Michael Thomas

https://mstdn.thms.uk/@michael

Full stack web developer currently working mostly with #PHP / #Laravel, Vanilla #Javascript and #SCSS. Love learning more about (almost) anything, but particularly #SQL and #InfoSec. Currently learning Arabic. Husband, father of two boys and a girl, Christian.

Website: https://michael.thms.uk
Blog: https://blog.thms.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mi-thomas
Forgejo: https://code.thms.uk/michael

Public Key

npub10fwpm3jdp55sax7m0g78fafafk3cdkangy3mjpvr20668jekvdmsu02fd9

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs85hqacexs62gwn0dh50r57575mguxmwe5zgaeqkp48adrevmxxacpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dslydnxq

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub10fwpm3jdp55sax7m0g78fafafk3cdkangy3mjpvr20668jekvdmsu02fd9

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-01-08 21:45:21 GMT

- reply

Sadly yes. It’s an absolute nightmare!

2026-01-08 21:44:29 GMT

- reply

I’m amazed you are using cash. There’s nothing you can do with cash in this country anymore (except go to the barber 😁) so my kids are all cashless, despite being. Abut younger than yours…

2025-11-21 09:33:24 GMT

- reply

As a German living in the UK I would say there is no English word for Quark.
The very few supermarkets that sell it here usually call it Quark, e.g. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/285173410
Curd is usually something else (that conversely doesn't have a German word for it that I know of 😁)
(Although I guess that Canadians might use completely different words for either of these two things …)

2025-11-12 21:45:59 GMT

- reply

I *think* the answer is ‘kinda’. The server would fetch the replies, but you would have to re-open the post in the app or otherwise refresh it, in order to see the fetched replies.
I’m hoping more 3rd party apps will eventually implement the mastodon UI’s functionality of automatically showing a button, or even automatically refreshing …

2025-11-09 21:58:31 GMT

- reply

Are you allowed to reply when asked? As in a user asking you ‘hey, I’d love to give you 10 quid, how best to do that?’ Can you answer? Or would you have to decline?

2025-10-26 13:28:15 GMT

One of @npub1zq5…dlp2 ‘s absolutely best products is their translation service.
The quality is amazing, they allow you to pick multiple variations (which is particularly helpful if you actually speak the language you are translating to, to some extent), and they sound really quite natural, especially as they try to mimic the original text’s tone of voice.
https://translate.kagi.com/
#kagi #translate #translation

2025-07-23 11:29:43 GMT

- reply

Hm. you might just be federated with a lot of instance.
Do you use relays?

2025-07-23 11:24:32 GMT

- reply

What are your retention settings like?

2025-07-23 11:22:45 GMT

- reply

How weird that my metrics are a lot smaller on pretty much everything - except elasticsearch …
https://mstdn-files.thms.uk/media_attachments/files/114/902/287/090/264/437/original/d1d1554a9980bcd4.png

2025-07-21 14:32:43 GMT

I spent some time thinking about the options available for fetching missing replies in mastodon over the last few days since the 4.4 release, and wrote them down.
I'm honestly not sure how helpful this is, but I published it on my blog anyway:
https://blog.thms.uk/2025/07/fetching-replies-mastodon?utm_source=mastodon
#mastodon #mastoadmin #fedifetcher

2025-07-14 19:43:09 GMT

PSA for MastoAdmins:
Did you know that Mastodon now has the ability to fetch missing replies from conversations?
Unfortunately you must enable this yourself by adding FETCH_REPLIES_ENABLED=true to your .env.production file.
So if you have updated your server to v4.4, you should seriously consider opting into this behaviour. Your users will thank you!
For full details and more settings to fine tune this behaviour see the docs:
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/config/#fetch-all-replies
#mastoadmin

2025-05-23 09:29:39 GMT

I have posted about this before, but wanted to re-iterate how much in love I am with FediAlgo:
I’m currently on paternity leave so have around half an hour per day for social. That is of course far from enough to keep up with a chronological timeline like mine, and previously with Mastodon the FOMO was real.
Now I go to FediAlgo and I feel I got an overview over what’s interesting in that day. It’s also immensely customisable, but the defaults do a decent job for me.
If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend you try it out. You can try it out on my personal playground at https://fedialgo.thms.uk or on the maintainer’s official website at https://michelcrypt4d4mus.github.io/fedialgo_demo_app_foryoufeed/
Thanks @npub1xh0…48gt for the work you put into this!
#activitypub #algorithm #algorithmicFeed #algorithmicTimeline #Fedi #FediTips #FediTools #Fediverse #Feed #FOSS #MastoAdmin #Mastodon #mastohelp #nodejs #nod #opensource #SocialWeb #timeline #TL #webdev

