textlog

about

The quieter social microblogging platform.

textlog is a simple social text log: write short notes, follow people and hashtags, and join conversations without turning every thought into a performance.

Notes are limited to 500 characters. The constraint keeps them quick to write and read, making room for one thought at a time.

Small by design

textlog is built around words: notes, people, hashtags, and conversations. It is intentionally small, straightforward, and easy to follow. There are no engagement tricks or pressure to build an audience.

Your profile and notes are public. Joining is free, and you can download or delete your account data whenever you like. If you feel like it, you can also donate to support the service.

textlog collective is fiscally hosted by Open Source Europe. Our finances and contributions are publicly visible on Open Collective.

Be a good neighbour

Share what is yours to share, treat other people with respect, and don’t use the service for harassment, abuse, spam, impersonation, or anything unlawful. We may moderate or remove content that puts the community or the service at risk.

What's next?

Any conversation

profileenter to followpoet by heart 𓅰wrote:
uncontroversial opinion. Young Thug is the greatest vocalist of our generation.
🙈profileenter to follow"Beware those that would deny you access to information, for in their heart they dream themselves your master." — Sid Meyersreplied toprofileenter to followswiley.net Try my zero dependency agent harness: public.swiley.net/agent.py If you're spending too much time on sites like these install bingeblock.com:
My reply didn’t carry literal meaning. If you are familiar with the now-out-of-fad expression, you know you don’t need to be a boomer, to be a boomer. :-D
16g of light roast, 350ml of Montcalm water, ~24 clicks on C40 and a Cafec ABACA filter paper in a v60 neo dripper
if for some reason you find yourself flying from burlington vt to a dc/baltimore airport: this is a perfect time to enjoy larks’ tongues in aspic [the album]
profileenter to followpermanent head damage, human-computer infractionwrote:
I'm not an optimist, just a pessimist who's still proactive: I don't think things are going to get better, but I just can't talk myself into giving up yet.
profileenter to followMillenial/Xenial who used to be really excited about programming.replied toprofileenter to follow:
As young kid I dreamed of working with reel-to-reel machines Cutting/splicing tape, happy accidents As a teen I couldn't afford reel-to-reel but got decent with multi-track cassettes Everyone was telling me digital was The Way (tm) In my 30s, I finally learned how to use a DAW properly In my 40s, I'm back to playing around with multi-tracks cassettes There is no money in it, but I'm enthusiastic as I can be (this is not so much as direct response as simply a response) #musicnotesenter to follow #aifearnotesenter to follow
When I write I just add html files to the swiley.net folder in public.swiley.net. Sometimes I syndicate elsewhere (I was doing Substack for a while before Notes took over.)
I recently wrote about why you shouldn't use your phone while you poopNate.spotDon't use your phone while you poop!Your brain needs to offload just as badly as your butt does. I know it sounds boring to sit in there, alone, naked from the waist down, staring at the wal...
Cool!! I'm currently designing and idea-shopping for an ultra light weight, super aesthetic browser whose goal is to go back to HTML roots and just be a "document browser". It would have HTML 4 and semantic HTML support, images, videos, full HTTP support, cookies, etc. No CSS, JS
profileenter to followNew herewrote:
Still in Quebec City, which has a pretty sizable street population once you come down from the hill where the tour groups go. We had to basically step over some guys sharing a glass pipe on the only stairs up the hill yesterday; I have teenagers so this bothered me. Later, my youngest and I were talking and he says "why don't the police do something about that?"
profileenter to followNew herecontinued:
He's showing me the first season of Mob Psycho, so I say You know how Mob's little brother Ritsu wants to clean up the school so there are no people who will bully Mob, and so he allies with the power hungry student council president and frames all the bullies to get them expelled and the whole situation eventually becomes really corrupt and authoritarian and Ritsu feels to blame even though he started out with good intentions? Life is really like that...
profileenter to followNew herecontinued:
