packetcat - Nullrouted Space

2022-12-182025-09-17

packetcat reads 2022 Week 50 – Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Pages: 626
Purchased from: Kobo

This one is pretty good as far as YA fantasy goes for me. Good characters, an interesting magic system and a plot that kept a good pace throughout. The book also deals with complex issues like trauma, grief and racism. All of these were handled with care and weaved into the narrative in a natural way.

The only thing I disliked about this book is what I usually seem to dislike about YA fantasy books…the romance plot. In this book’s defence, the main character is a teenager and the romance stuff is very teenage romance stuff. I am just too old for that particular kind of romance in books now.

This book was another recommendation by cari of the the cari can read YouTube channel, no misses yet!

2022-12-112025-09-17

packetcat reads 2022 Week 49 – Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Pages: 369
Purchased from: Kobo

For the first time this year I decided to try reading a short story anthology instead of a full novel. It was pretty good! A bunch of very thought provoking stories by Ted in this one. I especially liked the one about the “digients”, very interesting.

This was a nice change of pace from all the full length novels I’ve been reading this year.

2022-12-042025-09-17

packetcat reads 2022 Week 48 – The Flight of the Aphrodite by S.J Morden

Pages: 347
Purchased from: Kobo

A rather depressing hard sci-fi novel. This one definitely leant into the psychological horror aspects of hard-scifi. I am not sure just how realistic the mental breakdowns depicted are but it certainly was a book where there’s no respite from the onslaught of the terror of being in deep space far away from any help.

I only recommend this one if you are up for a psychologically grueling read.

2022-11-272025-09-17

packetcat reads 2022 Week 47 – Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Pages: 614
Purchased from: Kobo

Folks, this one was a real slog to get through. The author drags scenes and arcs for far too long which is a pity because there are some interesting characters and worldbuilding happening that just gets mired in these long arcs. This book would have been much more enjoyable if it was about 200 pages shorter.

Meh.

2022-11-242022-11-24

packetcat’s Guide to Moderating in the Fediverse: The Basics

So you have decided to run a instance on the fediverse. Welcome! But also I’m so sorry.

Jokes aside this post is intended to be a guide to the basic principles I keep at the back of my head while moderating Ten Forward since 2017.

I have been meaning to write a post like this ever since the November 2022 wave of new users and fediverse admins started happening. Now more than ever there is a new wave of admins and moderators who may be completely new to moderating a social space where they do not personally know the people in it.

Yep, that means this guide is targeted towards multi-user instance administrators and moderators. Single-user instance folks, some of this stuff may apply to you but this isn’t meant for you!

So before we get into the details, I am going to break down this guide into a few key points:

Separation of concerns
Proactive vs Reactive moderation
Transparency. Accountability, and Responsibility

I intend to keep this post at a 101 high level overview level. Some of the things I mention can be entire topics of blog posts on their own and I may write more about specifics later but for now we stick to the basics.