Tom Casavant on Nostr: It's been a long time since I posted an #introduction. I don't think I even made one ...
It's been a long time since I posted an #introduction. I don't think I even made one after moving to my self-hosted Mastodon server last year. So, why not drop it now while everyone is anxious about the election?
I'm a software developer from (and living in) Ohio after graduating from Ohio State. I like to tinker with things—usually on the software side, but occasionally, I do actual physical projects. I started programming back in middle school, but the first real project that got me hooked was a few years later when I connected a Wiimote to a Raspberry Pi to control a Spotify terminal client.
Earlier this year, I modified my Glitch-soc instance so hashtags in any post I make get filtered as out-of-band. Shortly after, during April Fools, I modified the federated timeline on my instance so that only people named Tom would be visible. I also built a very poorly made Minetest-ActivityPub bridge that linked the chat of a Minetest server to ActivityPub.
I have several active bots running on my instance. The more popular ones are:
npub1uun9wcudmj7wqgn5tx78ru8qm7kc745yh0vxdla0l2kfpcxmffuqz2lafg (npub1uun…lafg) (a crowdsourced gameplay of Pokémon Gold),
npub1eykasv0y99mu0a09wnkz63z4khktf3esxhxmnxurxfnlfkjn0ngqkmd07u (npub1eyk…d07u) (an instance of hype, which boosts trending posts across several top Mastodon instances), and
npub1cj792a75wp2c0sye5t7una3refn460nn3p3cpydfyaszh42eys8s7pzl4p (npub1cj7…zl4p) and npub1ah8rhvtg739ecdrcu604h6jj4gw2c4x6n32jyr8ku7uf6ews9szqxm030d (npub1ah8…030d) (both assign scores to NFL punts based on @jonbois.bsky.social's Surrender Index).
There are also a few less-popular bots that I still enjoy, like npub19jqkpv9y87eze7upvd4t2us0axay47etrdmyh564qww3mzgdrmss5vx4gn (npub19jq…x4gn) and npub1ncykyx2m8hj7m8t9c7a56tha27yy54apksmd34a2jxgq9093cxlqkuuuf5 (npub1ncy…uuf5).
Recently, I made a Firefox extension called DuckDuckSocial that appends (prepends?) Mastodon search results to any search you make in DuckDuckGo which has ended up very useful to me and probably only to me.
Outside of software development, I'm a runner who enjoys watching the most frustrating sports teams in Cincinnati (the Bengals and the Reds). I also do a bit of photography, mostly around Columbus, and sometimes of my 3-legged cat, Bean. I play a moderate amount of video games (primarily on the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch) and enjoy cooking—but I'm not particularly good at that either.
I actually had a Mastodon account back in 2018, but it was rather expensive for my brother to host at the time (and my puns were too top-notch), so I didn't come back until a few years ago, with the wave of other Twitter users.
I'm a software developer from (and living in) Ohio after graduating from Ohio State. I like to tinker with things—usually on the software side, but occasionally, I do actual physical projects. I started programming back in middle school, but the first real project that got me hooked was a few years later when I connected a Wiimote to a Raspberry Pi to control a Spotify terminal client.
Earlier this year, I modified my Glitch-soc instance so hashtags in any post I make get filtered as out-of-band. Shortly after, during April Fools, I modified the federated timeline on my instance so that only people named Tom would be visible. I also built a very poorly made Minetest-ActivityPub bridge that linked the chat of a Minetest server to ActivityPub.
I have several active bots running on my instance. The more popular ones are:
npub1uun9wcudmj7wqgn5tx78ru8qm7kc745yh0vxdla0l2kfpcxmffuqz2lafg (npub1uun…lafg) (a crowdsourced gameplay of Pokémon Gold),
npub1eykasv0y99mu0a09wnkz63z4khktf3esxhxmnxurxfnlfkjn0ngqkmd07u (npub1eyk…d07u) (an instance of hype, which boosts trending posts across several top Mastodon instances), and
npub1cj792a75wp2c0sye5t7una3refn460nn3p3cpydfyaszh42eys8s7pzl4p (npub1cj7…zl4p) and npub1ah8rhvtg739ecdrcu604h6jj4gw2c4x6n32jyr8ku7uf6ews9szqxm030d (npub1ah8…030d) (both assign scores to NFL punts based on @jonbois.bsky.social's Surrender Index).
There are also a few less-popular bots that I still enjoy, like npub19jqkpv9y87eze7upvd4t2us0axay47etrdmyh564qww3mzgdrmss5vx4gn (npub19jq…x4gn) and npub1ncykyx2m8hj7m8t9c7a56tha27yy54apksmd34a2jxgq9093cxlqkuuuf5 (npub1ncy…uuf5).
Recently, I made a Firefox extension called DuckDuckSocial that appends (prepends?) Mastodon search results to any search you make in DuckDuckGo which has ended up very useful to me and probably only to me.
Outside of software development, I'm a runner who enjoys watching the most frustrating sports teams in Cincinnati (the Bengals and the Reds). I also do a bit of photography, mostly around Columbus, and sometimes of my 3-legged cat, Bean. I play a moderate amount of video games (primarily on the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch) and enjoy cooking—but I'm not particularly good at that either.
I actually had a Mastodon account back in 2018, but it was rather expensive for my brother to host at the time (and my puns were too top-notch), so I didn't come back until a few years ago, with the wave of other Twitter users.