2025-09-25 19:30:13
The last week has been a bit of a disaster. I was very excited to continue pushing towards the low 300s, but unfortunately I’ve hit a major setback. I have a wicked ear infection that has been causing me extreme amounts of pain. As such, I’ve essentially lost nearly all control over my eating habits. In a fit of restlessness, I recorded this update while coming up with a plan to bounce back from this. It is frustrating to lose all of September’s progress to this, but I’m taking it as a lesson in patience and perseverance.
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2025-09-18 06:43:57
I’m thrilled to report that I’m comfortably below 350lbs. Coming from a high of over 570lbs not that long ago, it is quite astonishing what has changed. I’m finally beginning to fit into 2XL clothes, (down from 6XL!) taking on a wider variety of exercises, and getting a lot of positive feedback from people online and IRL. As you can see a great deal of weight has been lifted off of me, in ways beyond just physical. So many simple things are much easier, and I’m really excited for what’s ahead. If you don’t mind me getting a bit sappy, you might find this update worth listening to.
Since ~350lbs is the maximum weight capacity for a variety of cardio machines, being below it expands my options quite a bit. I’ve begun to use the elliptical and stationary bike to really try to push myself to the limit. I’ve mentioned before that changes to your body composition have huge impacts on the sensation of swimming. I am definitely going to miss being able to float on the water effortlessly, but I’ve unlocked a fun new thing. I can now much easier stay underwater while swimming, which is super fun and cool.
I’m eager to push ahead on a wide variety of fitness goals. As my body begins to restrain me less, I am eager to do more and more. It has been incredibly gratifying to take this opportunity to push myself to be familiar with so many things I hadn’t ever tried before. Going from struggling with even basic mobility to trying to become highly active has been equal parts fun and gratifying. One of the adventures I’m on in this regard is learning how to actually train hard while weightlifting. With some honest reflection, it’s clear to me that I very much struggle to really push hard against the weight when it begins to get tough. I am really appreciating what I am learning in improving both my strength and cardiovascular capacity.
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2025-08-27 19:01:54
Things have been challenging lately. I’ve been working hard to start counting calories again as well as taking another stab at kicking my caffeine habit. Pressure has been mounting and so have frustrations, but I’ve been doing well to regain momentum. I still struggle to learn to properly pace myself and truly prioritize recovery, so I’m taking time to take on those challenges head-on. Recently I was able to go for a swim and it did me quite a bit of good. I hope you’ll enjoy this off-the-cuff stream of consciousness about my weight loss journey.
The great news is that I’ve hit a new low of 353.4! I’m very close to the below 350 milestone. I’m really looking forward to getting a dexa scan, and using more cardio machines at the gym! The hope is that I can be very comfortable cycling before I even get on the bike! I’m eagerly looking forward to being able to fit into 2xl clothes, which radically opens up more options for me. I can put them on, but they don’t fit quite yet. What is funny to me is that compared to the 6xl clothes that I started this with, 2xl feels downright TINY. With optimism returning, I’m looking forward to hopefully being below 300 by the end of the year!
Over the last year of lifting I’ve gotten a few InBody snapshots. While these kinds of measurements have to be taken with a grain of salt it’s nice to have something to compare against. According to my latest scan I only have 144lbs left to lose, which would mean I’m way more than halfway done! According to the scans I’ve gone from a BMI of 80 to 53.
Segmental Lean Analysis: Allegedly 100% is supposed to be what’s normal for your size, so I’m thrilled to at least be pushing over 110% in many limbs! I can definitely say I would love to see over 120% on multiple limbs as I continue along.
| Body Part | Sept 24 | Jan 25 | Aug 25 | Total Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arm (R) | 109.% | 111.5% | 116.6% | +6.8% |
| Arm (L) | 111% | 110.4% | 118.7% | +7.7% |
| Core | 101.4% | 102.5% | 106.5 | +5.1% |
| Leg (R) | 95.9% | 97.6% | 110.1% | +14.2 |
| Leg (L) | 96% | 94.5% | 106.5% | +10.5 |
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2025-08-05 05:28:40
The long awaited Ghost 6.0 is OUT! This version is the much-anticipated update that allows self-hosters to use “the social web” with their Ghost websites. This is pretty good news, but for me it was quite a headache. I had already migrated one of my websites Canadian Cyber Freedom to Ghost in anticipation for this particular update. It seems that Ghost didn’t integrate activitypub support into ghost directly (which seems like an odd choice) but instead requires two new containers (and multiple others for their analytics support).
Unfortunately, none of this is clear when you just upgrade your Ghost container to version 6. Social web support will appear to be on, but it won’t actually work. I immediately checked the documentation and it says you just need to update your environment variables. Which lead me to realizing that I needed to configure additional containers by checking the new docker-compose.yaml file. Counter to the official recommendation I’m running Mariadb instead of mysql, this is a HARD STOP for the activitypub-migrate container, so if you’re doing that too you’ll need to setup a new mysql container just for activitypub support.
