@sebastianmalloy I believe it depends on the server/client. Some servers are set up to show a preview for links but if the server is slow it might not show for a while ... or not at all.

I have my custom client (that I wrote) which I configured to show a web preview for the first web link if there are no images in the post and it shows it like in the attached image.

@pretensesoup @mythopoetica In Sri Lanka, I don't think anybody's ever said "xerox" ... at least anybody Sri Lankan 🙂It's "photocopy" over there and still is what is ussed.

I am looking for a new contract as freelance #iOS developer (preferably in Germany, but EU is a must)

Since 2016 I've been working on iOS-apps in both #swift and #objc, I prefer UIKit over SwiftUI, I value good craftsmanship and simple, yet elegant solutions. In 2022 I went freelance, you might know me as the author of release notes for Mastodon for iOS.

In case someone is looking for an iOS contractor now or in the near future: let's have a chat!

Thanks for sharing <3 #GetFediHired

A friend from school whom I'd contacted long ago on FB suddenly accepted my friend request.

I check their FB feed and the top post looked rather suspicious, a phone screenshot showing an SMS message saying that they'd had a large amount of money deposited to their account from bitcoin mining.

I couldn't resist. I messaged them 😛

Within the hour, I get a response back and one of the first things they did (even though I had not heard from them in over 40 years) was to send me the same phone screenshot and tell me that their life was good and they got a lot of money.

I was now fairly sure that their account was hacked. Especially since the way they wrote didn't sound like a Sri Lankan, but more like somebody from a different part of the world 😛

I congratulated them on the money and asked about some fake friends (just names at random). They were non-committal but immediately told me about some personal stuff and sent me more images (gathered from their FB photo album, I assume) to convince me.

Then they start pushing me again about bitcoin and whether I'd be interested.

I ask them what class we were in back at school. He says that it's so long ago and that they can't remember. This is definitely not true since I can remember and I'd just talked to two other school friends a couple of days ago, who also remembered.

So I say, "I think you are a scammer and not my friend X".

They say, "You can believe what you want but I leave you with this" and send me another photo from the guy's FB album.

I contacted a mutual friend in Sri Lanka (since I had no way to contact him directly) and asked him to check with the other friend. And yes, his FB account is hacked.

Not that this needs to be said, but people who contact you on social media might not be who they claim to be. Always verify. Even when it seems totally legit — unlike in this particular case 😀

And if somebody tells you that they have a great way for you to make money with little/no effort ... but you need to pay them something first to do so, be very, very wary 🤔

#Scams #SocialMedia #LifeTheseDays #Facebook

@crcollins Congratulations 🙂May your editing be swift and the publishing painless 😀

@keira_reckons You might like my "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog" It's a humorous sci-fi novel about a man on the run from his wife's wrath after selling her dog to a Martian and the various scrapes he gets into as he tries to get the dog back 🙂

It's very happy and no hospitals involved at all 😛

You can see a bit more info and shopping links here:
https://shop.farook.org/

Does anyone have a recruiter or agency they can recommend for iOS work (1099 or W2)? The job market is absolutely terrible and I'm still looking.

#iOSDev #FediHire #jobsearch

When life gives you lemons, most people make lemonade – but when life gives Normal Kint a dog he hates, he serves it up to a Martian with a side of intergalactic chaos. Join the misadventures of Earth's most reluctant pooch hunter.

50% off at SmashWords - https://t.co/tvGASsc4Fy

Other options: https://shop.farook.org

#ScienceFiction #Humour #Bookstodon #FediBooks #IndieAuthor

@mythopoetica Thanks, wish you the same 🙂

On Draft2Digital I haven't seen any movement at all, so I don't watch that one much. But probably my fault since I am crap at marketing 😛

@mythopoetica I felt the same way when the royalties re-set to zero this month and that was my first month where I actually had some royaltlies.

But we might be talking about different dashboards here since I was watching the Amazon one and I think it resets every month — I mean at least the default one does. But not sure I actually get a payment since I'm probably below the threshold 😛

But not sure that makes you feel better? 🙂

@AngelaPreston Believe me, I totally get you about not wanting to be a "burden" 🙂 I always thought it was a vestige of the British occupation in Sri Lanka (stiff upper lip and all that 😛) but maybe it's more universal than I thought.

But yes, I do the same thing — well, to an even greater extreme in that I don't talk about personal stuff much at all. I'll just talk about coding, or movies, or something that interests me and which I hope interests other people. But sharing anyhing personal seems "icky" somehow 🙂

All this just to say, I do understand how you feel but that I'm happy to listen to other people talk about their lives even if I can't seem to bring myself to (much).

I've been made redundant from my job, effective tomorrow.

So... if you know anyone who's in need of a bioinformatician to work remotely on small bioinformatics projects, please let me know.

@AngelaPreston Sorry about all the negative stuff and I do know how you feel about not wanting to talk about it. But I think you should talk about these things since it does make you feel a little bit better just having talked about it.

For years, till I met my wife, I didn't talk to anybody about a lot of things. Now, with her, I think I talk a bit too much since I talk her ear off 😛And sometimes it's just sensory-overload for her and she'll tell me that she needs some quiet time. It doesn't help that we are together 24/7. But overall we like it and having her to talk stuff out has helped me immensely.