And so my guess is that Quebec is in the portion of the cycle that's reacting to harsh and unfair policing of the past. Someday a mayoral candidate will get elected on the promise of cleaning it all up and the cycle will begin again. Anyway Mob Psycho is a good show.
it's unfortunate these kinds of obvious non-starters for a functional society can only ever be discussed on both extremes of the political spectrum. It shouldn't be a question that degeneracy has no place in public settings.
In my storm and stress phase, I tried many things, but nowadays I tend to choose boring technology when it comes to work, for me that is Ubuntu or Debian with XFCE4 Desktop. On my personal System I currently run Omarchy though.
profileenter to follow🍎 A lifetime Apple user. Partner says I am pedantic, sarcastic, and cynic. I just want to be me.wrote:
Which Linux distribution do you like the most, and why? Follow the previous with your favourite desktop environment.
looking at the German public railway system (DB), I always wonder if the stereotypes of timeliness and precision were ever actually true. Surely someone must've figured out by now how off they are? These trains are always late and / or broken.
profileenter to followa work in progress; i love cats 🐱wrote:
Watched Black Bird ep 1. Definitely lived up to the great reviews.
profileenter to followSoftware engineer (of course) in Londonwrote:
I finished Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte and now I'm struggling to take any other book seriously. I need a pallet cleanser or something before I can move on
profileenter to followI carved wooden spoons and my favourite herb is lemon thyme.wrote:
Why do so many tools have JSON config files‽ Commenting why options have been set the way they have is just such a basic thing to want to do… Why do tech people have such an aversion to writing things down⁇
A lot of tech folks resist documentation because they think it provides them with job security. In reality they are either locking themselves into a project and/or prohibiting upward mobility. I don't want to work with folks who don't document.
profileenter to followSoftware • maker projects • music • DIY Mostly figuring things out as I go.replied toprofileenter to followI carved wooden spoons and my favourite herb is lemon thyme.:
i like to use JSON for metadata and configs for robots and YAML for humans. if there is a need for a human to read the file there needs to be support for annotations
You look in the corner, you see a guy quietly eating cigarette butts. It's ok. He's dealing with a lot of stress from work. He takes care of his family. Capitalism
🙈profileenter to follow"Beware those that would deny you access to information, for in their heart they dream themselves your master." — Sid Meyersreplied toprofileenter to follow:
Likewise... you look in the corner, you see a guy quietly eating cigarette butts. It's ok. He's dealing with a lot of stress for lack of work, or food, or future. He wants to take care of his family. Communism. We haven’t figured out yet. Maybe we never will.
Who's enjoying #cnotesenter to follow in 2026? I'm back after ~14 years away (some sporadic once-in-a-while use in there) and I'm finding it better than ever, a smoother development experience and clearer code than pretty much every language out there, except for maybe #odinnotesenter to follow.
I get paid to write it if you can believe that.
Some specialized censors used in automated manufacturing. It's pretty cool, I look forward to coming into the office almost every day. I've worked for a few f500 companies and took a pay cut to come here. A bunch of people from my college robotics club work here too.
That sounds really cool. Above all I really like hearing that someone enjoys their work and likes showing up for it. I've had that feeling on a few contracts and it's great. Looking to get into embedded myself, since it seems that's where you get to have all the fun writing C. :)
#cnotesenter to follow has been such a pleasure. Haven’t tried Odin, but was using #zignotesenter to follow for a while, and I just found myself pulled back to C. A minimal sharp tool. Runs anywhere. Can actually write a compiler for it. Short bootstrap chain from hex0. Does anybody care about these things (anymore)?
Support everywhere (in every way) was key to me starting to use C again. It's nice to not have to worry about the language you use being left out somewhere, a non-starter somewhere else and having to mentally translate it to something else (Zig/Odin in a debugger -> C).
profileenter to followI carved wooden spoons and my favourite herb is lemon thyme.wrote:
𐑲𐑥 𐑩𐑕𐑿𐑥𐑦𐑙 ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑦𐑟 𐑯𐑪𐑑 𐑕𐑩𐑐𐑹𐑑𐑩𐑛 𐑓 𐑷𐑑𐑴-𐑑𐑮𐑨𐑯𐑟𐑤𐑱𐑖𐑩𐑯. I’m assuming #Shaviannotesenter to follow is not supported for auto-translation.
