That was me that was having an issue zapping BTW (sorry, too many nyms π)
I don't think it's an issue with relays, on habla news it had definitely found your profile but for some reason wasn't recognising that you had a lightning address attached to your account. Also on blogstack it had also successfully found your profile on relays and let me send the zap but it just never got displayed below the post (maybe it just sends normal lightning payments and not proper zaps?)
Whilst zaps are obviously always appreciated, please zap the original author nostr:npub1pktmatjk0l8vn3jhfuwxaasjd65kn4ye9sce3egup7k993f8fg2q5tpxa6 , not me π
Why should I care about nostr?
naddr1qqyhw6re94hx7um5wgpzqrvhh6h9vl7we8r9wncudmmpym4fd82fjtp3nrj3crav2tzjwjs5qvzqqqr4guwv7dw4
Pura Vida, nostriches!
Been ages since I've shared something for #NewMusicFriday (is it even still a thing!?)
Anyway, I'm in love with these live versions that Chinchilla does. Here's the latest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZBlvsHN8a0
If you like that then you'll probably *love* the live version she did of Fingers.
I recently discovered this artist through her collaboration with Ren, Chalk Lines, which is an absolute masterpiece. If you've not heard that either then definitely check it out, and if you've somehow been living under a rock this last 6 months and don't know who Ren is then definitely go listen to Hi Ren (https://youtu.be/s_nc1IVoMxc), and then dive down the Ren rabbit hole of a whole plethora of β€οΈβπ₯ that spans multiple genres, styles and emotions (a lot of it's quite hard hitting, tackling issues of mental health and struggle, but much of it is also equally inspiring)
Have a great weekend and don't let the bastards get you down! πβ
Another absoluteοΈβ π₯ collaboration between the 2 of them:
Pura Vida, nostriches!
Been ages since I've shared something for #NewMusicFriday (is it even still a thing!?)
Anyway, I'm in love with these live versions that Chinchilla does. Here's the latest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZBlvsHN8a0
If you like that then you'll probably *love* the live version she did of Fingers.
I recently discovered this artist through her collaboration with Ren, Chalk Lines, which is an absolute masterpiece. If you've not heard that either then definitely check it out, and if you've somehow been living under a rock this last 6 months and don't know who Ren is then definitely go listen to Hi Ren (https://youtu.be/s_nc1IVoMxc), and then dive down the Ren rabbit hole of a whole plethora of β€οΈβπ₯ that spans multiple genres, styles and emotions (a lot of it's quite hard hitting, tackling issues of mental health and struggle, but much of it is also equally inspiring)
Have a great weekend and don't let the bastards get you down! πβ
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoin-not-blockchain/ alongside a couple of others in the Gradually then Suddenly series.
Wednesday the 26th. One of our members will be giving a talk/workshop on using multisig =) I'm trying to get speakers for each event now as we have a new venue with our own function room.
Cheers dude, sorry to miss the meetup last night. I'm just back from a cycle-packing tour from the Lake District through to Wales. I cut it short due to really bad weather after the Wales retreat. I'm back home but took a rest day yesterday. See you at the next one!
GM nostriches!
I can only really apologise for not being on here for so long! Development on bija drew to halt some months ago now and I guess I've been embarrassed to admit I took on more than I can commit to for the long term. I doubt at this point that I'll continue with the project, it hadn't gained much traction anyway, but have some ideas for some smaller projects/micro-apps that I may be able to work on when I find the time. I'd still really like to contribute to this amazing space in some capacity and believe Nostr has, and helps usher in, a bright future.
On a related note, I have 2 relays running since early in the year and it's costing quite a lot to do so. Unfortunately I'll be closing down pow.nostrati.com in the coming days as hardly anyone actually uses it (it's been freely available to use for anyone with a public key that has a certain amount of POW performed on it, but that is sadly not a use case that has caught on). I don't currently have plans to shut down the paid relay relay.nostrati.com, but I'll see how it goes, fees are only covering a very small % of the server costs. For now I'm just looking at that as a small contribution I can make here.
Y'all are awesome! Pura Vida π
Checking out Plebstr for Android. Seems really slick and user friendly... is it closed source though? I can't find any Github or info on their website.
Thanks. Yeah, it's definitely been a PiTA and has been hanging over me a bit for the last week of my trip.
My OpSec is generally pretty good but I need to be more careful with my laptop, especially when travelling. Ubuntu has frequently been doing this annoying thing where it fails to automatically activate screen lock. My current theory is that someone went in to one of the rooms I stayed in while travelling and found my laptop unlocked and browser open.
The thing I hate most about this kind of situation is the mistrust and suspicion it spreads towards people who are mostly innocent. Most of my hosts were lovely but I find myself running back through all my trips with a suspicious eye on all of them.
