As a #blind #musician I am so grateful for Bill McCann and Dancing Dots.
dancingdots.com

It is with the Lime Aloud suite that I created my first printable scores for choir, bells and other instruments. On December 15, Yeamans Park Presbyterian Church in Hanahan, SC where I currently serve in the music department, presented five of the ten songs from my "Living That Story" Advent/Christmas musical as part of our "Big Music Sunday." It was an honor to collaborate with the choir, children, bell choir, guest oboist and guest cellist to put this presentation together. My best friend, Audrey, wrote the accompanying script and served as the narrator. She, her guide dog Bernie, the children, oboist, cellist and I all gathered with the choir in the chancel area, and it was truly a joy-filled event!

Dancing Dots products have been part of my professional musicianship for over 20 years and I just had to give a shoutout to Bill and anyone who has ever been part of the Dancing Dots team.

Here is a link to the church service for anyone who would like to hear it. The cantata begins at around the 21-minute mark of the video.
<youtu.be/YdIztg-5sZg?feature=s…>](youtu.be/YdIztg-5sZg?feature=s…)

Yeamans Park Presbyterian Church - December 15, 2024

^YouTube

Stars of Sci-Fi and Fantasy we sadly leave behind in 2024.

Gary Graham (Alien Nation/ Star Trek: Enterprise)
James Darren (The Time Tunnel/Star Trek: DS9)
William Russell (Doctor Who)
James Earl Jones (The UFO Incident/Star Wars)
Michael Jayston (Doctor Who.)
David Graham (Doctor Who/Thunderbirds)
Kenneth Cope (Randall & Hopkirk Deceased)
Ron Ely (Tarzan.)

R.I.P.

#DoctorWho #StarTrek #TimeTunnel #Tarzan #Telefantasy #RetroSciFi

Many thanks to @chris for providing this link.

Blow Up The Death Star On New Years Eve
rebelforceradio.com/news/2015/…

Blow Up The Death Star On New Years Eve

New Year’s Eve is rapidly approaching so it’s time to remind you about our annual RFR tradition: Blowing Up The Death Star At Midnight! 

^{Jimmy McInerney (Rebel Force Radio: Star Wars Podcast)}

Privacy Browser Android 3.19 has been released.

stoutner.com/privacy-browser-a…

#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today brings you 11 updated and 2 added apps:

* Metrolist: Material 3 YouTube Music client 🛡️
* QRshare: Generate a QR code for sharing 🛡️

2 apps were removed:

* CoinWatch (on request by its author)
* Authenticator Pro (continued with a different AppId)

RB status: 378 apps (30.8%)

apt.izzysoft.de/magisk had 5 #Magisk modules updated.

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo – and have a good new year

IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).

^{IzzyOnDroid App Repo}

If you're wanting to discuss a particular year, you might have noticed that number-only hashtags don't work on here.

To get round this, a lot of people use the word "year" before the number, for example #Year2024 or #Year2025

(By the way, there is a discussion about this issue on Mastodon's Github page at github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…)

#FediTips

Numeric hashtags are not possible · Issue #9709 · mastodon/mastodon

Writing #2019 in a toot does not result in a hashtag being created, although some clients render it like it was (don't get fooled when trying). From a federalized ActivityPub instance that can crea...

^GitHub

Do you know the #ZOOOMProject ?

This initiative promotes innovation based on freedom of software, hardware, and data.

With its recent conclusion, the FSFE hopes to inspire broader use and effective application of #freesoftware by business, academia, and the public sector.

Find out more: fsfe.org/news/2024/news-202412…

The FSFE promotes freedom of software, hardware, and data - FSFE

The ZOOOM (3Os) Initiative promotes innovation based on freedom of software, hardware, and data. With its recent conclusion, the FSFE hopes to inspire broa...

