I wish there were two of me because then one me could devote all their time to doing all the offline stuff I do and the other could devote their entire time to Being on the Internet and Posting.

I found this website called Open Music Archive that distributes out-of-copyright music as public domain or under a (cc) by-sa 4.0 license (share-alike license).

While I'm a big proponent of the decentralized web (for example, things like the Fediverse and the indie web), I also recognize the many reasons people choose the more conventional centralized choices, so I know there's a lot of work to be done if we want to truly have a free and open web for everyone.

Part of my goal with my websites is to try to think about how to improve the decentralized web to make it a more viable option to others, both from a technical perspective and a social perspective. I also want to look at the problem both from a very practical HOWTO perspective when that's possible and from a more philosophical and political perspective. I think the latter is just as important as the former, and considerably more neglected.

Sometime I hope to update my website specifically devoted to the topic, The New Old Web, some more. However, I also do post about this on my general purpose website, Unspeakablehorror's Site. While I think my contributions to this area will necessarily always be small, I hope they will be of some value.

Glad I went and copied a bunch of the action items for Palestine to my website before Pillowfort went down. The thing about Pillowfort downtime is it is unpredictable. Sometimes it's short, but sometimes it takes a while for them to get the site back up.

Added the Politics section for unspeakablehorror.net, and added the Palestine page to that section. One of the advantages of a website like this is that I can organize materials onto different pages by topic, unlike in a blog or social media where they are much more disorganized. While I do think tags are very useful, the lack of hierarchical organization on blogs and social media can make it more difficult to locate what you are looking for.

Just FYI, if anyone wants a Pillowfort invite, just let me know. They are currently trying to raise money so they don't face an imminent shutdown, and are currently 89% of the way to their $25000 goal, which they need to reach by Dec 31.

As discussed in this post, there's a prize for people who invite 10-25 users, which...I think I am not remotely well-connected enough to do, but I'd like to see if I can help out anyone who's interested in trying a social media platform that's not reliant on venture funding or corporate ads.

If you join, you can say hi to me on my Pillowfort account! You don't have to, though. I'm happy to give an invite to anyone who wants one.

Looked into adding Bootstrap css to my website today and decided to shelve messing with the CSS for a bit because CSS is a pain. I do want to add something to help people get started with making a formatted page with CSS for both desktop and mobile, though. The simple.css library is fairly, well, simple, but I think having an html/css template combo already set up would help simplify it further.

I wanted to test out the moods. Initially I chose annoyed, but the animation was annoying me, so I settled on 'blah'. I maintain this one works as annoyed too.

EDIT: Was able to add a custom mood

Current Mood: quite annoyed

Ourchive MVP Announcement

MVP release is today

What this means is:
1. A tagged release will appear on GitHub, at some point.
2. An admin install guide will be available.
3. A few final changes will be pushed to https://ourchive.io

In coming weeks we will be opening up the Discord and contacting focus group signups as well. As always, a huge thank you to our beta testers, without whom this project would be moldering in a private GitHub repo.

Is the site broken? Probably! Can you install your own anyway? Yes! A release is tagged and getting started docs are available: https://docs.getourchive.io/admin-getting-started/
Thank you again to our lovely beta testers We're putting together tickets for v.05 now. Onward, upward, inward, etc.

The purpose of this software is to lower the barriers to entry for people wanting to host their own fandom archive by supplying a modern piece of software with user documentation.

I've helped with beta testing this software in the hope that it will be able to supply another option besides static sites for independent fan archives.

