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Month: September 2022

Registrations are now open at exercise.cafe!

Posted on by Doug Belshaw
Image of coffee cup with chat symbol in foam, with a pair of running trainers and barbells

I’m pleased to announce that registrations are now open at exercise.cafe/register

Configuration is ongoing, and I’m on the lookout for moderators, but I wanted to keep the momentum going on this project. Please register if you would like to share and discuss things related to exercise and fitness (and can agree with the Code of Conduct below!)

For those new to the Fediverse, this is an instance of Pixelfed, which is kind of like a federated/decentralised version of Instagram. The difference is that your updates can be followed by anyone from a compatible instance.

Code of Conduct v0.1

Exercise.cafe is a community focused on sharing and discussion of exercise and fitness-related activities. It’s a friendly, non-judgemental space.

The following behaviours all help make exercise.cafe a positive environment:

  • Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
  • Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
  • Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
  • Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
  • Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community

Examples of unacceptable behaviour include:

  • Public or private harassment
  • Sexual attention or advances of any kind
  • Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
  • Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
  • Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a social setting, including excessive advertising

We welcome members regardless of qualities such as gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family structure, spirituality, religion (or lack thereof), education, or other personal traits. We particularly celebrate diversity and do not tolerate bigotry or prejudice. Diverse opinions on politics, religion, and other matters are welcome as long as they align with our core values. For the avoidance of doubt, this is anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-transphobic space.

Enforcement

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behaviour may be reported using the built-in tools of the platform. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly, respecting the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.

Consequences for actions deemed to be violations of this Code of Conduct:

1. Correction

  • Community Impact: Use of inappropriate language or other behaviour deemed unprofessional or unwelcome in the community.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A private, written warning from community leaders, providing clarity around the nature of the violation and an explanation of why the behavior was inappropriate. A public apology may be requested.

2. Warning

  • Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A warning with consequences for continued behaviour. No interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in other spaces, too. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.

3. Temporary Ban

  • Community Impact: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. No public or private interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.

4. Permanent Ban

  • Community Impact: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.

This instance is run by Doug Belshaw (@doug) and the moderators are:

  • [looking for volunteers!]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly by a moderator of this instance, please make this clear to another moderator. Please be aware, however, that direct messages are not yet end-to-end encrypted.

Funding

This server will be supported by donations. The ability to do this will be set up at a future date.

Blocked servers

Exercise.cafe is a node of the Fediverse network. While users can block individual users from other servers, the following servers are blocked for all users of exercise.cafe. This is due to actions which contravene our code of conduct.

  • [list of known problematic servers will be found here]

References

Thanks to the following for inspiration:

License

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Weeknote 36/2022

Posted on by Doug Belshaw
Image of a runner holding a coffee cup

The kids were back to school on Wednesday this week so it felt like I was back at work ‘properly’. Things are still slowly revving-up after the summer break, though, and it was a bit of a rollercoaster of a week, emotions-wise.

On Monday, I went to see the doctor about the weird thing that happened to me last Friday. He referred me to the stroke clinic, thinking I’d had a TIA. That evening, they phoned me up and invited me in for an appointment the next day. I went along, and they gave me the all-clear, but are booking me in for an MRI over the next couple of weeks just in case.

I feel fine. To be honest, I’m more concerned about the hamstring I pulled on Wednesday and which I’ve only just got back to running on (gently). Relatedly, I’ve realised that while I enjoy being connected to people on Strava, the focus is too competitive for me, so I’m going to continue my efforts with exercise.cafe and try and create a space which is a bit more chill.

The Queen, or to give her the proper title ‘Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith’, died this week. As someone I follow commented, she achieved the remarkable feat of convincing the world that the monarchy’s raw power and wealth is actually a duty and a burden.

Personally, I just wish we got to have a referendum on having a monarch at all. Might it be worth pausing before we continue into the future with a King and a House of Lords? I’d suggest that the structure of the whole vestigial edifice, along with the attempted silencing of anyone who criticises it, is part of white supremacist culture.

Of course, now we’re in a ‘period of mourning’ which will have massive negative economic implications which we can’t really afford as a country. Especially right now. And, annoyingly, the football was off this weekend 🙄

Here, I published:

Over at Thought Shrapnel:

And on the WAO blog:

On the work front, Laura and I planned Season 5 of The Tao of WAO podcast, and have invited some awesome guests to contribute. I had a really interesting conversation about badges with Co-operatives UK, and caught up with some people from the CoTech network who have haven’t talked to over the summer. I had a chat with Ivan and Mayel about user research and prioritisation for Bonfire, and talked to John about user research for the project WAO is doing with Happy Porch and Common Knowledge for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

With Laura and Anne, I continued to work on the Keep Badges Weird project, and we caught up with Mark, Julie, and Don from Participate to plan the next bit of work. I booked my ticket, travel, and accommodation for the ePIC conference in Lille next month. I’ll be doing a short presentation on the KBW project, and it looks like Julie might be coming over for it, too. I’m quite excited to be getting the Eurostar for the first time!

There’s another project that we work on that I’m under an NDA for, which is annoying as it’s a pretty innovative and high-stakes one. Laura leads that, and it might never be something we can talk openly about. Needless to say, though, that it takes up brainspace (in a good way!) each Wednesday.

In other news, Hannah and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary this week, which is ‘bronze’, apparently. I got her a bracelet and… some bronzer(!) as well as some flowers. She got me some bronze-coloured whisky 😉

We went out for dinner and cocktails on Tuesday night, which was a double celebration in a way because I had been getting increasingly concerned before the stroke clinic appointment that my forties could be my last decade. Our kids are at an age where we can leave them for a couple of hours, which is nice.

Talking of them, our daughter went for the second trial for the Newcastle United ETC (Emerging Talent Centre). It was ridiculously wet on Friday, with the ball skidding everywhere. Apart from a couple of standout talents, they might as well pull the names out of a hat, to be fair. We’ll see.

Next week, I’m back to a normal working week. I’m not attempting to take any full days off any more, but rather to try and work sustainably from Monday to Friday. In practice, that looks like doing mostly non-WAO work on a Friday, and working intensely for about five hours per day while the kids are at school. I then have time to tinker around in the evenings or (more likely) in the early mornings before anyone else is up.

I’d quite like to do some wild camping, and would potentially have gone this evening. However, it looks like heavy rain overnight, and I’ve got a planning meeting at our house late this afternoon for neighbours. We’re discussing whether we want to form some form of organisation to take control of the land between our houses and the new development behind them. The devil, as ever, is in the details.

Image created by DALL-E 2 (“runner drinking coffee”)

Code of Conduct for exercise.cafe

Posted on by Doug Belshaw
Pixel art running shoe with speech bubble

Last week I was thinking about a Fediverse instance focused on fitness/exercise. I’m pleased to say that, with the help of Matti at Spacebear OÜ, I’ve set up a Pixelfed instance at exercise.cafe.

Registrations are currently closed, and I’ve asked for potential testers to kick the tyres and establish some norms. Before I do that, I want to ensure there’s v0.1 of a Code of Conduct established. If you’re interested, I’d like your assistance.

>>> Click here <<< for an etherpad with a draft Code of Conduct. Please follow the instructions at the top of the pad if you’d like to contribute!

Temporary logo for the purposes of illustration created by DALL-E 2

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