At the moment, I feel like I’m at a creative crossroads when it comes to making stuff online, and I thought that by typing it out, I might solidify some clarity. Apologies for the self-indulgent post, but for those of you who follow my online stuff, you’re probably used to it.

These days, I’m enjoying creating podcasts with my friends (Ours is the Theory, Space Virgins and Freebooters), rambling videos on Hamish’s PeerTube instance, voice notes and text posts for my website.

And these are just the things I’m particularly excited about. I do sometimes feel like I’ve spread myself a little bit thin. For those who have trouble keeping up - and I imagine that’s just about everyone - I keep a master feed for almost everything I create on my website.

I’ve recently been jumping into the realm of short-form video designed for viewing on mobile devices, which I feel all kinds of conflicted about. On the one hand, taking footage, refining it down to a short, distilled segment, and having it enjoyed by a sizable audience is satisfying; but conversely, it also feels like I’m feeding the cheapest, most harmful hemisphere of contemporary media: the Instagram/TikTok/Snapchat/YouTube Shorts monster. Now, to be clear, I’ve only seriously posted to Instagram and YouTube Shorts during this experimental phase with short-form video, but it’s a part of the internet with a lot of overlap between platforms. In fact, there’s something a little liberating about YouTube not being the only name in town when it comes to online video. TikTok really dethroned a champion there, and it did so without copying YouTube, but by offering a different paradigm. Now YouTube follows TikTok’s style with Shorts, as does Instagram with Reels.

I’ve made short-form videos from clips of podcasts I’m on, and they’ve been doing rather well. A video from Ours is the Theory has reached over 170,000 views in an incredibly short space of time. I don’t like to think I create stuff for the views, but I’d be lying if I said that didn’t entice me somewhat. In my previous blog post, I talked about how I try to use the platforms I create for. It just feels more appropriate to me. But in doing that, I’ve really come to feel that the mainstream short-form media platforms are just a cancer on media and society. Sounds extreme, but it’s truly how I feel.

With that in mind, people I know IRL do enjoy my content, and short-form platforms are a really accessible way for them to enjoy what I make without committing three hours to a podcast.

So much of the content there is rage-bait, trying to ‘dunk’ on someone or a group of people, or some kind of right-wing grift. But it’s not just the outright insidious content that makes me dislike short-form video platforms. It’s the fact that they’re designed to treat content so thoughtlessly: to entertain you for a few seconds without ever letting you absorb anything you’ve watched. It’s media with minimal consideration. The most disposable kind of media.

Now, I’m not saying everything ever made needs to be a refined work of art. I really like the medium of talk radio, livestreams, and lo-fi podcasts; but they still foster a meaningful connection with their audience. They can give you something to think about, make you feel safe with a comfortable voice, or allow you to feel connected to a community. It’s almost conversation, and in that sense I think it holds a great deal of value as a form of media - something that short-form video does not.

So, on the one hand, I feel that short-form video allows me to refine my longer-form content into something more accessible, whilst also harkening back to the old-school days of YouTube and its 10-minute videos. On the other hand, it’s feeding a corporate monster which is poisoning people, fuelling hateful ideologies, and fracturing our society for the sake of corporate profits.

There’s also the ‘punk’ angle to this. One of the things I really like about the Fediverse is that it takes a stand against the corporate bullshit. It offers us a way to take the best parts of what we have and find a way forward free from the oligarchs of today’s corporate internet. It might not have the numbers that the corporate world brings in, but then again, it isn’t trying to lure people in with manipulative tricks and aggressive expansion. It’s just a group of people making stuff on the internet for each other, and that’s kinda everything to me.

Of course, the Fediverse offers its own short-form platform in the shape of Loops, which I’ve been playing around with. It’s good - definitely the least toxic of the platforms - but at this point I really question whether it’s where my heart is.

One of the things that the non-corporate parts of the internet have to contend with is that, because of their less exploitative nature - because they’re not selling your data, trying to get you hooked on hate, or acting as a loss leader to undercut their competition - we have to actually pay for the resources we use. Sometimes that’s crowdfunding, sometimes that’s grants, and sometimes that’s just us stumping up the cash. It’s a world that’s truly ours, but that also comes with something of a bill.

One of the ways Google managed to conquer internet video for so long was that, for many, many years, it was operating at a huge loss whilst offering practically unlimited space for video hosting and impressively high resolutions. The fact that this wasn’t more widely questioned baffles me, because, as we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Especially on the internet.

Google spent billions keeping that market held down, with success. Yes, TikTok and Twitch have cut away at its market share, but it’s still the biggest player in town. I will say that, in addition to all this, YouTube offers value in ways that other platforms don’t. There’s a huge library of great video content, spanning decades, available for free. Some of the best stuff I ever watch on a screen is on YouTube, and I absolutely can’t deny that.

I also find YouTube Shorts to be somewhat less insidious than the other short-form platforms. Arguably, that’s because the YouTube algorithm knows me better than the others.