Well, what an adventure Costa Rica was! Amazing country!
I've not been on here for well over a week, since I discovered that someone was trying to gain access to various accounts of mine. Still not exactly sure what happened but somehow someone got hold of a whole load of my data, I wasn't able to deal with it properly while travelling but the data that was accessed suggests a physical access of one my machines, so I remote shut down my home server, and didn't load up my laptop again until back home.
So far as I can tell whoever it was has now given up, all of their attempts thwarted. They managed to get in to my Amazon and make some orders but the payments were blocked. They also managed to change my OTP method on Amazon, and had made a request to Amazon for all my data (which I think means they had some copy of my ID, perhaps passport). Again this was all reverted and blocked before any damage was done.
They also attempted to access various other accounts and the strange thing was that these accounts use different emails. This is why I think there was probably a physical access of one of my machines, probably my laptop while travelling, as the accounts they went after are ones that would be likely to have been open and logged in to in my browser. The other options I can think of where someone could have discovered various different emails are someone gaining remote access to one of my machines, or someone compromising my password manager, in both cases I suspect the damage would've been far worse.
There does also appear to be some possibility that someone has unsuccessfully tried to open a bank account using my details, so I need to deal with that tomorrow. And it does obviously beg the question of what else they may have attempted, or gotten away with.
Anyway, I'm back home now and am actually fairly optimistic that the most this has cost me is a waste of my time, as well as their own.
Here's to a new, more privacy focussed, world being built where things like this are harder for people to get away with! π»
Pura Vida!
Pura vida!
I don't have a lot of connectivity where I am so won't be on here much but here's a little taste of my day at Parqe Nacional Volcan Tenorio, not too far from the Nicaragua border.
Rio Celeste runs through the park and is famous for its blue colour, the waterfall was one of my favourite spots during the day. Just get rid of the noisy people and it would be perfect π€£
It took a whole load of complaining, messaging, and calling their support lines, but United finally agreed to fully refund the cost of my flight to Costa Rica (which I wasn't allowed to board due to vax status and transit via a US airport, I ended up buying a whole new ticket)! π₯³
Idilic last day at the beach in Uvita. As if it wasn't already perfect enough we had a rainbow in the late afternoon. 
demo from nostrica 
I'm supposed to be doing a presentation/demonstration of Bija at Nostrica on Sunday and the truth is that I'm not only pretty uncomfortable to have to stand in front of a crowd and present something but I also feel unqualified to do so in many respects :/
Bija started as a fun project for me in early November, I'd barely written any code for years and building a client seemed like something interesting to dig my teeth in to reintroduce myself to it. There was only a few accounts, mostly devs, active at that time but 2 weeks later Nostr exploded and it wasn't long before half of Bitcoin Twitter was there! 4 months later and this fun project has consumed most of my time over that period!
Anyway, feeling like I need to write my thoughts down as I've been having sleepless nights over it. Torn between feeling unworthy to be presenting and not wanting to let people down when I've said I'll do it. Again, this started as a fun project for me, I certainly never wanted any notoriety, success, money, or anything else from it. If it would maybe add some value to this amazing ecosystem that would be amazing - decentralised and censorship resistant social media that actually works is something I've wanted for a long time.
I probably shouldn't be stressing myself so much over it, everyone in the space is so nice and welcoming, I'm just acutely aware of how much dev talent there is around here whereas I was a lowly web dev without any formal training until around a decade ago, that walked away from it, and has just recently thrown himself back in at the deep end. Whilst I do have a functioning client which has a fairly unique approach, the fact is that I've learnt most of the technologies used along the way, during the process of building Bija, and there's many areas where I'm not sure, or qualified to know, if I've really made the best design choices, etc. - I'd only used Python a little before and never used Flask, SqlAlchemy, websockets and various other things in my life before. Hell, when I walked away from web dev HTML5 and CSS3 weren't even in use yet, they were on the cards but you couldn't actually use them because no browsers supported them, not to mention that javascript was still only being used for basic front end stuff! It still boggles my mind that we have full stack js now π€£
I don't know what will become of Bija, it doesn't have a particularly large user base, I certainly enjoy using it myself though, as do a few others. Fundamentally I care way more about the success of the protocol as a whole than of Bija, and more than that the success of a new, more open, decentralised, and censorship resistant Internet, whether that means Nostr or anything else that achieves those goals.
Peace out. Thanks for reading. Feels better out than in!
Mostly with online chat support though. Was on the phone for a while but after the best part of an hour, mostly on hold and getting transferred, I realised it was probably sending my phone bill through the roof calling abroad.