Winter Rant

"I’m utterly disgusted. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." – Miyazaki

Blog

rant.vpalepu.com/

Profile

rant.vpalepu.com/author/vpalep

Homepage

rant.vpalepu.com

  • Across the Fediverse: Tags with Spaces (and dashes)

    I have been wondering: how would WordPress tags federate when they have spaces? In a couple of recent WordPress posts I absentmindedly end up using such tags (i.e., with spaces): “Year in Review” and “user feedback”. Here are the screenshots of two such tags (two different blog posts): When federating over to Mastodon it seems…

  • Tech Regulations Update: Japan, Montana, North Carolina

    Tech regulations are going to be an important thing to watch out for in 2024. So, this year, I am going to keep documenting news about tech regulations that show up on my news feeds. Two things popped up today: 1. Japan: Copyright and AI Training A story from last year about Japan’s stance on…

  • Tech in 2023

    … the final list. Too much went down in 2023. 🤯 – vijay, nursing a case of sniffles on New Year’s Eve.

  • Federated comments going to spam, and one other Comment subtlety

    In my post yesterday I noted that not all replies from Mastodon were federating as blog post comments. I did not think much of it back then. But today I saw those comments (and several others) in the spam section of my blog’s comments – they were also pending approvals. Guessing that this is happening…

  • Post Edit Timestamps are federating

    WordPress is able roam/federate the edit timestamp, for when a user edits a published blog post. Edited posts on the Mastodon web client show up with an asterisk (*) next to the pretty-printed time stamp. In the screenshot below, you know that the post was edited after publishing, because of the asterisk next to the…

  • Setting up Activity Pub for a WP.com blog

    … and early experiences for Winter Rant on the Fediverse and Mastodon. Yesterday I enabled ActivityPub for my WordPress.com blog (this blog – Winter Rant!). This means that Winter Rant is now an ActivityPub server that is discoverable as rant.vpalepu.com@rant.vpalepu.com – on ActivityPub clients, such as Ivory, Ice cubes, or any Mastodon client application. This…

  • Winter Rant is now part of the Fediverse

    rant.vpalepu.com@rant.vpalepu.com

  • Professions Unsung

    Vijay admires professionals who engage in high-impact, often under-acknowledged work, characterized by sacrifices and dedication beyond a typical workday. They express their respect by using a line from Tennyson’s “Ulysses” to prompt Midjourney to visualize these workers: a passionate journalist, persevering scuba diver, diligent archaeologist, and resilient geologist.

  • Midjourney on “between a rock and a hard place”

    Vijay explored how an AI, Midjourney (MJ), interprets the phrase “stuck between a rock and a hard place.” He experimented with adding “Watercolors,” swapping “stuck” for “trapped,” and removing “stuck.” Regardless of the modifications, MJ consistently depicted open landscapes with rock formations, perhaps suggesting that it interprets the landscape as the “hard place.”

  • I broke Midjourney with “a roadmap”

    I thought about exploring “roadmaps” as a concept with Midjourney. It did not quite go as planned. I think I broke it!