So, when it comes to the Fedi, resources are more of a factor. Audio podcasts and text posts are much more affordable to host than long-form video. Short-form video seems to have something of a place on the Fedi because it’s not eating up as much space - especially if it’s lower resolution. Not everything has to be 4K, as YouTube would have you believe.

Mastodon and other Fedi platforms (not Loops or PeerTube) allow users to delete posts after a set number of days. This can be great for easing the load on servers’ disk space. I will often post a short video directly to the Fedi, only for it to live for a week before being removed. By then, whoever’s about and would want to watch it has seen it, before it goes back into its archive.

But if I’m making short videos for the Fedi, does it need to be vertical video? How does an old-school 4:3 video sound, or even just 16:9, or a 1:1 square?! Because the Fedi’s paradigm is infinitely more fluid, we can play by our own rules.

Perhaps it’s time to start closing up this ramble, but it definitely feels good to get some of this stuff written down. Thank you, dear reader, for putting up with me. If it’s any consolation, every word of this rambling nonsense has been written by yours truly, with no help from LLMs/AI.

Maybe it’s time I worried less about fitting into the corporate template and allowed myself to follow my roots a little more. Writing this down has helped, but I’d love to hear what you think. Genuinely, so feel free to talk to me on the Fedi or drop me an email; contact details are on my website.

What are shorts? They’re known by different names across platforms, but they’re short, (usually) vertical videos. They’re designed mostly for viewing on phones and can be found on a number of platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok (and Facebook et al), Loops.video (the Fediverse one), and probably Snapchat. Different platforms have different stipulations for what constitutes a short, but the style is the same across platforms. They’re also usually shown in quick succession, with the playlist decided by the algorithm™, with the user swiping through videos whenever they want to see a new one.

I try and use most social media platforms I make content for, so I know first-hand how addictive shorts are. Different platforms have different levels of insidiousness, and whilst I haven’t tried all of the shorts platforms, here’s a quick league table from best to worst, based simply on how toxic each platform is.

1. Loops: Whilst it has all the usual shortcomings of Fedi video platforms, ie a shortage of content, it’s by far the least addictive and has the least toxic rage-baiting content of all the platforms. In fact, many of the videos on Loops are just neat little home videos, and I find that so much more human than the clout-chasing platforms like Insta and TikTok.

2. YouTube: YouTube has an advantage in that it already knows what kind of videos I like to watch and can adjust its shorts playlist accordingly. It also shows me a lot of shorts from channels I’m already subscribed to, which I like. It’s still somewhat easy to get lost in the scrolling, although some of that might just be the nature of the media format.

3. Instagram: I’ve been enjoying Instagram Reels somewhat. There are a lot of interesting hobby and craft videos, but also a fair amount of AI slop, which really does just feel yucky. Say what you want about the legitimate uses of AI, generating artistic media just isn’t one of them. It’s just people using LLMs to churn out algorithm-appealing content to farm viewers and subscribers for no sensible reason I can fathom. Periodically, it’ll also try and push right-wing talking points on me in a way that makes me feel really uncomfortable.

4. TikTok: TikTok can fuck right off. By far the most disgusting and insidious platform I’ve used. Whilst it offers up more variety of content than the rest, it isn’t shy about throwing rage-baiting videos, AI slop, masculinity-obsessed influencers, right-wing nut-jobs, and just videos degrading and looking down on people at me. I really think TikTok is just a cancer at this stage.

I enjoy making shorts. I like getting a podcast of something I’ve been working on with friends and taking out neat little segments. People who know me IRL also enjoy them, since they’re usually uninterested in listening to a 2–3 hour podcast of me talking shite with Drew. Shorts allow them to engage with what I’m making in a more accessible way. Here’s how I’ve found making content for each platform.

1. Loops: I was surprised that my videos were doing quite well in terms of reach on Loops. The only real issue with Loops is that it’s yet another Fedi account for people to follow, when I could just as easily upload videos to my usual Fedi account and still get them out there.

2. YouTube: It seems to me that YouTube really wants to push the shorts format. It makes sense, as so many people are watching videos on their phones. Despite how few people I know IRL who scroll YouTube Shorts, videos I upload there seem to get pretty good views, at least for the first day or so after posting. The channels make it so that shorts can be a neat addition to content you’re already making for YouTube, and can be used as a form of outreach to new viewers.

3. Instagram: The AI is awkward with Insta, but nevertheless, I managed to make it work. Views are definitely highest on Instagram, and there are a decent number of comments from viewers too, which is something I really like.

4. TikTok: For some reason, anything I uploaded to TikTok stayed at 0 views. I hate TikTok so much that I didn’t really care to remedy this, but it seems I was shadowbanned for reasons I can’t fathom. Honestly, making content for TikTok just feels like fuelling people’s brainrot.

Overall, I don’t hate making shorts, but I do hate Instagram, TikTok, and, to a lesser extent, YouTube. How I continue making content for these platforms will be determined by how much I want to sell my soul for a little extra reach. One video about House of the Dragon reached over 100,000 views, and I can’t deny that feels good. But then what? In the old days, when you got that many views for a video, it used to mean something. Now it just feels so much more disposable.

Right now, I love creating podcasts with my friends Drew, Hamish, Max, and Jenny. And I have the itch to do even more. It’s nice to just sit down with people, chat, and share that with the world, even if only a few people end up listening. It feels cosier than a one-minute clip only glanced at by a hundred thousand people.

I know a lot of people have strong thoughts on big tech and media, and I would certainly be interested in listening to what you all have to say, so please get in touch via email or the Fedi, details are on my homepage.

That notwithstanding, I was reminded by Drew’s post titled Fuck web services that we should be limiting our reliance on web services as much as possible. I have sadly come to realise that a service I used to use and admire, Newsblur, has become enshittified. This saddens me greatly, but really it’s only an indictment of the times. It used to be a free service (both FOSS and free as in beer), with a supporter tier priced at $1 a month. Now Newsblur has a tiered pricing system, typical of the coercive pricing structures we’ve seen in big tech services. Fuck Newsblur. For those looking for an RSS reader recommendation, I heartily recommend Newsboat for the Linux command line. In addition to that, I use the Lynx web browser to read posts, as I find a text browser gets rid of most of the noise of today’s enshittified websites. I can also recommend the Dillo web browser for the same reasons in graphical environments.

As a result of this general disappointment in web services, I’ve been thinking about reducing my workflow’s reliance on them. One web service I’ve come to use is Filen. They seem like a decent company, with good prices, an appreciation for FOSS, and Linux support. Of course, as we have seen with Newsblur (and other formerly good™ companies like Gandi.net), things can always go downhill, but for now, Filen acts as a good off-site place to store my files for a reasonable price. The one downside, however, is that their mobile app is not as robust as I’d like. It mostly works, but it’s a little janky and feels more like a web app than a proper app. That’s no big deal, as their desktop client is perfectly usable. It would be nice if I could use more native Linux ways to access my files on Filen, but their current service is certainly good enough for me.

That being said, open source hero Syncthing is something I’ve been playing with over the past day or so. I’ve used it quite a lot before, so this is a use case I’m returning to, but with one slight difference. Those who follow Syncthing on mobile will know that there’s no official app that’s supported. There’s the well-known Syncthing-Fork, which I’ve used before and is perfectly good. It was last updated on 6th April 2026 (at the time of writing), so it’s current enough for me. There’s also Syncthing-Lite, which I’ve not used. It was last updated on 22nd November 2025, which is still relatively recent for my needs. It works a little differently from what I expect, as it seems to focus on reading Syncthing folders and syncing on a more selective basis. That’s not really what I need for my workflow—I’d prefer a small directory on my desktop and phone (and perhaps at some point my server) that I just keep fully synced, essentially an easy way to move files around my devices.

The bit about BasicSync

Instead, I landed on BasicSync, which operates similarly to Syncthing-Fork except for one big difference: it only fires up the Syncthing service and uses Syncthing’s built-in web UI to manage folders and devices. The project page says: “The app is intentionally kept very basic so that the project is easy to maintain and keep updated. BasicSync only controls when Syncthing runs. The actual configuration is done through Syncthing’s own web UI.” In my opinion, this is an excellent and minimalist way to approach the app’s design. I’m always a bit wary when small FOSS projects try to take on large challenges when goals can be achieved with smaller, simpler applications. BasicSync seems wise to this and looks like a really good approach to keeping Syncthing healthy on mobile. So far, I’ve had zero issues, and I feel like this is the right choice for me.

The files I need to move across from phone to desktop are really just photos and the occasional bit of music. I don’t use my phone for a whole lot outside of communications and RSS with FeedFlow, but for what I do, I want to use more FOSS tools and fewer web services.

In the wake of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), a number of Discord users have had their data stolen by an “unauthorised third party”. Whilst full credit card numbers and passwords were not impacted by the hack, data potentially accessed includes names, usernames, emails, the last four digits of credit card numbers and ,of course, 2,185,151 of images of government IDs from users who had to upload them for age verification. If the Online Safety Act is supposed to keep our children safe (it doesn’t), it’s certainly not keeping our adults safe.

As of writing, the petition to repeal the OSA has reached over half-a-million signatures and is due for a parliamentary debate in several months.

To add yet another tier to this growing layer-cake of ineptitude, current prime minister ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer wants EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the UK to have a photo ID which links us all in to government services, proves who we are, aNd WiLl DeFiNaTlY nOt GeT hAcKeD aT aLl.

So let’s get this straight: The UK Labour (lesser of two evils) government wants us to consolidate all our ID information, into a single app, and what? Hand it out like Halloween candy to any site that lets people post about politics?

Some platforms like Steam have taken a different approach, and now only allows the purchase of adult content to people who have a credit card. Sure, there’s no risk of my driving licence getting hacked, but also as someone who doesn’t have a credit card, I don’t feel like taking out a loan just so I can see a pair of tits.

So yeah, we might become victims of fraud, have to take out credit cards we don’t want, be unable to talk about things the government doesn’t want us talking about, BUT AT LEAST THE KIDS ARE SAFE!

Of course, Labour are using immigrants as a scapegoat for their encroaching authoritarianism. I really can’t see how any of this will even affect legal immigration, perhaps there will be other groups in the future that will need ‘rounding up’. This centralised store of personal data will sure make that easy.

During my time in the press, I covered a number of stories about modern slavery, whilst it is definitely a problem in the UK, I can say with certainty, this is not a problem ID cards will solve. This is probably why Labour will start making it more difficult for us to use cash in the future. The forced digitalisation of society hopes to make it easy for the government to completely remove what little is left of our privacy and dignity, and to marginalise those who won’t get on board.

But if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear, right? It’s not like I’m an immigrant, or hold horrendous views like Palestinians are humans beings who shouldn’t be slaughtered en masse, or starved out of their country.

The answers from Hamish Falconer, the new Labour minister at the Foreign Office, were evasive. Rather than engage directly with her concerns, he repeatedly referred back to months-old statements from David Lammy, the former Foreign Secretary. The government had nothing new to offer, despite the worsening humanitarian situation.

The crisis in Gaza is severe: children are starving, hospitals are being bombed, and families are being displaced daily. Labour’s reluctance to confront the situation revealed a party struggling to assert moral leadership. Ellie Chowns’s pointed questions underscored the urgency of holding Israel accountable, but Falconer’s responses demonstrated caution bordering on paralysis.

Yet, in a recent and significant shift, Sir Keir Starmer announced the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state. In a video statement on X, he said: “In the face of the growing horror in the Middle East we are acting to keep alive the possibility of peace and a two-state solution.” Australia, Canada, and Portugal also announced formal recognition, with France expected to follow.

The move has drawn criticism from Israel, some hostages’ families, and Conservative politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision unacceptable, claiming it rewards terrorism, while the US echoed similar concerns. Starmer insisted, however, that the recognition “is not a reward for Hamas,” emphasizing that the Palestinian leadership would have “no role in government, no role in security.”

The Foreign Office clarified that the UK now recognizes Palestinian statehood over provisional borders based on the 1967 lines, with equal land swaps to be negotiated in the future. The announcement reinforces the UK’s commitment to a two-state solution: Palestinians living in dignity and security alongside Israel.

This recognition was, in many ways, the only rational response after Israel’s relentless bombardment of civilian targets, the killing of countless children, and repeated violations of international law. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two other senior officials have been implicated by the International Criminal Court for serious crimes. Judges on the ICC found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant bore criminal responsibility as co-perpetrators for acts including the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity, including murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The ICC’s pre-trial chamber issued arrest warrants after rejecting Israel’s challenges to the Court’s jurisdiction.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the decision, noting that it could help pave the way for “the state of Palestine to live side by side with the state of Israel in security, peace and good neighbourliness.” Internationally, leaders framed the recognitions as steps to revive the stalled peace process. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it a “partnership in building the promise of a peaceful future,” and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described it as part of a coordinated effort to generate momentum for a two-state solution.

Despite this, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza persists. Israel recently carried out an air strike on a Hamas negotiating team in Qatar, and efforts to secure a ceasefire remain faltering. Recognition of a Palestinian state is a significant diplomatic step, but it does not immediately alleviate the suffering on the ground.

Turning a blind eye to harms

In the Senedd, Ms Hannah Blythyn MS (Welsh Labour, Delyn) raised urgent concerns about the rise of “nudification apps” that digitally strip women and girls. She warned that AI-driven abuse is already harming women in politics and could devastate schoolchildren.

Yet in Westminster, Mr Starmer is pressing ahead with plans for a flagship AI hub on Teesside, even as ministers openly admit AI is being weaponised against women and is burning through huge amounts of energy. The project came at the expense of a hydrogen energy plant championed by Ed Miliband MP, who has now been sidelined despite his role as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Starmer is happily willing to turn a blind eye to the harms of AI, both to women and the environment, in order to appease tech-bros and Silicon Valley investors, rather than taking a stand. Not great for a former human rights lawyer.

Fewer jobs, harsher welfare

The hype around AI has already produced a 30% fall in entry-level jobs since the technology went mainstream, hitting young people and new graduates hardest. At the same time, Starmer has pressed ahead with controversial welfare reforms, trying to force thousands of disabled people off benefits and into the workplace. Mr Starmer is pushing vulnerable people into a job market that simply cannot absorb them. The contradiction is plain, Labour says it wants full employment, but is championing a technology that is hollowing out opportunities.

Begging for leadership

Inside Labour, frustration is mounting. Ed Miliband and Hannah Blythyn MS need to be calling for stronger leadership on climate and women’s rights in the face of AI harms. They are joined by countless voters who watch Starmer capitulating to every passing tech trend while ignoring the voters who won him the general election.

