It's rare to get an article that basically "writes itself". And today, I'd dare say this is one of my better thought-out articles, too:
https://bojidar-bg.dev/blog/2025-06-27-being-human/
"On being human", an essay on what I find so profound about being human, and why I'm so insistent on including it in my tagline.
(:
Since I started my role as Head of Communications at Mastodon, I’ve been finding my surroundings becoming more and more… purple.
Our brand palette is a set of purple / indigo hues, and of course, I want to represent the organisation appropriately!
I now have a couple of pairs of glasses with varieties of purple frames. Naturally, I also got a purple (sort of) watch band as well.
[side note – I am now a big fan of IOLLA, a Scottish brand, who made one of the pairs I’m now wearing regularly – they have brilliantly-designed clip-on sunglasses too]
I’ve also taken advantage of Framework’s new translucent purple laptop accessories, and have added a bezel and a couple of USB-C expansion modules in that colourway.
Working on being fully on-brand – new transparent purple bezel for my #FrameworkLaptop (and some transparent purple expansions too, not visible from this angle).
— Andy Piper (@andypiper) 2025-06-15T12:10:52.315Z
Oh, and I made a GNOME Shell user theme that uses the brand colours, with a little SVG Fediverse logo for the app menu, configured using the ArcMenu extension).
On a more technical side, I also made some small tools to create LibreOffice and macOS colour palettes out of lists of colours in text files. One hundred percent connected to the fact that I wanted to use the right colour scheme in documents and presentations
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#OverUnder 025 with @monospace !
He share his point of view on:
- Split #keyboards
-#Arch Linux
- #Fish the shell
- #DevOps
- #Cider
#blog #fediverse #mastodon #GNU #Shell #Linux #SRE #MechanicalKeyboards
#100DaysToOffload : 068/100
A small issue with my #Neovim spelling
#blog #100DaysToOffload : 067/100
Must Have Essential Applications For Desktop Linux
Explore the curated essential list of free & open source software applications by category for the graphical user interface of a GNU/Linux desktop.
https://www.adamsdesk.com/posts/essential-desktop-linux-applications/
I have now set up a /now page, inspired by Bryan Braun's! Complete with it's very own Atom feed.
https://bojidar-bg.dev/blog/2025-06-19-now-page/
Now... () time to go and submit it to https://nownownow.com/ :D
I’m accidentally becoming a #FediMerch guy.
Shiny stickers
Last year, I wrote a blog post, Fediverse for Freedom – which was about the importance of a free and open Fediverse, and how and why public institutions can support it. Since then, I’ve referred to this blog post in many of my talks and in conversations, and started to use the hashtag #FediverseForFreedom.
Ahead of FOSDEM back in February, I created some stickers to share – a Fediverse logo, overlaid with the text “I Am Part Of The Rebel Alliance #FediverseForFreedom”. They were quite a hit at the time, and since then I’ve used the same image in presentations. When people have seen them, I’ve quite often been asked where they came from.
Last week, Elena Rossini – writer of the fantastic The Future is Federated blog/newsletter, talented filmmaker and photographer, and (perhaps) the Fediverse’s Number One Fan – released a great, four minute video that both explains and promotes the Fediverse and open platforms not owned by billionaires1
One of the stickers shows up in several shots of the the video, and once again, I heard that people would like to be able to get some for themselves.
A simple site
I’ve been wanting to make the stickers available for a while, but the release of the video finally pushed me into getting this done!
I’d recently bought some stickers myself, from the talented Robb Knight, and he mentioned that he used Stripe Payment Links for his site. I already had a Stripe account, so thought I’d try the same thing.
So: now you can visit fediverseforfreedom.org (.com points to .org), and click on a link to to get a handful of stickers shipped in your direction! You can also easily just tell your friends, “oh yeah, I got them from Fediverse For Freedom dot org”. Nice and straightforward.
A small pile of I Am Part Of The Rebel Alliance stickersThere’s a bit more information about it all on that simple site, but I thought it might be interesting to write down a bit more about how I made it.
The site is running on Codeberg Pages. Previously I’ve put these kinds of one-off, single page sites up on GitHub Pages, or on Glitch. I’m feeling increasingly less comfortable about having all of my stuff on GitHub and hosted in the US; and, unfortunately, Glitch is going away soon (more on this in a future post). So in this case I chose Codeberg Pages, although I’m aware that they are themselves a platform that is currently in maintenance mode. I’m open to suggestions for similar sites, as I’ll need to migrate some Glitch apps somewhere very soon!
Apart from that: the whole operation is very low tech. Stripe Payment Links are convenient – Stripe itself can handle a huge variety of payment types – but, on the backend… it does not do much. No order acknowledgement emails, order management tools, or anything like that. All I get is a basic dashboard with information about the orders. I whipped up some simple Python that uses the Stripe API to grab the postal addresses of orders, and then creates SVG address labels for printing. The same code also grabs the email addresses so that I can send an email thanking the customer for the order.
In terms of shipping, that’s also a manual process – no “drop-shipping” here, I’m getting the stickers from my regular supplier (StickerApp), putting them in envelopes, and posting them out myself. That also means that delivery times will vary – although I had enough in stock to cover all of the initial orders, I’ve also been in Amsterdam for the past 3 days, so the first batch will go out on Monday.
One more thing I’m experimenting with here is GoatCounter, just to get a sense of traffic and interest. I didn’t want to put a load of invasive Google Analytics onto such a basic page, and I’ve had GoatCounter recommended to me a few times now – like Mastodon, it has also benefited from NLNet funding from the European Union in the past, and I wanted to see what was possible. It seems to do just what I wanted, whilst also being unintrusive.
What’s next?
Look… I don’t intend to become some kind of merch magnate, but I do know that some people share my own desire to display our commitment to the Fediverse and related causes, and if I can help folks to do so, then I will (did you know we already made a t-shirt? Elena has asked me for more in the same vein!).
If you want to look for other ways to show your support in public, and to give back to people or projects that work on tools that you use, take a look at the Awesome Fediverse Merch list that Jeff Sikes is curating. Plenty of options for everyone.
Finally – remember to support the creators of your favourite sites, services, and open source software directly, whenever you can!
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https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/06/14/part-of-the-rebel-alliance/
IT'S HAPPENING!
Thanks for everyone who voted above; it's been sufficient votes to convince me that. I. am. doing. this! (in July )
https://bojidar-bg.dev/blog/2025-06-12-bugs-done-quick/
Now, if you would be kind enough to suggest bugs for me to do while speedrunning, either in the form on the above-linked post or just here, that would be awesome and much appreciated!