Gemini* and Gopher

• Technology and Free Software

  • Blaugust successes and challenges

    At the very beginning of August, I made a hasty and last-minute decision to participate in Blaugust 2026 [1], an indieweb community blogging event that encourages writers to develop their writing habits by posting more frequently. It's an entirely voluntary, honor system, no-stakes situation. Just a way to for those who are already interested in this stuff to absorb a little extra motivation from being part of a community effort.

    In a recent post about answering song title questions, I touched on the topic of "parallel or together?", and how "both" is my favorite answer, when possible. I enjoy these community writing events because they give me a sense of parallel AND together. It's really fun to participate in a shared project with my digital peers, to engage in that mutual exchange of ideas, and to feel like we have a shared destination, if not a shared journey.

  • Winter Nights 2025 Oaths Update

    This short post is me mentioning that I will not be able to meet all of my goals and oaths.

    I have made peace with that and have made settlements to some degree. My latest focus has been on the GameBoy Tarot card project, which I will write about at some point. The GameBoy Tarot project is so freaking close to done... I just wanna be done with it, honestly.

    There has just been so much I have had to deal with, especially family and home things lately. I just need to give enough headroom for those things to get dealt with.

  • Installing picore linux on a Raspberry Pi Zero W

    Picore Linux is a port of Tiny Core Linux to Raspberry Pi devices.

    I like it because it runs out of RAM and is therefore pretty resilient to power loss. I figured I could use it for solar-powered raspberry pi projects, where sun is not guaranteed (I live in the UK).

    (I ended up building picore extensions of tmux and gmid (gemini server by Omar Polo) for 32-bit pi in the hopes that one day I can solar-power my capsule)

  • One phone to ring them all

    It's perfectly possible to live without a smartphone, even in 2026. I didn't have one for the first 45 years of my life, and nothing bad happened which could be attributed to a smartphone's absence

    There are services I need like banking and pensions and tax which would be more challenging to manage without any online presence, but that doesn't necessarily require a phone. But sometimes, of course, it's just really convenient if you can't be at your laptop - everyone knows a phone can be a camera, a map, a weather forecaster, a 'whatever-you-want'. It's the conduit for messages from my family, who all use instant messaging apps to stay in touch. It's just important to make sure that it doesn't also become a distraction, to ensure I don't habitually reach for it whenever a thought occurs to me and I want to look something up, or worst of all when I'm bored and want to fill some time.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Setting up Gemini for the First Time

      I enjoy RSS for its simplicity and I don't really use social media. I follow Ploum, and after reading his article about Offpunk Culture I found his Offpunk Browser and started playing with it. What a relaxing world! I'm already one to pay with cash, code in Common Lisp for personal projects, and avoid LLM technology entirely, so this place fits my preferences. Already on Day 3 I've found myself setting up this little server. It's 08:00 on Sunday and I have nothing scheduled until 18:00. Why not?