VEX.blue Articles

So I've been half secretly building a little book for the past week or so that I believe would be a great advantage to the Fediverse. The book is meant to explain to newcomers of the Fediverse what it is and what to expect from it, getting into details about what sort of software they could see on the Fediverse as well as how the systems are different the centralised ones they've seen.

The hope is that once I finish writing this little book is that I'd have a pretty good started guide for those who wish to read about the Fediverse, well giving experienced users some helpful tips I've learnt over the years on the Fediverse. Obviously the book will need to be checked over a few times but I really am hoping to publish it not only to Apple Books like I have with previous writings of mine but also publish it as a physical book along with other E-book stores.

Why release it as a Physical and E-Book?

I believe the advantage of publishing the Fediverse in a physical and digital format will be that more people will learn about it, obviously it's most likely not going to be in every bookstore in the world, or even across the UK (where I live) but it would be good to have the option of it being in someones hands instead of just there digital library.

For those who are doing a bit of a social media detox it would be a good little read to explain the benefits of the decentralised system instead of the centralised ones that may have caused them the issues they are facing.

How am I making sure it's a quality book?

I'm writing about 1k words per day at minimum at the moment and put out a poll asking what sort of size book would look for when it comes to a book about the Fediverse. The poll was to try and a better understanding on what a general voter audience would like to see in a book centered about the Fediverse.

The current results of writing this has indicated that people want a more length book of at least 50 - 100+ pages and for there to be around 50k - 100k words what is possibly going to be a hell of a time. The 100 pages would be easy to do before 50k words but once you get above 50k words you are most likely going to be writing a 200+ page book what is about a normal novel length.

Some of the other ways I'm hoping to keep making the book as best of the quality that it can get to is by opening asking questions on the Fediverse along with doing my own research about how each software, instance and other parts of the Fediverse may function along with keeping in mind that the readers might not understand what the Fediverse is.

Explaining the Fediverse in multiple different ways to help people understand it throughout the book is one of the main ways this book could also help people learn what the Fediverse is and understand it that little bit more.

Do I think will become a 'Go-To Guide'?

The development of this book has never been the idea of creating a must 'go-to guide' for all. There is always going to be things that I miss, and if I didn't miss a single thing the book would be that long it would be way to expensive for one person to purchase without a monthly payment and to heavy for someone to move around without a fork-lift.

I'm more hoping that it would be a good starting point for the few people that might not have heard of the Fediverse yet, or even be a book you suggest your friend that is having trouble with the centralised social media and wants to find something different. So easily it's a book that I wish that those who use the Fediverse (if they feel it's a good enough book) to maybe share with those who haven't listened or just don't currently get why it's a good thing to use.

Will it become out-dated?

Simple answer is yes, things always become outdated overtime but I'd hope that with the ways I explain things as well as some of the softwares I mention about it will hopefully not become outdated till a few years down the line. This means that I rather would need to create a whole new book for the series of guides on the Fediverse or maybe the first book done enough in helping those who needed it that little push of why they should join the Fediverse.

So I simply would like to not have to update the book for a little while, but who knows it might be able do its job the first time around and many people learn about the Fediverse and move away from centralised social media.

How much will the book cost?

As of the moment I haven't set a price for the book as it's still in development but I do know both the Physical and Digital versions will have a price tag on them. "But it doesn't cost you anything to have a digital version for free", Yes well it doesn't cost me anything to distribute the digital version for free, allowing for more possible eyes to look at it but when you release something for free I've found a lot of people see it as worse quality. As for when you put a price tag on that, no matter how cheap it might be, people have got to try and get value from it "get there money's worth".

That's the reason that the digital version will have a price tag, even a little one. But Obviously I'm not sure how much I will charge for either version of the book as of the moment, as it's still being written and still taking up time and effort to write but I do want to try and keep costs low to make sure that people can read the book especially if they financially are struggling and in the future I may even try and help people with digital discounts on the E-Book versions but that will only come with time.

Today is Global Switch Day for the Fediverse, and to be honest it surprised me after waking up and seeing @dansup@mastodon.social posting about it.

I follow Dan closely due to his work on PixelFed & Loops, amazing platforms that has been in the works, both connecting to the ActivityPub Protocol so you can see the posts by users in places like Mastodon.

As a celebration of the day I thought I'd make an article talking and publish why I think you should Join the Fediverse, call it a quick refresh of my Decentralised Social Media article I did a while back.

What is the Fediverse?

I could write a long list of what the Fediverse is but instead I'll show you an amazingly short video that explains it instead.

What Software should I join?

To be honest Mastodon is a great start and introduction in what the Fediverse is, it's just like old twitter and there are plenty of people that stick with the base Instance / Server Mastodon.Social but if you wanted to explore further Software and Instances beyond the default I'd suggest to check out FediDB a database for Software and Instances a great tool to see what's out there.

If you already like certain types of social media maybe you should go for a software similar to what you already use.

• Twitter / X | Mastodon
• Facebook | Friendica
• Instagram | PixelFed
• Threads | Mastodon
• Facebook Messenger | Element (You could also use Signal but that's not decentralized)
• WhatsApp | Element (You could also use Signal but that's not decentralized)
• TikTok | Loops (Currently in BETA)
• YouTube | PeerTube
• Reddit | Lemmy or Mbin

I also made a basic graphic to share to people, here it is.

So get involved today, take back your control of your social life through switching to the Fediverse today.

For the past month plus I've been working hard with my partner to create a Mod for his long-term Creative Minecraft World where he's been building a Minecraft UK City called 'Creston'. Through joining the world in December 2024 I looked around and found there where so many things that he could be doing to add detail (especially as it was already a modded world to begin with).

This original developed into the idea of using Chisel & Bits an amazing Minecraft mod to keep the blocky look of Minecraft but also get great detail into things. There's a huge selection of visually pleasing videos across YouTube that I'd highly suggest to look up in the future.

