTP
- Hubic
- IBM COS S3
- Jottacloud
- Koofr
- Mail.ru Cloud
- Memset Memstore
- MEGA.io
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
- Microsoft OneDrive
- MinIO
- NetApp StorageGRID[31]
- Nextcloud
- OVH
- OpenDrive
- OpenIO[32]
- OpenStack Swift
- Oracle Cloud Storage
- ownCloud
- pCloud
- premiumize.me
- put.io
- QingStor
- Rackspace Cloud Files
- rsync.net
- Scaleway
- Scality[33]
- Seafile
- Selectel[34][35]
- SFTP
- StackPath
- SugarSync
- Tardigrade
- Tencent COS
- Wasabi
- WebDAV
- Yandex Disk
- Zoho Workdrive[30]
GUI Alternatives
File Managers/Browsers
- Odrive - $99 a year
- Multcloud - $189
- Raidrive $34 a year (limited free tier)
- Expandrive $75 lifetime
FTP/SFTP/Cloud Clients
Mounters (Network Drive Mappers)
- MountainDuck - $39
- CloudMounter - $75
- Netdrive - $50
Sundown in Town
I love a parking garage for getting pictures of lines and shadows. Sometimes urban photography can be quite fun.
Who Are You Thinking About?
There is a saying in the recovery community that if I could do anything to my worse enemy, I'd make him self-centered. There's nothing worse than continually being concerned with "How am I doing today?" I'm not knocking therapy. It's helped untold numbers of people, including me. Nor, am I smack-talking introspection because questioning your motives and evaluating yourself are healthy practices. No, what I'm getting at is the type of person who is always concerned with fairness, about what size your slice of pie is compared to his, about how life rewards you while it shafts him. I don't like that guy. I would rather not hang out with him.
What I find enjoyable is having a circle of people and a mind with enough space to let them all in. Most of us have our person, to borrow a concept from Grey's Anatomy. We have the one person whi is at the head of the line when we start making space in our consciousness when we begin to make room for something outside the scope of our wants and needs. No need to tell you that my person is Wonder Woman, my wife, my partner, my friend, and my coach. Although she sometimes doubts it, I evaluate almost every interesting fact in my life to decide whether I should share it with her. Tech-geek that I am, I have special apps and certain workflows just to be able to send her things during the day that she might like or be interested in.
One of my morning rituals is reading over my journal and looking at photos from this day in past years. Now that I've been doing the IndieWeb thing for longer than a year, I'm starting to see quotes from my favorite bloggers show up in my journal. I dig being able to send someone a screenshot to let them know, "Hey, I thought you were pretty astute last year and I still feel the same way." Who doesn't like to get fan mail, right?
For the people, like me, who share personal bits and pieces of their lives, well, it's better than a television show trying to keep up with what's happening in people's lives. During the day I start to wonder, How is mb feeling today, He's been ill. Or I wonder how Annie's son finished out the wrestling season or if Alexandra is freezing her butt off waiting for the bus on a Quebec sidewalk. When I think about the people working for the government, I think about Jen, Scott's wife her who had her dream vacation curtailed because of the fascists. and, OMG, if someone goes off the grid for an extended period of time, I start getting nervous. It constantly happens. Someone I enjoy reading, just gets fed up with the Internet and they disappear. I hate it.
It's a rare day when I don't send someone a photo I have of them. This week, I sent my youngest brother a shot of the one and only time he ever wore cycling shorts in his entire life. He called me stupid. I laughed. My brother-in-law scanned hundreds of my extended family's photos and shred them with us all. I like to find funny, early 1950s pictures of my dad with his flattop haircut and send those to him or pictures of my mom who was and is beautiful, just to let her know I am thinking of her. I have to stop myself from inundating my kids with constant pictures of their kids, most of which they sent me in the first place. It's just that all those grand babies are too precious not to show someone.
I have a vivid imagination. I consider it a blessing. When I was a third shift prison guard, stuck on a gun tower for eight hours, decades before cell phones were a thing, the only way I kept my sanity was an active mind. These days, I catch myself imagining the lives of my favorite fictional characters from television shows and movies. I gauge a show by how easy it is to bring its characters to life in my imagination. Take The Wire for instance. It was a show about the people of Baltimore, all kinds of people: cops, drug dealers, dockworkers, politicians, reporters, school teachers and more. One of my all-time favorites was Omar Little, a gay gangster with a penchant for robbing drug dealers, never regular people. He was courageous, funny, loving, intelligent and knew exactly what he wanted right until he was killed by a grade school kid in a corner store while buying his beloved Honey Nut Cheerios and Newport cigarettes. I think about Omar often and wonder what would have happened to him if he'd lived.
I'm not too good at striking up conversations with strangers, although in the right circumstances I don't mind it. My mother is the master at making friends with waitresses and clerks. She isn't putting people on either. She's genuinely interested in them. Mom admires anyone with a kind spirit and looks down on no one. Not once, ever. She might not approve of certain lifestyle choices, but she doesn't consider herself superior to anyone. She's just glad she doesn't have any tattoos and wishes I didn't either. My mother wasn't a big fan of me getting my ear pierced either, but that was a long time ago.
