I thought I’d share with you some objectives I have for this year. So maybe I can also reference this post during the year and keep you updated about how things go. Here are 5 things I’ve promised myself to do by the end of 2023.
Continue reading 2023 resolutionsCategory: /me
Articles about my work or longer reviews of someone else’s work.
/me (pronounced “slash me”) is a reference to IRC actions. The most popular histosical chat protocol of the Internets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
Sousveillance time with PineTime
After spending a few months with a Pinetime around my wrist, I thought I’d share some impressions about this open source smartwatch, with integrated step counter and heart rate sensor.
Continue reading Sousveillance time with PineTimeFronting social surveillance
A new breed of open source web applications are popping up and gaining momentum among privacy concerned citizens. They’re called Invidious, Nitter, Bibliogram, Teddit or Scribe. Their main purpose is to propose alternative interfaces to “corporate social media”.
Continue reading Fronting social surveillanceDeltaChat : la messagerie instantanée pour tou·te·s
Depuis la débâcle de Whatsapp, suite à leur changement de conditions d’utilisation, et le ras-le-bol général de se faire détrousser les données par des vendeurs de temps de cerveau disponible, beaucoup de personnes se demandent vers quelle application de messagerie se tourner. Au royaume des alternatives les moins connues, DeltaChat pourrait bien être la plus évidente à adopter et que tous vos contacts utilisent déjà sans le savoir.
Continue reading DeltaChat : la messagerie instantanée pour tou·te·s#tinyCode
I’ve just submitted a short (255 characters) piece of code to be displayed on the media facade of the Medialab Prado in Madrid.
The code is available on p5js online editor: https://editor.p5js.org/XUV/sketches/OzIwTs5SP and you will be able to see it running from there by pressing the pink play button.
If you’d like to participate, the call is open to anyone. You’ll find the rules and details on how to submit at Creative Coding Madrid. You need to submit before December 11th, 2020.
The public streaming on the media facade will be done Dec 12th, 2020 at 18:30 CEST.
Portraits of the Next Iterations

The Next Iterations is over and deployed as an intense couple days of presentations and workshops, all confined behind our screens. This on-camera setting is a blessing for free portrait drawing.
Next Iterations
Join me online this Sunday May 17, 2020 to participate in the Next Iterations.

Iterations consists of a series of artist residencies, exhibitions, reflection meetings and exchanges that take place between 2017 and 2020. Artists and cultural practitioners are welcomed in situations to experiment with and reflect on what the future of collectivity, sharing and working together in digital and networked contexts can look like.
Iterations supports the use of FLOSS software and open content licenses and encourages everybody to download anything you find on this site.
SUNDAY 17 MAY
12:00 – hello coffee / informal gathering
12:30 – Introduction to the coming days, and the infrastructural setting
13:00 – Launch of Iterations book Jara Rocha and Manetta Berends
14:00 – 14:45 BREAK
14.45 – 15:00 Caterina Mora – bodywork for transfigurate our back: the future is behind
15.00 – 15.15 Julien Deswaef – A license written by machines
15:15 – 16:00 Patricia Reis & Lale Rodgarkia-Dara from Mz Balthazar’s Laboratory (feminist infrastructures of support)
16:00 – 16:15 (OFFTIME)
16:15 – 16:30 Nayari Castillo & Hanns Holger Rutz – Collective Divagation (Instructions for Rendevous)
16:30 – 17:15 Kym Ward: networked sonic spell-casting
17:15 – 17:30 (OFFTIME)
17:30 – 17:45Luis Rodil-Fernández...the body of a newborn squeezes itself into the world. Life’s tribulations on the outside begin…
17:45 – 18:00 Zoumana Méité – voice stacking choral
18:00 – 18:15 Fran Quiroga & Andrea Olmedo – Workshop I Communal Ethics
18:15 – 18:30 (OFFTIME)
18:30 – IRCBAR with cocktails by Rica Rickson
20:00 – Jamsession (fade out to night …)With a.o: BeHuKi (Mia Melvær, Maxime Stifinner and Yoan Robin): audio postcard
Zoom drawings

At the multinational corp, I don’t always get to join meetings where I need to be active. Sometimes, I might just be there in case there is a question for me. So when those meetings are remote, I found a new way to beat the feeling of wasting my time. I draw portraits of my colleagues in video conferences.
They’re still enough to make this quite easy. They don’t notice I’m actually drawing them. And while I stay focused on the conversation, my eyes, brain and hand relax at following these lines.

How to transition from Twitter to Mastodon
In Mastodon lingo, here’s how to leave the birdsite for the fluffy animals federation, without hurting your social karma, while leaving the nazis behind.