I hope people who are stuck on trying to get federation via Ghost might find this post helpful. Once you’re setting this up, it’s important to clear cache & cookies regularly until you’ve confirmed it’s working. If you can load the new parts of Ghost after logging in to an incognito tab, you’ve configured everything correctly.
You’re going to need to make sure fediverse requests are handled by the activitypub container. The port I chose was arbitrary, but you can configure your own in the compose file.
Here are my settings:
location ~ /.ghost/activitypub/* {
proxy_pass http://localhost:2369;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
}
location ~ /.well-known/(webfinger|nodeinfo) {
proxy_pass http://localhost:2369;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
}
X-Forwarded-Proto cause of this issue
You need to add the two new containers to your docker-compose.yaml and configure the correct DB. activitypub-migrate just needs to do its work, so you can just re-launch it with docker-compose up or docker-compose restart activitypub-migrate when needed.
activitypub:
image: ghcr.io/tryghost/activitypub:edge
restart: always
volumes:
- ./ap_uploads:/opt/activitypub/content
ports:
- 2369:2369
environment:
PORT: 2369
NODE_ENV: production
MYSQL_HOST: mysql
MYSQL_USER: root
MYSQL_PASSWORD: YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE
MYSQL_DATABASE: activitypub
LOCAL_STORAGE_PATH: /opt/activitypub/content/images/activitypub
LOCAL_STORAGE_HOSTING_URL: https://YOUR_WEBSITE/content/images/activitypub
depends_on:
- mysql
activitypub-migrate:
image: ghcr.io/tryghost/activitypub-migrations:edge
environment:
MYSQL_DB: mysql://root:YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE@tcp(mysql:3306)/activitypub
depends_on:
- mysql
Any website served by ghosts hosted service should already be accessible. You can now follow these sites via the fediverse by their @[email protected] handle. But I’m concerned that self-hosted set-ups will run into the issues that I did.
I noticed that @[email protected] works great, but @[email protected] sadly doesn’t.
You can test if the self-hosted ghost instance has activitypub configured by going to example.com/.ghost/activitypub/users/index/ and seeing if you get a reply or an error.
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2025-08-02 02:52:49
I was elated while recording this walking monologue. I was granted a single day where I recovered from particularly intense muscle soreness. Recognizing a bit of a lack of appreciation for the hard-won challenges, I took this as an opportunity to reflect on past, present, and upcoming changes. Things are exciting these days as my life has radically transformed, but I can really notice how much soreness keeps my mood down. Ideally, I would learn to better pace myself, but for now I’ll contend with the fact that “pushing hard is hard”.
The past and the future is very much on my mind. I really wish I had consistently taken notes prior to beginning to turn things around. I wish I could go back and talk to myself during the worst of it and interrogate my state of mind back then. I certainly remember a fair amount of it, but I am noticing that I have already begun taking many changes for granted. I was absolutely too hard on myself, but maybe I’m not so different these days. What I do know is that I’m not excited enough for what’s ahead. I don’t really think I can comprehend how good I’ll feel once I can bike as regularly as I’ve been walking lately.
I spoke to my trainer about this and he reminded me of what he remembered from when I first set foot in the gym. On my first day I told him the 45 minutes I spent on my feet that day was the longest I had in a very long time. An early victory I had was when I realized I could stand still instead of needing to constantly sway and re-balance just to stay in place. I’ve come a long way, but it feels like I’ve only really begun to ‘let it in’.
An exciting achievement lately was being able to dead hang for a few moments. Even though is around 8 seconds, I think it’s really cool that I can grip over 180lbs in each hand. It really feels like my grip strength gains are paying off, but getting 200lbs off me certainly made a difference as well. This is definitely something I want to work on improving moving forward.
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2025-07-22 08:00:00
I really would like your feedback on what features are essential for a desktop RSS reader to have in 2025! I am not a designer, so UX suggestions are very much valued. I want this project to be built for making the open web a first-class contender with other media systems. The more feedback I get early on, the better this can be in the long run.
Open video if player isn’t working
I’m not special. I wholeheartedly that any experienced programmer could build what I’m hoping to deliver in much less time. This project is primarily for my own learning, but I want to deliver something game-changing. If you appreciate the vision I’m outlining here, I hope you would consider sharing your thoughts.
I wanted to actually get good at programming. Over the years what little I’ve done had gotten quite rusty, and I wanted to change that. As a challenge, I’ve been forcing myself to learn a GUI toolkit. Last year I started this project, but as my weight loss journey became demanding it fell by the wayside. Recently I’ve returned to it and have been making great progress. It has been going very well and it is very gratifying to work on. Iced is becoming more familiar to mes. It is great to finally be at the point where there is a lot less guesswork in getting things to actually run.
Ideally, I would be building small silly things for fun to learn, but I’m too stubborn for that. I want to build something that actually matters, and has a chance of making a difference. On the other hand, it has to actually be something I can create, because no program means no impact at all. So I had to come up with something that felt important but achievable.