The moral of this longer than I intended post, is that if you want to be happy, think about others. Think about how you can make them happy. It will rub off. I promise.
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It Must Be True, I Read It on the Internet
One of the reasons that the United States is in the middle of an existential crisis is that too many damned people believe everything they read on the Internet. For these people, the Internet is not the information super highway. It is a cesspool of lies, misinformation, manipulation by foreign adversaries and scammers out to make a buck. It is beholden to MAGA and the right wing, who grow angry and vengeful when they are fact checked. To keep from being attacked by the government, Meta, the parent company of Facebook fired its fact checkers when Donald Trump was reelected. Elon Musk fired Twitter's fact checkers when he paid 44 billion dollars for the company.
No information source is infallible. Still, intelligent people should be able to separate fact from fiction. In the immortal words of way too may people Do your research.
Credible Information Sources
PolitiFact - Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. - Snopes (/ ˈ s n oʊ p s/), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.
Some other fact-checking resources similar to Politifact and Snopes include:
- FactCheck.org - A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center
- Fact Check: Political & News Fact Check | AP News
- Fact Check | Reuters
- .Full Fact
- BBC Verify
- FactCheck – Channel 4 News
- Lead Stories
- Truth or Fiction? – Seeking truth, exposing fiction
- International Fact-Checking Network - Poynter
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is myapp review blog, delivered daily in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
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Cool Tools for Mastodon
When it comes to the new breed of social media, I prefer the
federated and independent nature of Mastodon over everything else. I
want nothing to do with Threads or anything else tainted by Meta. I like
the atmosphere at Bluesky, but we have to face that it is a company
founded by a billionaire, funded with venture capital and it's going to
be enshittified one day - breaking the heart of millions. Mastodon, on
the other hand was founded in Europe and is out of the control of the
American fascist movement. Unlike the reality with Blue Sky, you really
can have your very own Mastodon server. While it has an undeserved
reputation for being difficult for normal people to use, there is only a
single extra step to get started and there are many guides and walk
throughs o hold your hand throught that step. In the 15 months of being
on Mastodon, I have yet to witness the kind of hate filled craziness
seen on corporate owned social media every day.
There are almost 100 different apps with Mastodon access available for Apple hardware and a few online, browser based clients as well. Here are a few unique offerings that can compliment or replace your primary Mastodon client.
Newsmast (free)
In a first for the Fediverse, we’re seamlessly integrating content from your home server with Newsmast’s hand-curated, knowledge-sharing Communities, hosted on our customised Mastodon instance, newsmast.social. There’s no scraping or content aggregation - all the community content comes from Newsmast users or via federation, and is moderated by applying the Oliphant Tier 0 blocklist, filters that keep out NSFW, crypto and hate-speech, and our human team.
Automadon ($14.99 year)
Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include: • Post to Mastodon • Full-text search • Get account details, timelines, and following/follower lists • Interact with posts, including boosting, favoriting, and bookmarking posts • Follow/unfollow, block/unblock, mute/unmute accounts
Toot Later for Mastodon ($4.00)
With TootLater, you can: • Schedule multiple posts with different dates and times • Add multiple Mastodon accounts and switch between them easily • Attach images to your posts and preview them before sending • TootLater uses the official Mastodon API to ensure your account and posts are secure
Video for Ants ($3.99)
Got videos that are too big to upload to Mastodon? Everyone does. What kind of limits are these?! All you have to do is pick your video and then tap a button and video for ants will automatically convert the format, compress the bitrate, and optimize the fps (frame rate) as needed to make them fit. You only have to tap a button. That's it. That's the app.
Threaditor: write for everyone ($9.99)
- Draft threads for popular microblogging platforms all in one place
- Save unlimited threads to the cloud - always pick up where you left off
- Link your accounts to automatically publish, and group accounts to post to multiple places at once
- Add images and polls to your posts
Re: Toot ($2.99)
Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts. Images are accompanied by attribution to the original author and an alternative text. Images created by Re: Toot can also be shared to other social networks and messaging services. To create an image from a Mastodon post, just copy the link the post and open Re: Toot or invoke the app through the Share Sheet.
Still Followers for Mastodon (Expensive - just use the free features)
Still Followers is a useful analytics tool to keep you fro getting suckered by the people who game social media by following and unfollowing people. The free version offers several useful tools for the casual user.
AppAddict Picks
- My favorite Mastodon client isMona for Mastodon, a one time purchase with more features than any other Mastodon client.
- My favorite Mastodon instance is social.lol, which is for members of OMG.LOL and IndieWeb platform with multiple features inlcuding a link in bio page, a blog, photo hosting, an omg.lol email address and much more, all for $20 a year.
- My favorite social media tool for analytics, scheduled posts. account discovery, reports and more is Fedica. The free tier is useful. A paid membership is insane. Works with 10 different social media platforms.
- If you want to learn more about the Fediverse, how to use it, what it can do - head over to Fedi Tips.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a
weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on
Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe |
Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter