Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/06/2023: Opal 1.7.0 and More



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Funeral For a Friend - Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation

        I've talked about this album a lot. Every now and again I'll feel in the mood to just be 12 again: sad confused and angry.

        Disclaimer: This kinda got away from me! Bare with what is basically a listen along once I get into the song breakdowns. I highly recommend listening along if you want to! Back to the gemlog!

      • Introduction to the series (no album)

        The CS nerd in me is sad number 0 isn't an actual entry. But I figure this requires its own introduction!

        For the longest time I have considered a few albums I love "perfect". A perfect album to me is one I can press play on and I never get bored, tired, or that urge to "ugh let me skip this track" (cough uncough Drive by Incubus). But especially those that once I start listening I can't stop. I just want to keep listening or if a track comes on I have to just continue forward. That doesn't necessarily mean they have to be "album albums" where they require that context and ordering - but just an overall solid album through and through!

      • the art of letting go

        late at night, i'm the most productive. and when you used to be able to smoke inside, writing, smoking, and drinking is probably the best combination for successful prose on paper since liber and mercury bestowed us with their gifts. but even still, there is not much cooler a vibe than a writer at the end of the bar at a local pub, scribbling in a notebook in between sips of their beverage of choice—and it does say a lot about them, doesn't it?

        a pint: probably a more lover of language who writes for the hell of it. a dirty martini: some emotions are a bit built up in that one, there. an old-fashioned: who are you kidding? i see ~bartender shaking his head; i must've gotten that all wrong, but generalizations are more fun to write.

    • Science

      • Problematic Monoculture Reductivism in Literary Analysis

        In reading opinions of literary analysis, I sometimes come across large sweeping claims with little justification. Statements such as "Western stories focus on a singular power fantasy hero, while Eastern stories focus on unity to overcome threats." Usually they try to tie this in as a cultural analysis.

        They'll point to examples like *John Wick* to demonstrate their idea of Western stories, then *Sailor Moon* for Eastern stories. This ends up painting the stories of both cultures as one singular idea. It over-simplifies to a point where the the nuances of the cultures are ignored for the sake of the author's thesis statement.

      • the little things

        i tend to speak very openly about my mental health. about three to four years ago, i was at my absolute worst. i got stuck in really dangerous thought patterns, things like "if i were to jump out this window then i could knock myself out for a week at least at best". i was fortunate enough to (almost) never pull through with these ideas and sought help when i was at my lowest. within two weeks i got a first appointment with a psychotherapist in training. preliminary diagnosis: f32.1 moderate depressive episode. five months later i found myself in group therapy. i filled out a questionnaire at the beginning of every session which had me reflecting on my mental state of the past two weeks. the result was a score representative of the severity of my depression. before my first session i got a score of 33 out of 63, thinking it wasn't that bad. we weren't given the scale until late into therapy where we had the opportunity to look at our past scores and reflect on our mental growth. as it turned out, a score of 29 and above is classified as a severe depressive episode. it hadn't dawned on me just how messed up my mind was until then. at my last session, i got a score of 5. the scale didn't speak of depression up until a score of 8.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Bad Loops

        A bad loop might be "10 open up reddit, read all the posts, close reddit, open hacker news, read all the posts, close hacker news, GOTO 10". Sure, you might learn a few things, and put even more things into the ever-growing list of things to get to, but then where did the day go? Where were the other things you wanted to do?

      • Yet Another Homelab Setup

        I have a new homelab setup. I've been homelab-hopping for the past year or so, and with each new setup, something or other just never sit right with me. It always felt like there was something that could be made better or more effcient with the resources I had. I recently discovered the wonderful world of LXD, and I was excited over how robust the technology is, so I endeavored to make my homelab setup with it.

      • so many standards

        This is also a way of identifying a URL as the location of an avatar, and works pretty decently as just an extra class that can be added to what would otherwise be a normal HTML page containing information about a person.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Identity Again: Visual Hashing

          Feedback on my ideas around identity on Gemini has emphasized the need for decentralizaton and privacy.

        • I am Spartacus — Anonymous Identities on Gemini

          After a few days of musing, I am of the opinion that Morgan's Gemini identity proposals are fundamentally flawed and I am not going to implement them in Bubble.

        • gemini client testing

          The original torture tests that were up at => gemini://gemini.conman.org/test/torture had been taken down some time ago, and I started writing some new ones for shits and giggles and talked about it in

      • Software Releases/Announcements

        • Opal 1.7.0 - now with Titan!

          Last night I finished the initial implementation of support for the Titan protocol in Opal.

          Opal is a Gemini client library written for the C# world (.NET Standard 2.0 and .NET 7).


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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