Tag: Blog

NEW! The RyanSchultz.com Blog Joins the Fediverse

The various platforms of the fediverse, as well as other federated networks, visualised as a tree (image by Per Axbom, source)

Today, I am happy to announce that my blog has finally joined the fediverse! I have installed a brand-new ActivityPub plug-in that was just made available today for hosted, WordPress.com blogs like this one (it’s been available for self-hosted, WordPress.org blogs for a while now).

I’m going to let the developer, Matthias Pfefferle, do the explaining (here’s his full post):

Exciting times are here for all WordPress.com users! The revolutionary ActivityPub feature is now available across all WordPress.com plans, unlocking a world of engagement and interaction for your blog. Your blogs can now be part of the rapidly expanding fediverse, which enables you to connect with a broader audience and attract more followers.

Let’s dive into what this means for all WordPress.com blogs.

The fediverse consists of federated platforms like Mastodon, which are networks of independent websites or servers that can communicate with each other while still operating individually. It’s much like email; you can send emails to users with accounts on different services (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), yet all of them can interact seamlessly. Similarly, federated platforms enable users to follow, share, and interact with content across different services in a unified network.

ActivityPub is a WordPress plugin that facilitates seamless integration between your blog and a host of federated platforms, including Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, and more [see the diagram at the top of this blogpost]. This plugin empowers your readers to follow your blog posts on these platforms. 

In addition, replies to your posts from these platforms are automatically turned into comments on your WordPress blog, creating a more interactive and dynamic conversation around your content. Synchronicity for the win!

So, if you (like me) are on Mastodon, you can now choose to follow my blog in exactly the same way that you would follow any other Mastodon user! My blog’s username is:

@ryanschultz@ryanschultz.com

And the URL to my blog’s profile is:

https://ryanschultz.com/@ryanschultz

Matthias goes on to say:

Your WordPress blog can now become a profile for the fediverse. This means your readers can follow you and receive all the latest posts from your blog directly on their preferred platform. More so, they can engage in enriching conversations by replying to your posts, with their replies reflecting as comments on your blog post, creating a synchronized and interactive experience.

Now, this is all very new to me, so I’m probably still going to have to work out a few kinks in the system, but I’m actually pretty excited! For now, I have decided to keep the older WordPress plugin that I was using to automatically post my blogposts to my personal Mastodon account, which is:

@ryanschultz@mastodon.social

or, if you prefer the URL to my personal profile:

https://mastodon.social/@ryanschultz

You may notice that I have also upgraded my social media icons in the left-hand menu of the RyanSchultz.com blog (under the option to subscribe via email to my blog), adding a much better-looking Mastodon icon, which links directly to my personal Mastodon profile above. I still have to figure out the best way to integrate what are now two Mastodon profiles—one for my personal account, and one for my blog! For the moment, I will continue with both.

This wonderful, whimsical image is by DoodlebrinksArt, and you can purchase it here.

UPDATED: Playing Barbie in Second Life

HOUSEKEEPING NOTICE: I am off sick from work today, treating a pinched nerve in my neck with rest, heat, some strong painkillers, and muscle relaxants, which is another reason why I have gone missing from this blog. My body is a bit of a mess right now, folks! Working at a keyboard (both at home and at work) makes it worse, to the point where I have numbness and tingling along my right arm and hand.

So I have been visiting my local physiotherapist once or twice a week over the past month, and I have received some daily exercises to stretch my tight neck, shoulders, and back muscles. I’ve also bought a new mattress, new pillows, and a new backpack, and I also had a professional fitting for a new, ergonomic desk chair for work, which I hope will arrive soon.

Thank you for your patience. I currently have about 20 draft blogposts in various stages of editing, on a variety of topics, and I hope to be back sooner rather than later.

The White Pearl Salon (which I wrote about here) has thoughtfully provided this splendid Barbie box photo prop for Vanity Fair!

Unless you have been living under a very large rock (or perhaps somewhere in a dark cave), you are probably aware that there is a Barbie movie being released today. And—let’s face it—a lot of what I, and hundreds of thousands of other people, do in Second Life is play with digital Barbies of various kinds. (Hey, no judging; we all have our weird, obsessive little hobbies that help keep us sane! I still get a lot of personal satisfaction from completely styling a wide variety of Second Life avatars from head to toe, as I have written about before on this blog.)

One of the keys to the success and longevity of Second Life, as its blow-out 20th anniversary celebration wraps up, is the lucrative fashion ecosystem which has sprung up around the platform, with tens of thousands of creators selling mesh bodies, heads, eyes, hairstyles, apparel, footwear, tattoos, etc. There are even stores which specialize in fingernails and toenails for your avatar! All this contributes to a vibrant economy with an annual GDP of US$650 million, which is more than some real-world countries (e.g. American Samoa, Dominica, Tonga, and Micronesia).

One thing that I have been paying attention to is that nothing ever stays the same in Second Life fashion. Much like the real world, fashions, fads, and trends come and go. At one time Catwa ruled the mesh head market, but now it seems that everybody you run into is rocking a LeLutka Evo X mesh head. I myself have purchased an Inithium Khara mesh body for my main avatar, Vanity Fair, who normally wears Maitreya Lara (there was a one-hour flash sale at the Inithium Event, where I was able to snap it up for L$1,000, and you know I love a good bargain!).

