Mindmap of services
Mindmap. 39x44 cm. Paper: ? Mix of pencils, sharpies and markers.
I was trying to figure out what big services I still do have and while doing that realized that having a sketch next to my desk with them would be a good reminder. My plan is not to do a big sweep, but gently move away to good alternatives. I started with some color coding for urgency, ease and dependencies and such so that it will do things in a good order.
Stamping open
Open By Default. 7x4 cm. Paper: Canson Sketchpad. Stamps: Avec Wooden Stamps.
Yesterday, I picked up some stamps a person was giving away on the clever app Olio, where people share what they don't need. And today I started experimenting with it. And what better to start with than my company name whose logo is looking like something stamped?.
DI DAY
#DIDAY. License: CC0. 10x20 cm. Paper: Canson Sketchpad. Copic Marker, Faber-Castell Art & Graphic Poloychromos Pastel.
This morning I saw several posts talking about Digital Independence Day. As this is so aligned, I wanted to do something around this. It's just a simple text with a marker and blue and yellow pastel crayons. White balanced and cropped in Gimp.
Snow flake days
Snow flake days. A5. Notebook. Penol Calligraphy pen 2.0 (running out of ink).
I have a library nearby but living here over a year, I never went in. So this morning I went there, had a good look around, a cup of coffee and stared out on the snow and wrote this haiku. I am pretty sure I will be back soon.
Facebook preparation
The Facebook account has been a sourdough for me. This evening I gave up admin rights on a bunch of pages and published a post on my companys page there that I am about to close it. There are some other pages where I will want to download the archive, and some where I probably should transfer ownership, so it will take some time before I finally close the account. But I do feel like I have started the process.
What's up? Not WhatsApp
WhatsApp was never one of my preferred platforms. I got it for one work group, years ago, and then had a small group of friends there. Tonight, I finally deleted the account. Instead, I primarily prefer Signal, but I am also on Matrix (using Element) and Telegram (the latter is still very much in use in the Wikimedia movement).
Account inventory
A few days ago I started looking in my password manager to check if i had any accounts signed up on Gmail. Now I am all through it and for the handful I did I have changed the email and login for the account. This makes me feel less reliant on that service to function. I still have a few email aliases forwarding to it, but that will be the next step.
Email forwarding part 1
Over the years, I have aquired a bunch of domains. Often, there has been a need to setup some email for them too. To avoid too many mail boxes to check, most of them have been forwarding the emails to some of my more primary accounts. Today I went through (almost) all of these accounts and made sure no one is forwarding to Gmail any longer. This is part one, because there are a few accounts that I would like to not forward at all, but keep as separate accounts, but that will come soon (after I figure out what mail clients to use and how to set them up).
Thunderbird
My idea with the other emails (see previous post) was to get a local client for my laptop and phone and then run it like in the old days with IMAP directly from my provider. I was dreading this as the last time I did this, which admittely was at least a decade ago, it was rather tedious to geet all the settings right. But I got started with Thunderbird, an email client I know since before, and it turned out it could detect the settings from my provider (One.com). So it was not much more complicated than logging in and I was up and running. And after installing the app on the phone, it asked if I already had a desktop setup to import. So that was just scanning a QR code and then I was done. Now I only have a few more email addresses to decouple from Gmail.
Deleting Facebook Page
In my continued exodus from Facebook, today I deleted the Facebook page for my consultancy Open By Default. I felt ready to delete it as I do run a Fediverse instance for the company, and am still on LinkedIn (but I am looking for alternatives for that too). I still have a few pages to hand over adminship for in an orderly fashion, and then I can close my personal account on Facebook and be all out from Meta products.
Facebook decoupling
I realized when doing the mindmap earlier this year, that some platforms also functions as logins for other platforms. So today I have started looking at the connected Facebook apps and disconnect them after changing to a "local" password. At least those I want to continue to use. Some I will not care about, they may have been sites I only checked out once. I was surprised by the amount of apps, but at least now I have started this work.
Doodling
Doodles. A4. Paper: Canson Sketchpad. Copic markers and black roller tip pen.
Too tired to get into something real, but today I at least sat down with paper again. The backside shining trhrough was an experiment of a tree with markers, but it didn't turn out the way I wanted. Instead I just doodled...