After placing over 10k blocks across the already established city with custom blocks for road markings & partly modeled traffic lights, we realized that when loading into the world it takes a little bit of time before your area gets loaded, and even then when moving around it seemed to have lagged. We understood that it was due to the Chisel & Bits, so we started thinking of solutions to the basic blocks such as road markings & traffic lights that we wanted to add to the world and came up with creating our own mod.

Shortly after Christmas (December 28th) we started work on creating our own mod simply titled Creston's UK City Pack and because we both made sure to do plenty of research into UK City Mods for Minecraft Java in the past and as we are slowly developing the mod we thought to ourselves "Why not release the mod publicly?". It makes people (like us) that are looking for a mod for UK infrastructure able to at least have the option of a pre-made mod, even if it's very basic.

Originally we where releasing to Modrinth along with CurseForge but we decided to drop CurseForge support after a little bit as there seemed to be no traction (We may return to it or do major updates in the future, but no promises).

Since the start of 2025 we have now created over 300 blocks for the mod and doesn't look like we are slowing down with more signs coming to the mod in the future with plenty of ideas of blocks & items written down, but we are also always welcome for feedback / suggestions for future things you wish to see in the mod.

So what does the mod actually include? – It has various road markings, traffic lights, loads of Highway Code UK signs from the speed limits all the way to modular motorway signs & soon we will have a range of brick blocks, allowing you to expand your building depth for a more authentic feel.

Sadly there are several things we've been asked but can't currently add to the mod, such as functional traffic lights but all of our blocks are survival craftable thanks to @nikki@sunny.garden mentioning about there boyfriend wanting to play the mod.

Post by @nikki@sunny.garden

View on Mastodon

Since we play the Creston City World with a mix of mods, we also decided that it would be a good idea to release all the mods publicly as well under Creston's UK City Essentials this not only allows you the user to have a similar experience to us but allows for us to create crafting recipes for certain items based off the mods we have and use for a more immersive experience for those playing in survival.

So why am I telling you about this? – Simply, a mix of excitement and to show what we have developed. Within one month we have almost added half the total blocks of normal Minecraft (820 from what I know) and simply it's a great addition if you are playing Minecraft Java (Forge 1.19.2, 1.20.2 or NeoForge 1.20.6) and want to build a UK looking city!

So I will leave you off with multiple photos of some Work in Progress of the City of Creston;

We've got a new article home, originally when I started this article it was using pure HTML, CSS and a tad of JavaScript to provide you a whole overview of what where updating for VEX.blue & the various topics I'd wanted to put out into the world.

Since then I worked on learning React JS an amazing way of developing front-ends for websites but still haven't learnt enough about back-end development yet. This has made me search for a better way for me to host my Articles as originally I was writing a tone of code to showcase my articles and it was getting complicated every time I worked on a new one.

I knew I could build my whole site through Wordpress and have Fediverse Support but with recent issues that WP has had I thought it was best to stay away from it. My other reasons for staying away from Wordpress is simply it feels very old and often has huge paywalls for me to get into it, even if I self host. Want a theme, build it from scratch (what is complex for WP) or pay for a theme and it break the bank.

Instead I decided upon an up and coming blogging software called Ghost it's currently still developing ActivityPub support and is in BETA for those few that have access to it (I'm sadly not one of those people... yet). As I was looking across the software I was learning more and more things that I can do with it. Such as;

• Paid Subscriptions
• Embedding Code (such as Fediverse & Bluesky Posts)
• A paid 'barrier' simply a line that means you have to pay a subscription to see the rest of an article (not my thing but fair enough)
• Comments (for free and paid members)

These obviously aren't revolutionary features for a blogging / article websites but are a cool add on when I haven't been able to even let alone create an account or even make for a way that I can create Articles on the fly unlike this new system.

So for the future it looks like if I want to have quicker released articles, I will most likely be using Ghost for the future of my articles part of my website. Obviously I would love to cut down on this cost in the future and if I code it myself not only could it do that but I could have further control over how everything is laid out again but for the moment this will have to do.

It's been a minute since I create an article let alone a website update article, so there's a few things to go over as you can probably see from obviously using the site previously we've had a little bit of a overhaul in the UI of the navigation bar along with different sections of the website being slimmed down and made uniform making it easy to navigate across different parts of the site such as the Podcasting or Video Editing the basics of the page looks similar.

So how is the site different in v3.0 other than just looks? -- Well simply we've moved away from the simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript system that we where originally using, originally I was thinking about moving across to PHP and really tried to move across but ended up moving to React Instead. This means that updates to the website can be done a lot better, especially over time as I improve the way I format the pages and how each article, product or service type is displayed allowing for easy updates in the future, especially when it comes to changing the footer or navigation bar.

The other befit of moving over to React is that I will be able to create a back-end for the website in the future allowing for people to login to the site to see previous orders, the ability to have a full functional store (when I work out the code) along with being able to have things like Reviews, comments on articles along with just much more functionality in the whole site.

The advantage of learning react is that I will be able to get further into web development and even develop applications that I've rather always wanted to see or just simply want different features that platforms offer in the current market. The other advantage of learning these sorts of things are that I will be able to create websites for other people and have the full protection and functionality a modern website can have, as coding in HTML, CSS and JavaScript alone doesn't really bring much security to your code.

Will there ever be a v4.0? -- Possibly, I will never say that I won't rebuild the whole website all over again as obviously there's always new frameworks along with the internet is always changing, even in the smallest amount of ways. A version v4.0 is currently not being thought about as I see not many other ways to push the website further than the point I've put it into right now, the only thing that I can see that I will be developing and trying to understand over time is obviously the back-end side of the website.

What is the future of VEX.blue's site then? -- Even know I'd love to say I have millions of ideas of what we can do with the site, I simply don't. There's obviously a few 'pipe-dreams' I have for the site's future and maybe some of them might come true, moving to a better code-base did but as of the moment I just want to see what I can do with expanding the products, slowly creating a back-end for users to have accounts as well as have functionality with them. Finally, I want to just push for the company to grow bigger, it's the only reason i learnt to code the website in the first place as I didn't want to pay for something like Wix.