Starmer seems more concerned with winning over the far-right, who will never vote Labour, than with holding on to those progressive voters who only reluctantly backed Starmer last time. If this continues, Labour risks not just collapsing its own vote, but tearing apart the party itself.

The failure of the Online Safety Act

Labour has also hitched its AI agenda to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which requires intrusive age checks to access millions of websites. Ministers claim this will protect children, but campaigners say it is a lazy, ineffective solution that shifts responsibility away from parents.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argue the OSA threatens privacy, free speech, and equal access to the internet, while doing little to actually make children safer. We’ve already seen the bill used to crush political speech on the genocide in Gaza. Obviously a genocide isn’t going to be child-friendly, despite Labour also making moves to lower the voting age to 16.

Instead of teaching parents how to talk to their children about online risks, the Act assumes government surveillance is the answer. Many see this as another sign of a political class that would rather control speech online than to actually tackle any root problems, because that would require actual work and introspection.

A dangerous road ahead

The contradictions are piling up. Labour says it cares about climate change, but is replacing green energy projects with energy-hungry AI hubs. It says it wants to protect women, but is ignoring the dangers of AI-fuelled abuse. It says it wants to boost jobs, but is cheering on a technology that is erasing entry-level work.

With so many voters, and I’m sure many back-bench MPs, already questioning Labour’s direction, Starmer’s strategy risks alienating the very people who delivered his victory. If the Prime Minister continues down this path, he won’t just lose the next election, he’ll unravel the Labour Party itself.

The move has been seen as a blow to Mr Miliband’s net zero agenda, raising questions about how much influence he holds in government decision-making.
(The Telegraph, 12 September 2025)

Prime Minister overrules Energy Secretary

The hydrogen scheme, known as H2Teesside, was proposed by BP and supported by Mr Miliband. It would have produced “blue” hydrogen, supplying up to 10% of the hydrogen Britain is expected to need by 2030.

But the Prime Minister has backed a rival plan for Europe’s largest data centre on nearby land, declaring the Teesworks site an “AI growth zone.” The two projects were judged to be incompatible, effectively ending hopes for the hydrogen plant.

The decision was confirmed in a letter from Business Secretary Mr Peter Kyle to Tees Valley Mayor Lord Houchen, which described the data centre as “the cornerstone of the UK’s AI strategy.”

A Cabinet clash over priorities

Mr Miliband had delayed a ruling on the hydrogen project until the end of October, seeking more information and keeping the option alive. He also held the power to grant a development consent order, which could have forced the project through.

Instead, Sir Keir moved first, with the designation of the AI growth zone effectively shutting down the plan his Energy Secretary supported. Reports suggest that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology even prepared legal advice in case Mr Miliband tried to push ahead.

The outcome has been interpreted as Sir Keir putting his authority above Mr Miliband’s, choosing technology investment and AI growth over a central part of the Energy Secretary’s climate policy.

BP left in limbo

BP has said it remains committed to H2Teesside and continues to hold talks with the government, though it admitted the plant does not yet have a main customer. The company has argued that the project should not be blocked by “speculative development.”

For now, both BP and the wider energy sector are left uncertain, with Mr Miliband’s flagship plan set aside in favour of Sir Keir’s AI strategy.

Net zero or AI?

The decision underscores the tension inside government between meeting net zero pledges and building up Britain’s artificial intelligence sector.

Sir Keir is keen to demonstrate commitment to AI as he prepares to sign a “technology partnership” with US President Donald Trump next week.

A government spokesman defended the decision, saying: “Any infrastructure decision this Government makes will be in the national interest – helping deliver the Government’s Plan for Change.”

Lord Houchen has warned that Britain “cannot afford to dither and delay” in the race to attract AI investment, and argued that the hydrogen project would have had a “sterilising effect” on the Teesside data centre.

But the sidelining of Mr Miliband highlights a Cabinet divide – and raises doubts about how far net zero goals will be prioritised when they come into conflict with the Prime Minister’s technology ambitions.

I can’t believe I’ve been on Linux full-time for over 10 years without learning how Vim works. It’s the preferred text editor of almost everyone I know, and it’s a crime I didn’t give it a try sooner.

When it comes to learning Vim, I was very fortunate to have Drew walk me through the basics, as well as some advanced Vim techniques. Since then, I’ve hardly used anything else.

In fact, I’ve started using Vim for tasks I hadn’t previously used a text editor for. I’ve adopted calendar.txt as my calendar and todo.txt to organise my tasks. My go-to approach for new tasks is now to see how they can be handled in plain text.

But it doesn’t stop there. Keeping information in plain text has made me more familiar with other command-line tools, such as grep, which allows me to filter and view specific parts of a text file. I also use the terminal file browser nnn alongside Vim to rename and sort files. It’s incredibly satisfying to have all these tools work together in simple, yet highly effective ways. I’ve always been a fan of “the UNIX way,” but I’ve never truly lived it until now—and it all started with Vim.

