Sorry man. Feels like 2024, no more no less. Friendship and willingness to be around people (in person) is an old fart thing. Nowadays I only invite or make plans with my really close friends. Friends that are more family than friends.

Those casual friends we used to have are gone for good between laziness and socializing on-line, whatever that is.

If you were my neighbor and invited me I would've totally attended and decimated those delicious quesitos!

It is incredibly expensive. I only buy the ones I need for academic reasons... And you can imagine the artwork on those 😂

There's plenty of second hand libraries here that make deals like buy 3 for 5€. That plus public libraries is what keeps me reading to be honest!

Ping just to see if you found something relevant/interesting! :)

Wow! That's one thing I miss when reading on e-books. It's extremely convenient, but I miss those treats and the whole experience of holding a beautiful volume!

You're welcome! I hope you find something you like :)

Fair point lol I don't find the "discover" feature attractive, so I've been using the Openreads app just to keep track of what I've read year to year (a great app, by the way!)

Edited to add that maybe different instances of bookwyrm have different ways to review your books? I may be wrong about this, but I think it is worth checking if you really want to try an open alternative.

https://bookwyrm.social/ is what I've been using. I'm not an avid tracker though.

I tried thestorygraph, liked the idea but I don't like my readings to be guided by an algorithm and also I don't feel like paying for a platform, especially if I'm not using the main feature (the recommendations)

You could read Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson. It's an essay(ish) book about taste in music, funny to read and not too long (~200pg I'd say).

About the comfort zone, you could try and read something about contemporary problems and predicaments. A poison like no other talks about plastics in our everyday life (not fun), or something really old like Seneca's On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (~100pg)

We're suffering a serious drought here though, even Barcelona's tap water might be not available this summer! We should split our sunny and rainy days! We visited Frankfurt and Heidelberg and loved the cold and rainy days… which makes sense: we barely had any winter this year 😅

You make some good points, and being overwhelmed after trying to bite too much at once is something I'm used to, sadly, so I'll try to think about how to approach all this. Probably pre-configured hosting as you said, so I can see the website running sooner, and we'll then see how it goes or what calls my attention!

So, happy tinkering… Keep us posted in case you start another low-tech blog coming from Spain to us. And don’t let any complexity stop you 😊

That would be so cool! I don't know much about practical stuff, but I plan on putting my reflections about morals and society online. It would be nice to have some kind of low-tech website like that and inspire some conversation on the topics. I'll keep you guys posted for sure!

PS: I'm pretty sure I had a coffee with Kris, but I didn't know about the website back then. I thought it was a cool guy, we had a good time (well me at least lol).

Probably, because only two of them decimated a whole plant here. They're hungry little buddies, so much so that I actually captured them and keep feeding them with veggies leftovers lol

That's so cool! I've taken care of cabbage loopers three times now, and it's so cool to see them do their thing. My fiancée is not a fan though since both her and the caterpillars love our Swedish ivies lol

I'm all about free use and distribution of all kind of content, but also a big believer of patronage and supporting what actually made a difference in your life (because you learnt from it or just because it brought you enough joy, so to speak). I will definitely chip in!

I like how posts and replies tend to be longer here than in other platforms. It feels more like talking to actual people, and makes Lemmy less noise polluted I would say, so your reply was a very welcomed read!

When I was a kid I was really into computers, so I met Linux back then. Nowadays, I just use it when I'm fed up with Windows or if I need to get work done since it's distraction free and workspaces and hot corners make my life so much easier when working with multiple documents :)

Saved the website for later on!

It is true that I thought it would be easier to know what learning is essential to me and not. I find myself now saving stuff for later and with loads of new stuff that I didn't even know that existed before haha So far it's fun though! I'll probably stick to python and learn a bit of HTML and CSS for now.

I think neither of that is low-tech. The chips and software itself are state-of-the-art technology. From my perspective you’d need to add the “low”-aspect with some context. Make them solar-powered or host a blog on those services.

This is something I plan on doing. Going solar is something I definitely want to do for my website and, to be honest, I want to learn more about electronics for that same reason. It would be a sin not to since I live in Spain lol

Thanks for the explanation! Once you give everything a meaning it's just another language I guess lol

I'm not on a Mac, but I do have a PC running Ubuntu so maybe that works too (?)

I'll be looking for those resources you listed this week since we have some days off and see what I can come up with. With that and all the other suggestions I think I'm ready to do some stuff, build some break some and see how it goes haha

Thanks again!

It would be nice to just have a blog up and running! This morning I stumbled upon this website https://alexw.nyc/, and I would be so happy to be able to make a website like that one, to be honest.

Being able to host a matrix server o a pixelfed instance for me, family and friends is something that would be awesome, but probably too much for someone like me, at least for now. So I'd rather go with the website.

PS: Whenever I see something like this I panic lol

(egwhile true ; do nc -l -p 80 -c ‘echo -e “HTTP/1.1 200 OK\n\n $(date)”’; done)

Automate the boring stuff with Python sounds like something I would enjoy reading, even if it's a bit outdated. Mozilla's website seems a good approach for me too, since it starts from complete beginners.

I don't think I have the time to learn much about computer science theory if it's not something mandatory. Linux, on the other hand, is something I'm somewhat familiar too (I've used it a lot for uni and such as a “distraction free” OS haha) and it looks like any server that I could run on a Raspberry or similar is going to be running Linux.

Thanks for the information!

My brother-in-law gave me a Raspberry P1, so I might be able to do something! I'll be checking those communities, thank you!

As for Arduino, I bought years ago an Arduino Super (?), but it doesn't have wifi nor bluetooth is it essential, or I could use this one? I'll have a look at those sensors. It came with a little screen, so I might be able to do some of that!

Probably because of my background I'm used to learning and understanding something before getting my hands dirty, so to speak. This might prove as a good chance to try another approach. Thank you!

Since I don't quite understand how all this works (in fact, my field are humanities and sociology lol) I can only talk about what I've seen surfing. A website that I could host and requires little to run sounds super fun to me and also a nice way to dip my toes in this world, although I might be wrong about that.

I recently discovered the Fediverse and matrix, and thought it would be neat to try to host my own stuff. But again, I don't know how literate you need to be to do any of that, and I'm probably a few months away from even understanding the basics.

Thanks for the reply! I'll check if I can find the book in the public libraries nearby!

Yes it does!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10700824/