So what do you think of the site? Sadly as of writing this there's no comments but feel free to contact us through Discord @VEX.blue

It's been a long month without any updates on VEX.blue or any new articles releasing on our part, I can only say sorry for not keeping you upto date with what's been happening.

If you'd like to know there's been a huge update in the works to try and make sure the website is still updatable in the future, with me looking into possibly using PHP or React in the future of the website for easier updates in the future.

This is all due to me currently building each page of the site with re-used code of every-other page on this site, such as the navigation & footer being the same code but needing to be redone eachtime, this means that if something in the navigation or footer needs to be updated, I need to update it on all 50 pages of the website so far (if not more in the future).

The other thing that has kept me busy in the recent month is a bit of personal issues, but i'm glad to say that I am slowly healing and hopefully will be okay eventually. Either way onto the update notes.

Update Notes

1. Fixed Video Editing Portfolio Pages to be categorised as Video on Search Engines.

2. Added 'Creek Events' Homepage as a 'test site' for the 'Basic Websites' service

3. Fixed Author URL to link to Sam's page

4. Fixed VEX.blue Fediverse URL link at bottom of pages due to moving to app.southampton.social lately instead of southampton.social (as it's shutting down January 1st, 2025)

5. Added (2) episodes of Trakt Insider Podcast (RSS & Pages)

6. Added (3) episodes* of Beyond The Blurb Podcast (RSS & Pages)

7. An audio player has been added for podcast episodes playback on our site

8. Added (1) episode of the VEX podcast

9. Donation like to articles added - You can now donate to the author of the article (personally) through paypal

The past week I've been making active efforts to bring Version 2.5 of the website to the world, this time focusing on our Podcasting Services such as being able to play each Podcast episode directly from our website as well as hosting our RSS feed through the website so that places like Spotify Podcasts, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts can easily see the Podcast and update there database in the future of each Podcast. So far we've got through 3 out of 4 podcasts that we host, with lots more work needing to be done to make sure they are accessible on every possible platform such as YouTube & Spotify as they seem to not want to list some of the podcasts.

At the moment I don't feel Version 2.5 is fully ready to release, and i'll keep working on developing this version of the website to improve on it as I'd love to make sure the Podcasting Service is the most optimal so people 100% understand what they are getting provided to them, as well as what the benefits of going with us are. This doesn't mean Version 2.5 will be just Podcast Development, There are many other sections on the website that will need to be worked on including but not limited to (Might not come to Version 2.5);
- The Mastodon Hosting Service; So far we've just put a basic layout for the Mastodon Hosting Service but I don't believe we've explained what the benefits of going with us, such as the 'Blocklist' we can add along with update for each Instance we help create and run.
- Social Media Management; The Social Media service is very much under represented on what we can do, and needs a well needed update showcasing what we can do for each service as well as prices and things for replies and interacting with your community for you on certain platforms.
- Basic Websites; The Basic Websites section was created very quickly and hasn't been worked on since it was created. It does really need an update with possibly little Portfolio pages on what I could create for customers, there's always the need to reuse-code and make something 'Basic' that someone might want as a template for there own website.

There's a lot of things that I want to work on for this site but we are rapidly gaining pages, This isn't a completely bad thing, with new Articles daily and new pages to showcase the Podcasts & Edits we work on, it's understandable that we will get a lot of pages over time. There is a downside on developing the site the way we are at the moment though, updatability; If I needed to change an element of the page layout such as changing our 'Editing' Tab at the top of each page into the 'Articles' button instead, this would mean I'd have to update it on each page manually making the update of just that one 'feature' take a few hours or longer if the site get's over 100 pages big. This would be solvable learning how to create a Dynamic website.

What are some of the benefits of building a Dynamic Website? -- One of the Benefits would be easy updatability for things such as layouts for the website allowing me to change the Header or Footer with just one simple click? Another Benefit would be the use of things like Databases and APIs, This is something I've been wanting to learn for a little while and would allow me to create logins for the website, making it so I can add small features such as 'Reactions' and even comments for the site, allowing for more communication and interaction across the whole site. This does mean I will have to look into a framework such as React to securely use the data and even allow people to login from things such as Google, Apple or Facebook accounts if they so wish to.

Overall the benefits of a dynamic website doesn't come without a cost. We'd need to start paying for or running our own servers to host the website on but the benefits of building and updating our own platform to do the things we wish to would bring the possibility of new services for people, such as developing my own TV and Movie Tracker, How about a Podcasting hosting service, How about a full on Mobile app for the website or even splitting each of my services into there own app allowing you to Listen to Podcasts on one app, Read our Articles on another and Track your TV Shows and Movies on another.

So why haven't you done this sort of thing already? -- Simply, experience. I have only really known how to develop a static website, no databases, no contact forums, no fancy log in screen. This doesn't mean I can't learn it but it will take a while to do so. So we will be sticking in Version 2.0 for the foreseeable future as all of this Dynamic website stuff is more for Version 3.0 but you never know, I may actually learn these systems faster either of us can think is possible and just click in my head, it seems like some things do that for me, Maybe due to my autism or something.

Why bring this all up? -- I'm a very strange person, I need goals to head for and giving myself the goals is all well and good but publicly posting something about it kind of keeps me to my word, so if in 6 months to a year I haven't even made an update or effort towards making the whole site more dynamic please just contact me. But the pages and developments I do want to do the site is something really cool that could be really worked on and developed into something really cool for people to view, knowing I went from a small really stupid website that I made 5 pages through basic HTML and CSS to something dynamic that people can use would be a really cool step.

Wouldn't it be hard making two versions of the website at the same time? – Maybe but anything I learn from the 2.0 pages will be workable and easily copied into the 3.0 stuff, as the 3.0 stuff would be the replacement for 2.0 once I implement everything into it anyway. I may even do a few META articles about it just to show the progress over time as that would be a really cool thing to show off with the progress slowly getting there but due to life, i'd most likely not being spending 50% let alone 90% of my time on 3.0 but it's better to have a slow burn instead of a quick one.

