Latest reviews
Great place for campers that want some amenities. The grounds include a general store that opens at 8am, which is too late for fishers, but the tackle shop opens at 6am with coffee and snacks.
Fun nature center, that’s great for kids, with knowledgeable docents. I’d recommend seeing the bats go out at night from their bat box. They also have a variety of events throughout the year.
There’s also a pool, bike rental, and boat rentals, including an accessible fishing dock for those with disabilities.
This is a large, well-kept park. Walking trails, Picnic and BBQ areas, tennis courts, batting cages, Farmer’s Market on Tuesday, and a recreation center for classes. Could use more bathrooms, and I miss the skate park.
Great variety of interesting and informative shows from a leftist and anarchist perspective. Most of the major shows are represented. They could use more of a focus on Free/Open Source Software, but I eventually dug up a working m3u files to listen in VLC.
Framaforms is a quick solution to design web-based forms and collect responses through these forms. The responses can then be exported as spreadsheets or viewed as charts and aggregate tables on the website. It is an alternative to Google Forms, allowing you to ask your users to fill in a form without having to hand their data over to Google.
I am using Framaforms for a couple of projects and use cases and have to say it is very reliable, has so far satisfied all my needs and in fact provides many more features that I currently need - you can set-up emails to both the users completing the forms and you as recipient, you can style the form in various ways, it supports a ton of form elements and sophisticated validation rules to evaluate form input. The only downside (and why it only gets four stars) is that your forms expire after six months unless you renew them (renewing them is as simple as logging in and changing the expiry date, but still it’s a bit inconvenient…).
Framaforms is hosted in Europe by the Framasoft non-profit, which provides hosted open-source alternatives to many services of the Internet giants Google et al. It is based on Drupal’s Webform module, which you can also self-host if you prefer full control.
I feel I shouldn’t tell too many people about this little gem, as I want it to be my secret retreat. I’ve been twice to Elounda Garden suites and never does it disappoint. In fact I aim to go many more times if it’s not completely booked.
Let me start by saying that the suites are all fresh, clean and modern, they even have a little kitchenette for self catering should that take your fancy. The pool isn’t large but plans are in motion for a second larger pool to be built and possibly even a gym.
The reason I love this place so much is the manager and the other staff make it a home away from home, I always miss them when I leave and can’t wait to see them again as I plan my next return. The breakfast is perfect with little Cretan elements that inspire you to explore the Creatan cuisine further and enjoy countless meals at the many restaurants and bars that are only a short walk away at the centre on Elounda. Don’t get me wrong this is a quieter side of Crete and is mainly aimed at a more mature adult however it is enjoyed by many a young person and at times can become reasonably busy.
I use Elounda Garden suites as a base to explore the island from, each time travelling further to discover more. But as I’ve said it’s like returning home after a long day exploring and this is why I can’t keep this gem of a place to myself.
Elounda Garden suites is a perfect place to begin your discovery of Crete.
a great exploration of one type of mushroom and how it creates assemblages with everything around it to thrive.
Altered Carbon is a cyberpunk TV series on Netflix. The story revolves around a man who is brought back from the dead to solve a multimillionaire’s murder case. In terms of cyberpunk tropes, it’s got it all: high tech and low life, neon signs, a super-rich caste, a failed state whose only purpose is to serve the ruling class, drugs, violence, cynicism and grime everywhere.
There are a number of small things that bother me about it. As a fan of cyberpunk, I wished the show was a little more subtle in its exploration of themes, like poverty or religion. Also, the whole jaded muscular military guy trope feels tired at this point. Often, the show presents itself like yet another police procedural drama. Many reviewers have also correctly complained about the pace, which is uneven.
The motivations for some of the characters and groups are never convincing. The only thing that seems to drive the villain is nihilism and a pathological obsession for family, which just makes the character look undeveloped. The Uprising wants to make people mortal again, but why? Something about “it’s not human nature”. Then they explain that the problem actually is that only the super-rich have access to immortality, which… okay, but wouldn’t it be best to just fight overthrow the system that distributes benefits unfairly in the first place?
Having said that, it still has a watchable quality to it and you do want to know how the plot is resolved. Despite my grievances, it’s still more good than bad, hence the three star rating. If you’re into the genre, I can recommend it, but don’t go into it expecting something like Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell. It really isn’t.
Biting satire of empire hidden under a historical fiction of the Ottoman empire. It’s all rather dark, but also humorous. Never read anything like this before.
If you’ve been wondering whether you should make a Mastodon account, the answer is, yes, you should. (If you haven’t been wondering, you might want to start here to read more about the project.) While Mastodon has more in common with Twitter than with Facebook, it is also entirely its own thing, a living, growing, decentralized community of humans building a new social network from the bottom up, on the basis of open standards like ActivityPub and free software like Mastodon itself.
mastodon.technology, in spite of the “official-sounding” name, is just one of many instances in the Mastodon network. It is indeed focused on techy/nerdy topics, though of course you can follow people on other instances as usual. There is a code of conduct which is quite sensible, and which is enforced through a shared blocklist. Operations are funded through a Patreon account. The server code is up-to-date.
Right now the operation of the instance very much seems like one person’s passion. The “About” page is short on technical details (backup policy, monitoring, etc.), and most of the tech stuff seems to be sitting on the personal Patreon account. To continue scaling past 10,000 users or so, it may be time to think a bit more about how to grow the administrative side of the community.
(Update: The instance was shut down in late 2022.)
When you’re done with Facebook, but still have a slight need for a social feed, Mastodon and specially the technology instance, is a great place to start.