#introduction I've hosted the Grammar Girl podcast for 16+ years. You may have hit my website searching for something like "semicolons." I also write books and teach online courses, and I'm an #entrepreneur, having founded the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

I often post about #usage, #editing, #writing, #etymology, #books, and other #wordnerd stuff. I'm a fan of #linguistics, #librarians, #podcasting, #journalism, #scifi, #fiction in general, and I'm on the #nanowrimo writers board.

Oops I forgot to write an #introduction post! "Oops I forgot" being a frequent refrain with me, in part because I have #ADHD, diagnosed at 40. (That rhymed!)

#Writing fiction is my curse and my haunting. I wrote fanfic for decades and still do sometimes, but my current focus is a novel series about a Korean queen who lived 2,000 years ago. You can find my rantings and struggles on the #DailyWriting or #LjWrites tags.

I have set up the WriteOut instance and am one of the mods, but I take most mod actions through the @nerd account. Don't hesitate to bring me your moderation and technical concerns, of course!

#introduction time.

Hello, friendly Mastodon!
I’m a retiree with a varied work bio, both public and private sector business + tech consulting, educator, former writer of proprietary tomes for hire, last employed in higher ed.

Wide interests in retirement but lately focused on #books, #writing, #DigitalArt, #WomensRights, and #Democracy.

Happy to be here and meet interesting people.

Etiquette appears to include an #introduction. Hi. Hello. How do you do? I'm Hollis. I used to make freeware #DOS games. Then I got older. Now I wait to retire so I can... make freeware DOS games? Professional #webdev & #devsec. Healthy #horror appetite born of unsupervised access to 80s VHS rental. #NewEngland. Sometimes I take my #motorbike to find #cryptids at night, later #writing about it in #nanowrimo

#retrogaming #adlib #msdos #amiga #motorcycles #pots #alphasmart #cnc #pixelart #cycling

The down or maybe up-side to moving instances: my #Introduction post no longer exists. What a great excuse to re-create it so I can pin it!

Hi, I'm Elissa. I do #Writing for a living (video games mostly, but also transmedia related to that), have designed & coded indie games for over a decade, do #Photography, use my #FlightSim setup a lot (GA in MSFS mostly, but also sometimes the Fenix A320), and I'm also a pretty obsessed #RetroGaming big box & hardware collector, especially from the '90s.

I thought I'd update my #introduction here.
I'm a Brazilian who fell in love with winter living in Canada. I'm reading #books all the time (#scifi and #fantasy) and I love #hiking, #running, #yoga, #writing, #heavymetal music, #science, #journaling, #tea and lots of quiet time. I have a background in Engineering and I work with spreadsheets and construction drawings as an estimator.

The proof of my newly released book, Smoochy and the Maga, arrived today and it looks great! Pictured here with my cat Smoochy. It’s a middle grade fantasy and it possibly has a character modelled after my cat. #caturday #cats #books #writing

Perhaps I need to do another #introduction here, since it has been some time since I did it last and new folks are arriving all the time. My regular forays here include composing #smallpoems, #writing #smallmoments, #remix, chatting about #songwriting and other connected sharing threads. By day, I am a #teacher #educator of adolescents. Some days are longer than others, if you know what I mean. If you write there, I'll try to respond. I try to keep my heart and mind open.

#introduction
Hi all! I've spent the last decade in the #translation biz and doing a little bit of #writing on the side, but I'd prefer for it to be the other way round. So I'm shifting priorities and, while we're at it, switching platforms as well. Hope to find a new #writingcommunity here (just in time for #NaNoWriMo), ideally with some #screenwriting chatter thrown into the mix.

And just so you know: If you enjoy pineapple on pizza, we can never be friends. 😜

#introductions time!

I'm Monzz, she/her. I've lived all around but I'm based in the #UK now.

During term time, I'm a #teacher who is lucky enough to run #roleplaying games with kids as part of my job.

After hours, I'm a massive #gamer (ask me what I'm playing at the moment), I'm a #scifi / #fantasy #worldbuilding nerd and I do a bit of #writing. Mid-pandemic, I adopted #houseplants for the first time. I've recently got into #synthpop after buying my first cassettes and am a big #musical geek too.

I like storytelling, gamification and imaginary worlds. I was raised by the internet in the mid 2000's and would like to rebuild some community links here.

[#introduction]

#Introduction

Just another #writer looking for shelter from the inevitable implosion of Twitter. Because how can I avoid #writing if I don't have social media distraction?

Currently halfway through a #middlegrade fantasy novel. Owned by a German Shepherd called Loki who mind-controls me using the ancient canine art of the puppy eyes.

Hope to find a great writing community to procrastinate with!

What exactly am I writing? I should probably mention that, seeing as someone just asked and I had to sum it up:

I'm currently working with the writer to adapt her play about a Korean American who returns to Korea and encounters much family drama, and self-publishing a strange Urban Fantasy story, which is actually a Modern Rural Fantasy, with a very sweary lady who is constantly waking up in weird places.

#writing #writer #steampunk #theatre #scifi #author #Australia

#introduction. Hi folkes! I'm a writer, board game designer, and general layabout currently living in Tasmania. Abandoning the sinking Twitter ship, I'm hoping to connect with other writers and designers, but mostly I'll be posting memes, writing prompts and ttrpg stuff.

#Writer #writing #ttrpg #BoardGames #dnd #science #scifi #fantasy

New #introductions time!

I'm kind of a mess -- but a friendly one!

I'm an author, a #narrator, and a moon #witch in training.

I talk a lot about my familiar, Merlin the cat.

I post a lot of #writing and #microfiction for free -- mostly cute creatures and monster romance and #cats.