The Decentralised Web over time will grow into new applications and functions than the centralised counterparts, this is how the original web turned into forums and then further into Social Media, by taking something that already exists and expanding upon the idea of it. At the moment the Fediverse has a few alternative 'software' to the centralised counter parts. So today I thought I'd give you a basic list and information about some of those Projects.

Mastodon -- This is one of the first bits software people often think of when talking about the Fediverse. As a Microblogging platform a lot like older twitter this software is great for people wanting to write posts under 500 characters or string together a few posts and make a 'Thread'. Mastodon is a great starting point, just pick an 'instance' / server and off you go.

Lemmy -- If you are active on Reddit when the Reddit blackout 2023 happened you might have heard or even tried Lemmy. As an alternative to the centralised Reddit or forums based sites, Lemmy is a lot like Older-Reddit in both design and helpfulness. Each 'Community' or Subreddits are you know them from Reddit can be created on new Instances meaning you can have a few communities with the same topic, this is pretty handy as it can solve the power tripping that some people get on Modding a Reddit Forum but also gives the opportunity for actual developers of say a video game to create there own server and run there own community from it and not need anyone actually be a user of there instance. Also this is all without mentioning that Mastodon users can still interact with Lemmy posts from there Mastodon Instance.

PeerTube -- An alternative to YouTube or just Video platforms in general PeerTube allows you to host your own channels on the Fediverse and have people watch them from the Instances they are using, including Mastodon, allowing for you to run your own PeerTube instance, host the files on there and allow people on Mastodon to view and even comment on the video and still reply through your PeerTube Instance. The main problem that I find with finding a PeerTube instance to upload or even sync my content from YouTube is that they only have limited space or upload caps for people meaning you would rather have to run your own Instance or find one you can donate to and get 'unlimited uploads' if you create a lot of content.

PixelFed -- An alternative Photo sharing Software a lot like Instagram, PixelFed is a great way to have a simpler experience to Instagram well also being decentralised allowing you to see Photo posts from Mastodon or even just share your life, work or project with photos on the Fediverse. This Software even allows you to import your posts from Instagram making you be able to pick up where you left off.

Sharkey -- This is actually a Fork of Misskey a more visually pleasing Microblogging platform a lot like Mastodon but more in the style of Facebook or more modern Social Media. Sharkey is great if you want something visually pleasing well also having some really cool functionality such as more reactions for posts, instead of just the simple 'favourite' star on Mastodon or up-down votes on Lemmy or Like & Dislike on PeerTube. Sharkey is truely a wonderful Software that I'd love to run personally but it can be a little bit more demanding due to all the added features for it. Maybe give a Sharkey instance a try, especially if you are a Trans person as the whole Fork is maintained by trans people for trans people.

Mbin -- Actually another Fork, but instead of Misskey, Mbin is a Fork of Kbin a Microblogging and Forum based publishing software, it allows you to have a reddit like experience with there 'Threads' section of the site and then have more basic talks with Microblogging sites on there 'Microblog' feature. This is kind of the best of both worlds at the moment but unlike Lemmy calling there version of 'Subreddits' as Communities, Mbin calls them 'Magazines'. I used Mbin & Kbin for a little while (about 6 months) and I got to say I love them, and they really capture a mix of social media including the Karma on Reddit, instead called 'Reputation Points'.

There's also platforms like Threads (Meta's Microblogging platform), Writefreely & Ghost (Blog Posting Platforms), along with many, many more softwares people have developed but these where just a few that I would suggest checking out if you are just trying to find your place in the Fediverse or have certain uses for them, as there are plenty of uses for your own Microblogging, Video Publishing or Forum based platforms. The question is, what is the benefits of running your own decentralised one compared to just joining a centralised one... basically control, your own platform or at least using a small instance what you can contact the admin allows you to know the rules, give feedback to your runners of the Instance and even change how you interact with people online, all without having to start a huge protest or something because Facebook decided to take your favourite Facebook Page off the platform, or because your video on YouTube has been removed due to 'Community Guidelines'. You control your content, to go everywhere, no one can tell you no, they can only block and remove your content from there platform if it's not up to their standards.

I've spent the past month plus being a 'pillion' / passenger for someone on there motorbike, and I've got to say it far out beats getting the bus... So firstly what have I been doing on the back of a motorbike? I met someone online and we started to hang out, they have a SUZUKI GSX-R125 and was still on L-plates when we first met, after the first time meeting they done their A2 - Module 1 & 2 making them be able to go on the Motorway along with having a Pillion on the back, I made it very obvious that I wanted to go on a ride and see how it goes, and the next time they where over (a few days after passing) then we'd go out for a little ride together.

Our ride took us to the city where we'd grab some McDonald's and relax before heading back. We quickly learnt that we needed Comms as we both really couldn't hear each-other and because it was my first time on a bike I was holding onto him really closely, luckily each time we stopped at a red light I got little tips of what not to do as I was very new to it all. I'm glad to say I now don't shift unless we are stopped as well as now am a lot more confident that I don't have to be grabbing hold of him for dear life, instead just a gentle holding of the hips is good enough.

We've taken quite a few trips out since the first time going including ones to drop me off at my weekly group I go to where I get taken down, dropped off and then he goes back to mine for a bit before picking me back up and it's been amazing seeing the other bikers react to his cute cat eared helmet to the point I have now ordered my own. We've done a few trips to see my family as some have recently reached out and others I see regularly but we wanted to do a surprise trip. One of the trips was definitely a key trip to make, taking me to go get my first pair of Gloves and ended up paying for a Jacket as well. Overall I have spent close to £500 in total on gear with my Helmet given to me for free, and now owning my own Gloves, Jacket and Boots with just my trousers and a newer intercom needed in the future due to the one we did get being patchy and hard to understand along with not allowing music and the intercom to played at the same time.

How am I feeling about it? -- Even though I don't enjoy relying on people, it feels amazing to be able to get to my location in less than an hour (without having to keep to the routes of buses as well as being able to catch up with family). It has made me not only really happy but it makes me want to learn to ride again, especially with how much I've spent on gear.