Hmm, maybe I’ll sometimes post in Shavian anyway and translate myself. It’s a skill I’m trying to practice but rarely otherwise write brief enough notes to be so inclined. 𐑣𐑩𐑥, 𐑥𐑱𐑚𐑰 𐑲𐑤 𐑕𐑳𐑥𐑑𐑲𐑥𐑟 𐑐𐑴𐑕𐑑 𐑦𐑯 ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑧𐑯𐑦𐑢𐑱 𐑯 𐑑𐑮𐑨𐑯𐑟𐑤𐑱𐑑 𐑥𐑲𐑕𐑧𐑤𐑓. 𐑦𐑑𐑕 𐑩 𐑕𐑒𐑦𐑤 𐑲𐑥 𐑑𐑮𐑲𐑦𐑙 𐑑 𐑐𐑮𐑨𐑒𐑑𐑦𐑕 𐑚𐑳𐑑 𐑮𐑺𐑤𐑦 𐑳𐑞𐑼𐑢𐑲𐑟 𐑮𐑲𐑑 𐑚𐑮𐑰𐑓 𐑦𐑯𐑳𐑓 𐑮𐑴𐑑𐑕 𐑑 𐑚 𐑕𐑴 𐑦𐑯𐑒𐑤𐑲𐑯𐑛.
profileenter to followCurrently in remission from ME/CFS after 3+ years. Occasional software engineering leader, app developer, blogger, zwifter, and just being online.wrote:
Been a bit quiet here the last week or so. Recovering from ill health, at risk of redundancy, and working on side projects. It's been a bit full on. Does anyone make pay check/cheque money from side projects? Can I use my redundancy runway to turn some websites from side hustle to salary money?
🤸profileenter to followcreative technologistGitHubstagas - Overviewstagas has 462 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub. creator of textlogreplied toprofileenter to followCurrently in remission from ME/CFS after 3+ years. Occasional software engineering leader, app developer, blogger, zwifter, and just being online.:
Recovering from ill healthHope you’re feeling better now!Does anyone make pay check/cheque money from side projects?That’s the dream, I’ve only made a few hundreds so far. I’ve had a machine gun approach. Shoot as many rounds as possible in the hopes I might hit something. #AInotesenter to follow has helped immensely in this direction. I’ve done a dozen projects past year and while a few became #viralnotesenter to follow I’m still not there yet. I’m hopeful though! 😊 #sidehustlenotesenter to follow #entrepreneurshipnotesenter to follow
Great read, wish you best on your new endeavour!
new link; my page is a work in progress - it is now more mobile friendly hellodavid.dev/blog/thinkingDavid Gonzalez-VelezDavid Gonzalez-Velez | Software Engineer & ResearcherSelf-taught software engineer and researcher based in Chicago, specializing in quantum computation and full-stack development.
Applied to an L5 software engineering role via e-mail and without any other contact I received back a bunch of questions that clearly look like they're aimed at L6 or even L7. Not sure what to do with that so I withdrew. Briefly considered answering them but was weirded out.
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OK. I've translated the (correctness) requirements of LeetCode No.22 to Lean, and ask Claude Code to both implement a solution and prove it.
profileenter to followi create thingscontinued:
In the first attempt, Opus 4.7 successfully completed it and proved it. However, the solution is to enumerate all possible space and .filter out anything that doesn't qualify my definition, which is obviously not ideal (if cheating is too harsh).
profileenter to followi create thingscontinued:
I can't think of a good way to also prevent that kind of solutions and ended up prompting "please don't enumerate and filter". Opus 4.7 then reimplemented and proved the backtracking algorithm.
profileenter to followOld school metallian, hobbyist developer writing things mostly in Rust…mostlywrote:
I subscribe to the Tony Stark school of engineering. "Sometimes you have to run before you walk." Earlier this year, I built my own static site generator. I hate literally every static site generator out there (not joking). get-taxus.org
profileenter to followjack of all trades linux sysadminwrote:
The more I use Terraform the more I don't like it. Can I just get the option to track state with Ansible?
profileenter to followNew herereplied toprofileenter to followjack of all trades linux sysadmin:
Say more. I've been using it this year "at scale" and it sucks in the way that everything sucks when the whole company starts using it for everything. I haven't used Ansible in over a decade, but am curious what you like about it better.
profileenter to followjack of all trades linux sysadminreplied toprofileenter to followNew here:
Ansible just melds with my way of thinking better. I have a really hard time wrapping my head around nested loops in HCL and the overall "ugliness" of the language. Plus, I kind of like being in control of the order things are created.
profileenter to followHi! I'm a programmer and enjoy playing music. Jesus is my Savior, and my ultimate goal is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." (Westminster Q1).wrote:
I've avoided social media (except YouTube) all my life, but this looks like it could finally be a better way to do it. Maybe I'll keep a running journal of cool things I'm working on here or weird bugs that I've found. Or just the struggles of coding. First one: GitHub actions was down again today when I specifically wanted to test my app's deploy and auto update flow...
