Undistinguished Blog

POTPOURRI INTRO DEV

POTPOURRI

Reading is fundamental, but not very fun

bubsmeany

I'm late to the Nate Bargatze train, but the guy speaks to me at a level few ever have. This particular dialogue struck a chord deep in my soul :

"..every book is just the most words... and it doesn't let up.." - Nate Bargatze

I am a very poor reader, oftentimes having to read the same sentence repeatedly to get it to "stick". I tried CliffsNotes in high school, but quickly learned even Cliff was too verbose for my pallette and hoped secretly he had a simpler brother named Chuck to boil things down further. So yea, I don't read books either Nate... and I, as well, wish I did..

In reality - I'm relatively certain I have an undiagnosed reading disorder but, having grown up when I did, it made more sense to mask imperfections instead of trying to improve them... so here we are... bumblefugging through my literary existence ...

Unfortunately, almost as if by proxy, my writing skills are pretty rudimentary as well. So trying to coral my thoughts and formally "blog" about them is proving.. challenging...

..but I'm trying! Prior to Mastodon and Bluesky, Twitter helped me and others "squeeze the life" out of a digestible character limit (..yes.. I know the character limits on Masto are instance specific... not the point ... ), which is why I likely gravitated toward them in the first place; there was less of "Uncle Wayne brain dumping about politics for 8 scrollable pages on Facebook"... ain't nobody got time for that.

So this blog is gonna act as somewhat of a "learning ground" for me to practice expressing myself through writing in a comprehensive way. I'll never be a "writer", mind you, but forcing myself out of my comfort zone in a "non-tech" way can only help me at this point. And who knows... maybe, just maybe, one day I'll even read another book...

Wish me luck!

2025-02-25 15:03:51

DEV

The "Mastodon Server Hug"

bubsmeany

Posted about my fun little project here on Mastodon and learned about the "Mastodon Server Hug" the hard way..

INTRO

Welcome to my undistinguished ass blog...

bubsmeany

You probably stumbled here from Bluesky wondering -

What in tarnation is Undistinguished.com?

The simple answer is : it's my personal blog that I created using a simple ass, homecooked blogging software package of mine (eYap) leveraging Jenkwerx (a Python web framework I originally made fom my online horse racing game - eHorseracing.com).

Furthermore - it's me, Mike (aka Bubs Meany), and it's also my overall approach to the interwebz. Call it my attempt to harken back to the halcyon days of WWW (and, prior to that, BBS instances).. before overabundant commercialization, page bloat, addictive algorithms, political clout chasing techbros, advertising-over-content, crypto and NFT scams, morale-crushing phony influencers, and AI enshitified almost all of what was one a great thing.

..so now I'm trying to create primarily simple, low code, easy-to-use web sites and frameworks in Python. The goal is to have to rely as little of "other folks shit" as possible going forward.

So this is a live example of my blogging software, eYap. To keep it low maintence and reslient, I am not using a (formal) database. Instead, I am leveraging file naming schemes and notable memory caching to help keep things fast. I'll be expanding things soon to include pagination, previews, dark/light mode, a link aggregator, RSS feed, categories, and some stuff like that. I may even integrate ActivityPub down the road (I have a lot of the code already written, but integrating it will be a bear). But what I have zero appetite to do is add ANY cross-site tracking cookies, big javascript/css framework packages, or especially a "reply to blog" portion (so if you like/hate what I say go out to the Fediverse or Bluesky and @ me - my handles are at the bottom of this page).

I'll make both eYap and Jenkwerx FOSS when I get further along but, honestly, I'm not sure if I have the energy to do a formal repo thing 'cause tech folks can sometimes be a surly pack of motivational vampires and I got no time for that type of drama in my life.

As for what you'll get here - a whole buch of random stuff (tech, comics, music, and other mind dumps). For now it's gonna be one big page but, again, categories, previews, and pagination will hopefully be on the short term horizon.

Until then - thanks for stopping by!

Bubs Meany

2025-02-17 21:54:05