What is my plans for the future? – Well I've become a huge fan of motorbikes, even more so than a few years back when I just wanted to get get from A-to-B faster. With some experience on the bike including basic clutch control in a parking lot, it's really made me feel confident in myself that I could actually get on the road and ride myself places. After getting my trousers I'll be looking at doing my CBT, and finally getting my first bike. At the moment I'm looking at a Honda CB125R but might look at some other bikes closer to the time as the insurance on any bike for a new rider is pretty high.

So through our last 11 articles we've had at the bottom a RSS icon, This is so if you have a RSS reader (app or website) you will be able to follow our articles directly from the RSS feed link instead of having to wait for the latest post on our Socials (What we don't always release at the moment) or keep refreshing our website each day to see if we've released the article (as we don't have a Time of Release for these yet).

Even know RSS came out in 1999 and had RSS 2.0 come out in September 2002, we haven't had a major update for RSS since then. This could be as the internet has slightly moved on from having to subscribe to someone through feeds as the invention of following or subscribing directly through Social Media has taken over since 2004 / 2005. There is still a few people that may still use RSS readers and no need to not support a technology you could support with minimal effort.

But we don't just use RSS feeds for our Articles, we actually use a similar sort of feed for podcasts, This allows for places like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music (Podcasts) and any other Podcast Listening platform to find the Podcast. This is something that we are still working out and developing for the Beyond The Blurb Podcast before we push it to the rest of the podcasts we helped get out into the world. Knowing that RSS is needed for a Podcast to truly be a Podcast, allowing you to distribute it to the multiple platforms that people may listen from is amazing and actually is similar to our Decenralised Web Article allowing for you to post in one place and it to be shared everywhere*.

Overall, we use RSS not because it's the most used system in the world for our Articles but because it's helpful for those who do use it, allowing for more traffic and updates for the articles. Along with obviously allowing us to publish our Podcasts to the world directly from our website. So we really suggest that you also use RSS for your website, even just to make it accessible for that one person.

I've been an avid user of iPhone since the end of January this year, where I purchased my first iPhone, the iPhone SE Gen 2 (2020). When I got the phone it was for the pure reason to try out Apple, as upto that point I hadn't gave Apple an actual go other than a few times in the early days of iPads when selecting music on my Dads iPad every so often when I was over at his. Once getting my SE, I realised the screen was way to small, so I decided to purchase an iPad 9th Gen (2021), what allowed me to do so much more before purchasing a few more Apple Products such as an Apple TV 4k & an Apple Pencil.

Yesterday I needed to go upgrade my phone, I kind of wanted to make my payments cheaper to save money towards something I actually know I want such as a Motorbike but if I got anything close to the price I wanted I couldn't go for Apple and as someone who used Android for about 10 years, I really didn't want to go back. Luckily my phone providor was able to give me a Apple Watch SE (not sure what version) apart of the price.

What made me want to go for a 15? -- I had a few reasons I hated my SE but to best honest most of the problems had been solved in newer models or slightly more expencive iPhones, firstly the screen size; I really despised using my phone when it come to long winded tasks, what was a good thing when it came to using other devices but was annoying if I needed to work on something on the go and only had my phone. Secondly the Battery life, as I purchased an already used phone I quickly found that it seemed to not hold a charge all day especially if I was to use it to message or call someone (even for short periods of time) to the point that walking only a 10 minute walk dropped my battery percent by 5% before, obviously this is one of the worst cases.

Thirdly, I was always fustrated that I had to rather carry around a Lightning Cable and a USB C or just the Lightning as my phone always needed charging as with the iPhone 15 upwards you now have USB C making only my iPad need to use the Lightning.

Why not go for more premium iPhone 15? -- Simply money, I ended up just getting a iPhone 15 (128gb) as that was the cheapest iPhone I could get, well unless I wanted to still use Lightning but be paying like £2 less per month. Also there was not many other places for me to actually pay for my phone due to my low income and not many companies wanting to take the 'risk'.

Should I have waited for the 16? -- Maybe but I would have still been paying the high prices for a really bad phone along with possibly not even being able to get an iPhone 16 when they release. But also simply the upgrades for the 16 probably isn't that much as the 15 will still get updates for years to come and Apple Inteligence will still work on the 15, if it doesn't I'm sure lots of people will be mad.

So simply, I have a new phone, within the past 12 hours I've been enjoying it and I hope that over time it will keep on function as well as it is at the moment... Also i'm glad that I have such a nice camera now, It actually makes me want to start recording little vlog videos like I used to again. Who knows what the future will bring but I will stay possitive for the future of Technology as well as my own personal projects.

Today Satisfactory 1.0 released, actually a lot sooner than what I thought it was going to (as I originally thought it was releasing at 8pm GMT). I stuck with my original plan and waited a few hours (as I had other things to do anyway) to play with 4 friends in a new world together. When we first booted up the game oh my, was the menu so beautiful. I was so excited to play Version 1.0 just look at that screen, it's just something to fall in love with.

Our game session was decided to be done mostly through Discord with 1 person actually using my PC at my house as they are over for the next few days and the one to host the server decided to invite us through a Session ID, We thought this would be fine with me being the first to try and load into the world.... 'Yay you are in Sam'... shortly lived as my whole laptop decided to crash. As I reset my stuff so I could hear my friends and hopefully play the game an error came up with the friend I had in my room, "It's ok, release often have this, just wait a minute and try again"... Little did we know this error would haunt at least one of us at a time through the evening if you where disconnected from the world.

When we did actually get in a few of the people we where playing with fucked around well the others actually tried to make progress and it was amazing. Not only because I had never seen how good the graphics for Satisfactory had gotten because I normally play on Low settings on my PC. If you have a good PC it's really suggested to just boot the game with how beautiful the area can be, just look at where we started (The Northern Forest).

