Notices by es0mhi@tilde.zone

#amateurradio #morsecode #morseclasses

I don't know if anyone still follows my updates about my progress in learning morse code. But if you do, and if you're wondering if I've given up: not yet! However, I was unable to attend class for the first time on Tuesday night. Because of a serious snowstorm, I was stuck at home with no electricity and lots of problems to solve quickly. But I was finally able to attend via skype (that's what they use) and it was perfectly fine.

I have to admit that I had not been able to practice all week and it showed. In the beginning, I made an alarming number of mistakes copying. But during the lesson my rate improved constantly and at the end I was back to 0 mistakes.

The new characters were 'R' and 'G' and that makes it a total of 16, if I'm not mistaken. (I've never gotten that far, but I wouldn't say the new characters have stuck yet).

Still, I'm full of hope that I'll actually make it this time. If your club offers something similar, don't hesitate to try it out.

#snowstorm

Digging my way into the light. 🙂

That was quite a snowstorm on Monday! I was without power for 38 hours. And lots of snow (otherwise rather the exception on the island here.) Quite a test for the water supply: Pump and pipes can easily freeze. But everything's o.k. Water and electricity running again. Just a lot of hassle.

@el

Indeed, I wasn't very clear. Let's put it like this: at one moment I decided to write all my posts in English. Lately, however, I started to think about the extent to which this is limiting. It's at least artificial, doesn't necessarily reflect me as I am elsewhere. So how about posting from one account in different languages? Whatever seems most appropriate for the subject at hand. Or even switching languages randomly in one sentence.

Like you, I don't see much of a problem there, with all the automatic translation aids. I just see few who really do it like this.

That's why I asked.

@diana @jakobrosin @tramm

It is definitely a good decision to be on a smaller instance. Otherwise, the constant flickering of new posts in the local timeline can drive you crazy. But I still don't like the idea to allow only certain languages. I hate all this blocking in advance. I prefer to look for a quieter place ;-)

@simsa04

From an Estonian perspective, of course, such concerns seem bizarre: it is not a matter of superiority, but rather of a will to assert oneself.

But this is a difficult discussion anyway: much depends on whether a culture defines itself primarily through language (as is the case with estonian culture) or whether language and the possible loss of it do not seem all that essential.

@simsa04

Totally agree. In the case of Estonian, however, there is also the aspect that it is a 'small' language (1.1 million native speakers) and that such projects are always about doing something to preserve the language. If Estonian is no longer present on the net, its future is uncertain.

#eestimastodon

In all the years I've been in the fediverse, I've looked every now and then if there are any Estonian users out there. Usually to no avail. Now the immigration wave from twitter (which - looking at my timeline - is already about to end) sets something in motion.

This week mastodon even made it to estonian public broadcasting: @jakobrosin, @diana and @tramm talked about a newly founded Estonian mastodon instance, est.social. Interesting! However, there were things that felt immediately strange to me: users are expected to post in Estonian - something I almost never do. This is done intentionally to build an 'Estonian community'. For me, this commitment to geographical, language-based spaces is in contradiction to what attracts me to the internet in the first place.

The discussion also suffered from being very mastodon-focused, barely mentioning the many other platforms that make the fediverse.

But let's see what happens next.

@simsa04

This statement should trigger a much broader discussion than I have time for right now.

Just a few brief remarks:

I, too, find approaching people via interests rather clumsy. Outside the net, I am first interested in personality (I use this fuzzy term here on purpose) and only later try to find out via which interests someone has become that personality. Moreover, here in the fediverse it apparently leads to the fact that many create different accounts for their different interests. Which I refuse to do (until now).

Since we can't "listen to the tone of a person's voice" here, don't necessarily learn about her mannors, the personality could be sensed in a different way. It would be helpful if people would express themselves more creatively. Simply boosting things, or spreading a link, a message, etc., is not enough. At some point, #GNUsocial was called 'statusnet' - an origin of which we hopefully emancipate ourselves - or not. Style would be of importance, style of writing, style of discussing. In a sharing culture, there is no room for style any more.

I find 'personal info' sometimes helpful after all. You say that we have learned not to share it on the net. Well, I have also learned many things offline about what I shouldn't do - and do them anyway.

@simsa04 @administrator

No, don't worry the first one is here as well:

@simsa04 @administrator

A screenshot from my side, showing you what I got here:

@administrator @simsa04

Yeah, I was sending this as a 'direct message' which is hidden to all other users but the ones addressed directly. I' m using this feature very rarely and I don't have to in the future if this causes any problems at gnusocial.net.

I received both @simsa04 replies and I think in general I get everything that is addressed to me from your instance. So no problem on this side.

@zanmcquade

I remember the ignorance, even disdain, with which I met people who explained to me that unfortunately they didn't have enough space in their apartment any more to buy more books.

Recently I had the idea to create a digital catalog of my/our books. The books are scattered over many places and residences, even countries, and that makes it increasingly difficult to find them. A side effect would be that I would learn how many there are. I have no idea - they will in any case be several thousands.

These days, 9 out of 10 books I read are digital. The question of whether I have enough time to read all the unread books has never bothered me. That's not why I own all these books in the first place. It's mostly about the fact that at some moment during the day a passage in a book may come to mind and I can immediately go to the shelf and continue reading.That happens quite often. (Over 90% of our books are written in all kinds of languages other than English, and thus not available online.)

I love to live squeezed tightly between objects anyway. But a life in a place that is not crammed with books would not seem worth living.

@simsa04

As much as I would like to disagree with this pessimistic assessment - I'm afraid I can't. Fortunately, nobody can see into the future, which may still give space for unexpected developments. So far, however, the war has brought little surprises, at least not for those who knew a little bit about Russia and Ukraine.

Oh, I know that one. We used it when I first went to university. I had completely forgotten about it.

@simsa04

What was the dictionary you bought? Was it dead trees or digital?

#inflation

I was grocery shopping at the supermarket on Thursday and again today: once again the prices for most products have gone up significantly. This happens every few days by now.

Inflation in Estonia was 25.2% in August, 24.2% in September and 22.4% in October. The amazing thing is that consumption has not decreased so far. I mean, how do people do that? We have - after a short period of inertia - drastically cut back. (And even before we were spending little).

Sure, in Estonia nobody sees the need to save: "Money comes, money goes," is the mantra. I don't know anyone who has savings, they all have loans and leases.

@ephemeral

Something that's just more fun offline is focused, absorbed reading. For this I find Calibre a wonderful software, which can turn webcontent into e-books. The built-in feature to fetch news from newspapers sites used to be really great as well. Since more and more content disappears behind pay walls, it's not that useful anymore. I went back to rss feeds for that.

If you think you finally grasped some things about the Russians that you would have preferred rather not to know, then here's another one:

Russians are stealing plenty of speed cameras from Swedish roads, to use the electronics for their drones in Ukraine.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/VPPe8l/stulna-fartkameror-blir-donare-i-kriget-i-ukraina

Unbelievable, you say?
But I told you so!

Let's look at the brighter side: when you are that desperate, the end is near.