This view of the Milky Way was captured at Sunset Crater National Monument near Flagstaff, AZ, USA in 2018.

My co-workers and I were taking the back way into Flagstaff from a job site at the end of the day and pulled off the road to stargaze. I forgot my tripod at the hotel, so I positioned the camera on the truck tailgate, aimed towards the Milky Way, and took a couple dozen photos. This 10-image composition was the result!

#Photography #Astrophotography #Astronomy #Astrodon #MilkyWay

Trees reflected in a pond in heavy fog, Wharton State Forest.
#landscape #photography #NJ #PineBarrens #fog #reflections #landscapePhotography #ReflectionPhotography

Now that the Akkoma server is running and the memory issues seem to have been sorted out, I turned my attention to the UI ...

While I do like some of the features that the default Akkoma UI provides, it felt a bit too busy and didn't allow the content to shine, IMO. So a little bit of messing around with CSS and I managed to get the UI tweaked enough to suit my requirements ....

I like it much better now 🙂
Tweaked Akkoma frontend with th…

Christmas At The Lake. As night approaches and snowflakes begin to fall, the decorated Christmas tree at the edge of the lake glows against the snow and reflects in the calm water. Also available with the words Merry Christmas in white script.

See it here -https://deborah-league.pixels.com/featured/christmas-at-the-lake-deborah-league.html

#mastodon #mastoart #AYearForArt #Christmas #art #artist #artwork #watercolor #fediart #holidays #winter #snow #night #christmaslights #trees #lake #landscape #wallart #homedecor #fedi22 #arte #blue #reflection

It is winter, so let's dream of summer on day 22 #ArtAdventCalendar with this watercolor painting of a peaceful landscape with three trees on a meadow beside a grainfield. Everything is quiet, the sky is blue ... relax.

See the Peaceful summer landscape watercolor painting here:
https://karen-kaspar.pixels.com/featured/peaceful-summer-landscape-watercolor-painting-karen-kaspar.html

#MastoArt #art #ArtMatters #AYearForArt #painting #FediArt #FediGiftShop #artist #arte #humanartist #watercolor #watercolour #landscape #interiordesign #landscapepainting #trees #peaceful

Elgol, Isle of Skye. A wild evening spent trying to not to get absolutely soaking, I failed for what it's worth. So so so wet #scotland #isleofskye #photography #landscape #nikon

GM!!
Simply Iceland 🇮🇸
#photo #photography #foto #landscape #landscapephotography #nikon #nikonphotography #nature #naturephotography #goodmorning #winter #iceland #sunrise #sunset #mountain

I did one final tune-up for my 1GB RAM Akkoma instance earlier today — I optimized the Posgres DB as per this Akkoma guide: https://docs.akkoma.dev/stable/configuration/postgresql/ and the help of PGTune: https://pgtune.leopard.in.ua/

Just adding a swap file (earlier) seemed to make things so much better and I can't say for certain that the Postgres tuning made a huge difference ... or not. But CPU load has certainly gone down a lot and the memory usage, while still substantial, is not always at a 100%. In fact, since the above changes, I don't believe memory usage has topped 90%.

So that's where it is after 24 hours of running the Akkoma server. This server incidentally has nothing else on it except for Akkoma 🙂

I'm adding some charts for the 24-hour period so that you can see how it's gone so far — where the lines plunge suddenly today is from around the time the swap file was added and the Postgres tuning done, one after the other with maybe 15 minutes interval in between.

#Akkoma #Ubuntu #Server #VPS
Graph showing CPU usage percent…
Graph showing memory usage perc…
Graph showing disk I/O for the …
Graph showing server load for t…

A Great Gray Owl sitting pretty for a portrait, Missoula, Montana, spring 2022. Photo by Chase Miller.

I'd like to spend the weekend focusing on the black, indigenous, and PoC creatives in the community here, in an effort to amplify their voices with the reach of this account.

If you'd like to share your work (this includes art, craft, writing, music, dance - anything creative), comment below; introduce yourself, say a bit about your work, and link to any of your posts that you'd like to highlight, including shop/support links! <3

(Fixed for increased inclusion <3)

Wanted: a true #lancashire accent!

My daughter's undergraduate linguistics project needs a recording of a person who was born in #lancashire and who has lived there throughout their life, so their vowels are unsullied by southern tones.

All that's required is a short recording of a word list.

The project is an analysis of the effect on vowel sound on people who are brought up in one part of the UK and later move elsewhere.