One thing I noticed as soon as I got in the game is that the HUBs milestone menus have changed and looks so nice. It just makes me want to make progress, with easy to read tiers of progress along with what phase of space elevator you need to be on to start that tier, It's amazing to see how a simple and helpful a menu can be with some basic changes to it and truly shows that making something simple can make it pretty at the same time.

The assistant is really nice with it now having a little 'ADA' logo above the text when it's talking about things, and even have humour involved making us laugh as we made progress together.

One of the best things I enjoy on 1.0 is the ability for customization, as you can now pick what colour you are along with even change your helmet, these options are slightly limited but are a welcome change from the early access, along with the colours being 100% customisable allowing you to post a HEX code into it. The Colour changes doesn't only change what you look like though but changes all your personal equipment too including portal miners.

So overall I think this is a welcome change and there's got to be so many more things I am forgetting to write about along with haven't experienced in Satisfactory 1.0 including the new upgrades and fixed for conveyer belts. So if you have £30 of disposable income and are wanting a new game to play satisfactory might be a really cool experience to try rather alone or with friends.

I know yesterday we announced Version 2.3 of the website but today we done even more work on making the website more accessible for everyone. Including bring back Lightmode, but in a slightly different way... We've got a small little toggle on the top right of the desktop website and navigation menu on mobile.

All you need to do to toggle to lightmode and back is click the lightbulb. Just as simple as that, it will also carry accross every page on the site and even across browsing sessions on our site. I feel this is a great edition as there's times that you may not want to use our website in Darkmode such as being out in the sun, reading large bits of text such as our Articles or you are just a straight maniac and prefer lightmode at all times of the day, Just insane.

We've added hover effects (only works on desktop) for;
- Article Cards
- Navbar
- Various Buttons

: We moved the rules area for the Southampton.Social page to a new rules subpage.
: Added a 'Join Us' button for users on the Southampton.Social page
: Added Two new services; Mastodon Hosting & Basic Website Services
: Fixed Spacing for Services on Services Page
: Fixed Portfolios (Video Editing & Podcasts) Spacing in Mobile

Overall there's a lot of updates in less than 24 hours, this is probably as I mainly focused on making this site more optimised and effective in the future. Who doesn't want easier navigation and accessiblity features when it comes to a hopefully great designed website. As all of this progress has been changed along with a huge overhall on how the website reacts to you the user using it i'm glad to say this is Version 2.4 of the site but please don't worry I won't be releasing Version 2.69 for a long time, I plan to keep the website with this style for a long time coming, I just needed to make sure that it was functional and any medium features like toggling lightmode needs to be done before we get to 100+ pages in the future.

Welcome to Version 2.3 of the VEX.blue website, I recieved some feedback from very close friends about how the website was too bright and just seemed to have the feel of ‘Apple’. This made me work with them closely to bring a new version of the website Version 2.3, this whole new Dark Theme is now the only way to view the website (currently) but in the future as I develop my skills I will learn how to intergrate a light theme as well into the site, I just want to make sure when you toggle between the two it keeps the settings through Cookies.

What else does Version 2.3 bring as I’ve done a little bit of work since last update a week or so back. Firstly, Retitled Blog to Articles; as we want to allow others to also write articles we have made sure our ‘blog’ is now titled ‘articles’ to not only future proof but to look professional. Secondly, we have updated the navigation bars to (when hovered over) the text goes blue to make it seem clickable.

We have also added the ability to have images in our articles as started to be seen in our last post How to Turn on Fediverse Sharing on Threads. We’ve also made it so when on our Video Editing page, and you go down to the portfolio; When you hover over the image of an edit it made the edge rounder and outline (blue for my edits) more brighter. As seen by the center edit in the image.

Overall i’ve been trying to get the whole site ready for upkeep and maintaining a website that is consitent, this is probably going to get harder and harder as we get more pages on the whole site as, as of the momemnt I write these articles along with everything else on the site through pure HTML, CSS and a tad of JavaScript. With now 26 pages including this article with at minimum 1 page beening added per-day and future plans for atleast 4 pages being worked on in the really near future.

So why have I done all of this just for a stupid website? – We’ll simply I wanted to see the extent of what I could make a ‘free’ website could go, as this could be a really helpful skill to use in the future for a possible service or even just to keep costs low for my own sites. Also websites are still pretty important to have for business' sometimes, as websites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pintreast and Tumblr can only take you so far when it comes to customistation and navigating between services. Facebook Pages for instance can be hard to maintain but also do we really create a whole new page for each service we provide? That seems like a lot of work instead of just updating and maintaining a website.

So when’s version 2.4 coming out? – To be honest, I don’t really know. Version 2.2 was a full rework from the version 1 stuff I used to do for the website, and Version 2.3 is just a dark version of 2.3 with a few added fixes and quality of life things I’ve started working on. I may take into consideration the next overhall I am working on as Version 2.4 but to be honest it’s just a better way to view one certain service, so unless I update other service pages at the same time I’ll take it as Version 2.4.1 as it’s just minor fixes.

Why don’t we get a change log? – I would love to have a change log for the website but to be honest I haven’t been keeping up to date with all the little fixes and changes that I’ve been doing, maybe that’s what I should do for Version 2.4 as I effect things over time. Bug Fixes and changes are always fun to do and will most likely be lumped into the same post, so get ready for a long winded change log in the future for these updates.

What’s the new service you’ve been teasing? – Even know I’d love to bring the service to the light, I not only need to work on the service page, but I should also work on possible having a second service to bring to the world at the same time as bringing one service will make my service page on desktop to not look even with a image to the left but not the right leaving empty void, who knows I might make a ‘More Services coming soon…’ placement image for that so that people know it’s still being developed on.

Anyway, before I make this into a whole essay… well even more so, Thank you for reading and hopefully see you tomorrow for a new article.

Back when I wrote Decentralised Social Media an article about the Fediverse and some of the various projects I mentioned about writing another article about how to turn on ‘Fediverse Sharing’ on threads. This is that article.

When you are on your Threads account navigate to settings and then account, so settings - account. You will see a little BETA icon next to a setting called Fediverse Sharing, If this says off click on it.

