Trying to mass-delete older posts and shares on my #ktistec instance without prior backup turned out to be a bad idea

The docker container running on my tiny 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS suddently started crashing and restarting every few seconds.

Turns out, ktistec is doing some(?) tasks in the background now, hogging the CPU and loads of RAM, which eventually leads to crashing the container. Creating a swapfile stabilized the situation until the cleanup(?) tasks are done. We will see whenever it finishes.

Remember: never start fiddling without doing prior backups...

I am actually really happy about how my mobile-tweaks for #ktistec turned out. There was a lot of #CSS hacking involved, but I am pretty happy with the results :)

Here's a little video of how it looks:

And I am back online! Looks like the move went fine. All posts and data is still here, federations appears to work as well. Neat! #ktistec

Alright, I booked a new #VPS at another host. Waiting for the initial setup, then I start transferring the first few sites, starting with #ktistec (let's see how easy a server migration is for an activitypub server :D). I'll be gone from here for a while (at least until DNS updates...)

My #ktistec tweaks repository (https://src.jayvii.de/pub/ktistec-tweaks/index.html) now also includes adjustments for small screens (for example, if you use ktistec on your smart-phone), such as pagination buttons that are easier to hit with your thumbs or an iconified navigation bar at the top, so it actually fits the screen. It's using the very nice feather icons!

Also added a docker-compose file for (even) easier deployment of #ktistec, as well as some notes on #backup management. The #CSS has also been improved in the meantime. I added deployment-notes for those too!

https://src.jayvii.de/pub/ktistec-tweaks

Started working on some tiny #ktistec end-user hacks: https://src.jayvii.de/pub/ktistec-tweaks

For now only a user #CSS theme i dupped "purple-ish": https://src.jayvii.de/pub/ktistec-tweaks/file/css/purpleish.css.html

Maybe more to come in the future. Or not, we'll see :)

This was actually a nice read!

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/27/the-boring-phone-stressed-out-gen-z-ditch-smartphones-for-dumbphones

While I would probably not go for a "dumb" or feature phone at the moment (particularly for messaging; SMS is an insecure technology that needs to die already), the overall sentiment does resonate a lot with me.

I've read a bunch of insightful blogposts, articles and long-reads over the past few months about this topic. I did switch my habits a fair bit, especially after reading this post by amolith, which I also enjoyed a lot as well: https://secluded.site/pull-vs-push-intentional-notifications/

What I concluded for me personally is, that I want to be a lot less online to "kill time". This especially affects social media (in my case, that means the #fediverse) and doom-watching YouTube videos.

I intentionally selfhost an ActivityPub server that has few bells and whistles and is overall somewhat geared towards a slower feed (it's called #ktistec, check it out and leave some warm words for its developer!). I check in once a day or every other day. Still have some nice interactions and interesting thoughts to read, but nothing dragging me back every few minutes or notifications popping up constantly.

I enjoy reading interesting articles and blogposts and of course news about hobby interests, software developments & releases, discussions and A LOT about international, European and German politics. I use mostly #RSS for that. Again, this also follows the idea of "pull, not push". My preferred RSS client #miniflux just sits there and keeps collecting all my neatly compiled sources. And whenever I get around to it, I pull it up and start reading what's interesting and discard the rest. It does not notify me, it does not stress me: pull, not push.

Lastly, I started to use the Do Not Disturb mode of my phone and computer very liberally. Mostly on a timer during most of the day (during work and from 8PM until waking up), allowing only phone calls to get through and only from people in my contact list. I told family and friends to call me, when they need something from me immediately or for important issues. Messages on #signal can take several hours (sometimes days) until I see them.

This has gotten me in a better place, I think. Still, there are some "left-over issus" I am still unhappy about, such as YouTube/VOD consumption, which is still way more than I would like. And also the fact that i constantly have my phone on me and often times also in my hand, rarely even during conversations, which is horrible!

But I decided to not stress myself about that too much and work on minor changes in a consistent manner, as I have during the past months and years. It is all a process.

I'm quite happy with my current setup of self hosted services on my VPS, including the fediverse server #ktistec, the RSS aggregator #selfoss and a bunch of tiny self written services & scripts (+ Websites).

All of which are as simple and low footprint as possible to make them easily maintainable. E.g. websites are completely static content, created with #hugo.

Feels like small islands that are isolated from outside factors, yet let me interact with others out there. That's probably how the internet must have felt like pre Web 2.0, when many people still had their own blogs, rather than using centralized, monopolistic platforms.

I am thinking about co-hosting more complex software together with others (and sharing costs...) like invidious. So if you are interested, send me an e-mail (contact + PGP avail. on my website)

Some observations about my #ktistec (1.0.0) trial:

• The setup was super easy and blazingly quick. Barely any load on my server hardware
• The UI is very smooth, simple and fast
• Rich message-composer, which however feels like it is constantly fighting me (on mobile)
• Posts can be edited any time!
• Visibility of posts cannot be set. Everything is "global"
• Media upload works fine. "Captions" are not the same as "alttext" in Mastodon.
• Searching for tags would be a nice feature
• No option for filtering my timeline, except for following and blocking accounts
• Posts of accounts appear from the moment onwards you interacted with them for the first time
• Above two observations make threads really awkward, because there is missing context
• The "metrics" feature is really, really nice!
• Obviously no limitation on post length(?)
• No API that I am aware of. makes cross posting, archiving, etc somewhat hard to achieve(?)
• The web-frontend embeds content from jquery, cloudflare and another random domain, which I feel like shouldn't be necessary (see screenshot)

All in all, there are many rough edges, but nothing that appears like it couldn't be overcome. Feels quicker nice, actually and I hope I have the skill set to actually contribute to this in the future!