^{FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe}

Her Mental Health Treatment Was Helping. That’s Why #Insurance Cut Off Her Coverage.
—

Providers, patients and even some federal judges say progress-based insurance denials harm patients at key moments of mental health treatment.

propub.li/4iQhhsh

#News #MentalHealth #Health #Healthcare #Law #MedMastodon

How Insurers Use Patient Progress to Justify Denials of Mental Health Coverage

^ProPublica

Dear friends of the BSD Cafe,

As 2024 comes to an end, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve built together during the first full year of life for BSD Cafe. Launched on 20 July 2023, this project has grown far beyond what I could have imagined. While I haven’t tracked full uptime data, I can confidently say that the downtime was less than 30 minutes overall - even though the main VM hosting our services moved multiple times (including a switch from a Proxmox hypervisor to bhyve on FreeBSD, for the sake of alignment with our mission). In a world filled with over-engineered HA systems, we’ve outperformed many “big-name” cloud providers. Not bad for a community project, right?

For me, this has been an incredible journey. The users here are not just participants - they’re collaborators, and their positivity has been inspiring. The content shared and created at BSD Cafe has been valuable not only to the BSD community but beyond. What truly sets BSD Cafe apart is the openness for dialogue and exchange. Whether it’s social media posts, Matrix discussions, repositories in our brew, or RSS feeds, people seem to genuinely appreciate what we create and the conversations we foster.

BSD Cafe is a journey - one that grows, evolves, and continues. Our goal isn’t endless growth (we’re a community, not a business) but rather to maintain a welcoming, inclusive space where everyone feels a sense of positivity and belonging. For me, opening any service with “bsd.cafe” in the domain brings joy and pride. That’s the spirit I’ve tried to convey, and I hope it resonates with all of you, whether you’re active BSD Cafe users or friends of the community.

Promoting self-hosting and #OwnYourData has, as a side effect, inspired some users to “go solo” with their own setups. But even then, they remain part of BSD Cafe - in spirit, in purpose, and in connection.

Here’s a look at what we’ve achieved together this year:

- mastodon.bsd.cafe: 370 total users
Active in the past month: 207
Active in the past six months: 286
- snac.bsd.cafe: 14 total users
Active in the past month: 7
- blendit.bsd.cafe: 61 registered users
- matrix.bsd.cafe: 23 users
- brew.bsd.cafe: 29 users - 80 repositories
- freshrss.bsd.cafe: 25 users
- miniflux.bsd.cafe: 11 users
- press.bsd.cafe: 9 users
- myip.bsd.cafe: Constantly used by various users
- wiki.bsd.cafe: Could use a bit more love and content, but it fulfills its role as a functional homepage.
- tube.bsd.cafe: Still in testing - Peertube 7.0 update is on the way.

For detailed stats from our reverse proxy and general router (excluding media services, which generate most traffic but are handled via caching reverse proxies), you can check here - updated hourly: netstats.bsd.cafe

The journey of BSD Cafe continues, and I look forward to seeing where 2025 will take us. Together, we’ve built something special - something driven by passion, shared purpose, and a little bit of the BSD magic that makes all of this possible.

Here’s to a new year full of joy, serenity, and connection. Thank you for being part of this adventure.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2025 - and THANK YOU!
Stefano

#BSDCafe #BSDCafeServices #BSDCafeAnnouncements #BSDCafeUpdates #Fediverse #HappyNewYear #Mastodon #Snac #snac2 #lemmy #matrix #dokuwiki #forgejo #freshrss #miniflux #wallabag #peertube #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #RunBSD #BSD

Donations to the @internetarchive this year are helping-- Thank you!

Donations have come in money, stocks, corporate matches, and crypto.

As well as physical materials, time, uploads.

Thank you all for keeping the Library building collections and offering Free Public Access!

archive.org/donate
archive.org/donate/cryptocurre…

There are good things and bad things about the new generation of AI, but one of the most terrible is the ability to impersonate humans. Let's not do this.

Counterfeit people are more dangerous than counterfeit money. They are tools for disinformation and manipulation. They destroy trust.

Let's not allow them. futurism.com/the-byte/facebook…

Facebook Planning to Flood Platform with AI-Powered Users

Meta says it envisions Facebook as being filled with AI generated characters that exist on the platform the same way as human users do.

^{Frank Landymore (Futurism)}

Who else worked #y2k?

I was at UUNET Canada, an ISP and had to work from 9-3am testing scripts after midnight. Spoiler: they all worked fine.

No pics of the night but found this one from my first day in 1997. I had to label each end of these ethernet cables between two banks of switches. #networking