Blog

I restarted my amateur radio hobby recently, on a small scale, just HF CW.

I had a QSO with Julian G4VHJ on 30m CW and he reminded me of the You Tube videos I'd made a few years ago when I was fairly active on CW and making You Tube videos of CW QSOs seemed a nice niche thing to do.

Since I left the mainstream internet behind - so-called De-Googling - and deleted my Google/You Tube account among many other things, and decided to concentrate on “smol web” methods - Gopher, and this wiki mostly - I did have qualms about not being able to share short personal hobby-related videos. I didn't miss consuming lots of You Tube content - it's still possible to watch You Tube without an account, and with an Ad Blocker, if you forgo the “history” and algorithmic pushing of content. But not being able to share my own short video clips was beginning to make me consider my position regarding Google/You Tube….

Then I remembered “Peer Tube” - I'd heard of it, but wasn't sure what it involved. So I had a look, and it's just what I was hoping for. I don't want a huge audience, I don't want “followers” and certainly don't want Advertising and monetization etc. Just a simple way of making short geeky videos available on the web….

So I created an account at makertube.net : https://makertube.net/c/rf_eclectica/videos and made a couple of videos of some CW QSOs, and dug out an old one from 2023 as well, just to get the ball rolling.

So far, so good….

Then I re-discovered Mastodon - I'd tried it in the past and found it partly good, and partly annoying.

The post-Twitter-migration dust seems to have settled and perhaps this is time to re-think.

I managed to get my account at mastodon.radio re-activated thanks to Christopher M0YNG and I've been refreshing my memory about using it.

I'm @gm4slv@mastodon.radio

I still want to continue my Gopher hole - but perhaps also re-ignite my use of this wiki/blog and Mastodon too.