Gemini* and Gopher

• Technology and Free Software

  • Magic of Radio

    Today has been spent in the manner I truely love for Sundays. Waking up to the radio, lying in bed for a bit, getting up, sorting life out, sitting down with a good book and plenty of decent tea, popping out for wander and then settling down for the joys of time in com while faffing about. The key constant is the radio. I love Sunday radio and well, that got me thinking about why the radio is magic.

    Lets get it out of the way. Radio transmission is simply magic. You change the voltage at the bottom of a metal rod at a specific frequency and that becomes sound. It still blows my mind that this works and I have a full amateur radio licence and a Bachelors of Engineering in communications. The method of transmission is simply magic. TV is also magic but it doesn't quite feel as magic for some reason. I know... visuals over radio waves is madness too but hey - who will let you take a TV apart? Radios on the other hand tend to cause less anguish when you prod inside.

  • Easing adoption by generic Git repos

    Summary: Recent changes to the gwit spec allow the verification of arbitrary commits merged into the site branch, even if they weren't signed by the site key. This allows a (possibly unrelated) actor to create a gwit site to certify the content from an existing Git repo, enabling links to it.

    gwit was initially conceived to support the creation of Git repositories holding file-based sites. This relied on two main features: (i) gwit URIs allowing in-site and cross-site links, and (ii) a way of verifying site content based on per-commit signatures. In short, a URI would resolve to a path in a commit in a target site, and the commit should both be signed by that site's PGP key and belong to the chain of commits leading to the site's most recently known version, i.e. the head of the site branch.

  • Fixing a Touch ID keyboard after upgrading to macOS Sequoia

    I regularly use 2 Macs: a work laptop, and personal laptop. All my peripherals are pulled into a monitor, and I have a single Thunderbolt cable going into a Mac. Switching between companies is as simple as unplugged the cable from one mac, and plugging it into the other.

    [...]

    After upgrading both machines to macOS Sequoia, I noticed that Touch ID stopped working

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Misfin-Server v0.5.9c Update

      More advanced threading system - threads now take into account the participants. A change in participants creates a new thread.

    • Winter Nights 2024 - Oaths and Deleting My Mastodon Account

      Starting this next nightfall is the start of Winter Nights, which lasts 3 nights. It is a time for making oaths and resolutions, a time to respect those who came and left before us, a time to celebrate the start of a new year. Winter is coming. May we hold fast as the cold and wild hunt approach. May we celebrate another year finishing. May appreciate the experience and wisdom gained, along with lessons learned.

      Last Winter Nights, I made a few oaths related to determining time from first principles. The post describing my oaths is linked below.

    • Hello world

      I've been poking at Gemini and the "smol web" for some time. The idea tallies with some I've held for a while about sustainable computing, and what we lost as we let commerce determine not just the content, but the form of the modern World Wide Web. Still, despite interest, I've never before felt the need to set up a presence here.