A Powerful and Light, FAST client for Mastodon, etc...

Originally posted as a sequence of Toots from my account at Koyu.Space, this was well received, appreciated by the Pinafore client's Author and I think is quite informative.

There's a lack of good reporting and documentation on many projects in the Fediverse.

But Pinafore is beloved of its users – see screenshot above, from the #Pinafore fediverse hashtag. And some others below too. 👍🙂❤

From Toot sequence to Blog page...

I wrote the Toots un-edited, from the hip, and the sequence came out pretty good.

Now it's time to collate them and add some polish, some extra reference links, to make a shiny Blog post. And here it is.

Explainer – the 'Nomad Living' mention refers to my love of seeing the many instances in the Fediverse first hand, by myself, to learn about each and see their Local timelines.

The Instance we Choose to use in the Fediverse is Important — I have written about that in a popular post in my Tech blog.

The sequence follows, lightly edited for style and for in-line images placement. I have also expanded some sub-topics and added extra links.

Pinafore makes Nomad Living a joy

Adding one more to the list. 17 in it, CDrom.Tokyo joins at no. 18 spot. 😎

Many thanks to @nolan@toot.cafe">@nolan for the wonderful #fediverse #client that #Pinafore is.

The BEST, ask your geeky friends.

Speed, lightness. Functional and elegant Design. Free, not in your face design impositions.

No freaking character limits, Pinafore allows use of whatever your instance allows.

AND — it also accepts MarkDown posts, which are joy for me as a writer and content producer.

Same client, visits mastodon, or Glitch-Social, or Pleroma, or Misskey instances. All without leaving the same screen.

Power user?

For those with accounts in multiple instances – You can run multiple Pinafore copies -side by side in the same browser window, each tab a different instance.

Won't I get confused or lost, where am I?

No, no fret — Pinafore allows a big range of Themes, pre configured Colour Schemes so you can keep track of where you are, even in multi tabbed, multi instance moments.

Quick snapshot of the Colour Theme selection panel here, for illustration.

See this post with a full Gallery of #Pinafore Themes :

Pinafore client – A sampler of all the Colour Themes available

...at the little known Pinafore subforum at another instance.

#Recommended #Client — #Fediverse #nomad Friendly.

#FediReporter on the Beat. Frontline reports return...

And to find out more about #Pinafore ?

Visit the Author's blog post, written after one year working in the project.

One year of Pinafore

Read the Tea Leaves

Or, Ask me!

I love it, and be glad to oblige and answer questions. Reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

Also, check out the glowing user commentary — see : Pinafore Love – User’s Impressions from the Hash Tag

How To install Pinafore ?

Simple, visit Pinafore · Home — which is one of the various possible web hosts for Pina.

( More instances are also available, listed here for us geeks : Listing of Known Pinafore Instances you can connect to.

We really don't install Pinafore — you simply open the Pinafore instance in a Browser tab, and from that moment on, your client loads and communicates directly with the Mastodon (or Glitch-Social, or Pleroma) instance.

Client Side Data – session authorization, themes, etc...

No data is saved at the Pinafore home instance – it is all on the client side. Awesome, isn't it?

If you change to a different browser, even in the same machine, the logged-in instances list and your colour theme selections are not there yet. The price of keeping your data private. So, stick with a good browser and enjoy it.

Pinafore can also be run on mobile devices – simply open the site in your favourite Browser in the mobile. Save a bookmark and enjoy it.

It was tested and built from the ground up to perform well even in less powerful devices. In a good laptop or desktop, it flies.

This post brought to you by the letters MD, P and K.

Even Eugen R. recommended it! 😉😙

See screen capture below – from this Toot.

For those who might not know him, Eugen Rochko is the lead Developer in the Mastodon project. And that endorsement is important.

@rgx@write.tedomum.net

This page created entirely in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment about this post – reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

R.G. @rgx@muensterland.social ^—top of page

It has been a while

...since you heard from me; the blog, the FediReporter tag, the Toots which came from the various instances I have accounts and a presence on.

Including the link above just reminds me it would be good to revisit and write a new page; as things change, and that page was popular. We could benefit from personal views from others.

But as you will see below, I am glad to be writing, and slowly getting more active here once again. Still quite annoyed by non-sense like cryptic one liner posts, or people who see no problem posting arms and dead animals in the open timelines, no content warnings from them. Or carrying flags that for me don't make sense.

There are many places

And we can find better fitting communities. Just look around, read, ask people — and try, create an account and observe the place yourself (no better evaluation, if you are attentive).

This post started as a Toot at my new home instance, and evolved so soon I copied the text over and edited with added links which were relevant. Take them as bookmarks, they are mostly full blog posts and each is intended to be read and considered; no binge-ing, keep a bookmark and return later.

From this intro, not included in the live Toot, we move on to it's full content, below. Hope you enjoy reading it, thank you.

Sometimes, Quieter is Better

In an earlier conversation with our local system admin, Niklas @nipos , he wrote :

You're right that our instance is too quiet in the local timeline.In fact,all of my instances are so I will be rolling out this feature to all instances this evening.

I responded right away with a Thank you for the acceptance of my suggestion, much appreciated.

Now I would like to go back and send a note to all my friends, here in fediverse, an update of sorts.

Sorry that I have been mostly quiet – in fact not logging in to Fediverse much at all for the past 4 months or so.

Why is that?

I got involved in a forum community, supporting an applications which I really like, and that has taken a lot of my attention and time. Long letters to friends all over the world also take effort, time and dedication, but are very enjoyable.