profileenter to followlate is the hour in which this conjuror chooses to appearwrote:
one more step. just a moment. attention required! enable javascript and cookies to continue. verifying the security of your connection. your browsing activity has been paused. content unavailable in your region. 429 too many requests. 403 forbidden. connection has timed out.
profileenter to followI am just a grain of sand on your beach.replied toprofileenter to followlate is the hour in which this conjuror chooses to appear:
The future is here. But instead of flying cars or holodeck, what you get is tracking cookies and captcha everywhere. Maybe someday you will need to have your rectum scanned by Google or Meta nee Facebook before your browser does a HTTP request.
profileenter to followSoftware • maker projects • music • DIY Mostly figuring things out as I go.wrote:
bill gates built microsoft by making computation cheaper faster and harder for government to restrain. now that he's a billionaire no longer dependent on the free market for his own success he's discovered the virtues of taxing the next wave of computation. 1995 gates would have called it a tax on innovation. classic pull-the-ladder-up-behind-you politics. #billgatesnotesenter to follow #microsoftnotesenter to follow #AInotesenter to follow #AItaxnotesenter to follow #techpolicynotesenter to follow
profileenter to followI carved wooden spoons and my favourite herb is lemon thyme.replied toprofileenter to followSoftware • maker projects • music • DIY Mostly figuring things out as I go.:
These were exactly my thoughts reading about how he thinks we should “preserve” some jobs for people; I don’t remember him being an advocate of preserving the jobs of typists, draftsman, typesetters, and other clerks when his company was leading a prior digital revolution…
profileenter to followHow wonderful to be alivewrote:
Last year I wasn't feeling too good. I turned forty, waited for surgery, and was hurt by my own colleagues. So I dealt with things. Maybe not so well, but to the best of my ability. One of the consequences was that I got a bit heavy. My body changed, and I didn't feel like myself. It was a problem for future me. So now I am here with this little belly of mine. We're not enemies, but I decided it's time to part ways. So I count calories. Maybe not so well, but to the best of my ability.
profileenter to followHow wonderful to be alivereplied toprofileenter to followPresbyter, husband, father, technologist, linguist, musician.:
Thank you! Almost back to baseline now, after a few months. trigger warning, eating disorders: I sometimes forget to log what I eat in my app of course, but what is perhaps slightly nore disturbing is the fact that I sometimes log stuff and then forget to actually eat them. Some sort of Baudrillardian simulacrum of eating.
profileenter to followOld school metallian, hobbyist developer writing things mostly in Rust…mostlywrote:
The pendulum has swung far in the direction of favouring machine generated content over that from actual people. I wonder when it will swing back?
😊profileenter to followPresbyter, husband, father, technologist, linguist, musician.wrote:
Body's awake, eyes are sleepy. Mind's awake, brain is sleepy.
😊profileenter to followPresbyter, husband, father, technologist, linguist, musician.continued:
After #exercisenotesenter to follow everything's awake and a good kind of sore. So much of habit-building has been to identify and train myself to value moderate discomfort that leads to growth as the most pleasurable of goals. Consistent spiritual efforts, healthy food and in proper amounts, minimum sleep quota, regular exercise a few times a week—all of these involve discomfort and force of will, but all of them enable growth and fulfillment.
profileenter to followex-perl programmer, linux userwrote:
let's see how arabic letters are rendered here: بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Let's see how Arabic letters are rendered here: بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
profileenter to followwrote:
Team vim, team emacs, or team “my editor doesn’t start wars”? One line, no essays. Go!
The job market feels like it's been run over by a truck. What's the play here? Anything automated/streamlined (job platforms, LinkedIn, etc.) feels like a dead end. Messaging people, networking and so on seems like the only reasonable way, and that's a hustle all on its own.
profileenter to followI really enjoy learning, I really enjoy making. I'm learning to be less guarded.wrote:
