Dismal Manor Gang, anticipating the Twitter Apocalypse, created @DismalManorGang@mastodon.online. After about 2 months of activity, the Gang has become taken with the joint and is pretty much ignoring Twitter. Mastodon is a lot like pen pals. A post goes out to the gang and you hear back from a few. Maybe holiday cards is a better model. Everyone appreciates hearing form you but not everybody sends a reply.
I’m following about 250 and have a similar number following the Gang. Some of our Twitter pals have joined us on one or another Mastodon nodes. But most followers are new, many are UK, and some are EU and US. Here’s what we are finding.
Well, Elon Musk did it, he bought Twitter. And he hung a $44 Billion millstone about Twitter’s neck. The debt service on his borrowing is $1 Billion per year. And what did he put up for collateral, Twitter? Unlikely, not even his billionaire buddies would smoke that crack. So there is probably a big chunk of Tesla stock on the line. Will it be interesting? You bet. $44 Billion controlled flight into terrain will make a spectacular kaboom!
So if you have a social media habit, and the Dismal Moocher does, what are the alternatives? Everything out there has wealthy owners except for one, Mastodon and the Fediverse of social media applications. More after the break.
Featured image by Eugen Rochko at Github used in accordance with the AGPL
Dismal Manor Gang has pitched its social media camp at Mastodon.Online. Mastodon is a new federated social network similar to Twitter in many ways but improved in important ways.
Image taken by the author and manipulated in Apple iOS Clips.app. Photos of the Bovver Boys courtesy of their social media minions.
Rocky has made great strides in his house manners. We continue to work on treat taking, table manors are largely down when I’m at the island counter, and he is getting the hang of moving about the house. He’s caught on that Missy won’t be bullied to change beds.
He’ still a shouty git. He still wants brekkie at 0400 but waits to mug me after a loo visit. He still wants his tea around 1530 but can be distracted into waiting until 1630 or so. He’s still working on meeting trades and has yet to catch on to the notion that trades are not Blighters of Zombies. Maybe Zombie Squad HQ has a training for that.
So why is he Mister Fancy Pants?
Mister Fancy Pants
His ticking makes him look like he is wearing yoga pants! This is an iOS 13 Apple Clips manipulated image that exaggerates his markings and coat texture. In boring reality his bum looks like this.
Rocky showing off his yoga pants while watching Squizzer TV
So that it?
No, he did something stupid so Missy give him the nickname for a Twitter post. Her social media assistant has forgotten the specific incident.
Apple iOS Clips App is a lot of fun
Clips App can process new camera images or video clips to apply various transformations to them. I’ve done a couple of things where I’ve grabbed a promising photo off of Twitter, filtered it, and posted it back as a comment on the original post. I modded an image of @NormTheCairn. Later that day both #BovverBoys were posting photos for me to render for them. I like the “Comic” filter.
Before
The Bovver Boys posted this image on the occasion of friends day. I suspect it is a paste up but it is one of their better efforts at getting both of them into the same image. So I saved it to my iPad and had a go at it.
Bovver Boys before Comic Rendering
After
This image is the result of cropping and applying the color version of the Comic transformation. There are monochrome, pen and ink, and various color transformation filters. I keep coming back to the color Comic filter.
Bovver Boys Norm The Cairn and Rupert after comic render and crop
This may be a good technique to try for #ZZST storyboard collages. The ZZST artists make these up using Zombie cartoons as a base layer and clipped images of the brave Zombie Squad war fighters participating in that Saturday’s event.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 
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