Erstwhile Okie on St. Mark's Place. "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past."
When I first built this site, it was an attempt to make something that could be my own personal facebook / instagram / twitter site that I was in complete control of. I even downloaded all of my Facebook and Instagram posts at the time and imported them since the main thing that kept me on Facebook at the time was the "memories" feature.
Later on, I imagined maybe I could build it in such a way that other people could download and host it and add their own name and bio and pictrue, etc... and quickly have their own personal social media.
Then, I imagined that maybe I could give these different sites the ability to connect to one another via some central registry, allowing them to see other sites' posts on their own, and like and share and comment, etc... without ever leaving their own personal domain. But ultimately, social media is only ever as successful as the number of people you know on it, and setting up your own site and hosting it was never going to attract many people.
A couple of years ago, a service called Mastodon came into existence, which had a similar premise. You host your own account (or use one of many, many sites out there, eg. https://mastodon.social) and it can be viewed, liked, etc... by any other Mastodon account.
For a hot minute, when Elon Musk was buying Twitter, it seemed like it might take off, but ultimately I think it was just too confusing for it to ever be mass-adopted.
At any rate, on a whim, I refactored this site to integrate with Mastodon, so if I create a post (like this one), it displays here like it always has, but also publishes to Mastodon (in places like this: https://mastodon.social/@patrick@pg.mccullo.ug) and I have a feed (visible only to me) of other Mastodon users I follow. Unfortunately, right now it's just the creator and a bot that spits out Mastodon stats and analytics. I couldn't find anyone else that seemed very interesting. I got excited to find Stephen Fry, but his last post is from 2023. But it's been a fun distraction from the lingering ache of a breakup...
· 1 min read
1 years ago
I need to update this antiquated site to make it easier to share TikTok / Instagram / YouTube videos, but who has the time?
As a kid, I used to be much more interested in publicizing myself than creating any work worth publicizing (eg. in high school, my friend and I decided to make an independent film, and our first order of business was making film-branded t-shirts).
Getting older and looking back on it, I felt so embarrassed, I swung the other way and worked on things and never told anyone about them.
But now, I'm trying to land somewhere in the middle, and in the midst of a constantly shifting publishing-ecosystem, I figure its worth taking advantage of the egalitarian entry point of social media, so I've (cynically) started a series of mini-videos snarkily reviewing the first lines of novels.
Hopefully I can build up some kernel of literate followers that might make it easier to pitch myself to publishers.
You can check out the first entry in the series (Reviewing the opening lines of novels) at:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pgmccullough/video/7536000328789921054
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNEuSITRAp6/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/00ZtWDz94j8
Would appreciate any TikTok followers...
This Tweet pops into my mind not-infrequently. 😂
· 1 min read
5 years ago
Really tired of social media for a number of different reasons, but still occasionally feel the urge to share thoughts and pictures with the 2-3 people who follow me on different platforms. A blog might seem like a sensible answer, but that's always overwhelming and never holds my interest long. Piecing together 140 characters that no one will read is a lot more appealing than writing a couple thousand words that no one will read.
So, I built this. It doesn't look like much, but it's got a pretty nifty backend (if I do say so myself) that makes it more or less a clone/amalgam of all the major social media websites. And since I host it, I have full and total control over every video, photo, or note I post.
I have a long-term vision of getting the code for it tidied up enough to be able to have other people run it on their own websites, and allow said websites the ability to connect with other websites on the same platform so that there could potentially be a traditional social-media-esque feed.
Which basically means that a random visitor to your website just sees your posts, but when you, the owner of the website, visit it, you see your posts intermingled with the latest posts from websites you follow, and have all of the usual social media methods for interaction (liking/commenting). But in a completely decentralized system.
Just an idea, and I'll probably get bored of it before I get far, but in the meantime, at least I have an easy way to store thoughts and memories outside of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter.
So, I built this. It doesn't look like much, but it's got a pretty nifty backend (if I do say so myself) that makes it more or less a clone/amalgam of all the major social media websites. And since I host it, I have full and total control over every video, photo, or note I post.
I have a long-term vision of getting the code for it tidied up enough to be able to have other people run it on their own websites, and allow said websites the ability to connect with other websites on the same platform so that there could potentially be a traditional social-media-esque feed.
Which basically means that a random visitor to your website just sees your posts, but when you, the owner of the website, visit it, you see your posts intermingled with the latest posts from websites you follow, and have all of the usual social media methods for interaction (liking/commenting). But in a completely decentralized system.
Just an idea, and I'll probably get bored of it before I get far, but in the meantime, at least I have an easy way to store thoughts and memories outside of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter.
Patrick doesn't live here anymore. Follow me to @PGMcCullough (if you like)
· 1 min read
7 years ago
A lot of tough love from the fans on Lori Laughlin's page. Some harsh words, some raw feelings, but also some thoughtful meditations on the nature of redemption. It's great to see people taking the time to reach out to Ms. Loughlin. People like Shannon Gold, who pulled no punches in explaining to Ms. Loughlin: "I have no words to describe my disappointment in you."
Does everyone else now have the ability to not just "like" a post, but express other responses? Don't know what I think about it.
I wonder how long it would take for Instagram servers to explode if I had the kids during the week too
leave me alone, Facebook, I'm busy
http://groups.myspace.com/ripkevo
making a clever comment about the newsfeed thing