@Rycaut Yeah, I've been on LinkedIn since the early 2000s (I think). I've never really found it to be useful, but I keep hoping 😛

(Plus there are a few people on there from various places I worked at, or from other social platforms that they are no longer on, that I want to keep in touch with.)

But probably time to give up on LinkedIn and look elsewhere 🙂

@AngelaPreston I get how you must feel. I sometimes withdraw completely from social media because of things like this, but I think your approach is better. Once you tell them how you feel, they'll either learn to be better because they understand how their behaviour affects others, or will (hopefully) go away and bother somebody else?

@Rycaut I hadn't been there in a while. Thought I'd drop by since I'm trying to find some work ... turns out that the only kind of work I can get is working for scam princes 😛

So, an interesting thing (for varying values of interesting 😛) happened today ...

There's a service request for a book editing job. The prospective client? The Minister of Finance for the UAE.

I was like, "Hmm ... why would he want a document edited on LinkedIn? He's probably got staff to do stuff like this."

I look at his profile (shown in image) and it seems to indicate that he has 4.5 million followers. Must be legit right?

But hang on! Lower down it shows his activity as having 2 followers. And his activity extends only to like 12 hours of responding to three different accounts.

Look further down and you notice that his experience listing is what shows up at the top making it look like he's got 4.5 million followers 😛

So obviously a fake/spam/scam account. But if you just look at the number at the top, you could be fooled. I've already reported them to LinkedIn. But just posting this in case they take in somebody else ....
Screenshot of fake LinkedIn acc…

@gaveen I agree with you both about the genie being out of the bottle and the whole don't-pay-attention-to-it-and-it'll-go-away mindset not being successful.

As you said, you do have to enage with it, know where it fails us, and then call it out. That's the only way to affect any meaningful change.

I've always got a side-project going on that interests me in some way. But most of the time, I forget about the side-project after I get it working to my satisfaction 😛

This one's one such project.

My nephew kept sending me images of similar puzzles that he'd solved, trying to stump me. That's how I got interested.

I found the app/game that he was using and realized that the app had a curated list of puzzles that the developer had created. You could only play about 40 puzzles and you were done.

I wondered if it was possible to create unlimited puzzled by dynamically generating the puzzles on the go. I gave it a shot and it was possible ... and this app was the result.

But once the problem was solved, I forgot about that project and moved on to the next project 😛 I just remembered the project today and am wondering if perhaps I should package it up and put it up on an app store or two ...

I don't know, there's so many interesting projects to work on. So is it worthwhile spending the time on bundling and distributing an app which might go nowhere?

What do YOU think? 🙂
An image of a game screen showi…

Someone's kindness made me cry today.

My son's been attending a kids sewing class at a local fabric store.

The owner saw how much he loves it, and had offered to sell us a machine at a discount for him to use at home, but it was still out of reach for us financially. I told her we'd save up for it for Christmas.

Today she gave us that sewing machine free. She said she wanted him to be able to continue to sew at home.

Enabling his passion is such a priceless gift and I'm incredibly thankful.

MacWhisper has this new Parakeet model which transcribes audio at astonishing speeds. I created subtitles for a 30 minute video, which normally takes about 15 minutes, in under 1 minute!

#MacWhisper #Transcribing #Subtitles

"Tourist Family" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34915705) is a movie that's well-worth watching — humours, heart-warming, and full of heart.

I started watching it due to the Sri Lanka connection and didn't expect much but it easily exceeded my expectations.

#Movies #Tamil

Watching "Jaat" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32223398) at the moment.

All the hallmarks of Indian movies these days — harkening to mythology, disregard for facts, Sri Lankans with Sinhala names with Tamil mothers and non-Sinhalese named brothers etc.

Some of the characters who are supposedly Tamil can barely speak Tamil. The lone Sinhalese-named guy apparently has no idea where he really comes from ... except from a place where they chew the scenery up 😛

His wife strips women and sneers at their plight as if she has no clue that she's a woman as well.

It's a movie with logic and emotional holes that jsut drips with useless patriotism. I do have to wonder if India is heading the same way as America ...

#Movies #Hindi #HodgePodge

@rakontisto For me, the trouble is that I'm often accused of trying to emulate Adams when I'm actually trying to emulate Pratchett 🙂

@davemark Umm ... wouldn't a molecule of water only have two Hydrogen atoms in it? 🙂

Never mind, I instinctively read that as "entire universe" rather than solar system ... 😛

@gaveen I know who you mean (the Synology person). I've known him a long time, I think like the late 80s ... 🙂

@gaveen It was all fine till you said "It's hot and humid here" 😛Looking at coming back for a long(ish) stay and that kind of fills me with (mild) dread ...

But I guess if you want to live in paradise, you gotta put up with the heat? 😀

I'm looking for a web or full stack developer to join my awesome team. This would be a part time (~20 hours a week) independent contractor position for a fully remote team working on a website primarily for the Jewish community.

We're using Django, htmx, and Tailwinds, along with other smatterings of technology, and so familiarity with some or all those platforms/frameworks would be a plus. Devops experience, or at least strong familiarity with container based deployments are a plus.

If you have any questions, feel free/encouraged to ask and I'll clarify or specify anything I can!

If you're interested, please DM me with some information about you and we'll go from there.

#GetFediHired

Hello mastodon. I could use some help. #fedihire

TL;DR: I was laid off a while ago, and the traditional "go scour job sites and apply" is currently broken. So - let's try social media. Please boost if you are willing, or pass this along if you know someone who needs what I can offer.

I'll be brief: I'm a very experienced System Reliability Engineer, with a track record of dependability and scalability. I take people's problems - stability, uptime, scale, cost, durability, speed, security and attack resistance - and fix them. I have the dubious honor of generally costing less to employ than I save my employer. If everything is perfect - you don't need me. But if you do, you may need me badly.

I'm available. Drop me a note.

I am located in Ventura, California, and strongly prefer remote work. I don't require visas or special accommodation to work in the US.

Here's a resume: https://www.bortels.us/TBortels_Resume_2025_public.pdf

I’m urgently looking for work 🚨
Engineering manager or staff programmer

20 years ruby/rails
30 years of web dev/design
5+ years of eng mgmt

I’m based in Portland, Oregon
Open to local or remote work

#GetFediHired

https://linkedin.com/in/veganstraightedge

Been busy getting ready to move, but we managed to get another video done about how to greet people in Sri Lanka in the local languages 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrRY_n-7Uc

#SriLanka #YouTube #MultiLanguage #Travel

@AngelaPreston This sounds really interesting. Bookmarking for later so that we (the wife and I) can try it out 🙂 Thanks, Angela!

Whelp. Just got let go. They actually disabled my account while I was in the exit interview. Corporate IT is _cold_.

Anyway, I guess I'm looking for a new position maybe even be #FediHired ?

I have to live in Cove, AR with my disabled family, so it will probably need to be 100% remote.

I'd prefer to keep doing #Haskell or try out #PureScript in production, or even something more exotic like #Agda or #Idris