∞

I’ve been using Butt Rub for a number of years, but made my first direct purchase from their website and got this awesome t-shirt as a free gift! Great rub, great name, great shirt! 🐖🔥😍

Smiling man barefoot in a white Bad Byrons Butt Rub Barbeque Seasoning t-shirt and khaki shorts standing in a kitchen
∞

Tammy and I checked out Dinner Jazz with Jeremy Ylvisaker and Martin Dosh at Icehouse Minneapolis tonight. 🎶

Three musicians performing under red stage lighting outdoors, with drums on left, electric guitar center, and guitar on right.
∞

Happy Birthday America! 🇺🇸🎉🎆

Four people posing together in a backyard at a summer gathering, two adults and two kids wearing casual patriotic and sporty outfits.
∞

Independence Day Hike at Murphy-Hanrehan

In just over a week we head to Switzerland for our hiking trip. I wanted to get a longer and harder hike in before we left so this morning Tammy and I got up early, let the kids sleep in, and went to Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve for a 5.3 mile hike with about 900 ft of elevation gain. It took us 2h 8m to finish. My shirt was like I had wore it in a shower when we got done. I brought my poles and was initially feeling silly, but after a couple of miles the trail started going up and down more and I was happy to have them. 😅 Also on Strava.

Strava GPS map of a 5.3-mile looping hike trail through forested parkland with ponds, color-coded green to yellow showing pace. Calm pond glimpsed through dense woodland trees, with a fallen log and low undergrowth in the foreground Two smiling hikers pose for a selfie on a lush green wooded trail, one holding trekking poles and wearing a plaid shirt, the other a mint Patagonia Run tee. Lush green meadow with tall grasses and seed heads, bare dead trees in the center, and a dense leafy forest under a partly cloudy sky Narrow dirt trail cutting through lush green undergrowth into a dense summer forest, with a lone hiker visible far ahead on the path Smiling hiker taking a selfie on a wooded trail, wearing a blue plaid shirt and backpack, holding trekking poles Narrow dirt trail winding through a tall deciduous forest with a lone hiker in a teal shirt visible in the distance Two hikers smile for a selfie at a trailhead kiosk showing Hiking Trail and Ski Trail signs, surrounded by green trees.
∞

Enjoying this Athletic Brewing Apricot Farmhouse. Refreshing and crisp flavor. 🍻

Athletic Brewing Co Apricot Farmhouse non-alcoholic beer can beside a full glass on a white counter with bananas in background
∞

We had a fun night at the Dude Perfect Panda-monium show tonight. Tyler and I went to the 2021 and this show followed the same structure.

Packed arena crowd watching performers on a lit stage court with a basketball hoop and rack of colored balls nearby. Packed arena with purple stage lighting as a performer in yellow raises arms on a small elevated court surrounded by a large crowd Four people smiling together for a selfie inside a packed arena with purple stage lighting during a live show. Packed arena during Dude Perfect Panda-monium show with smoke cannons firing, green stage lighting, and a large screen reading All Time Greatest.
∞

Thanks to very detailed directions from Matt Langford (@mtt) I was able to add NIP-05 Verification to my micro.blog hosted site with a custom plugin to create the nostr.json link.

∞

Current POV.

Laptop and coffee mug on a yellow picnic table under a pergola with string lights and a yellow star lantern, overlooking a lake.
∞

I love watching the Damselflies hover and cling to the Big Bluestem in the morning.

Blue damselfly perched on a green reed stem, wings spread flat, surrounded by tall grasses with yellow seed heads.
∞

Micro.blog Ecosystem Support via a Community Fund?

I’ve been having more fun on micro.blog lately in large part to the excellent work of Matt Langford and his delightful Tiny Theme for Micro.blog.

When I saw Tiny Theme I instantly appreciated the design and support for all the capabilities that micro.blog provides. I liked how Matt had built in support for some of the most popular plug-ins, including Sven Dahlstrand’s great collection. Plus Tiny Theme is super fast. I switched my site to it and have been having a great time.

Matt has pushed new features and improvements on a weekly basis (or more) since release. It has been fun to see the continued improvements. He recently started integrating Tinylytics, a new service by Vincent Ritter, and Matt’s enthusiasm for the service, and built-in support coming in Tiny Theme, was enough to get me to sign up for a paid account.

Great blogging platforms have these wonderful developer communities that form around them. I’ve hosted my blog on several different technologies, and the one thing I miss about WordPress is the massive (almost too massive) community of themes and plugins built around it.

But no blogging platform has developed an economically supported ecosystem around it. I think that is an opportunity.

Matt has a PayPal link in his Tiny Theme documentation which I was happy to see and use to send a Thank You. That is fine, but it is hardly the way to support an on-going effort like maintaining a theme.

The introduction of Tiny Theme added a lot of value to my micro.blog experience. Not just for the service directly, but also for other plugin developers too. I’d love to support a Community Fund to continue to support the development of additional themes and plugins.

Could we have a micro.blog Community Fund? Micro.blog already has different tiers of service. Imagine if I could “upgrade” with a $50/year “Community Fund” add-on. Those funds would go to micro.blog, and then be distributed to theme and plugin developers to help make the ecosystem even better.

Distribution of funds would need some thought, and should be more editorial and algorithmic. You would not want to game a system of plugin developers seeking installs to drive funding. And you would want to fund things that have no usage yet. But creating an economic system to drive community innovation would be a great step to a sustainable, independent, and thriving platform still at human scale.

Maybe Micro.blog creator Manton will find this intriguing. 😎