Went down a little rabbit hole over the past couple of weeks and thought I’d share.

I’ve been sitting back watching Twitter slowly fall apart as a spectator and rather enjoying it becasue it didn’t affect me directly. All the outrage seemed to be focused on those that used the default client app or web site. Not me. As soon as there were 3rd party clients available back-in-the-day (has it been 16 YEARS?!?), I’ve used them. First with Twitterrific and then I migrated to Tweetbot, which I’ve been using since around 2011. I’ve never had ads, promoted Tweets or timeline shenanigans, so I was immune to all the fuss. That all changed last week.

Craig Hockenberry summed it up best in his blog post Shit Show but suffice to say, Space Karen, shut me out. Maybe it’ll come back, maybe it won’t, but I had already begun looking at other services beccause I figured at some point the wheels might come off the wagon and Twitter might become the next MySpace.

I have an accounts on Mastadon and Post but neither have a dedicated 3rd party apps just yet so I use it infrequently. Ivory looks promising and I’ll probably buy it as soon as it comes out.

In the process of exploring other social media platforms it had me thinking back to my old Palm OS User Council days and thankfully I wasn’t alone. Many of my old Palm buddies are on Mastadon and it feels a little like we go the band back together. Awash in nostalgia, I went back even further in search of the old #palmchat IRC channel.

IRC

Before Discord and Slack, I used to chat with friends via IRC and #palmchat was the channel that I hung out in the most. Back-in-the-day it was a veritible who’s who of Palm Enthusiasts who generated content about PalmOS. No such thing as influencers, YouTube, Instagram, etc., back then but I suppose there’s a similarity, just no real compensation component. I did a dive to try and find some reference to it and I found an old article from The Gadgeteer but that was about it.

After the iPhone came out the PalmOS community just evaporated and everyone moved on to other things, as people do. Not intenionally, but over time I drifted away from #palmchat. I would reformat my machine and forget to connect to IRC, something else would grab my attention and I’d forget. Every few years though, I’d have a sudden reminder that I hadn’t checked in and I’d look up the connection info and pop back in.

Dawned on me that it’d been at least 5-years since I checked in but I was lucky enough to find my way. #palmchat is now invite only #palmchat2 (don’t know why) and mostly on Discord now but a lot of the same people are there and it’s been fantastic to reconnect. Not as many as in 2002, of course, but far from empty.

Here’s a photo of my desktop from 2002 to give some context to my “former life”.

My desktop circa 2002
My desktop circa 2002

Blogging Again?

All of this looking back, Wayback Machine deep dives and reconnections, naturally led me back to here. I’ve been focused on work and building my business and not really feeling like I had much to say. Maybe that will change now, maybe it won’t. Time will tell.

“History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”, Mark Twain

Seems I’m not alone either. I looked up the developer of an application I used to use, BlogGTK!, and he’s back to blogging too.

I started this blog in 2003 on MovableType and then moved to WordPress in 2009. 20 years ago I had a lot to say, even though I didnt’ know that much. Over time, I’ve learned just how little I know and just how nuanced life can be. I don’t know how much I’ll actually blog but going down this rabbit hole has been a lot of fun.

This article was composed and published from Byword using Markdown on an M1 Macbook Air.