a constant, existential pull so old I couldn't tell you the end or draw its shape between kind acceptance and striving, struggling, writhing, climbing learning, growing, discontent "do you feel this way, too, at endless war with longing itself?" but the birds and trees and ants and wind in their own marvelous design don't reply #poemnotesenter to follow
Added #meta tag — use it whenever you want to talk about the site itself, and these posts will not show up in all, any or the post’s page. Only those that follow the tag or the person will see these posts in my feed or in post pages. This is to keep the site clear of meta discussions which dominated a lot at this early stage and I think were annoying to many people. So this is the last meta without the #meta tag you’ll see unless u follow. I’ll try to tag every post I find.
🙈profileenter to follow"Beware those that would deny you access to information, for in their heart they dream themselves your master." — Sid Meyerswrote:
The interface needs some work. For example, I would like the textarea that I am using right now to be as wide as the header above. Also, where is the character counter?
I'm curious how do people start writing longer novels.. what determines the length of it? Like I have a story in mind but it feels like I'm "filling" details instead of communicating information.
I'm doing experiments with short attention-span students and code. Starting with python, and, oddly, now working in BASIC. As a C programmer of 40+ years, I find this aesthetically and pedagogically displeasing, but I am delighted to see them getting fully absorbed in writing 130 PRINT "You have been eaten by a bear!" : GOTO 900. Yes there is spaghetti, but it's their spaghetti and they seem to take delight in debugging it. Python will come later. #educationnotesenter to follow #programmingnotesenter to follow
profileenter to followreplied to(deleted account):
I was talking about this with some alumni students, specifically their experience learning python with us a few years earlier (these are college students who are not really using python any more). What it seems to boil down to is that with python you have the feeling that there is this huge forest of solutions to any problem you are having -- but you will never know the whole forest. BASIC feels like you "know" it after a day or two of playing around, evidently.
I have to constantly be working or I get very agitated. Is this #workaholismnotesenter to follow? I don’t like entertainment other than background music while working and maybe before going to sleep I watch a series on Netflix to relax. That’s when I’m on my introvert mode. When I’m extrovert (I’m ambivert) I have to constantly be around people and outdoors, I get agitated indoors, can’t work at all and definitely can’t watch anything. How do these two personalities co-exist in me?
profileenter to followYear 4 CS. Like tech, systems, game devwrote:
This SM is like a subreddit feed, except you also get a personalized feed along with 'hot' and 'latest' for people you follow. Or maybe it's modelled after twitter? Never used it so wouldnt know
Frustrated with my phone usage again tonight, I uninstalled several pointless and time-consuming apps. It’s a cycle I repeat every few months. During this cycle, I wasted a lot of time on one of those puzzle-matching games. I'm considering switching to Ubuntu Touch at this point
Inspired by two projects of github:schildep I start to explore what can be expressed in Lean and make coding agents implement and prove the implementation at the same time.
profileenter to followi create thingscontinued:
The two projects of github:schildep are "3d mesh intersection" and "multipolygon intersection". I can try "Voronoi diagram generation" as a starter.
profileenter to followwrote:
I think more than 50% of our economy's businesses, are cosplaying. Not in it for customers or profit; in it for investors and investments. "Looking like a business", as your real line of work.
I've never thought of something like OF as gambling. But I guess your point is that young adults are pushed to a lot of "you have a 0.1% chance of hitting it big and a 99.9% chance of getting no online traction at all" types of careers?
a business loan is not an investment, it is debt financing that pays back with interest. An investment means putting money into a company to gain ownership or a share of future profits. to me it feels like youre arguing against cosplaying, showing small businesses struggle and arent just playing boss for the funzies.
curious to know whats the experience of production push in other companies? e.g lots of documents/approvals…