It's that time again! It's been 2 years since our last new recommendations thread, and there are plenty of new businesses since then! Let's kick off the Lemmy community with another one!

Feel free to plug any restaurants and other entertainment venues, excellent local businesses, favorite parks and nature spots, and pretty much anything that you think deserves wider recognition and acclaim! Bonus for anything recent that even locals might have missed!

Given the overlap in interests between mechanical keyboards and Lemmy, I thought some of you might be able to make use of this macro.

When you open a Lemmy link in a new tab and trigger the macro, it'll switch to the tab and automatically search the URL on lemm.ee, then open the first result. You could pretty easily swap it over to another instance that you have an account on, but you'll have to count the tabs yourself if they have some extra links or buttons or something.

Pretty simple, but it's been really useful to make browsing and posting between different fediverse platforms much smoother. Hopping from Calckey over to Lemmy and getting to the particular instance I need feels a lot more seamless now. If you run into issues with some instances not federating with one another, you could also easily set a second macro with another instance for those communities that have defederated from one another, such as open-registration communities and human-verified ones if you prefer one or the other.

I'm honestly still kind of blown away by just how much smoother a few macros can make day-to-day PC use.

I'm curious what others have made with VIA and how it's affected their every day experience and their work flow. What unique VIA macros have you made? Have you made anything that might make Fediverse integration a little smoother?

Anyway, here it is so you can try it out! It should be pretty simple to modify or make your own from scratch!

{KC_LCTL, KC_TAB}{400}{KC_F6}{400}{KC_LCTL, KC_C}{40}lemm.ee/search{KC_ENT}{4067}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_LCTL, KC_V}{703}{KC_ENT}{4000}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_TAB}{KC_ENT}

I've got a Calckey server up and I'm testing integration with Lemmy and Mastodon. It seems like Mastodon's working well, and I've been able to follow communities, but I'm not sure if it actually displays posts (we're about to find out).

What other Fediverse instances have you used, and how has connecting with Lemmy or other federated instances worked on it for you?

If you run your own instance, have you had much luck with relays? Are there any you'd recommend?

Edit: So on my end it seems like Calckey will allow you to follow Lemmy communities, but it only displays posts if they're 'boosted' by the community. Which, I have no idea how that happens!