2025-04-25 15:57:47 GMT

- reply

And that, right here, is going to be a main problem!
I have been migrating more and more stuff to EU/UK, and make the same experience: Often just a bit more expensive for a bit worse service.
Makes it hard to convince people to follow suit …

2025-04-01 08:59:37 GMT

Question to the network people out there:
Are there any ISPs that are IPv6 only (without providing a NAT/whatever)?
Background: Having an argument with a provider that hasn't published any AAAA records, and whilst I think that's poor form, I'm wondering if this would actually negatively affect any actual users in practice?
#ip #ipv6 #ipv4 #isp

2025-03-12 16:25:54 GMT

- reply

Several people have asked me whether this makes FediFetcher obsolete. I thought I'd put out a more public response to this question:
Unfortunately I don't think I can retire FediFetcher just yet, as it still has some utility:
Firstly, FediFetcher can fetch context proactively without having to expand posts. (Eg one of my favourite features of FediFetcher is that it pro-actively pulls in replies to posts in my home timeline. I personally wouldn't really want to miss out on this.)
Secondly, FediFetcher can also backfill profiles - something that Mastodon is still unable to do, and, as far as I can tell, has no intention of implementing.
Thirdly, it'll likely still be a while until these changes are available in any released versions, and likely even longer until 3rd party apps have support for it.
I do hope it’s the beginning of the end of FediFetcher, but imo we are not there just yet!
Obviously other users of FediFetcher may have different opinions, and if - once this is released - you personally are happy with Mastodon's built in ‘on demand' context fetch, you should stop using FediFetcher to relieve pressure from your home instance.
#mastoadmin #fedifetcher

2025-03-12 09:36:54 GMT

Looks like Mastodon is finally getting some built in functionality to fetch missing replies:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/32615
🥳
#mastoadmin #fedifetcher

2025-02-14 20:12:14 GMT

- reply

inthinknthey are inherently flawed. Although Inkasso see the utility of them, so I understand why they exist and why admins use them.
I believe the oliphant list is still problematic, although better than it used to be.

2025-02-14 19:36:40 GMT

- reply

lol. Not only can it be abused. It *has been* and is being regularly abused …
#mastoadmin

2025-02-13 13:56:53 GMT

- reply

thank you. Interesting.
Which search engine are you using now? Asking because Google obviously has close ties to the US government at the moment, and I currently consider that only marginally better than the Russian one. Which is something I never imagined myself saying even a few weeks ago…

2025-02-13 11:20:25 GMT

- reply

can you explain how that’s happening, or show any proof?
I am currently subscribed to Kagi, and really do like it, but would find that unconscionable. At the same time I don’t want to act on very vague hearsay only, if that makes sense.
(FWIW, whilst I do like the product, I can’t stand the founder and find many of their stances problematic as it is…)

2025-02-13 09:42:13 GMT

- reply

what are referring to? (Genuine question)

2025-02-12 09:30:10 GMT

- reply

lol, now Amazon - having sent me a replace for the order that went missing - are asking me to return the item I never received, or otherwise they’ll charge me again. 🤦‍♂️

2025-02-08 09:50:50 GMT

- reply

haha, i know, right. Search and AI - the fediverse’s two worst enemies in a single product 😁

2025-02-08 09:27:27 GMT

Hm, there appears to be a new Fediverse search thingy around, this time incorporating AI somehow:
https://seewallee.com/
Anyone know how it works and how it ingests data?
#mastoadmin

2025-01-23 19:37:43 GMT

- reply

Yeah, I think mastodon seems to suffer from a mix of ‘not invented here’ syndrome and from just setting the bar too high on the quote boost front.
They want to bake in all sorts of special stuff, and that’s what’s holding it up, I think.

2025-01-23 17:08:48 GMT

- reply

IIRC they've been talking about ‘quote posts will be the next thing' for quite some time, without ever giving any further details (other than describing why it’s hard).

2025-01-17 22:02:22 GMT

- reply

if you are looking for a Facebook alternative, then friendica is supposedly the fediverse replacement (rather than mastodon).
Can’t say I’ve ever used it tho. Seems a lot more clunky/less polished than mastodon to me.