A Letter From Julia Baritz

To the Pillowfort Community,
Transparency from myself and my Staff is part of the foundation that makes Pillowfort so great. The news I am about to share is not easy. But it is important for you, our community, to know what is going on.
Pillowfort has always relied on the generosity of our users. We are proud to be user funded. Over the years we have been able to operate using the funds from our 2018 Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $60,000, in addition to ongoing payments and donations from you. I am extremely grateful for the support we continue to receive.
However, despite cost-cutting efforts, we have struggled to break even in revenue since 2021. The funds from the 2018 Kickstarter have been depleted to cover operating costs and to ensure our Staff receives the compensation they deserve. I will never ask my Staff to work without being compensated.
We are now at a point where Pillowfort is in danger of exhausting all current finances in the next six months if we continue the current funding/spending trajectory. This is not hyperbole. This is the unfortunate reality of what the platform is facing. If we do not change course now I will have to end contracts with our entire team soon and, eventually, Pillowfort would no longer be able to operate.
For the past two years I have not compensated myself for my work on Pillowfort. My commitment to Pillowfort is not for personal gain. I was fortunate enough in my privilege to have adequate savings to cover my own personal expenses for a while. I sacrificed what would have been my own compensation in order to ensure my third-party contractors (Staff) could be paid.
I take full responsibility for the current state of Pillowfort. It has been challenging being a first-time business owner in such turbulent times. Looking back now there are ways I would have managed things differently with the knowledge I have now. If we can recover from this, I will continue applying what I have learned these last several years to make sure we do not reach this point again.
I knew Pillowfort was going to be a difficult enterprise due to the very things that I believe make us great: we don’t have shareholders or venture-capital investments (which often leads to shifts away from a company’s primary mission as they are directed to achieve revenue and profit growth to benefit investors); we don’t compromise your privacy by selling user data to third parties; and we don’t host third-party ads that would disrupt your experience. We also pay much higher payment processing fees because we host adult content. Compared to other social media sites that have millions of dollars in corporate investments backing them, things are much harder for us.
In spite of every hurdle we face, I truly believe Pillowfort deserves to exist. I believe in Pillowfort’s mission and I am determined for this platform to succeed. I am not going to abandon this platform until every possible option is exhausted. That is why I have decided it will be necessary to initiate another, more ambitious fundraiser. Our goal will be to raise $25,000 by December 31, 2023.
This amount is based on the following:

We are at risk of the IRS reclassifying Pillowfort as a hobby instead of a business because Pillowfort has not been profitable for several years. If we are reclassified as a hobby this would prohibit us from deducting expenses which will make our financial situation more dire. The $25,000 amount will make up for our existing year-to-date losses as well as cover our projected expenses (Staff Compensation & Operating costs) for the remainder of the year.
Raising this amount will also buy our staff the time needed to complete the following projects geared toward increased long-term revenue:
Finish Progressive Web App development to allow Pillowfort to reach a much broader audience on mobile platforms.
Add the ability for users to pay to promote their posts.
Add the ability for users to gift Pillowfort Premium to other users.
Once these features are in place, Pillowfort will be in a better position to bring in reliable revenue than we have been recently and will hopefully be on the road to continued self-sustainability.
If you appreciate that Pillowfort is beholden to its users instead of shareholders– if you believe in Pillowfort’s core principles of user privacy control and freedom of expression and creativity– then I ask you to consider supporting this fundraising effort.
We will post more information soon regarding rewards for reaching our goal (yes, we will be offering a profile badge to donors, and more!), so stay tuned for details. This time around we are also planning to have rewards geared toward users who help spread the word about us too. We understand that not everyone can support us financially right now.
If you can’t donate to the fundraiser there are still many ways to help us. Here are some examples:
Talk about us to your friends and family.
Write about or make a video about us. (Psst: Use #Pillowfort on other platforms like X, Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Bluesky so we can find your posts!)
Invite your friends, family, and colleagues to Pillowfort using your Invitation Keys to allow them to join immediately.
I am forever grateful for your past and continued support. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this message. Let’s work together to make Pillowfort a robust site for years to come.
Best Wishes,
Julia Baritz
Founder & Lead Architect

I want to draw attention to the current Pillowfort situation on other social media. As a long-time user of the site, I'd obviously prefer it not to go under. But beyond that, I'm concerned about further limitation of social media choices by those of us who are tired of the endless ads and abuse that mainstream social media sites force their users to endure.