Not sure if any of that actually helps, but if you need to talk, I'm sure that I and many others here are willing to listen 🙂

Hope you have a great day today!

@AngelaPreston We've been using a Roku stick for about 6 years now and when I started reading your post that was what I was thinking of suggesting before I realized you'd used a Roku 🙂

We found the Roku stick so easy while traveling since we can turn any TV into a smart TV. We can share our screens to the TV, and also, as you mentioned, use additional apps to add extra channels that we normally wouldn't have used.

And so far, the same stick has worked fine for 6 years. It does complain about overheating at times, but generally it still chugs on ... 🙂

Affinity has a sale on till the 15th of August which is well worth it if you're interested 🙂
https://affinity.serif.com

I have no affiliation to them but I bought two of the Affinity apps back in 2016 or 2017 and I think it might have cost something like $50 and I received updates for all those years for the $50 I paid.

Didn't update to the V2 apps because I had stopped doing anything significantly graphics related for years. Just started working on some artwork and took a look and I could upgrade to their universal suite (all their apps for all supported platforms — macOS, Windows, and iPadOS) for around $65. I did since that seemed like a great deal 🙂

I have not been disappointed so far. Still loving working with their apps to create graphics and artwork. Will post some samples soon ... (possibly).

Now that I've finisehd my second novel and can put off starting on editing till tomorrow, I am going to do some coding today 🙂

I've wanted to add favourites and bookmarks lists to my Flutter Fedi client and I also discovered a bug wtih really long threads and showing the entire thread. Sounds like enough stuff to keep me occupied for today 😛

#CodingLife #WritingLife

And ... The End 🙂(Though I've never actually put that at the end of a novel since the story always continues ...)

I've finally finished novel #2 — "Sir Lanka Files" (no, not a typo).

I thought I had 1.5 chapters to go according to my original plan (and because I like round numbers and 1.5 chapters would have put the chapter count at 30).

But as I finished chapter 29, I realized that I had a better ending with chapter 29 (and a hook for the next novel). So I stopped at chapter 29 even though a part of my brain was screaming at me for ending on 29 😛

Now I begin the editing. So another month or so at least before it's ready for publishing?

#Writing #SciFi #IndieAuthor #FinallyDone

Forgetting things when you are a certain age is normal 🙂I never remember what I had for lunch yesterday and I'm fine with that.

But I vividly remember a lot of stuff from when I was like 2 years old up to about my 20s and it's a little bit more poignant when I think I've forgotten something from that period ...

Yesterday I was talking to a friend from school whom I'd known since the early 80s. I mentioned another friend from the same school that I'd met in the early 90s (but who I hadn't known at school) and this friend said something like "What do you mean? He was in the same class as you!"

I was dumbfounded. Had I known he was my classmate when I met him in the 90s? Or had we not recognized each other at all? All I remember about him was from meeting him in the 90s. Nothing about knowing himi from the 80s.

So I contacted this other friend. He said that he hadn't known me before the 90s even though we'd gone to the same school (it was a big school ...)

You can't imagine how relieved I felt 🙂 I had not lost a chunk of my childhood memories after all.

It later turned out that my first friend had confused the other one with somebody else who had the same name ... But for a while there, I really wasn't sure if I was losing chunks of memory or if my friend was wrong or if something else was going on.

It's funny the things we cling to 🙂

It's on Amazon already!

London, 1252: Gavin Rownt finds himself caught in the middle of a rift between two old friends when a troupe of actors he once knew returns to London after a ten-year absence. When one of the players, a child actor, goes missing, he agrees to search for the boy, only to discover that young Adam is not what he seems. As Rownt works to discover whether the reason for the child’s disappearance lies in the scandals and betrayals of the actors’ past or in the boy’s short life before the troupe took him in, he finds himself facing an unexpectedly dangerous opponent.

The Players’ Boy is a mystery about loyalty and betrayal set amidst the violence of thirteenth-century London. Perfect for fans of historical fiction and mysteries.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXH4QZQZ/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1F10HS0H1ZYCQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.z3oTGSF_LIc_HP7zzt-X2-XqWaXZMJ_u2QxuqRcRs4TUho7dRXVy2ShcLqRm3BGIA6rXWw98abnipxKAZcHqWVu_-x76-5U9xphLXNIJt0JbCtwFzDi3gZoBujB-Qc6wuCluDXLWKek1H-_nmhwy65feMeJENsp92c_QxF6t4XlfklUiQ16ADl0ov7hSE54kQi0Sil4kvnTLp8yA9TAPoWVDCnhipzBtUaXhB0bTIo4.wh-MI3YjoPEO3tJU8fRhQBMoUhiPIKMtxNUqoyirUEw&dib_tag=se&keywords=players%27+boy&qid=1720884013&rnid=2941120011&s=digital-text&sprefix=%2Caps%2C85&sr=1-2

Fantasy, Lore, & More: Lightning & Ember

Hi, I'm indie fantasy author, Melinda Kucsera, and in this episode, E.B. Repetto is joining me to talk about her book, Lightning & Ember. What's it about? Akina de Kitamura and her twin sister Miki, bastard children of a Volandrian nobleman and a Solterrean commoner, struggle for acceptance in Volandrian nobility. Despite their uncle's favor, they face scorn at the prestigious Academy.

http://melindakucsera.com/2024/07/13/fantasy-lore-more-lightning-ember/