2025-01-17 09:22:54 GMT

Missing UPS delivery says ‘Left At: Dock’.
Leaves me wondering where they actually delivered it?! Do they think I live in a houseboat?
🤦‍♂️
https://mstdn-files.thms.uk/media_attachments/files/113/842/963/781/104/005/original/6d4f0705950b9f38.png

2025-01-15 13:37:55 GMT

- reply

I'm not sure to be honest. I've never tried. I imagine not.
Generally speaking I'd do one redis server per app…

2025-01-15 08:51:04 GMT

- reply

you used to be able to do that using mastodon’s REDis_NAMESPACE option, but I believe that’s now deprecated.
You now need to have different redis servers, I assume.

2025-01-02 08:10:37 GMT

- reply

we have been selling alcohol at our motorway rest stops for ever here in the UK. I have no idea on how much that alcohol specifically contributes to accidents, but I would make two points in the defence of this:
Firstly, truckers often have fairly long breaks at these (eg they mustn’t drive for more than 10 hours per day, so that alone leads to plenty of breaks of about 14 hours length). Doesn’t seem implausible for a trucker to have a beer or two at the beginning of their break, and be perfectly fit to drive at the end of it. Don’t know if that’s the same in Canada, obviously.
Secondly, plenty of cars have passengers.

2024-12-27 11:57:16 GMT

- reply

Surely anything is gonna be better than FediFetcher 😬
I really really hope this will end up getting merged in some way so that I can finally retire FediFetcher!

2024-12-03 18:02:00 GMT

- reply

Ah, yes. The notification will only show up in the web client.
Another annoying shortcoming of this feature…

2024-12-03 17:52:55 GMT

- reply

Yeah, pretty sure they are processed by sidekiq in the background, so on a busy server it’ll probably take a while.
Though I am surprised it took that long!

2024-12-03 12:16:15 GMT

With mastodon's new Wrapstodon thing rolling out on their own instance, I went hunting on how to generate these reports.
Thanks to @npub1egx…c706 who provided me with instructions, I've written a short blog post on this here:
https://blog.thms.uk/2024/12/how-to-run-wrapstodon?utm_source=mastodon
You must have the latest nightly version on your instance.
The UI of this is serious weird and out of sync with the rest of Mastodon though....
#Wrapstodon #mastoadmin

2024-11-13 16:31:37 GMT

> “We will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X. We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere."
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/why-the-guardian-is-no-longer-posting-on-x

2024-10-25 18:31:59 GMT

- reply

blowing my own trumpet here, hope you don’t mind, but have a look at FediFetcher:
https://blog.thms.uk/fedifetcher
That way you’ll at least see (mostly) the same comments as the OP.
Another option, if you use Mastodon primarily through the browser, might be the Substitoot extension:
https://substitoot.kludge.guru/

2024-09-26 05:20:37 GMT

- reply

Can you re-run pip install -r requirements.txt to see if that fixes it?

2024-09-18 14:08:38 GMT

- reply

I love the sound of hogehoge. It’s way too many letters though 😁

2024-09-06 19:10:55 GMT

- reply

Actually, I completely forgot the arguably easiest and lowest tech way of running FediFetcher:
GitHub Actions. These require no hardware, no installation, and no CLI at all: it’s all point and click at GitHub. Full instructions can be found in the readme:
https://github.com/nanos/FediFetcher?tab=readme-ov-file#to-run-fedifetcher-as-a-github-action
The main disadvantage is that this way you can only schedule it every 15 min - GitHub doesn’t allow more frequent schedules.

2024-09-06 18:44:12 GMT

- reply

yes you can. I’m sure Paul has more details - it’s been years since I last touched Windows in a meaningful way …

2024-09-06 18:41:34 GMT

- reply

Actually just to clarify: you don’t need access to your instance’s CLI. Any machine that can run python will do. I know @npub16nn…mxpg runs it on his standard windows machine using Task scheduler. Even an Android device would do (though it’s complex to set up)
As such FediFetcher is completely compatible with hosted services like masto.host, and can even be used if you are just a plain old regular user, rather than the admin of your instance
@npub1kv3…ajhg

2024-09-06 18:37:38 GMT

- reply

Nah, it’s fine. It makes me feel important and I like feeling important 🙈😂

2024-09-05 14:06:19 GMT

- reply

well, on the plus side I’m about as handy as a snake would be, I assume, so at least that isn’t a problem for me. 😁

2024-09-05 05:17:07 GMT

- reply

you non-Brits are so spoiled.
Meanwhile here in the UK I consider myself blessed because I have enough space for a suitcase or two in my attic, and half a toolbox under my stairs.
The car is parked on the road …

