Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: TEFKLOC Wordo: EXEAT

  • Tastes like Tea

    I just got back from the west coast. One of the things I look forward to when visiting my family is to stop by Murchie's. They're a tea merchant and sell a lot of really high-quality teas. Growing up, when I had tea, which wasn't often, it was often one of the grocery store brands, and probably Red Rose. Red Rose is to Canada what PG Tips or Typhoo is to England - a fairly cheap, inexpensive tea for people whose relationship with tea doesn't really go beyond the fact that it needs to taste like tea when taken with milk and sugar. Which is fine - these sorts of brands establish a safe, middle ground. It's from here that you can branch out, or just happily enjoy your tea.

• Technology and Free Software

  • New Laptop and Linux Distro and Desktop Environment Musings

    It's past 6am and I feel the urge to write another gemlog entry with some late night musings. Well, I guess early morning musings at this point. If I'm not careful this might turn into a habit. I really ought to at least make some attempt to fix my sleep schedule...

  • My Experience with Flat-File Databases

    Pollux.casa resident HanzBrix recently pondered about databases using flat files. His most recent reply to the discussion^ laid out a hypothetical data storage system for Station or BBS in which user information is kept in separate gemtext files. This effectively splits out data which would be single rows in a database table to separate files, enabling fine control over process locking, with the added feature that the data files can be served directly without further parsing.

    In truth, I already use a scheme like this for one of my capsule's services. Almost all of the CGI scripts on Rob's Gemini Capsule use Python with a SQLite backend, but one does not: my OEIS mirror.^^

    OEIS was my first experience working with a relatively large dataset. At time of writing, the encyclopedia has about 375000 sequences, the shortest having 1 term and the longest having just over 500. The challenge I set for myself was to create a mirror of the encyclopedia in gemtext that would run as efficiently as possible on my modest VPS.

  • Video App and Sharing

    I found an amazing iPhone app via the hiro.report and maique on Mastodon and I'm in love. One time purchase for all the features, total of $6 USD. I also set up bunny.net for video storage so I can share videos easily and not rely on big social platforms. Win!

  • Copy from ssh session

    I wrote myself the following `fish` function that uses OSC 52 as explained by jdhao in order to copy text from within a `ssh` session into the local (client-side) clipboard. OSC stands for Operating System Command.

  • Control the ssh login messages

    I found that the settings in `/etc/ssh/sshd_config` had no effect. Namely, `PrintLastLog no` and `PrintMotd no`.

    Instead, what helped was to edit `/etc/pam.d/sshd` and comment the first line (to get rid of the `uname -a` stuff identifying the system). I kept the second line because `/etc/motd` just says "This is the server."

  • A Threshold is Approaching in the Mid-Distance

    I just played with the cat a bit, and, as the song says, or at least implies, *I'll miss my cat*. After all the trinkets, feathers and simulations of twine we've bought for her, in the end, the most effective device for pay is a long, wobbly, flexible (but not too much so) wire attached to a handle that has a piece of *real* twine tied to its end. Goes to show you that some ways from the ancient epochs are the best ways. Or at least the most effective ways.

    As is usual when a threshold is approaching in the mid-distance, my perception of time creeps. Well, it usually creeps, and especially when I have diverse offerings for my mental modules each day, but right now it creeps in an even more lugubrious fashion. Well, good for it, then. I'll take advantage of the *perceived extra time* and attempt to get as much music done as possible. I may even do some programming along the way, and not just for myself.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • How the Web ate Gopher

      I was reading this article today about the gopher protocol www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol and I was fascinated to learn: 1. The www was developed by TBL for places like CERN, Stanford, and the CIA, to distribute large cenralized troves of data. While Gopher was developed by long haired 20 somethings at UofM, to be able to run servers on nearly any small computer. This made the admins at UofM so mad, that one admin stood in the middle of the room jumping up and down in pumps screaming, "you cant do that!" "you cant do that!". The UofM wanted the protocol to give them gate keeping control over everything that was moving across the internet, forcing traffic through mainframes. When it didnt, they tried to shut development down. 2. The first gopher servers were named things like Danzig, Mudhoney, and Anthrax 3. According to the developers of Gopher, the real reason www took off over gopher, was the simple fact that while gopher was 100 times better at organizing and making data available, www could serve ads and porn. 4. The last stage of Gopher development was done in secret, hidden from the UofM administrators, and was released to the internet, becoming the first viral software release. People loved Gopher so much that when many of them started calling the U of M asking when new releases were coming, they pretended they had never tried to stop it, and instead tried to charge people for it, which wound up killing the project.