For those who don’t know, Vim is a text editor, similar to Windows Notepad, where you can create and edit text files. But unlike Notepad, Vim comes with powerful tools for coding and all other forms of writing.

Lately, I’ve changed my workflow significantly: I’ve moved from Xfce to i3, from Nano to Vim, and from GUI applications to plain text and their CLI counterparts. I’ll be journaling more about this journey, but returning to a command-line-focused workflow is proving to be incredibly rewarding.

In the interest of completeness here is my .vimrc file, so you call all see how I’ve customised it.

unlet! skip_defaults_vim
source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim
set nocompatible
set nobackup
set nowritebackup
set noswapfile
set ruler
set showcmd
set incsearch
set hlsearch
set noautoindent
set nocursorline
set laststatus=2
set wrap
set wrapscan
set linebreak
set showbreak=↪
set nolist
set number
set mouse=a
set clipboard=unnamedplus
set noexpandtab
set tabstop=4
set softtabstop=0
set noexpandtab
set shiftwidth=4
set hidden
set ignorecase
set smartcase
set formatoptions-=cro
set spell spelllang=en_gb
set spellsuggest=best,10
set nospell


" Change the highlight for misspelled words
highlight SpellBad ctermfg=red ctermbg=NONE cterm=underline
highlight SpellCap ctermfg=yellow ctermbg=NONE cterm=underline
highlight SpellRare ctermfg=magenta ctermbg=NONE cterm=underline
highlight SpellLocal ctermfg=cyan ctermbg=NONE cterm=underline

" Cursor shapes
let &t_SI = "\<Esc>[6 q"
let &t_SR = "\<Esc>[4 q"
let &t_EI = "\<Esc>[2 q"

" Save as root
cmap w!! w !sudo tee > /dev/null %

" Remember buffers
set viminfo^=%

" Tweaks for browsing
set autochdir
let g:netrw_banner=0        " disable annoying banner
let g:netrw_browse_split=4  " open in prior window
let g:netrw_altv=1          " open splits to the right
let g:netrw_list_hide = '\(^\|\s\s\)\zs\.\S\+'  " hide dotfiles on load.
let g:netrw_keepdir = 0     " keep the current directory and the browsing directory synced. 
let g:netrw_winsize=30

map <silent> <C-E> :Lexplore<CR>
function! NetrwMapping()
endfunction

augroup netrw_mapping
    autocmd!
    autocmd filetype netrw call NetrwMapping()
augroup END

function! NetrwMapping()
    nmap <buffer> H u
    nmap <buffer> h -^
    nmap <buffer> l <CR>
    nmap <buffer> . gh
    nmap <buffer> P <C-w>z
    nmap <buffer> L <CR>:Lexplore<CR>
    nmap <buffer> <C-E> :Lexplore<CR>
endfunction

" set leader to space
map <SPACE> <leader>

" Bindings
nnoremap <leader>s :setlocal spell! spell?<CR>
nnoremap <leader>v :set relativenumber! relativenumber?<CR>
nnoremap <Tab> :bNext<CR>
nnoremap <S-Tab> :bprevious<CR>
nnoremap <leader><space> :nohlsearch<CR>
nnoremap <Up> gk
nnoremap <Down> gj
nnoremap j gj
nnoremap k gk
inoremap <Up> <C-o>gk
inoremap <Down> <C-o>gj
vnoremap <leader>y :w !xclip -selection clipboard<CR>

" Shorter tabs for HTML files
autocmd FileType html setlocal tabstop=2
autocmd FileType html setlocal softtabstop=2
autocmd FileType html setlocal shiftwidth=2
autocmd FileType html setlocal noexpandtab

1. Deus Ex
2. Hitman: Silent Assassin
3. Hitman: Blood Money
4. Deus Ex: Invisible War
5. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines
6. Battle for Wesnoth
7. Duke Nukem 3D
8. Super Tux Kart
9. Morrowind
10. Oblivion
11. Open TTD / Transport Tycoon Deluxe
12. Fallout 3
13. Fallout NV
14. Warhammer: Vermintide 2
15. Hitman: Absolution
16. Shapez.io
17. Superhot
18. Half-Life / Half-Life Blue Shift
19. Team Fortress Classic / Team Fortress 2
20. Portal 2 (co-op)
21. Project Zomboid
22. Don’t Starve Together
23. Settlers 2 / Widelands
24. Sim City 2000
25. Hitman 2 (Ghost Mode)
26. Left 4 Dead 2
27. Doom 1 and 2
28. Garry’s Mod

While I’m not particularly focused on cultivating a ‘personal brand,’ there is still value in having a bold, recognizable icon for your website. This is especially true for drawing attention to vertical browser tabs or tabs where the title text has been truncated. After some research, I discovered a clever concept by Lea Verou PhD that allows you to use an emoji as your favicon. Below is an example of the code you need to insert between your HTML ‘head’ tags:

<link rel="icon" href="data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 viewBox=%220 0 100 100%22><text y=%22.9em%22 font-size=%2290%22>🌳</text></svg>">

Simply replace my little tree emoji with whatever emoji you’d like to use. A good resource for searching emojis is EmojiDB.