So, just an FYI to others that if you ban someone you used to give access to from commenting on your account here on Dreamwidth, it's probably a good idea to uncheck 'gives access' before doing so AND MAKE SURE TO PRESS THE 'save changes' button. Then double-triple-quadruple check this in multiple ways by navigating out and back to the page and clicking 'show banned users?' and seeing who you have checked 'gives access' to. Even in the best case scenario (which I have not been able to confirm), should you somehow unintentionally unban the person, they would immediately regain access to your access-list only posts. In the worst-case situation, this means they can still read your access-list only posts even when they're banned, they just can't comment on them. I always lean more towards assuming the worst-case situation, but if anyone can confirm that banning is also intended to prevent users from seeing access list only posts even if that's checked, or confirm that it's not intended to do that, I would find that information useful.

Today I just noticed a former friend I unfortunately had a falling-out with a while back and so banned here on Dreamwidth was still listed as on the access list to my blog when I clicked 'show banned users' in my circle. Of course I unchecked that box instantly and chose 'save changes'. I thought I had done that earlier but I guess not.

It's certainly not ideal for me but in my case, I'm not going to have too much emotional turmoil over that by itself. I limit what I put on social media, regardless of restriction level. Still, other people might want to be aware that regardless of whether banned users can still view access-only posts if you don't uncheck the 'gives access' box, that ban =/= block.

'Gives access' will always be imo better than 'followers only' or 'mutuals only' choices, but I think ban being different from the current conception of blocking can cause some problems when it interacts with these settings, especially given the expectations set by blocking. My understanding is that ban is more a 'read only' setting than the more 'restraining order' approach attempted by blocking. I think blocking is the better approach, even if it sometimes grants people a false sense of security, because it increases barriers for troublemakers.

Since I seem to recall unchecking those boxes way back when I did the original ban, my guess is that I didn't select the 'Save Changes' button before banning.

I always try to be very incremental in my website updates because making a website is a lot of work that I'd totally abandon if I didn't get the reward of seeing it slowly grow, a little at a time.

I need to streamline my fic-generation process. Right now it requires an HTML source file to be copied to an odt file, which then produces the pdf and epub files. I think a better way is going to be to have a Markdown file that then I use to autogenerate the HTML, Epub, and PDF (and just about any other format I might want) with pandoc.

Have just realized I could add a drafts section to unspeakablehorror.net which would just be a place for me to store incomplete works I don't want people to see by encrypting a zip file with gpg.

Is it overkill to use encryption on this kind of thing? Yes, absolutely. Would it mean I could also use my static website for secure storage? Also yes.

Hmmmmm...

My document conversion process for my website so far can be outlined as follows:

1. Convert AO3 HTML to my own custom HTML formatting manually. Requirement: must be proficient in HTML. Knowing some CSS is necessary too, but a stylesheet like simple.css can help a lot.

2. Convert the custom-formatted HTML to a LibreOffice odt file.

3. Add page breaks as appropriate in front matter, delete HTML Table Of Contents and add autogenerated LibreOffice Table of Contents, add Title Pages (front and index pages), and add page numbers.

4. Convert to PDF. In LibreOffice, select File -> Export As -> Export as PDF -> General. Then check the Universal Accessibility (PDF/UA) checkbox. This will help to point out some types of accessibility issues.

5. Convert to epub. In LibreOffice, select File -> Export as EPUB. Alternately, open the odt file in Calibre, choose Convert Books->Convert individually and then fill out the epub conversion options described here.

NOTE: While LibreOffice can also produce HTML pages from odt files, the HTML produced is not very amenable to manual editing, and I suspect tends to not be very accessible. This is why I manually edit my HTML instead.

Today I updated PermianExtinction's Fanfic on my site to have my own custom formatting for the HTML, EPUBs, and PDFs.

Did you know that Calibre can convert a LibreOffice odt file to an epub? Here's an example of what that might look like:

The Empire Needs Children by PermianExtinction

I really like the autogenerated cover pages that calibre makes for epubs. They're simple but stylish. Calibre seems to randomly choose the overall color--I wonder if there's a way to purposely select a particular option. I'm planning to go back and switch my own fic to use calibre instead of LibreOffice to generate the epubs because I really like the covers and because this way I can include an autogenerated Table of Contents from the odt into my epub.

