people are told that equinox is the start of autumn and yet can't understand why it starts to feel like autumn weeks before. but if you go by the old calendars, equinox isn't the start: it's when autumn really comes into itself and is entirely its own season.

it used to be, in celtic countries but also elsewhere, that the quarter days — equinoxes and solstices — marked the mid points of the seasons, whereas the cross-quarter days marked their beginnings. the cross-quarter days are at the beginning of february, may, august, and november, and correspond to the modern/christian groundhog's day/candlemas, may day, lammas, and hallowe'en/all saints'.

but just like solstices and equinoxes, the cross-quarter days are specific astronomical points in the year and technically fall sometime during the first week of the month in question.

so northern hemisphere spring is born in february, when the wind begins to change and the air feels different sometimes. summer in may, when the world has truly come to life. autumn in august, when the wind changes again, and winter in november when the world begins to sleep.

this is why winter and summer solstice are traditionally known as midwinter and midsummer. and in china, this time of year is when the mid-autumn festival occurs.

so if the dates of the seasons have never really made sense to you, maybe this is why?

whatever you do, have a blessed and beautiful equinox. may we all find balance today, and rest in the darkness to come.

Today I refactored the code when sending files in FluffyChat. Now the app does not try to load all bytes from the files at once. It first checks the sizes and queries the max file size from the server.

Previously the app could even crash when picking a too large file. Especially videos. Now it is possible to pick large videos and let the app try to compress them, without the risk, that the app crashes.

This should make sending large files a much smoother experience.

github.com/krille-chan/fluffyc…

Silicon Valley has a monopoly on the web. But we can make a difference by choosing privacy-friendly alternatives. Here are some ideas:

✅ Tuta Mail
✅ Tuta Calendar
✅ Firefox browse
✅ DuckDuckGo search
✅ OpenStreetMap
✅ Mastodon
✅ LibreOffice

What are your favorite apps?

Read more on how Google pays to maintain its #monopoly: tuta.com/blog/google-search-mo…

🚲 Rolling through life one pedal at a time.

Can you imagine a city with less noise and less air pollution?

Today we experienced it here in Brussels and in hundreds of EU cities on #CarFreeDay!

1929 cities from 43 countries are participating with a single motto: ‘Shared public spaces’ and show their commitment to cleaner and more sustainable urban transport during #MobilityWeek.

The BT Speak (blazietech.com/bt-speak-pro), particularly in its "traditional" (non-GUI) mode, takes such an interesting approach to implementing a UI specifically for blind people.

From the mid 2000s until I got my BT Speak, I thought the only viable options were to either implement a screen reader for a GUI, or implement a fully custom UI designed specifically for speech output and whatever kind of keyboard or keypad the device supports. The BT Speak does neither. 1/?

Decided to finally step off the "zero point something" versioning scheme treadmill for Amberol, and released 2024.1.

Fixed up a bunch of small issues that were tied up in my attempt at getting "1.0" out of the door, before realising that version numbers are complete fiction, and there's no reason whatsoever for an application to start out of "zero point" and reach the fabled "one point oh" status.

#amberol #maintainerlife #freesoftware