Amit Gawande @am1t@mastodon.technology

#Introduction

Hello! I am coder by profession, who loves to read & write to keep myself inspired. I have been a blogger for more than 12 years, but lost touch with writing when Twitter was at it’s peak. May be I lost love for my words.

Anyway recently IndieWeb got my love for the technology and also writing back. So been working on a lot many Indie projects & writing my heart out at my blog since then. My only hope is this place does not kill my drive for reading, writing and coding; rather inspires it.

If you publish a newsletter, please, please make sure you include a link to your archives very close to that "Subscribe" button your want readers to click. You intend to form a relationship with the readers. Give them a chance to see in advance what and how you write.

Apparently, the lockdown and stay at home orders have caused the podcast downloads to decline. I guess it's mainly due to the lack of any form of commutes. Has been, for sure, the case with me. Contrarily, I believe the podcasts episodes being released must be on the rise.

Dear people, we are divided by Nation. Region. Race. Religion. Launguage. Culture. Economies. And many more things. But I believe it is time now to be united by one resolve - stay the fuck at home. Don't listen to your deranged peers. Your idiotic leaders. Even your families.

It was exactly a year ago that I had given up on Stoop, the newsletter app. I had a smaller device, an iPhone SE, and I didn't like the app then. Today I find it so useful, not sure if it due to the larger display of my OnePlus or the testing times we are living through.

To say that the situation is not that bad yet, it not scary, is a bit irresponsible at this point. For those who can read, who can find the right sources, who can segregate authentic news and facts from the rumours, it is imperative on you to inform and enlighten those who cannot do all of this. Either due to lack of resources or willingness.
Willingness to be informed is necessary and is something that is often ignored. Many people just.. https://www.amitgawande.com/covid-this-time-its-real

Over the last week, I've added some features to Blotpub that were long in works - support for syndicating longer posts, support for updating posts. I've also automated sending of webmentions to the target sites for reply and like posts types. It's been some productive week this.

Coronavirus has been affecting me, my immediate family and even the world at large in extreme ways. It was only natural to feel the urge to record my thoughts as I live through the pandemic. Hence, I have created a page that I intend to use to do just that.

I am toying with an idea to enable another option for the readers to comment on posts. I have always been very wary of enabling a commenting system of any form on my blog. So the only option I have kept till now was webmentions. Most of the responses I get on my posts are via micro.blog and I get webmentions for all these replies. However, I think there's just no easy way to redirect people to write a response if that is the only option available.
To.. https://www.amitgawande.com/1584503152450

This social distancing exercise takes a toll on one's mind, it is not very easy to undergo. When we go outside and meet others, be social that is, we let our mind wander from the day to day grind. It doesn't matter then if the "social gathering" is as regular as just at the office. People around have stories that they are keen to share.
We chat, discuss, debate, tease, prank, laugh. We brainstorm, we learn from others, we teach others. We.. https://www.amitgawande.com/social-distancing-is-not-easy

Coronavirus has completely taken over all forms of media and the discussions around me. Not an hour goes by without a mention of the global pandemic. It's not an all-out panic yet, but an increasing number of positive cases in my city has, for sure, put the people on alert.
I am avoiding unverified information that gets spread on social media and group messaging platforms. But it is difficult to stay and keep others, sane amidst the deluge of news bites.. https://www.amitgawande.com/1584361843289

I am having fun getting back into Indieweb stuff -- working on adding support for updates to Blotpub. This has been in works for so long, I had to get to it. I also recently added support for syndicating longer posts to Twitter and Mastodon. Always makes me relaxed.

Is there anyone who can easily find the one emoji that they do not use very often? How many of the 1500+ emojis can one possibly use? There is a limited set of emojis I use regularly. And because they are front and centre every time I open an emoji keyboard, they tend to get used even more often.
Even the way they get categorized is horrible. Which category do you think you will find a loudspeaker in? Objects, you say? What about a balloon? Now the.. https://www.amitgawande.com/1584035549342

A quick question for the IndieWeb community here, how do you send the webmentions? Is it automated on posting? Is it part of the micropub or an independent script? Are there ready resources, scripts or tools available? I couldn't find much on indieweb.org.

With the recent exercise of changing a few things around, I have also reset my \now page. I intend to keep it very simple going onwards - my thoughts log as a list. I know I won't keep up with anything more complicated.

Stand-up is an extremely difficult form of comedy -- it cannot be easily mastered. There are very few who actually manage to talk sense and still make folks laugh out loud. The abundance of the streaming platforms unleashed recently has flooded the timelines with available non-heard folks doing stand-up. But very few of them are any good.
The problem is actually finding them. And I am tired of watching the same set of voices. Any recommendations?

What's it with the UX of the apps on Android? They just don't look clean, finished. Is it a limitation of the platform? Or the complexity of the SDK? Or it is simply the misguided belief that design is not really important for users of an "open" platform?

I do not fathom the recent craze for folding devices. Basically, we were tired earlier of the thick phones - so we all rushed behind thinness. And the devices became larger. Now we want smaller ones, the thickness is fine again? I can never fully understand us.

It is easy to get addicted to YouTube - unknowingly spend hours clicking through the myriad of recommendations that algorithms through at you. The experience sucks. I have been burnt many a time. So much so that I spent a month off YouTube this year. It helped.

But staying off YouTube completely is difficult. These steps have helped me not stay glued to the app for hours. https://blog.amitgawande.com/make-youtube-less-addictive

I was recently held back by a prompt, I couldn’t come up with a satisfying subplot. I asked my 6-year-old daughter to tell me a story about space. This is her short story — she always beats me with her creativity and freedom of thought. #amwriting https://blog.amitgawande.com/the-aging-spaceship

What pisses me off the most with Google's Fitbit acquisition is the fact that Fitbit kept the fitness data always private, on their own servers. No way to even sync it with Apple Health. And now the only way to not share it with Google is to lose it all? That's so wrong.