Galleries

How I’m replacing Instagram with WordPress

By using the official WordPress App I can create an Instagram like experience without Instagram.

I set forth a challenge to remove Facebook and its properties from my online presence and this includes Instagram.

Here I’m using the official WordPress App from Automattic and Snapseed by Google along with the Twenty Sixteen theme on my website to get the job done. What follows is a step back step gallery with screenshots. Yes, its more steps than Instagram but all the features are there.

Open the WordPress app
First, I open the WordPress app and click the circular button at the bottom right to create a new post.

upload the photos from my phone
Next, I upload the photos from my phone.

That’s basically it. However, if I’m willing to put in the additional effort. I’ll open up Snapseed to edit the image before uploading. This allows me to use automatic image editing filters and reduce the file size if I want to conserve my data during the upload process.

A photo I took at the Petersen Automotive Museum recently
A photo I took at the Petersen Automotive Museum recently

I open the image in Snapseed and prepare a smaller standard HD copy for export and upload.
I open the image in Snapseed I open the image in Snapseed and prepare a smaller standard HD copy for export and upload.

Additional image filters in Snapseed
I’d be negligent if I didn’t mention the Instagram like filters available in Snapseed

Back on the WordPress app there are additional settings found by tapping the gear icon. Here, I set the featured image, Geo location, as well as organize the post with categories, tags and custom post types.

Post Types
The Twenty Sixteen theme offers additional post types to further organize your post by type.

Geo tagging the post
Use your phones location to Geo tag the post

Confirm the location
Confirm the location.

Review details of your post
Review every detail of what you’re sharing.

File details screen
Set a display size, caption, alt text and even link the image.

That’s a lot of steps. However I can choose every detail or skip anything I don’t need for that particular post. This allows me to share as little detail or as much as I’d like.

The important point to take away is that there are options beyond closed social media platforms to share photos. Sure, I use Snapseed here to make adjustments but I can easily leave that out.

PureOS – First Impressions Gallery

Today I poked around in PureOS a GNU/Linux distribution recently endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. So far I’m very impressed in what I can do with minimal effort. For starters, I had no problems creating a local installation of WordPress. (A necessity and a test in my line of work as a web developer.) It was actually pretty simple. Being based on Debian made it easy. I just swapped MariaDB out for the usual MySQL.

It’s nice to know that PureOS is another option. The best way to describe this experience is Debian + GNOME minus proprietary blobs. If I had to fine one complaint it would be that Firefox is stuck on ESR rather than the current version. However, when you’re running Free Software that’s a small price to pay for software freedom. Chromium is also available in the repository.

i3 desktop screenshot gallery

Before I get to far into further customizations how about a gallery of my progress so far.

For the i3lock screen I started with a tutorial posted at http://plankenau.com/blog/post/gaussianlock followed by a little additional research to adjust the brightness levels at http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/color_mods/#level_gamma which contains several tips and tricks for use with ImageMagick. If you’re curious my final lock config is listed below.


#!/bin/bash
scrot /tmp/screenshot.png
convert /tmp/screenshot.png -blur 0x7 -level 0%,100%,0.5 /tmp/screenshotblur.png
i3lock -i /tmp/screenshotblur.png