Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • How bout that: Hardcore independence list

    Own multiple identities.

  • Effecting Change at scale

    I have a friend for whom I have a great deal of respect. She is very much an activist, and has been planning a way through law school specialising in health law, largely because she has thought it to be a path where she could effect some positive change in the world.

    The world stage over the last several months, in particular Gaza, has left her at a bit of a loss, with the flagrant disregard for international law by the powers that be. If law that is preferred as one of the basic planks of our society can be so easily and brazenly put aside, then what is fighting to improve society using that law?

    It's a feeling I share. I'm at the moment contemplating heading off to a protest against some stupid arsed fast track legislation that would grant the current idiots in charge unprecedented powers to push through infrastructure projects without planning or consultation. It's the right thing to do, but for a long time now, I've not been convinced that protests do much.

  • The Pain of Loss: Why Nia's Death in Gurren Lagaan Broke Me

    Whenever I see Simon smiling in the face of Nia’s death, I can’t help but be reminded of the death of my own girlfriend.

    I can’t help but feel ashamed of myself for being unable to hold a “brave face” when my girlfriend took her own life. Rather, it broke me so much that I had to send myself to a mental hospital. That’s how much I truly loved her.

  • Frames Of Reference- Chapter 22

    “Christ, Jerry,” Bradford gleans. “You’re a sight.” I don’t have the benefit of a mirror currently, but I suppose the bags underneath my eyes are ever more pronounced- the accumulated damage of a particularly miserable day can’t be hidden after a certain point. I notice something rattling inside my jacket. One of the prescription bottles. I toss it aside, it bounces down the steps and rolls to a halt. Bradford isn’t wet, so I figure he’s been waiting down here all day for me. Or maybe there’s some water-repellent capability he’s got I’m not aware of, he can weather any storm and look casual through it, because he’s in control and knows as much. You know the old myth- they don’t sweat- they’re always dry, smooth to the touch... “Hi, Vern,” I flourish. “Just checking up on things, ‘s all. Didn’t know you would be in today. Nice to see you, though. Ya haven’t been here in a while.”

  • A drink with a view

    At the very top of a tower of steel and glass, with a bird's view of the city below. As I sit on my perch, nestled comfortably inside, a tall glass of bubbles by my hand, dark clouds roll swiftly by at the horizon.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Gemini Chess

    I've had a go at making a two-player chess game for Gemini. If you want to try it out it is available at the link below. There is also a version of wordle there, though I made this before I realised that there is already a much better wordle clone available on gemini, Wordo.

    I was able to make these thanks to the Space Age gemini server, which is written in clojure and allows for fairly straight-forward development of these kinds of applications for gemini.

  • A quick review of Raspberry Pi Connect

    The Raspberry Pi company has created a nice way to share a Pi Desktop. It is called Raspberry Pi Connect. It is built on the peer-to-peer capability of modern web browsers using [WebRTC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC). The connect service requires a Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 400 or Raspberry Pi 5 running the [Wayland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)) display server and Bookworm release of Raspberry Pi OS.

  • Building Lagrange on Raspberry Pi OS

    These are my quick notes on building the Lagrange Gemini browser on Raspberry Pi OS. They are based on instructions I found at <gemini://home.gegeweb.org/install_lagrange_linux.gmi>. These are in French and I don't speak or read French. My loss. The author kindly provided the specific command sequence in shell that I could read those. That was all I needed. When I read the site today I had to click through an expired certificate. That's why I think it is a good idea to capture the instructions here for the next time I need them. I made single change to his instructions. I have cloned the repository from <https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange>.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Initial work on Vanquish Vanguard Online

      Having gotten my Gemini server and initial content for my capsule into shape, I started initial work on my multiplayer roguelite, Vanquish Vanguard Online or VVO, after work today.

      I'm writing the server in Golang to continue my study of that language. For the client, I decided to use Electron, because I think essentially wrapping up a webpage into a desktop application will be the overall easiest way to roll a client given the graphical style (simple, static sprite-based tile graphics) and UI I want to go for.

      I've never used Electron before, but getting an Electron app up and running was surprisingly easy, as was getting the client and server to talk to each other. From here, I'm taking a very "agile" approach and, rather than having a detailed plan, I'm just kind of winging it and writing code as I go. :3 (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Somewhat.)

  • Programming

    • Random Map Fun

      Will be a short update today, but I finished my random map generator algorithm by completing the logic for adding connections between nodes, and then created nearly 200 geomorphs. Well, there's still a few little tweaks to apply, but the core of the generator is 100% functional, and now at the point where it's really fun generating maps with it and seeing what it comes up with: [...]