COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
The gemini:// world or Geminispace will soon have 3,100 known and online ("active") capsules, at least those that are known to Lupa. Half a year from now our Gemini capsule turns 5. It used to run on a humble Raspberry Pi 4. I still have that Raspberry Pi 4 and it works. It's not powerful enough for our capsule anymore.
If it weren't for the COVID-19 lock-downs, I probably would not have enough time to explore and then join gemini://. That's not to say that the COVID-19 lock-downs were a "blessing in disguise", but the second major lock-downs convinced me to start making long videos (I've not done any in a while), add many things to IPFS, add text-only daily bulletins, and more. Even a simple and fast front page was crafted for the site. A few months later we created our very own IRC network (about time!). One year later I quit all social control media and later in the same year I quit my job (as I had planned for years, since before COVID-19 broke out; working from home during lock-downs was suddenly a "bargain").
When I finally got COVID-19 in late 2023 - apparently infected through my mother - we finally moved the site to an SSG (as we had planned for ages) and to the UK "proper" (for the first time since 2006).
I still wear a mask in public. It's not just because of COVID-19. To me, COVID-19 was "nothing". Not when I finally got it (the moderate discomfort lasted 1-2 days) and not when it forced everyone to stay home. It was a life-changing thing in a lot of ways, especially a change of routines and habits in my life.
2 years after the pandemic began we also got a NATO-scale war, then trade wars, and even a war on us. The world got nutty. We coexist with people who went bonkers. █