If you don’t know the Mastodon, there are articles that will explain you in details what it is about and why it’s better than Twitter or where it comes from and what is the federation. But in a few words, it’s a decentralized social network, driven by a community of free software enthusiasts, that feels very much like twitter, but with added values.
If you are coming from Twitter, these would be some of the reasons to consider switching to Mastodon:
- It feels friendlier, more conversational and fresh. Just like twitter at the beginning.
- It puts users first. Its architecture is completely designed from the ground up to protect against harassment and bullying.
- It’s free from nazis.
- It’s not driven by corporate greed. There is no central authority aggregating your data and selling it to third parties.
- It is not addictive tech. It’s not built with email reminders to connect or suggestions to post and give away personal details about yourself.
- It’s decentralized open source software supported by its community. So it would be very hard for any government or malicious entity to shut it down or censor it completely.
So now that you have an account (follow this guide if you don’t have one yet), here are a few tricks I’ve come across that helped me during the transition.
From Twitter
Find your twitter friends who are already on Mastodon and follow them. Use it to find your friends now, and to find more friends in 3 or 6 months. People join Mastodon all the time. Not every Tweep did the transhumance last April. Some only join today. Find them and make contact on Mastodon.[Edit: 27/04/2022] Unfortunately, this service is not available anymore. I think the Twitter API did not really like this app. You’ll have to ask your friends directly what is their Mastodon account. Pinning a tweet in your profile with your Mastodon address is a good way for your followers to find that information.
- Craft and pin a tweet that announces you’re moving to Mastodon and link to your new profile. Here is mine for example:
Ping me there if you’d like https://t.co/DY36jIsT1I
— Julien Deswaef | @xuv (@xuv) April 1, 2017
It’s pinned at the top of my twitter profile so that anyone visiting it can find it.
- Since Twitter has recently allowed a lot more characters in twitter names, you could also add your Mastodon user handle next to it. It helps spread the message, one tweet at a time. (A mastodon user handle starts with @your-username and finishes with @the-instance-where-its-located. This is mine:
@xuv@mastodon.social@xuv@merveilles.town@julien@xuv.be. It’s like an email address, but with an @ in front of it. PS: don’t send emails to that address. It will not work.) - While you’re still on Twitter, why not follow the official @MastodonProject account. It’ll regularly remind you about your decision to move and provide good stuff to retweet to your friends.
On the move
If tweeting from your phone is your thing, Mastodon has you covered in many ways. There is plenty of apps to choose from. And Mastodon itself behaves very well in mobile browsers (no app needed). But this is what I recommend:
- Remove the official Twitter app from your phone. It’s bad anyway. It tracks your location, does not show tweets in a chronological order and tries to figure out everything you are doing with your phone. It also only works with Twitter.
- Install Twidere (for Android, also available on F-Droid) instead. And connect it to both your Mastodon and Twitter accounts. You will then have one unified feed, with both tweets and toots from your friends in reverse chronological order. No tracking, no profiling, no machine engineering of your preferences. And when you want to post a message, you can decide to send it to both platforms or not. Your choice. I personally decided to post solely on Mastodon. Though I do still retweet some stuff and reply to @mentions on Twitter… for now.
To Mastodon
Consider Mastodon as a new school you’d be going to or a new city you’d just moved in. You know how it works. There will be things you are familiar with and things you don’t know. There will be new friends to make, but you will probably know a few people there already. But with every move, there will be a little effort needed from your part to make it an enjoyable experience.
Things are a little different on Mastodon than Twitter. But, the rule, I guess, is to be yourself. I believe there is a tone for every social network. Even if probably Mastodon is very similar to Twitter. Try to find out how it’s different. It’s like finding this new café at the corner of the street you just moved in. When is it crowded? What’s the best thing on the menu? Why do people go outside if they they want to take a call?
Here are a few accounts you might find interesting if you like the stuff I like:
- Allison Parrish: @aparrish@mastodon.social
- Brendan Howell: @KnowPresent@mastodon.social
- Darius Kazemi: @darius@social.tinysubversions.com
- Máirín Duffy: @mairin@mastodon.social
- Yunohost: @yunohost@mastodon.social
Of course there is many more (1.000.000 more). Hop on the federation feed or local feed of your instance once in a while and you will see a flow of many many posts in different languages (you can filter out the languages you don’t want to read in the settings). Especially do this if you just started, it’ll give you a sense of what’s going on in this space. And basically, it’s something you can only do on Mastodon. Then follow new people. Unfollow, if it’s not as interesting as you thought. No one will be offended. This is new ground. Be curious.