If you can help, please DM or reply. Otherwise pls boost Thanks!

Um bom dia para todos 😃🌿🎋🌧️🙏

A purple coneflower Echinacea Purpurea.

See more HERE: https://5-tanya-smith.pixels.com/featured/echinacea-purpurea-flower-tanya-c-smith.html

#Flower #FloralArt #ArtMatters #AYearForArt #prints #photography #PhotographyIsArt #mastoart #mastodonart

OK, time for an update on the state of the Akkoma server ... this is about the Akkoma server I set up, not the general state of Akkoma development 😛

After I set up Akkoma on a 1GB RAM VPS yesterday, I could see there were issues. I'd constantly see the Red "502 error" banner at the top of my Akkoma feed for example ... Plus, memory usage (and CPU) on the server was constantly pegged at 100%.

I read somewhere that the CPU usage might be a misleading stat since Akkoma (and Pleroma) uses "busy waiting" to fake out the OS into thinking it's busy when it's not. I don't know if this is what is happening or if the constant low RAM keeps the CPU busy, but either way, that's what I was seeing yesterday.

Somebody suggested that I should enable zRAM since they had good results with zRAM on a 1GB RAM server. So I thought I'd give it a go.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get zRAM enabled on my DigitalOcean VPS despite trying two separate guides on how to do so. Other info I read online seemed to indicate that this might be an issue that others had faced too. Is this DigitalOcean (or their VPS software) specific? I don't know. But I gave it a rest for the moment since I just didn't feel like struggling with it any longer.

I had noticed that my VPS didn't have a swap file set. While researching the zRAM stuff, I came across a DigitalOcean guide on setting up (and tweaking) a swap file for your VPS. I decided to try that and see if that would help ...

And all I can say is, "wow, it makes a huge difference!" 🙂

The CPU load which had been at about 80% - 90% most of the time went down to about 40%. While memory load didn't decrease as much, instead of being almost constantly at 100%, it's now down to about 95%. Best of all, I haven't seen a red "502" banner on my Akkoma feed since I added the swap file 🙂

So if you can add zRAM, it probably will help since it adds a compressed block in memory so that you can store more data in memory. But if you can't, and you don't have a swap enabled, do enable swapping since it makes a huge difference. Hopefully, this helps somebody 🙂

I talk a lot about my #writing but I also like to paint.

#art #artist #acrylic

Three of my favorite classes will be online & asynchronous--meaning you can take them from anywhere, without time zone weirdness.

Starts Jan. 25
Eight Weeks, Eight Drafts (about revision)
https://bit.ly/8Weeks8Drafts

Starts Mar. 15
Evil and Empathy
(about characterization)
https://bit.ly/EvilEmp

Starts Mar. 15
Finding the Right Voice
(about POV) https://bit.ly/VoiceLoft

#Writing #WritingCommunity #revision #editing #villains #characterization #narration #POV #perspective

An #introduction

I'm a #journalist, critic and #information activist; founding editor of https://flaminghydra.com https://popula.com and https://thebrick.house

I care about #library rights, #literature, #writing, #culture, #journalism, #publishing, #cinema and #freedom

Some of my favorite writers are Tom #Stoppard, Etsu Sugimoto, Henry #Fielding, Philip #Pullman, Sei #Shōnagon, Sybille Bedford, Klaus #Theweleit, Roberto #Bolaño, Agatha #Christie, Ernest Becker, P.G. #Wodehouse

A little more about me…

I'm a Silicon Valley escapee, now living about an hour from Lake Tahoe.

I lived in the Bay Area for about 20 yrs and worked at places like Apple, IBM, eBay, Yahoo, and various tech startups.

I've returned to my roots as a psychologist and solopreneur and provide coaching for leadership, career stuff, life, and business.

Got my Ph.D. from Rice University in Houston, TX.

I'm into #coffee #books #writing #art #photography #powerlifting #weighlifting #trailrunning

HEY, Y'ALL!

Second time on Mastodon.

I'm interested in #cooking, #writing about cooking, and #fundraising for #startup companies, especially in the #space sector. I helped launch a wildland firefighting company most recently.

Currently working my next startup that may help million of stroke victims in 2023+.

#Writer :: Website in my profile verified by Mastodon.

I enjoy #surfing #skateboarding #reading and being #outdoors in #Texas.

Husband of 25 years; 3 sons, almost grown.