Now, you might be wondering if I did all this because Drew hates emojis and I wanted to torment him by introducing more of them into his life. Who’s to say? 🤷

Chowns slammed the Conservatives’ plans to extract more oil and gas from the North Sea, calling it “reckless” and useless for energy security or jobs. Turning to Starmer, she asked if he would finally put a stop to the controversial Rosebank oil project, reminding him that climate action is supposed to be at the heart of his government’s mission.

Rather than answering the question, Starmer fired back, pointing the finger at the Greens. He criticized the party’s plans in Scotland, claiming they could threaten £50 billion in renewable energy investment and secure jobs.

The Prime Minister also blasted the Green Party’s new leader, Zack Polanski, accusing him of:

• Supporting withdrawal from NATO at a sensitive time
  
• Proposing unfunded spending that could harm the economy
  
• Blocking all planning applications
  
• Making “very strange” comments about women

Starmer claims Labour is the only party tackling the climate crisis while delivering fairness to the country.

Who is Zach Polanski?

Zack Polanski has been elected leader of the Green Party, promising bold communication and a new “eco-populism” approach. He told Labour, “We are here to replace you,” signaling his intent to challenge Sir Keir Starmer’s party directly.

Polanski, 42, is well-known among Green Party members for his media appearances but remains little known outside the London Assembly, where he is an elected member. He beat two of the party’s four MPs to take the leadership, despite questions about his lack of experience in the traditional parliamentary system.

His leadership pitch focused on moving the party decisively to the left and adopting a more confrontational style of communication.

Polanski has had an unconventional path into politics, previously working as an actor, hypnotherapist, and mental health counsellor. A 2013 article in the Sun, which claimed he helped a client enhance her bust through hypnotherapy, continues to follow him. Polanski said this was before his political career, and he immediately apologised, adding, “We are all more than one mistake.”

Born in 1982 in Salford, Polanski studied at Aberystwyth University in Wales before moving to Hackney, east London. He is openly gay and Jewish, and changed his name from David Paulden at 18 to embrace his heritage and differentiate from his stepfather.

Polanski first entered politics with the Liberal Democrats but now criticizes them for being too centrist. He joined the Greens in 2017, served as a local party chairman, was elected to the London Assembly in 2021, and became the party’s deputy leader in 2022.

Despite YouTube’s continued enshitification, it is still possible to get an RSS feed from YouTube channels and playlists, this page will provide you with the necessary details. I’ve also made a demonstration video for this.

In order to find your RSS URL you need two parts, the first part, which is the common URL for channels and playlists and the second part, which is the ID of the channel or playlist The ID is the final string of numbers and letters at the end of a channel or playlist URL.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyga2RDU50AO0gtBXwk3c_2aEI5hMUvbc

Some channels can also use a username as a suffix here. This only applies to older channels that have username based channel URLs. Whereas not all channels have username based URLs, all channels have a channel ID, just make sure not to confuse the username with the channel ID.

The first part

The channel ID prefix URL for RSS:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

The username prefix URL for RSS:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=

The playlist prefix URL for RSS:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=

The second part

Simply add your relevant channel ID (in this example it’s UCAPR27YUyxmgwm3Wc2WSHLw), playlist ID (in this example it’s PLyga2RDU50AODdcN9aIkg4rXwxS-174uW), or username (in this example it’s ChrisWereDigital) to the correct prefix above and you should have the RSS URL for your YouTube channel or playlist. Most people will want to use the channel ID as the username suffix is from legacy usernames and not the current system of TikTok style @handles. Examples:

The channel ID URL:

youtube.com/channel/UCAPR27YUyxmgwm3Wc2WSHLw

The channel ID URL for RSS:

youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCAPR27YUyxmgwm3Wc2WSHLw

The username URL:

youtube.com/user/ChrisWereDigital

The username URL for RSS:

youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=ChrisWereDigital

The playlist URL:

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyga2RDU50AODdcN9aIkg4rXwxS-174uW

The playlist URL for RSS:

youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=PLyga2RDU50AODdcN9aIkg4rXwxS-174uW

• behind!: This is a great tool for helping you download photos and videos from many websites.
• uBlock Origin: The best ad blocking tool out there, and the primary reason I’m still using Firefox web browser.

Online resources

• Google Fonts: Shamefully I’ve found that Google Fonts is a really good repository for SIL Open Font Licensed fonts. They’re downloadable so you don’t have to use their hosting. They have a vast selection and many of them are of superb quality.
• DaFont and Font Squirrel: Both also have a large collection of fonts, searchable by licence.
• FreePD: A large library of public domain music. I don’t use music in my videos any more, but this still remains the best place for public domain stock music.

