Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🖼️ xkcd — Superstition #3191

  • 🔤SpellBinding — BEMSTYU Wordo: BASES

  • New Year, Old Plans

    2026! I'm entering this year with a burst of energy and productivity. My recent post about being more public with my FRST project was more aspirational, since I haven't actually followed through on any real promotion of the project... I've just felt like there were a few important long-running-threads I needed to close out before any kind of serious launch. For one, while I have the PHP e-commerce system mostly functional, I'd like to tweak a few things on both the web and gopher sides.

    Another stalled thread is the schematic capture / PCB work for the Data Crystals. It's not going to be too bad, though -- I've nailed down the main parts selections, at least. JLC does such quick work, I should be able to get boards back by VCF East, which is my hopeful launch target. The BBS software that drives the crystals is fairly complete, but I've got lots of real-world testing that needs to take place. I'm planning on operating at least one TCP node on a public IP for a bit, at least. I'd like to start dabbling in FTN networking, and this seems most suitable to that end.

    But the main update I wanted to offer this evening is the one that is most current. One long-running task/thread that has remained in 'suspend' for far too long involves my earliest cyberdeck concepts. The so-called 'Model 1 Cyberterminal' was my first attempt at a truly ultra-personal, minimalist personal computing device. I drew inspiration from many sources and the result was a fairly ideal (elegant) mix of hardware -- a 4.3" B/W ePaper display, driven by an ESP32S3 with 8MB PSRAM, an SX1262 radio module, RGB LED front-light, and a Corne split keyboard with ZMK nice:nano!s.

  • The SNAIL Reduces Cognitive Load to Put Its Player in a "Flow State" of Musical Bliss

    Pseudonymous maker "alyssagsmi," hereafter simply "Alyssa," has built a guitar-shaped electronic instrument with a difference — taking inspiration from the nautilus shell and the concept of cognitive flow states: the Sensory Neurofeedback Acoustic Instrument, or SNAIL.

    "Blending a sophisticated cello/guitar hybrid with as many otherworldly instrument designs as possible, I was inspired by logarithmic and nautilus spirals, snails, and the possibility to bring many concepts into a 'smart' instrument system," Alyssa explains. "Developed as a deep dive into embedded systems, mechanical torque, and cognitive flow states, my 'Cathedral Snail' features a rotating 'Picker Disc,' a 144-LED reactive light array, and an integrated 'musical flow states' system featuring different MIDI/MP3 sounds and effects."

  • secret society

    A strange dream.

    A friend of mine wanted to share a deep reflection about the world on social media (in real life).

    In my dream, he did, and it caught the attention of many people. He had not only posted his ideas online but also setup a public viewing of these ideas, where many people came to see his somewhat prophetic message.

    I was surprised, but excited to see that his message was so powerful. A lot of spiritual people also were there, studying his text, in a mostly concrete park with some water fountain where huge screens were setup like tables, with his words displayed on there.

    I got to a group of people, who were all wearing a strange outfit. They were from a secret order of some sort, I can't remember the name, but it sounded familiar when they said it. The leader of the group, a man in his 50s wasn't keen on having to speak French or English to me. I asked them what were they practicing. With a grin the man spoke in French, something about the different 'thing' you are learning at school, as if I had to figure out that word.

• Technology and Free Software

  • A good investment

    I think it was some time around 1996 or 97 when i needed a printer. Urgently. I would have liked to buy one of those fancy color inkjet printers or - oh how cool it would have been - a nice laser printer, but my 14 year old me didn't have the money. But there was this ad in the local newspaper under the "Buy and Sell" category where someone in the nearby village wanted to sell an used Epson LQ 500 dot-matrix printer which i think did cost about 100 DM ... if i remember correctly. The printer did miss some plastic parts but it did come with the obligatory single page paper holder and an additional tractor feed. For a few years i used it quiet excessively for doing homework, printing TTRPG character sheets and everything else.

    Somewhere around the early 00s i finally bought an inkljet printer which worked quiet well for a while, but ink was very expensive and the printhead was drying out quickly if i didn't print something for one or two weeks. While it was quiet nice to be able to now print nice color pictures, it got more and more annoying over the time. I think i tried out two or three (increasingly cheaper) models over the coming 10 years but it got just more frustrating. I am pretty sure it was around 2014 or 2015 when i was unemployed and - again, urgently - needed something to print out job applications i remembered that there was this dot-matrix printer sitting in the attic at my parents place.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • what features are important for you in a gemini client?

      i'm putting together a big feature grid of all the gemini clients and what features they support. the first step is to know which features are important for a gemini browser / client to have.

    • Toby's tinylog

      The Mastodon web interface is so sluggish on a #raspberrypi 4 that I decided to write a quick-and-dirty lightweight CGI script to display just the content and links to media (deliberately avoided embedding previews). Now I can read my Mastodon feeds anywhere in comfort, even on Netsurf or w3m.

    • Text first for fedi

      My usual web client for fedi is @phanpy@hachyderm.io and I wonder if there's a way to add the following feature using tamper script or grease monkey: Replace every image attachment with the clickable alt text. If there is no alt text, no problem, just drop it.

      Naturally, I'd like the regular Phanpy goodies, too. But these are strictly nice to have. If the alt text is too long, show the "Read more" button. If the image is marked NSFW then hide the alt text behind a "Show content" button.

    • Shared block lists for the scrapers

      The artificial intelligence bros are scraping the net and they don't care if the small websites fall over or not for days on end. But you already know all that. It's the founding story of my Butlerian Jihad.

    • Phirst Phost!

      I just spent some time with my friend, Daniel. It was the first for the year. I haven't seen him since last year, haha. I have witnessed transformation in him. This is what I live for. Seeing people transform. It feeds my soul. It gives me hope and assures me that I am on the right path.

      So we made the jump. Glad to be alive. That wasn't always the case. Today it is. I have hope for 2026. Day 7of365 has been ok so far. I know there is much more to come, unless I drop dead today, which I am ill prepared for.