Now my fanfics on my website have a table of contents with chapter links to each chapter and a little breadcrumb link back to my fanfic page.Like this one:

Cut Strings

The Table of Contents makes it so much easier to traverse my longer stories.But really, I think most long documents would benefit from this more retro form of organization. Within-page links are great for moving quickly between different parts of a large page.And you can press the back button to go back to the top.

I've added an important bit of navigation for my multichapter fic on my website, such as on Cut Strings. Now these stories have Table of Contents chapter links to help with browsing through non-sequentially or going back to where you left off.

I want to do something similar with Holonet entries, where I have a listing on each page link to any headers in the article so a person can navigate through longer articles that way.

I like within-page links as a form of navigation.

My next step is to convert the fic on PermianExtinction's page to this format, plus any specific requests he has made or makes for his fic.

I'm really excited about my personal website, but sometimes managing all the different pages can be a real pain. Sometimes I just want to glom everything into a single page and just go 'all right, come look at my virtual equivalent of a papyrus scroll, come look at my 50 mile long scroll'.

In light of Pillowfort's recent decision to ban AI art, I thought I would write up some reasons I don't support generalized AI bans despite having major issues with companies that make software like ChatGPT. I'll also state what kind of AI ban I do think is reasonable.

* AI is a very general term that whose usage has only recently been focused on this particular type of software. It has widespread applications, including in digital art and photography (there's AI software built into digital cameras on phones even). This is not just an issue of semantics, either, but could get into tricky questions of which of these applications is "not the kind of AI we're talking about" in terms of functionality as well.

* Disproportionately punishes the harmless, does nothing against the companies creating the AI software or the companies using it to harm creatives (like those news articles putting up AI-generated art instead of paying an actual artist for their work). My impression is that this will mostly punish the people who are not making any money from this grift but just generating and posting it for their own entertainment. I don't think most the artists actually selling their work on Pillowfort are actually AI-generating it.

* Undermines fair use. Having a position that AI is bad because posting excerpts or works based on other works is stealing is to have a position that fanworks and even general fair use is theft. This is a position that megacorps like Disney have historically been very much in favor of supporting as a means to disenfranchise regular writers and artists like the kind who join platforms like Pillowfort. These megacorps are not friends to creatives and engage in contant theft and exploitation of their workers, whose work is *their* IP, and not owned by the creatives themselves.

So, what kind of ban on AI would I support? For me, this would be a ban similar to the spam ban a lot of sites implement, possibly customized to address specifics of these types of AI's. Obviously anything becomes a problem if it is being used to spam a site.

I also very much support sites discouraging AI scrapers by altering their robots.txt (I was happy to see that Pillowfort had done this) and giving their users the option to make posts site only. These measures aren't an AI ban on the site, but rather put up some roadblocks against the companies who are creating this AI in order to try to generate profit for themselves at the expense of all of us.

Oh, I have now updated the epubs for my fanfic on https://unspeakablehorror.net. Now my plan is to focus on improving the HTML versions of my fanfic and overall site HTML. I especially want to add an easy download link for the HTML version like what AO3 has.

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Navigation

Loftwings and Demons

And Sith and Porgs as Well...

Entries tagged with internet

If Only There Were Two of Me

Open Music Archive

Thinking About The Decentralized Web on the Decentralized Web

Website Backup and Pillowfort Downtime

Added Palestine Page to unspeakablehorror.net

Pillowfort

CSS Annoyances

Ourchive: Software For Archiving Fanworks

A Letter From Julia Baritz

A Ban is Not a Block

Incremental Website Updates

Streamlining My Fic-Generation process

Super Top Secret Fanfic Drafts!

How I Create The HTML, EPUB, and PDF Files for Fanfic on My Website

Website Update. More Fanfic Style Customization

Me Being Very Excited About Links

Table of Contents Links on Website

Virtual Papyrus Scroll

Why I Don't Support Generalized AI Bans

Epubs! Get Your Free Epubs!