How would you compare it to Matrix? I use Matrix and have never tried XMPP.
digitallyfree
For writing, practice writing short stories using writing prompts (I normally use Reddit's /r/writingprompts but I'm trying to find an alternative here) and post them on the thread even if they suck. The commitment is low since it's a short story and you can afford to twist the story to match your writing style rather than the other way around. You'll also get votes and feedback from other members.
I started drawing as a kid, stopped for a while, and got back to it in my teens since I started doing a lot of writing then and wanted to visually depict what was happening as well. One thing that helped me a lot was to not look at other people's art or photographs but rather solely work with what you're visualizing in your mind and reiterate (with many many strokes) until the quality becomes acceptable. Use pencil and sketch with short and light lines. The point here is to develop your own intuition for perspective, splitting an object into basic shapes, and so forth.
I'll also add that it's extremely important to create your own style both for writing and drawing. Make your stuff look good, but always keep in mind that it's fine to have your own quirks and distinctions. E.g. if your lines are a bit sketchy or if your circles aren't perfect that can easily be part of your style.
Writing and drawing!
It requires no upfront investment, can be done individually, and it's one of the few arts which is constrained by skill rather than budget. You can write a bestseller novel with just your computer but good luck doing a blockbuster film on your own.
I'm already seeing an increase in trolling and spam across the Lemmy and Kbin instances. Hopefully the mods can handle the influx.
I'm doing my part!
TIFF is a classic storage format, but PNG is common for web images and isn't going away either. DNG is for RAW sensor output from professional cameras and is not used for edited and published images. However if you're archiving your photo collection or something than keep the DNGs!
One of those Reddit 3PA devs need to get on board with the Fediverse and encourage their users to switch over. If they can make it seamless that'll bring in an influx of new members, for better or for worse.
You didn't just push it to main, you also pushed confidential code to the public repo!