I toot awkward true stories in #VicorvaStorytime

I love #reading #books #gaming #TTRPG #boardgames

I'm the eldest of seven siblings and nearly all of us are queer.

I'm very awkward but do say hello!

Hello! I'm old enough to remember the joy of Fidonet, BBSes and Usenet forums so migrating to #Mastodon feels like a good fit. I work with disadvantaged young people which is joyous and challenging. I live with my husband, a once-feral cat and a boisterous border collie. I enjoy #writing, #sketching, #knitting, #horror and #reading. I swear a lot, laugh a lot and do what I can to make things better. #Introduction #Introductions #newhere

[CW: soulful eye contact from cat and dog]

Here is my #introduction I love to see #humor and will participate in conversations on#music , #Poetry , #film and #art in general. Also #politics and #spirituality and like to have #law explained to me as well as #science

I like posting pics with some commentary now and then and love animal videos.

Other interests: #MusicHealing, #ClassicalMusic and #ClassicalGuitar (which I play). I am #writing and love #drawing #cartoons though not doing much of that lately.

Nice to meet you!

I figured out how to change servers, but not how to transfer my other posts, so let’s try this again!

I’m Mark. I’m into #mentalhealth, #neuroscience, #journalism, #writing, #media and more!

Love to connect! 🌟

#intro #introduction #introductions #firstday #newhere #new #newbie #start #learning #patience #writer #books #health #mentalhealth

Oops some folks from twt don't recognize me w/ the lipstick display pic, so here's an added #introduction!

I'm creating the #videogame Solace State for #Steam and #Xbox w/ a small team! It's a political #Queer #Cyberpunk #VisualNovel about empowering friends amid a biotech crackdown.

Though that occupies most of my time, I also love #Dance #Writing #DigitalArt #MediaStudies #RhythmGames #IndieGames #MDZS #MXTX #Fitness #WLW #novels #film #Hopepunk #GayStoriesWithGoodEndings

Nice to meet you!

I guess I should do an #introduction for this account since I'm hoping that (unlike my previous attempts) this instance will be around .... at least for a while?

My main account is @f and I've been using it for posting about all the various things that catch my fancy, but above all else, that account posts a lot of #MachineLearning content and I was thinking that I might use this account for more #Writing related stuff, especially since I can post longer form content here 🙂

So, if what you are interested in is #MachineLearning stuff and the daily posts from arXiv papers, then the other account is what you want to follow ... But if you're interested in #Writing and/or #TV and #Movie reviews, then this account is probably where I'll post those from now on 🙂

I've been trying to set up a Fediverse server for a while now.

I wanted something that was not heavy on resource usage and so I went with #GotoSocial and I got that working fairly easily. It was really easy to configure and light on resource usage. The trouble was that we (my wife and I) wanted a few features that GotoSocial doesn't have yet — like hashtag following and post editing.

So I started looking around again. I looked at multiple options but discarded each of them before even installing anything for one reason or another. The one I finally settled on to try was #Pleroma. My current VPS server runs #CentOS 7 and I there were no OTP builds of Pleroma for CentOS 7.

I tried compiling from source but that didn't work either — ran into compiling issues from the get go and couldn't find any references online which helped with the compiler issues.

Tried using Docker and was finally able to get it working fine on our VPS 😊 It seemed to work OK (except for not seeing to federate much at first) and had some nifty features. While it did have post editing, it didn't have hashtag following.

I started looking again and found #Akkoma which was a fork of Pleroma and which apparently had a faster development cycle and more features. Akkoma had hashtag following in addition to post editing and so it looked as if that was the one we wanted ...

Unfortunately, installing via Docker wouldn't work 😕 Or rather, it would install fine but you couldn't connect to the server and there didn't appear to be any information about what the issue was or any indication as to how to debug the issue.

I tried the same Docker install locally on macOS and it worked fine and I could connect immediately to the server. So it seemed (barring any info to the contrary) that this issue was on CentOS 7?

I thought I'd try compiling from source again after multiple tries with Docker on CentOS 7 but ran into the same issues with compiling that I'd experienced before with Pleroma. No matter what I tried (and I tried multiple versions of Erlang and Elixir), I kept hitting issues.

So I decided to set up a new VPS and install an OTP version of Akkoma since that seemed the easiest option. I had read about how Akkoma needed less resources and could run comfortably on a $4 VPS and so got a VPS with 512M RAM that was running #Ubuntu.

Now the question was which version of Ubuntu to go with. The OTP builds were available only for Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) but being the glutton for punishment that I am, I tried to give it a try with Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) ...

The installation went fine, but similar to my CentOS 7 installs, I could not connect to the server. Since 22.10 was not supported, I had half expected this to happen. So switched over to Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). But no go, same issue with the server not working.

Dropped down a few tiers further to Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) and I was finally able to connect to the server. I was fairly happy at this point but it was not to last! Turns out that the issue all along might have been that the 512MB of RAM wasn't enough but Ubuntu 20.04 would at least let me get started before it ran out of memory but if I tried to do anything on the server, it would still crash out.

So I upgraded the server RAM to 1GB and tried again ... Success!

I was finally able to run the server, configure it and start doing some stuff. But again, after using it for about 10 - 20 minutes, I started noticing failures. Checked the server resource usage and memory usage was pegged at a 100%!

So, yes, Akkoma and Pleroma might be lighter on resource usage but not by much since you'd still need more than 1GB of RAM for a server with just two users on it. I love the features of Akkoma, but I'm not sure if I can justify the cost for another server if I have to plonk down the cash for something with more resources than 1GB of RAM ...

I probably should look at ways to optimize the RAM usage and I guess that's the next step to try, but just wanted to put down this tale of woe (and to try the really long text feature in Akkoma at the same time) before I did that 🙂