2024-09-03 07:40:31 GMT

I've just released FediFetcher 7.1.7.
This version adds an instance-blocklist option, so you can completely block FediFetcher from even attempting to connect to bad instance.
It also contains some performance improvements, so definitely worth getting this one.
Full changelog and update instructions are on the release page:
https://github.com/nanos/FediFetcher/releases/tag/v7.1.7
#FediFetcher #MastoAdmin #SingleUserInstance

2024-09-02 17:01:07 GMT

- reply

https://mstdn-files.thms.uk/media_attachments/files/113/069/029/012/315/012/original/6c2a9ebd5aeb4269.mp4

2024-08-31 16:52:52 GMT

- reply

pretty interesting point here, that I’m glad to have some confirmation of: I’m far from an accessibility expert, but I do full stack development and do take accessibility seriously. I sometimes feel that automated tests to do actual harm. I still remember one case where an accessibility test insisted we need to change colours because the the existing button didn’t pass AAA criteria, and the only colour combination it would accept had visually worse contrast than ours.
We decided to ignore the test and stick to our existing design after much deliberation.
Ever since I’m cautious about automated tests, much preferring asking actual people.

2024-08-31 13:29:29 GMT

- reply

tagging @npub1zdf…6u9l who has created bird ui. I don’t know how much he’s considered accessiblilty, (nor indeed how much it’s possible to do that using css only) but I assume he’ll be able to tell you.

2024-08-24 12:24:46 GMT

Glitch has now also tagged 4.3-beta1. Afaik the first tagged release by them:
https://github.com/glitch-soc/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.0-beta.1
#mastoadmin #glitch #glitchsoc

2024-08-15 18:52:34 GMT

- reply

Yeah, FediFetcher uses the Missley API when fetching from Sharkey, because it’s mastodon api was/is too unreliable.
So, I got to admit that I doubt you’ll get it to work backfilling into Sharkey without modification.
But I think someone made a fork actually. Let me do some digging.

2024-08-15 18:23:17 GMT

- reply

I’m really not sure whether it’ll work with Sharkey. Does sharkey have a mastodon compatible api?

2024-08-09 12:39:15 GMT

- reply

good question!
In a nutshell and from my biased perspective:
Substitoot is a browser extension that fetches missing replies when you are looking at the post. As such it can be super targeted (it’ll never fetch replies you aren’t interested in), but relies on you using chrome or Firefox.
FediFetcher is a server side script that attempts to guess which replies you might be interested in, and fetch these proactively. As such you can use it with any client (I hardly ever use the web browser), but also means it’ll occasionally not fetch replies you’d like to see, and it’ll fetch plenty of replies you’ll never look at.
IMO if you use only chrome or Firefox, Substitoot is the better option.
If you want to use any other client you’ll need to use FediFetcher.
#fedifetcher

2024-08-09 12:14:29 GMT

- reply

I've just pressed the release button on FediFetcher 7.1.6.
This version brings support for Iceshrimpt.NET, and the ability to configure FediFetcher via environment variables.
https://github.com/nanos/FediFetcher/releases/tag/v7.1.6
Massive thanks to all the contributors! This is another release where almost all changes are contributed by the community, which is amazing to see! 💪
#FediFetcher #MastoAdmin #singleUserInstance

2024-08-09 11:50:22 GMT

Friday afternoon. Time to deploy to production 💪

2024-08-05 18:17:39 GMT

- reply

yep. This problem is exactly why FediFetcher was invented, and it works amazingly well to address it. But I might be a little biased 😉
Have a look at the readme, and let me know if you have questions.

2024-08-03 06:39:05 GMT

- reply

sadly at least mastodon doesn’t work like this at all.
In mastodon only self-replies by the OP are part of the activity pub replies collection, which is the reason that replies don’t federate well, and why we need FediFetcher.

2024-06-28 07:59:22 GMT

Working on FediFetcher might be somewhat addictive 🙈
Today I present v7.1.3 with a new feature that was requested almost exactly a year ago: FediFetcher can now fetch data from your lists 🎉
It also fixes a bug introduced in 7.1.0.
For all details including update instructions view the release page:
https://github.com/nanos/FediFetcher/releases/tag/v7.1.3
#FediFetcher #MastoAdmin #SingleUserInstance

2024-05-25 12:53:45 GMT

I once again come to the conclusion that I hate gardening.
The fact that the previous owners of this house have planted not one, not two, but three big hedges doesn’t help.
And the fact that I have bad hay fever and an even worse back is the cherry on top …