You can pretty much scroll and accept this if you understand what the Fediverse is.

Simply if you don’t want it public, DO NOT POST IT. The internet is a place that doesn’t really forget stupid things you say, so be careful out there.

To turn on Fediverse Sharing just press ‘Turn on Sharing’.

Your old posts will not be added the Fediverse but your new ones will be, also when someone from the Fediverse interacts you will not see the username at the moment, along with you can not reply to there comments just yet but further integration is meant to being worked on before the end of 2024. Thank you, feel free to follow us on Mastodon [@VEXdotblue@southampton.social] or on threads [@VEXdotblue@threads.net].

Yesterday marked our one year anniversary of becoming a company (September 6th, 2023 being our company registration date) and I can tell you, we’ve made both lots of progress as well as so little in other areas, I took breaks from creating and pushing the company at times, along with getting confused and overwhelmed by how much there is to do.

So first of all, why did I create VEX.blue? – I originally created VEX.blue as an acronym as the website came before the company, I was originally going to call the company ‘Video Editing Xavia’, The Xavia taken from my last name and Video Editing, well it’s our main service we try to provide to people. This obviously changed when I realised I could do VHS Conversions & Podcasting services that I was already helping provide for free to my grandad as well as Trans Pride Southampton; a organisation I helped Found.

Obviously over the year we’ve added various more services such as;

• Southampton.Social our Mastodon instance for local users (completely free from Southampton, UK users to use by the way)
• Social Media Management for Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon for the moment but will probably expand into the META suite in the future. and just recently our Articles, this is what you are reading right now. Each day I write a little article to explain something or give support by giving a small tutorial, and even just little ‘META’ updates like this one.

There are many ways we could expand into the future, as of the moment I am learning more and more about web-development as seen by the new v2.2 of the website. Sadly I am still working on a static website but I may start looking into how to work with such intergrations as react in the future, stepping up my game and learning how to make dynamic pages making it easier for future updates and even change of styles or themes in the future.

Will any new services drop before the end of the year? – I have been looking into one service that could possibly drop in the near future and it’s all to do with our Southampton.Social project, and that is hosting Mastodon Instances, we’d hope to help people easily run a Mastodon Instance for themselves. family and/or friends. These would most likely be cheap small instances but I’d give the added benefit of managing them by blocking Instances that are outright illegal as well as giving tech support if someone needed help. This does not have release-date as of the moment but now I’ve mentioned about it, I may actually start making the pages for it.

What makes VEX.blue different than other companies? – We try to make sure that every penny you spend on us is worth it, along with are currently a one person team when it comes to most of our services & projects. Our goals are simple, make it easier for people to be creative and provide one of the best services for the prices we set. Here’s to another year, you can always support us in our socials at the bottom of each page.

Having a Bluesky account can mean locking yourself off from the rest of the Fediverse at the moment, due to there custom protocol ‘AT Protocol’, I’m here today to give you a tutorial on how to make it so your Bluesky profile can be found on the rest of the Fediverse (Decentralised Social Media), as well as if you have a Fediverse account making it viewable on Bluesky.

Bluesky to Fediverse

After doing this you should be able to find your profile on Mastodon (or other Fediverse Software) via @[Your Handle]@bsky.brid.gy so for expample our VEX.blue account is @vex.blue so ours would be @vex.blue@bsky.brid.gy or if you wanted to go with my ‘Alt’ account for personal use it’s @samxavia.bsky.social making my account be found on the fediverse as @samxavia.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

Simple right? Yes it is, sadly as of the recent flow of traffic from Brazil the syncing for Bluesky to the Fediverse is taking over 24 hours but will hopefully change in the near future.

Bridgy Fed is struggling to handle the recent flood of new Bluesky users. 10-20x usage increase, wow!

Fediverse => Bluesky is still bridging ok, but Bluesky => fediverse is well over a day behind. It’ll take me some time to optimize it enough to handle the new load. Apologies for the delay!

— Bridgy Fed for the fediverse (@ap.brid.gy) September 2, 2024 at 7:39 AM

Fediverse to Bluesky

You’d then find your account on bluesky as @[username].[Domain].ap.brid.gy so for my @sam@southampton.social account that I use for personal posting it’ll be @sam.southampton.social.ap.brid.gy

This is obviously a long domain but it functions, sadly either way you sync your account any people that comment on your posts will need to do the opposite steps to make sure their account is accessible on the other platform(s).

Conclusion

Have you ever wanted to build a website? Did you know how to ‘code’ that website? No, well there’s sites like Wix, Wordpress and Square out there that allows you to just drag-and-drop your whole website or simply add plugins. These systems are plainly not terrible if you are making a dynamic website with logins and things, especially if you want to join the fediverse as said in our Decentralised Social Media article through a Wordpress Plugin.

But, most of these systems are not the best for customisability, apart from Wix, what is quite a pricy website drag-and-drop system. Really if you want to have a fully customised website the best thing you can do is rather learn to build it yourself (like we have lately) or send it off to someone that could build it for you, the sad reality is that the latter option can be unrealistic for some people or companies.

Why is no-code a thing? – No Code, even know can be a pricy service gives a general user the ability to create a website, app or other helpful things without learning the code themselves, often enough these services may charge a monthly subscription. There is a few issues with using No Code;

1. You can’t 100% come up with a new website or concept
2. You are paying monthly fees that are high compaired to what it would actually cost with your own code
3. If you are making a basic ‘infomation’ website such as for your small business or portfolio, you are better off learning the basic HTML, CSS and copy some JavaScript for the site itself
4. You are trapped to the ‘No Code’ website or application to not change there side of the deal, as often enough you can’t take your website or application and go to another place, you are trapped.

Have I ever used no code builders? – Yes I’ve used many no code builders and after giving up on them due to price, I started to learn my own way of building websites through HTML, CSS and JS but this takes time and you need the will to mess up and have to fix what you changed to your code. At this stage I have broken the VEX.blue website a number of times and luckily now use Git to make sure I don’t always push to main, as well as can go back versions if I break something.

