@Taskerland "Host your own site"

@Printdevil Occultists do resemble IT professionals with blogs in their ability to produce pages of detailed instructions that are impenetrable to anyone who isn't them.

@Taskerland @Printdevil Teaching board games has made me a better teacher of tech.

@Taskerland The art on occult blogs is usually better though.

Luckily I am above reproach as I have no background in any of these things, and the only thing I have detailed knowledge of is that time Doctor Who fought the Spangles.

I do remember working with a really gifted programmer who insisted that all websites should adhere to a template that was easy for him to update/produce/sell. It was based on a triangle. Everyone hated it. (1/2)

@Taskerland It looked like the triangle of Solomon, and he kept trying to flog the design to clients and no one was touching it, and no matter how often he explained to me that the template was really flexible and took minutes to create a designed website based on, my argument "no one is commissioning us" seemed to fail to make progress. Everyone wanted flash sites at the time, and it drove him insane clients picked them. (Because flash)

"Just repair your own car, and make your own petroleum distillates"

"Home surgery is easy!"

@RogerBW @Taskerland

@Printdevil @Taskerland "It's time to teach you the REAL power. Emacs."

@Taskerland Why do you think I host my site on Wordpress? I've occasional thoughts about making something beautiful like https://www.jamesreeves.co/, but it'd become its own hobby.

Yes at a client pitch to get work we always did well explaining Emacs to a small group of behavioural trauma specialists.

¬¬

@RogerBW @Taskerland

@Taskerland It really was exactly that! With menus you had to tilt your head to read. It was awful, but it was all hand coded and he could *not* let it go.

His depth of occult knowledge was anything associated with the Blue Oyster Cult and a typical level of Crowley interest.

Meh

Tyros.

@Taskerland "listen, listen. You don't need to use big tech infrastructure. You just need your own domain and open source tech, it's free! Not the domain though, but listen, for 20$ a month you may set up your own website, forum and a communicator! Don't forget about the security and updates and if too many people use it it will cost more and there are additional costs and AI scrapers and..."

@Taskerland @Printdevil Yeah, that's when you call me in. (I learned it demonstrating games at conventions, but I've become the usual game teacher in most groups I play with, because I am actually quite good at it.)

@vdonnut IT professional with a blog: "It only takes 5 minutes to CSEM an A2M. Once the bespoke kernel's set-up and you've stabilised the quantum-tunnelling from your off-site server it's all doable using the drop-down menus in your bloopi account"

Me, googling acronyms: "Arse to mouth?"

Are you good at it? or do people just avoid you like a packet of Meat Flavoured Spangles at conventions.

Actually to be honest at most conventions because of "gamers" Meat Spangles would probably sell well.

Meat Spangles sound like something you'd get in #scarfolk

@RogerBW @Taskerland

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp I have been promoted repeatedly in my career for being mediocre at translating between my fellow IT professionals and … well, anyone else.

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp I cringed this morning when I saw somebody saying 'oh, I'd love to set up my own blog but I'm not sure how' because I'm sure that at least 15 helpful IT professionals have now convinced them it is impossible.

(Although also, hats off to people like @_elena@mastodon.social who are actually doing the hard work of writing guides that make sense to the rest of the population)