Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Final break in the year: no-post November

    Yeah, I know, there have been too many breaks this year but I really don't have enough resources to keep up with overwhelming amount of work and personal chores and also post something interesting regularly. "Posting for the sake of it" is not my piece of cake. I have several pieces in mind, like reviewing Haiku OS on my nc2400, or Void Linux I freshly installed onto the A1370, or using sub-500M LLMs for tasks suitable for mere mortals, or continuing with the abacus and ultracompact VMs... but in order to make all these stories coherent and fascinating to read, I need to have a clear state of mind first. And this isn't something that I have right now.

  • 🔤SpellBinding — FUMRSTI Wordo: WHENS

  • healing the hollow

    This void is looming in the background, waiting for me to be alone. It's a familiar feeling, but I am annoyed by it. I don't want that anymore. I want to shake it off, just stay cool. Why can't I just stay relaxed and aware.

    I loose myself to my self-created suffering. Nothing is happening, just my head creating fear and discomfort. And then I happily join the fear wagon, I write about it, I replay it in my head. I reread it to make sure I'm well freaked out.

  • healing the father

    The end of the last reflection opened up some more inner work.

    Our parents, through their relationship with us, help chisel our personality, in a positive or negative way.

    Through their action, they create also some trauma that can be dealt with during our life. But it seems like there is something else that is passed on, maybe on a more cellular level? And that also need some healing, but can't be reached until some of the 'lighter' stuff is being taken care of.

  • What I'm playing 🪝🐶 Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines | Grappling hook platforming goes multiversal

    Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is the follow-up to 2022's Grapple Dog. The story picks up where the first game ended, with protagonist Pablo being recruited to save the world using his excellent grappling skills. This time, we meet a new character, Luna, who is playable alongside Pablo.

    The grappling hook-focused platformer gameplay is back as well, where your speed and agility depend on your ability to swing to build up momentum.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Gopher entries, Android

    On Android I use JuiceSSH, which I think I paid for many years ago. The other ssh apps I sometimes use are Termux and ConnectBot.

  • iPod

    Back in September I watched a video by [Macho Nacho][1] on YouTube about a new [BoxyPixel kit for 5th-7th gen iPods][2]. Glass and metal and BoxyPixel quality (I own a Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP with an all metal shell made by them, these guys are good). This made me return to the iPod rabbithole. I did not own any of the iPods I had purchased between 2003 and 2007, but I had two 5.5 gen thin (30gb) ipods laying around from the last time I did this, years ago now. One with the original spinning HD and one with an [iFlash card][3] and a 256gb SD card with [RockBox firmware][4] installed. So I went ahead and bought the kit (wouldn't be receiving it until December 2025).

    Since I wouldn't be receiving the kit for some time, and I have two iPods, I decided to build myself an iPod in the mean time. So I bought a transparent faceplate, thick back, enhanced 64mb motherboard, 3800maH battery, transparent clickwheel, and an iFlash quad board all from [Elite Obsolete Electronics][3]. As well as a [leather case from Amazon][5] so I can just toss the iPod in my carry-on bag since I live on the road. I also picked up a pair of [Hidezs mp143 Salt planar driver IEM earbuds][6].

    [...]

    That Android app in particular is a game changer. Sorta like YamiPod was back in the day.

  • Old Androids and Small Shells

    I have two devices that are stuck on very old versions of Android. Those are my Tauon PC-1, which runs Nougat, and my second-generation Amazon Fire TV Stick, which runs Lollipop. I use a terminal on all of my Android devices, but neither of these is conducive to using Termux: the Fire Stick has a poor UI for it, and the PC-1 only has about 5 GB of free internal storage for all user apps combined. Instead, I installed Busybox and a terminal emulator called TermOne Plus.

    This is an odd Unix paradigm for me. The shell included with TermOne Plus has fewer features than Bash, and Busybox's utilities are rather basic compared to GNU coreutils. Many programs I'm used to using are nowhere to be found. And critically, neither device has a compiler I can use to build what's missing.

  • Being an unplug weirdo to not be a FOSS weirdo

    I’ve retraced my step trying to remember how I became such a screentime hater. It started with me not wanting to be on board with Facebook or other proprietary apps. But after a few years years of this I got so sick of being a FOSS weirdo which no-one could understand or respect or see why it was important or mattered. Like people hate, really super duper hate on vegans but at least they understand what it is.

    I think that’s why I wanted to unplug entirely instead. Somehow people understand ludditism waaay more than they understand GNU slash Lin slash ux or “I don’t have Google System Frameworks” or why I can’t open their doc files or whatever. That, they can’t get, but someone showing up with a dumbphone, that makes more sense.

  • Prevent M$ Teams from changing your status to Away

    If, like me, you are a Linux user and have to use M$ Teams because of your $dayjob, you may be confused by the fact that your status keeps changing to Away, even when you're using your computer. Only when you hover your mouse pointer over Teams does it decide to wake up and change your status back to Available.

    To prevent this from happening, you just have to trick it into thinking that you're periodically hovering your mouse pointer over it.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Gemini and Gopher support for this site

      I recently did some tinkering with my Patched Satellite and my Markdown Gopher to get things working for my 2025 Portugal post.

      The main problem was that if I link to the directory (`2025-portugal`) then the web redirects to the index file (`index`).

      Patched Satellite didn't do this. It tried to read the `index.gmi` file that wasn't there. The first fix was to read the `index.md` fix if possible. But that still didn't work because all the images didn't load. This has to do with relative URLs. If the page `2025-portugal/index` links to a local file, say `image.jpg`, then the result is `2025-portugal/image.jpg`. But if `2025-portugal` just reads the index file in the background, then the result of the link is `image.jpg`! The browser computes the link target based on its current URL and reading a file from a subdirectory without telling the browser breaks all these links. So I needed either some processing for all links, or a redirect from `2025-portugal` to `2025-portugal/index`. And that's what I did.