Gemini Links 25/05/2024: "Bill Smugs" and OpenBSD Mirror Over Tor / I2P
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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🔤SpellBinding: EINPRTX Wordo: FAMES
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Wet Weekend
It's been a wet spring. It's been raining all week. The grass, which had really just turned from brown a couple of weeks ago, is now thick and lush. And tall, though I can't get the mower out. The ground is still squelching. Maybe soon.
Today's a busy day: stop by the gluten free bakery to pick up bread for my partner, drive across the city to pick up our (tuned up) bikes, buy all the bedding plants and supplies, go to the bookstore. Then supper with our friends, and off to our goddaughter's dance recital. Tomorrow, weather permitting, the bedding plants. This is one of those weekends that doesn't feel like it, where on Sunday evening, you look back, and wonder where your days off went.
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bird songs
Each morning at around four am or so, local time, I start to hear a few bird songs. It builds over the next few hours. But I think I like it best before it gets fully light out because you can hear the birds and the insects together. It’s a deeply peaceful experience and such a pleasant way to wake up. I like to open the window around this time so I can hear them even better. This has the benefit of letting in that fresh air, too. It’s also pleasantly cool at this hour.
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Magic Moments 4: Aurora Borealis
Suffice it to say that around 2024-05-09 several X class flares occured on the solar surface. The interplanetary magnetic field increased quite a bit (factor 10) and elevated particle flux was detected, too.
In the late evening of 2024-05-11 I went outside with the expectation to see nothing. Living near 48°N 10°E is quite some distance from the magnetic North pole of Earth. But unexpectedly, the sky towards the North-West was glowing in a distinct red --- without structures, but clearly aurora borealis. I gazed in astonishment! It was the first time I have consciously seen this phenomenon of nature.
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What's in a Name? (Considering changing my online identity)
The books are set in the good old days when children were allowed to disappear for hours or days (even while on holiday in unfamiliar settings), without their parents or guardians apparently being especially worried, despite the fact that seemingly every cave, ruin, or abandoned building was crawling with armed smugglers or similar villains.
The children team up with a secret policeman named Bill Cunningham, who first introduces himself under the alias "Bill Smugs" (which is then used throughout the series as the children's nickname for him). I enjoyed the books and thought Bill Smugs was a funny name, so started to occasionally pick 'billsmugs' as a username online. Over time, billsmugs became my standard choice of username (in part because it was rarely, if ever, already taken).
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It's finals week! yippie!
Good evening. I felt like coming by here despite the busy schedule, some nice chit-chat is good for you every once in a while.
So yeah, finals... at least for me they are starting this Tuesday. I uave been waking up early in the morning, sleeping late, all to sit in my room, just study. It's driving me a little crazy.
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Technology and Free Software
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Adding nex and kinex to bubble wrapped services (bws)
Some time back Toby Kurien published details and code about his favourite setup regarding self hosting services at home. He did put in quite some effort to make this simple to install and run. This time I have added nexd and kinex by ~m15o to run in this setup.
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Strange Moment
This week at $dayjob I was editing some text in my editor (emacs) to be copied into $mailclient as text of a message. I typed away, leaving out some detail at first. Then I returned to that spot to fill in the details. So far, so good.
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OpenBSD mirror over Tor / I2P
For an upcoming privacy related article about OpenBSD I needed to setup an access to an OpenBSD mirror both from a Tor hidden service and I2P.
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OpenBSD mirror over Tor / I2P
The server does not contain any data, it only act as a proxy fetch files from a random existing OpenBSD mirror, so it does not waste bandwidth mirroring everything, the server does not have the storage required anyway. There is a little cache to keep most requested files locally.
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Pretendo
I’ve been playing more games on my 3DS lately and I was thinking how nice it would be to use some of the online features that Nintendo shut off back in April (was it April of 2024?) Turns out, some clever folks have made what is damn near a drop-in replacement for the Nintendo network. Pretendo lets you sign up and with the Nimbus app (and custom firmware) you can replace the Nintendo network (to be clear, the Nintendo network is now completely gone for 3DS/WiiU) and play some 3DS titles with their full online features. Some titles only have partial support, but it’s better than none.
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Internet/Gemini
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Planned Projects and Thoughts
In this article I want to briefly discuss my plans and ideas for my projects, but I want to first announce that the first two server hosts, outside of my own servers, for the Scroll Protocol have been added to the project's homepage!
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[Old] Simpler Linux self-hosting with tmux and bubblewrap
Let's say you want to self-host a Gemini capsule and a weblog. Maybe you'll use a Raspberry Pi or VPS server. Typically, you'd install (or get a pre-installed) operating system, like Debian/Ubuntu. You might then `apt install` a webserver like nginx, and `pip3 install` a Gemini server like JetForce.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.