Guest: @RosemaryOrchard
Release date: April 23, 2018
@macgenie: Hey it’s micro Monday again the weekly microcast where we get to know members of the Micro.blog community. I’m Jean MacDonald, the community manager here at Micro.blog and I’m very pleased to have as my guest today Rosemary Orchard who is @rosemaryorchard on Micro.blog. Hey Rosemary, how are you doing?
@rosemaryorchard: I’m good. Thank you very much for having me.
@macgenie: I’m really glad you’re here. Why don’t we start with you telling the listeners a little bit about yourself.
@rosemaryorchard: Well, as you said, my name is Rosemary. I am a software developer originally from the UK and I now live and work in Vienna in Austria.
@macgenie: Wow. I love Austria. I’ve been all over there, but that’s not what this podcast is about. So I refrain from picking your brain about the virtues of Vienna versus Innsbruck versus… Sound of Music Town [editor’s note: Salzburg]. I have watched The Sound of Music one million times.
@rosemaryorchard: Hasn’t everybody?
@macgenie: So how long have you lived in Vienna?
@rosemaryorchard: Oh I’ve been living in Vienna since 2015, so about two and a half years at the moment.
@macgenie: How did you hear about Micro.blog all the way in Vienna? As if it’s far away! Digitally speaking, you’re just next door.
@rosemaryorchard: Well, digitally speaking, it wasn’t very far away at all. Manton was on [Mac Power Users Episode 417]() and I am a big Mac Power Users fan. I heard about it and thought, “Oooh, I think I vaguely heard about something like this before!” It might have popped up on Twitter, but I’d heard about it. I thought “Great! That sounds really nice. Nice people. I’m going to sign up and give it a try”.” And I did.
@macgenie: That’s cool yes I’m a big Mac Power Users fan myself and I’ve been listening to it since Episode 1. But that’s another story. This is not the Mac Power Users Microcast. However we can totally recommend that podcast to our Mac-using community at Micro.blog. So were you blogging before you heard about Micro.blog.
@rosemaryorchard: Yes, I’ve had blogs in one form or another since about 2011. Now thankfully the Internet has eaten most of those, because quite frankly some of it would be pretty embarrassing to look at now. I have my own separate blog blog and then I have my microblog as well.
@macgenie: Do you have the two lke integrated? How are you hosting your main blog?I’m curious about that because everybody at Micro.blog has many choices if they don’t just use the Micro.blog hosting, there’s a lot to sort out.
@rosemaryorchard: Yes, I am using a CMS called Grav. It’s open source and it’s free. I have my blog and my microblog on that, and I’ve separated them out. So while they’re both on the same website, they’re two separate RSS and JSON feeds, two separate pages. I know they’re not 100 percent integrated, but you can see both of them very easily.
@macgenie: This is totally off of our usual interview questions, but I’m just curious because I know of people who listen to this, not everybody has that much experience with the underpinnings of blog hosting and integrating things into one another. Do you think that that’s a good way to go? Like for for maybe not for a beginner, but for somebody who maybe used WordPress before ?
@rosemaryorchard: Absolutely. For Grav, it was a little bit tricky. I’ve had to create my own install of a service for Jekyll and hack it to make it work for Grav and I wouldn’t recommend to start with that. That would be much too much and it took me quite a long time to figure it out. The WordPress setup is fairly easy. You’ve got a couple of plug-ins which would make it super easy to set everything up for standard Micropub formatting. So if people want to give it a go, they should absolutely give it a shot. But a microblog is a really nice way to try it out, because you have a limit of 280 characters. There’s not a lot you can say and not a lot you can get wrong in 280 characters either.
@macgenie: That’s a really great way of putting it. I think there’s a lot of resources available in our Micro.blog community. People, I’ve noticed, have been really helpful, helping others find the way to get something the way they want it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel necessarily.
@rosemaryorchard: It’s really nice. If you look in the timeline, then you see other people suggesting things that might help somebody else out. And it’s one of my favorite things.
@macgenie: So what kind of content do you have on your blog?
@rosemaryorchard: Well my main blog is technology-based and then my microblog is stream of consciousness, it’s my replacement for Twitter and Facebook. So you get pictures of food that I’m eating, planes that I’m sitting on, the seat next to me on the plane was a recent one, all sorts of things. Just whatever takes my fancy.
@macgenie: As you know, we usually wrap this up with the question “What do you like about Micro.blog?” And you’ve alreadymentioned a couple of things. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
@rosemaryorchard: Yes. I love the community. So whether it’s the little Slack channels or just Micro.blog in general, you always see people sharing things and it’s for the enjoyment of others. So you don’t see people harassing other people and so on, which I know was one of the points of Micro.blog and why you’re the community manager. I liked that there’s a person who is the community manager, and she has a name, and her name is Jean MacDonald, and she’s lovely. [editor’s note: blushing] It makes me feel safe, though I am very fortunate that I’ve never felt unsafe on the internet, but it’s really nice to have people there looking out for you, whom you can help look out for as well.
@macgenie: I really appreciate that you came on today to share your experiences and your insights into Micro.blog, Rosemary. Thanks for coming today.
@rosemaryorchard: Thank you very much for having me. It’s been lovely to be on.
@macgenie: And for everybody else, thank you for listening and we’ll talk to you next week.