So to Conclude – No Code isn’t all bad and can be a really accessible way for someone to learn what they could build with there website but if you code it yourself not only will you feel more proud of yourself, as I do when I see what i’ve done so far for VEX.blue but it can cost less and transplate to other websites in the future if you ever needed to build something new.

A few days ago I started writing ‘blog’ posts for this website, starting with Welcome to v2.2 where I wrote about version 2.2 of the VEX.blue website. After creating my second post Decentralised Social Media, i’d started to realised that this ‘blog’ was much more than just me writing about the updates for this website and that I’d most likely want to write about the topics I love talking to people about (but they often don’t understand).

Also on a quick update there has now been an update with our RSS feed, not only can it be accessed through our new Articles page but at the bottom of every articles page. We are also looking at how the articles could be improved in the future. We also hope to keep the articles free for everyone for ever and don’t like ads so are hoping to avoid adding banner ads in the future (but will have a look at them to see if we could add them without them being in the way or annoying.)

What ‘Articles’ could you see in the future? – I’ve been suggested a few topics that I love talking about, one obviously decentralisation or simply called ‘Fediverse’ in our Topic Tags. The second being gaming reviews, guides, information and more; this is a highly intresting topic to be able to talk about and I could probably work on a Gaming Article here and there, I’m not the best gamer by any means but I do know a thing or two about certain video games. I will mention now, because a Topic Type of ‘Gaming’ or ‘Video Games’ is so broad, I’ll most likely made catogaries such as ‘Gaming News’, ‘Gaming Rumours’, ‘Gaming Guide’, ‘Gaming Review’ & more.

Other topics that I could get into include local (Southampton, UK) based information helping people I live and work around every single day be able to contact and share information about what they believe is important for people to see. I know that the biggest thing about me writing all of these is to help spread (hopefully correct) information, develop my skills further along with giving myself a purpose. I hope to keep this whole article system free for everyone but maybe in the future I may have to add a banner ad to cover costs or maybe even just link a donation page for those who can support the updates. Thank you all for reading and stay safe.

Lately there’s been plenty of talk about Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon & many more new Social Media platforms, along with something called the Fediverse. I thought I’d make a post about all of this, along with explain why we as VEX.blue actually love using these systems and encourage people to use them as well.

So what is the Fediverse? – The Fediverse is a system of websites that connect to each other through a ‘protocol’ like Email, you can use Gmail.com and still connect and talk to people on Outlook.com. The Fediverse is using it’s own protocol mainly ‘ActivityPub’ for sites that run the Threads or Mastodon ‘Software’ / Code. Like email our usernames have our websites at the end of them to make it so we can communicate between websites. You wouldn’t want someone to take up NoobMaster69 on every website at the same time would we.

My instance is Southampton.Social and my username is Sam, so simply my username you will follow me from is @sam@southampton.social easy right? This allows people on ‘Mastodon.iow.social’ to be also have the username ‘Sam’, so you’d follow @sam@mastodon.iow.social for them. These are two different accounts by two different people. It’s like if you have sam@gmail.com you wouldn’t own sam@outlook.com

So what is Mastodon? – Mastodon is a microblogging website that has simular look to Twitter/X, just without the Toxic environment that it’s known for today. By Default on Mastodon ‘Instances’ / Websites you have 500 characters to work with per post or comment. This has been the go to place for interacting with people on the Fediverse for a long time but is not the Fediverse itself just is one of many software / code basis on it. The most common Mastodon instance is Mastodon.Social maybe go check it out sometime.

What is Threads? – Threads is a microblogging app / website that is made by Instagram (Meta). When they first released the app they mentioned about joining the Fediverse so about 30% of instances have blocked them from being seen on there Instance. Also Threads even know are still in development and haven’t fully added all the features to 100% interact with everyone on the Fediverse, is an opt-in system through your settings on the website or app, so if you want me to see your posts please turn on ‘Fediverse Sharing’. Maybe we’ll do a little tutorial about it in the future.

What is Bluesky? – Bluesky is another microblogging website but it actually doesn’t use the ActivityPub protocol making it harder to see the posts on places like Mastodon. There are ‘bridges’ out there but are completely a opt-in by both party system meaning even if you opt-in one end, the person replying to your posts will also need to opt-in to see them. Bluesky has a really cool interface as well great concept of what a decentralised social media could be but with AT Protocol being made by them and no other software being released with AT Protocol at the center of it, It doesn’t seem to be a great option for a decentralised website.

Why should you care about Decentralisation? – With centralised systems your data is owned and even sold by the systems that you used, with self-hosting being accessable with decentralised systems like Mastodon you can not only control your data but also control who get’s to see it by blocking whole instances or just indeviduals from your whole instance or just your account. Also, with things like PixelFed (a decentralised photo sharing website - it’s very simular to Instagram) along with Lemmy (a decentralised forum website - simular to Reddit) you can choose how you see the posts you enjoy, along with how you can interact with it.

Also why should you have to be on Facebook to interact with your friends on there, or why should you need a Twitter to interact with the one nice person on the platform. You should be able to interact with whoever you want without limitations. So why not join the Fediverse today. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to version 2.2 of the VEX.blue website, I recently was looking across our wonderful website here and realised that it didn’t look so great, possible due to me coding it myself from HTML, CSS and JS (what I don’t know much about). So I spent the past few days working on making this website more simple and usable for the general user. This is not only handy for my learning of ‘What makes a good website’ but also now is getting to the point that I am learning more of what I can do with static websites like this one.

As you’ve also probably noticed by now, this is a full blog post. I wanted to learn a little bit more of RSS feeds and how I can use them to my advantage when it comes to this website and maybe even use them from this site for podcasts, video edits and updates for services and things in the future.

How would this change how I do my projects? – I’m not planning on this really changing the work that I do on the services but could make it a lot more intresting with blog posts like this one being produced every so often or even some tutorial posts such as ‘How to join the Fediverse’ being produced. This would allow me to express myself on the website as well as make it easier for people to follow these things along through longer posts than ones with 500 characters.