Closed source web apps

Whilst I avoid using non-FOSS tools whenever possible, the following are what I’ll make an exception for.

• Temp Mail: This allows you to set up a one-time-use temporary email address for signing up to online services. I use it for all accounts that I don’t consider important, and for services where I don’t which to leave my real email address.

All apps mentioned here are free and open source and most should be available in most Linux distro repositories.

Web browser

• Firefox: My day-to-day browser of choice, I use the ESR version which usually seems like the least enshittified version, but I’m certainly not happy with how Mozilla have been behaving.
• Lynx: The browser I use to read articles from my RSS reader. It does a great job of bypassing many of the annoyances of the modern web.
• Qutebrowser: I’ve been trying out Qutebrowser lately. Whilst I’m quite enjoying it, the lack of Ublock Origin level ad-blocking, as well as the lack of a in-built password manager are two factors I’m learning to work out.

Password manager

• KeePassXC: One of the best password managers around, it also comes with the package keepassxc-cli which is a command line interface for KeePassXC I’ve been getting used to using.

RSS reader

• Newsboat: I have used many, many RSS readers over the years, and this is by far my favourite. I’ve hooked it in to use the text-only browser Lynx to read articles which don’t publish full articles in the feed and it’s a very pleasant way to catch-up on the web. For those who want a GUI RSS reader, I can recommend NewsFlash. People have been recommending Newsraft but I haven’t got round to giving it a spin.

Graphics

• GIMP: I know many folks detest this for image editing, but it’s the first one I learnt to effectively use and I’ve become familiar with it. Whilst it may not be the best FOSS has to offer, it’s certainly good enough for me.
• Inkscape: I use Inkscape for all my vector-based graphics. It does everything that I need to do as is an excellent piece of FOSS software.
• Pixelorama: simple, intuitive pixel art tool, on Itch and Steam.
• Scribus: Fantastic desktop publishing package. I’ve used this for so many project, including, leaflets, magazines, and even a billboard once.

Video

• Kdenlive: I use the Kdenlive AppImage for all my video editing. It does everything I need and more.
• OBS (Open Broadcaster Software): Screen recorder and livestreaming software, very feature complete.
• SimpleScreenRecorder: Screen recorder, not as full-featured as OBS but a useful lighter recorder.

So, what is this blorp?

Firstly, it’s ‘blop’. Secondly, the project page defines blop succinctly: “blop essentially just converts markdown into HTML in a lightly structured way. Run blop in a directory where you want the local copy of your blog to live and then upload/push the resulting HTML to your website.” Thirdly, the Urban Dictionary defines blop thusly: “the sound of jelly when it falls off your knife onto the floor.” Please don’t look at the subsequent definitions, you won’t like them.

I wanted to get back into writing, make my website somewhere more interesting to visit, and align myself with the small/smol web. Every now and then, I want to tinker with this little facet of my personality. The last time I made a significant change here was the new ‘picnic style’ theme. I considered giving Hugo and E11y a shot, but they both felt like more than I needed. Additionally, Drew had been keeping blop ticking over for years now, and it always seemed to work well for him. I mean, all I need is something to convert .md files into an HTML template and assemble an RSS feed.

The RSS feed was important, in fact, I was even considering creating an RSS feed-only blog at one point. I’ve recently been getting into Newsboat, a command line RSS reader that fits the way I like to read perfectly. People have been recommending Newsraft, but I’ve yet to give that a go. I tend to opt for what’s available in the Debian stable repositories as a broad, albeit sometimes broken, rule.

Not many people get the privilege of having the creator of a piece of software available to personally offer a step-by-step guide on getting all the templates set up, but Drew, being one of the kindest people I know and one of my best friends, took the time to get me set up nicely, even though he was having a migraine (or, as I like to call them, blood attacks).

I managed to migrate a lot of my old website content over very easily, as is the beauty of working with plain text. I never cared much for having too many images on my website, waste of space and bandwidth if you ask me.

All in all, blop is everything I need and want out of a static site generator, and I’m incredibly grateful to Drew for putting it together. I’ve even made myself a little script to push the changes easily. Due to this new workflow, I’m now hosting this site on Codeberg Pages.

So, how does it work?

Well, you simply pull all the files from the blop project page using git, or a web browser if you prefer. Adjust the templates, style.css, url.txt, site.conf, and add your posts in the form of markdown files in the markdown folder, then run blop. Sidenote: I’ve placed blop in my ~/.local/bin folder, where I keep all my local executables, but you can stick it anywhere you like. The full documentation has all the settings options as well as details on how to get your blop site set up properly.

To top it all off, I’ve set up a little script that compiles the site and pushes it up to Codeberg. While the script is very basic, all of my work can be seen on the Codeberg project page for my site. A big thanks to Codeberg, by the way, for being such a wonderfully supportive institution in the free software and open-source world, as well as a big thank you to Drew for taking the time to put together this tool and walk me through using it.