#ktistec 10 hashtags

JayVii
JayVii

Since all my websites and web-tools use the phenomenal #SimpleCSS framework, I thought it would also make sense to create a theme for #ktistec using those exact colours. Of course, this is also available from my ktistec-tweaks, next to the old purpleish-theme, which I had before.

Also new is the separation of the card-style post theming, which is also shown in the screenshot below, in its own CSS file.

Image description: Screenshot of my Fediverse profile, which is cut straight in the middle. The left side shows the dark mode with orange-yellow highlights, the right side shows bright mode with blue highlights.
JayVii

Yesterday, I implemented #CSS rules in my "purpleish theme" within my #ktistec tweaks that change the display of posts in card style, similar to other social media. Also adds some very subtle shadow, which gives it a very slight 3D effect. This looks a lot more modern now, I think: https://src.jayvii.de/pub/ktistec-tweaks/commit/136cc0629bd23df71cc4969e23e6c252f847a9c6.html

Image description: Screenshot of a heavily styled ktistec instance, displaying a thread with three replies to some post. All posts appear within a dark grey card object with round corners. The reply cars are slightly indented and have a light gray border on the left side.
JayVii

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...

JayVii

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:

Bildschirmaufzeichnung vom 2024-08-08, 18-28-20.webm 187.76 KB
JayVii

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 :)

JayVii

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.

JayVii

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)

JayVii

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!

Image caption: a screenshot of the ublock origin overview on a smartphone. It shows the domains ktistec on social.jayvii.de connects to. There is cloudflare, hwcdn.net and jquery
JayVii

Currently trying #ktistec, a very simplistic single-user selfhosted #fediverse server. Not 100% certain it'll stick around, but if you care to follow, there you go.