Vanity is wearing the Khara mesh body in the picture above, along with the Catwa Kimberly head she has been wearing for many years now (some things never change). All I had to do was buy a new, matching Bakes on Mesh skin at Vanity’s skin store, The Skinnery, and she was all set to go!

Anyway, my neck is still bothering me, so I will end this blogpost here. I’ll be back soon, I promise!

UPDATE July 22nd, 2023: I neglected to mention that many stores on the grid are giving away new group gifts or throwing special sales to mark the release of the Barbie movie. For example, the womenswear store Glitzz has a new Barbie-themed group gift out, and they are marking all pink items in the store to only L$50 each, from July 20th to 30th, 2023. If it’s pink, hot pink, bubblegum pink, or blush, it’s on sale! The Glitzz store group costs L$300 to join, but you can pick up many previous group gifts on their generous gift wall:

The group gift wall at Glitzz

The Barbie-themed Baby Set outfit includes the top, the matching skirt, and the (rigged) pink neck ribbon, and comes in sizes to fit the following mesh bodies: Maitreya Lara, Petite & Smash Boobs; Meshbody Legacy, Perky & Push-Up; Inithium Kupra; eBody Reborn, Juicy & Waifu; and Belleza GenX Classic & Curvy.

At the entrance to Glitzz is a large sign announcing their Pink Week sale; all pink items are only L$50 each!
I even found a Barbie Dream House for this picture and the next, to show off this Glitzz group gift!
Of course, you’ve gotta make sure that your feet are always ready for high heels! 😉

UPDATE July 23, 2023: Another store with a Barbie-themed group gift is Ewa Boutique, which you can pick up if you join their store group for L$300. There’s also numerous other group gifts on their gift wall, plus a Daily Prize Board with a L$400 gift card!

Ewa’s Barbie outfit includes everything you see here: top, skirt, belt, shoes, purse, even the funky hot pink rectangular fur earrings! The purse includes the Bento arm pose shown in the picture. Sizes: Maitreya Lara, Meshbody Legacy, Belleza Freya & Isis, and Slink Hourglass.

Housekeeping Notice: My Blog, WordPress, Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin

I have been tearing my hair out since last night, when I noticed that my blog, which normally looks like this:

Suddenly started looking like this, with all the fonts wrong:

Now, I am very picky about my blog, and this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy! I spent half an hour in live text chat with a WordPress support person early this morning, and it turns out that I had to turn off two plug-ins I regularly use with Firefox, Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin (which I use to block trackers on most websites as I surf the web).

Privacy Badger is a program from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It’s a browser extension which stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. uBlock Origin is an excellent, free-and-open-source (FOSS) ad content blocker, available for several of the most widely used browsers, including: Chrome, Chromium, MS Edge, Opera, Firefox and all Safari releases prior to 13. I can recommend both programs highly, but I sometimes run in trouble (like I did yesterday evening and this morning), when something stops working or doesn’t work properly, and I forget to check to see if either Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin is the source of the problem.

So, if you are visiting my blog, and it looks like the second picture instead of the first, try turning off uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger (or both) if you have them installed. (There are other ad blocker plug-ins like Adblock Plus, which might cause the same problem. I no longer use Adblock Plus, because I find uBlock Origin to be superior in every way.)

New Year, Now What? Taking Time to Figure Out My Next Steps for this Blog

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

Happy New Year! Time for an update.

As you might have noticed, my formerly feverish pace of blogging has slowed to a glacial crawl lately. There are a number of reasons for that, among them the fact that I am extremely busy with my full-time paying job as an academic librarian, where among many other projects I am juggling, I am working on a project to set up a virtual reality lab in one of my university’s libraries.

But another reason is that I am tired. Bone tired, after almost three years of pandemic living. I also turn 59 this month, and I have had my fair share of health issues (Type II diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, obesity, etc.). Because I have these underlying health issues which would put me at risk of a severe case of COVID-19 if I were to become infected, I have basically upended my former life in an effort to stay safe and healthy.

I am quintuple-vaccinated, I still practice elaborate social distancing wherever possible, and I wear a facemask when I am indoors in public spaces. I have a rule I have not broken in almost three years now: no indoor restaurant dining! (I do meet up with friends during the summer to enjoy some outdoor patio dining, however. Obviously, that’s not an option the rest of the year, up here in wintry Winnipeg!)

Thankfully, my employer (the University of Manitoba) is listening to the scientists, and still has imposed an indoor facemask mandate on both its campuses for this Winter term—a lone island of sanity in my city, I fear (of course, healthcare settings like hospitals and my doctor’s and dentist’s offices still require masks).

I really only leave my apartment to go to work, visit my parents at their life lease condo across town, and pick up my prescriptions at my local pharmacy (where tomorrow I will be getting my Pfizer bivalent booster shot!).

I have also gotten into the habit of ordering my groceries online via Walmart, then picking them up Sunday mornings between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m., when it is not busy. They load up my car, while I stand and watch (masked of course), and I drive away; it works well, and I see no reason to change it. During the last three years, I have set foot into a grocery store exactly once.

Anyway, long story short, I’m not sure where I’m going right now, and how this blog fits into everything else that I’m doing. So I am going to take some time to figure things out. In the meantime, there won’t be very much blogging, I’m afraid.

When I do have something to announce, I will let you know! Thank you all for your patience.