I am fortunate to have their letters coming, and that they enjoy my usually long replies. I have published some, as the quality of Writing we see really makes me feel more readers should see them. Of course, I restrain to only posting my own writing, and I edit personal information, anonymize my friend's real ID so they are not exposed.

Things come and go in phases, and I have been very happy to be in a productive, creative phase once again. As before, I will try to do as much as I can, and put down in writing the ideas and projects that inspire me. A fun journey, it is.

Muensterland.social IS my main account

...and has been for months now. I am more well know in fedi circles from another account, at a larger instance, where I was an active and friendly moderator and above all, more importantly, Content Producer.

Due to my annoyance of the damage to visibility of my personal work as a result of FediBlock non-sense, I searched for a new home for my Publishing work.

And I found it, and it worked well, no block stopping my work from being seen or replied to, like happens in some places. (I wrote about that in a blog, or two, more than twice in fact).

My Writing is the most important contribution

...that I can bring to this interesting place. I have been involved in computer networks for many years, starting from before Internet access was a consumer commodity like it later became.

I wrote memoirs and dialogues I had here with some other old-timers, and greatly enjoyed that. The pages were well received and informed a newer generation on how things were in the past.

Turns out they were quite similar!

Happy here, thank you Niklas!

I don't think users show appreciation for the effort, work, time and talent people put into making those instances and services available for anyone. No corporate backing, no advertising revenue, no personal data harvesting and brokering for profit.

This instance is quite special for me. It's like my very own, personal instance, with the advantage that I enjoy it running on beautiful hardware, and with professional management. From my first post about Muensterland :

Muensterland.social runs on a HP ProLiant DL380 G6 server with two Intel Xeon Quad Core CPUs,32GB memory and 4x72GB RAID5 HDDs so there is still much space for new users.

For a geek like me, the server description was saliva inducing. OMG. I want in, thank you!

And a location in the European Union, which for me is essential for personal privacy and comfort. Wrote a Blog page about how I had just discovered Muensterland.social, and it had 820 page views in the 5 months since publication. This for a small, Tech and Fedi focused blog like mine, is significant.

This is soon to be in a Blog page...

...as what started as a Toot, due to it being written in a superior Platform (Glitch-Social), in an instance allowing MarkDown rich text format and perfectly presenting it; turns out I soon saw I should take it to my normal text editor, and add links to relevant post as well. Which is done and will be in the completed Toot when sent, soon.

A copy will be saved here, and that will receive the full love of a Blog post, which for me is my ultimate Content Production experience. I aim for a Magazine style and quality, and am happy that my work has the shine and information like one of the professional ones.

I enjoy this journey as a Citizen Journalist, and this post marks a return to my active #FediReporter tag and work.

Thank you again, Niklas, for the great service. Glad my Nomad heart brought me to a better caravanserai.

Sincerely,

rgx@muensterland.social

#Fediverse #Glitch #Glitchsocial #markdown love #nomad

Banner image is a photo by Dzmitry Dudov (Dead_Angel) on Unsplash

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@rgx@write.tedomum.net

This page created entirely in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment about this post – reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

R.G. @rgx@muensterland.social ^—top of page

Intro

To love is sometimes to let go, respect someone's need to be out and observe, marvel at so much the world has to offer. Sometimes people have a hard time accepting that, while part of a community, or in a closer relationship with someone, all humans have curiosity and it's rich to see and let it blossom.

I offer this post to my friend Coralie, we met very recently, and yet she has such a sensibility, that it saw deeply into my heart and soul.

Yesterday she surprised me, messaging privately and offering a comment that delighted me — that she could perceive my inner nature so clearly. <!—more—>

It closely related to the theme of this page. A toot, written from the hip, not polished or edited but coming from inside, prose flowing. A response to the local system administrator, which sometimes shows concern about my wanderings all over the Fediverse.

This morning, she favourited and boosted it – which brought it into my notifications and a re-read confirms it's poetic, and should be published. To Coralie, I offer this.

Thanks dear friend.

“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” — Antoine de Saint Exupery

And so I wrote.

Well done, very good.

And excellent work on implementing that feature, new in non-Japanese instances (in Nippon they created that for Misskey).

I was honoured that you pursued this feature to serve my own nomad lifestyle, lol, but I need the real thing, to join and post as a Local in any instance I am interested it is my modus-operandi.

Thanks to the power and flexibility of the great Pinafore client for Fediverse, each of my current 11 or so instances are ONE click away; I do keep various tabs of Pinafore open, with the most frequently used instances loaded in each.

As I have stated and explained before, this is a personal choice, for a inquiring mind and mid to advanced level users. Not for the average user, who is better served by locating one good instance and staying with it.

Qoto.org has many good things, and that is the reason I volunteer and put many hours and thousands of posts here.

But that's only one side of me; and I have interests that make having various accounts desirable; and I act on them, as you know.

This morning I am connected and actively communicating from 3 instances atm; each with a focus and local feature set that makes it interesting and useful.

But the feature you are referring to, and which got endorsed by a well created poll, is not an important one for me (reasons stated above).

Getting a better software instance is Number one — I am moving to Glitch-Social instances as much as possible. Pleroma awaits a thorough evaluation, which I plan to publish in my Blog.

Enhanced text formatting is so satisfying that I dread anytime I post something significant — like this very post, which I will use as part of a Blog, real soon — in an instance which doesn't offer me that.

I remain a user here, but Nomad is my heart.

Muensterland.Social – a new Instance joined

#FediReporter #WriteFreely #Nomad #Culture #Instances #QotoJournal #KoyuJournal

in response to a system admin post.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@rgx@write.tedomum.net

This page created entirely in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment about this post – reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

R.G. @rgx@muensterland.social ^—top of page