The plan is to build myself a desktop RSS reader. I’ve written before that more software needs to be written for RSS and I think there’s a lot of opportunity here. Currently I use FreshRSS for keeping up with feeds, but I want something on the desktop that supports more features and especially multimedia like AntennaPod. Kasts is also a great podcast client on the desktop that works pretty well with written content. With these in mind, the goal is to truly highlight the multimedia experience that the open web can be. Instead of being primarily focused on podcasts or articles, the plan is to make the best of both.
Despite the potential behind Ladybird, I’m turbo bearish on browsers. AI chatbots replacing search engines, and short-form video dominating the information landscape are terrible things for the cultivation of a valuable independent web. My goal is to build an RSS tool so powerful that I’ll hardly need a browser. Not only that, but I believe that it’s important to solve the demand side of the attention economy as well as the supply side. As such, I want to build a tool that can bring real eyeballs and attention to independent web sites. This means that the application has to be as user-friendly as possible. Discovery features are essential to connecting people with the open web. I’m excited about the fact that this can be purely meritocratic, feeds can be discovered from feeds you already follow. Purely individual, no opinionated or manipulative algorithms needed.
I have many ideas for what I consider to be a truly modern refinement of what a desktop RSS reader should be. I think by actually building a desktop client, so much of the massive privacy attack-surface of browsers can be eliminated. It’s become clear to me that browsers are (at least for now) in a particularly terrible state and I don’t want the open web to die with them. The fact of the matter is, big tech systems always raise the bar for what people expect out of their tools. It is crucial that a modern RSS reader has many features that provide competitive value without sacrificing privacy or autonomy. This requires some genuinely creative thinking if I say so myself. By broadening the scope of what such a tool can be used for, many exciting options open up.
For example, I’ve essentially used FreshRSS as my own mini search engine. With full-text search capabilities and other features, an RSS reader can be a powerful information management tool. Just as I fear for the future of web browsers, I am also concerned about the future of search engines as a whole. If we allow AI agents to be the new gatekeepers of the web, the idea of directly searching the web comes under fire. I definitely want to build a tool that opposes this force head-on. One advantage of building this in 2025 is that expecting users to store archives of their RSS feeds is a relatively trivial demand for most systems. As such, I think search and information management features are a serious game-changer for a modern RSS reader. I already use Logseq and I’ll be thinking about what integrations would be desirable. My hope is that this would create a real avenue for valuable resources to be discovered and engaged with.
It has been pointed out that an advantage of ‘darknet’ sites is that anyone can set one up without having to pay for a domain, or having to expose a public IP to the Internet. Treating Tor & I2P (and hopefully other networks as well) as first-class resources allows users to leverage these powerful censorship resistance technologies. The dream of this is that instead of valuable hidden services being siloed away, they can be full participants in the greater open web. I believe this alone-makes this project a valuable pursuit. A great deal of (actual human) web traffic to my (relatively small) web presence is from both Tor & I2P, this is one way I hope to ‘give back’.
You can subscribe to arbitrary feeds
Code is written to discover feeds from an arbitrary url.
via `<link rel="alternate">`
Feeds & items are saved and retrieved from the database
Feed content is properly parsed with my module to build objects for the iced gui.
Browsing feeds and items works
Item view page successfully displays article contents (without multimedia for now)
TTS with Piper
Configuration wizard
Different views for particular kinds of content
Video support via iced_video_player
I’d really like any and all thoughts you may have about what’s worth including or how to get particular features right. If you have any thoughts or suggestions I would really appreciate it if you’d contact me.
Given that I fully intend to support clearnet & darknets, I’d love to feedback on how they should be handled. The easiest would be to simply load content from it’s respective network, but maybe some people would want to use Tor for clearnet connections as well. I think there are many people much more knowledgeable than me who would have very useful thoughts on how best to handle this.
An obvious low-hanging fruit would be to suggest feeds linked from the open article/podcast. I’m curious what other useful avenues are worth considering when it comes to offering suggestions. I was thinking that some form of ranked suggestions based off similar feeds is an interesting idea. I would definitely be open to specific suggestions on this front.
Getting the application to look acceptable will be a significant achievement on my part. Any and all suggestions are going to be vital in the long run.
If you’re excited by the prospect of a new RSS client with fancy features, any help you can offer would go a long way to making my life a lot easier. I can accept donations through Liberapay or via Monero. I am hoping that once this project beings to show promise, that I can work on this and other similarly inspired projects full-time. I want to spend my time building things that frustrate tyrants.
xmr:83H6o3oMRYog28CbFfG1bQ5vdVG9MQ3itSF1HAPygTyrPsQ7zsXwPXcB5WBei3RqDpdHjitWTeZWkQJSXK3VF8VRG4e2e9R
Thank you for reading this through RSS 📡
Your thoughts and feedback is very important to me. Get in touch!