And don’t be silent. It’s a social network. It means there is nothing really interesting there if you don’t bring anything. Social network tools are empty by default. So talk to strangers. It’s a potluck, BYOB party, shared lunch. Everyone is bringing something to the table.
Sharing content from Twitter on Mastodon
You will be tempted to share the good things you read on Twitter to Mastodon. And this is perfectly fine. Though to properly do it, start your copy with “RT @username@twitter.com” to credit the original author (just like in the old days of Twitter by the way).
You might also want to use the feature called “Content Warning” (CW) if what you copy might feel offensive to some readers.
People on Mastodon tend to respect their audience more than on Twitter. Some like to put violence, political views and anything related to Twitter (aka. the birdsite) behind a Content Warning.
Sharing content from Mastodon to Twitter
Depending on what you’d like to achieve with this transition, you might want to keep your twitter followers in sync with what you are doing on the Mastodon. I personally don’t do this (if people want the good bits of me, they are welcome to follow me on Mastodon). But you could find interest in using the Mastodon Twitter Poster to manage this automatically for you.
This service [by @renatolond] allows you to connect a Mastodon account and a Twitter account and enable cross-posting between them.
Mastodon Twitter Poster seems really well thought in terms of cross-posting features, respect of privacy levels and overall understanding of both worlds. Though, this is just from reading the doc. I’m curious to have feedback from people who have used it.
And by the way, when you tweet a link to a toot, this is what it looks like:
— Julien Deswaef | @xuv (@xuv) June 22, 2017
Yes, Twitter embeds toots perfectly.
Conclusion
If you have the feeling Twitter is getting worst every day, but that the way the medium used to work was fun and promising. If you believe there is a more respectful way to micro-blog, using a platform driven by community decisions, with respect in mind and keeping a safe distance from centralized silos. Now is the time to embark on a new journey.
Hopefully, I’ve demonstrated in this article that the tool set is available to ease that transition. Whether your goal is to completely remove yourself from Twitter at some point or to maintain a presence on both sides until Twitter burns down to ashes is up to you.
But the future is bright and seeing the pace at which Mastodon is growing, we have probably not measured yet completely the impact this will have on the future of social media (start reading about PeerTube and Activity Pub, if you want to grasp what I’m talking about).
Let me know if anything in this article helped you or feels incorrect and don’t hesitate to come say ‘hi’.
A patch for the Github centralization dilemma
Github, with its 75,000,000 repositories, has become a central place for open source development and is well-known for having popularized Git among programmers and other code hungry fellas. The irony is not lost on anyone that we are again relying on a centralized service for our decentralized Git workflow. And as with any centralization comes the risk of giving too much power in the hands of just a few.
Of course, a central service such as Github has its benefits. We all know where to search for code. We all also potentially know how the service works and can jump more quickly from one project to another. Third parties can even build upon this resource and push things in new directions, maybe attracting faster early adopters.
But… Centralized services can turn against you. They can censor and be censored. They also can disappear. Maybe Github will not disappear soon, but a user on Github could decide to delete all its repositories and there would not be much you could do about it. You don’t think that has happened? Check RGBDToolkit or Gravit, for example. (You’ll have to put those urls in your preferred search-engine to verify that I’m not bullshitting you and that these projects did exist on Github at some point.)
So, in order to restore balance in the force, I’ve decided to adopt a few habits that I want to share with you. They are not going to solve the centralization problem. But they can maybe provide some safe guards against the major risk exposed in the previous paragraph. These tricks apply for projects you have not created. For your own projects, it’s up to you to decide where you want to host them.
The solution I’m using is based on the mirror feature from Gitlab. Gitlab is an open source clone of Github. It provides the same functionalities, but you can install it on your own server. And many groups are running public instances across the web. Gitlab.com itself, as a company, develops the software and offers hosting of public and private repositories at the same address.
So now, every time I find a nice open source project on Github, and especially the ones with few stars, forks or developers, I create a mirror of it in a public Gitlab repository. The advantage here over just a git clone on my machine or elsewhere is that I’m not just creating a copy of the project at a certain time. The mirror feature will keep watching the original project and pull all the changes that happen after I created the mirror. So I’m confident, that whatever happens to the original repository, all the history and changes will be saved elsewhere.
Because those repositories are just backups, I also disable issue tracking, wikis and any other unnecessary feature that could mislead visitors. The point is not to divert development. There is also a clear mention that those are mirrors and link back to the canonical repository.
So next time, instead of starring a project you like, mirror it. You’ll do everyone a favor. The ones I keep are here. But feel free to choose any other hosting service elsewhere. Let’s keep things distributed.