I came across the 512kb club a long time ago, and it was very influential in helping me understand how websites work and the impact different kinds of assets or design choices can have on how pages load. As a fan of gemini, it makes sense to me that websites should be as minimal as possible.
I’m calling the protocols discussed below “smallnet protocols”, but actually I don’t know the right name for them…
The gemini protocol is great, I’ve been using it for five years now. I also browse gopher quite a bit. There have also been some other small internet protocols that have been developed over recent years, which are captured in this “Small internet protocol roundup” page:
A quick look at some stats about gemini capsules.
For those that aren’t aware, gemini is a largely text-based, minimal internet protocol. It is part of what is sometimes called the “smolnet”, an alternative to the mainstream web.
I use sourcehut pages for both my gemini and website. It is a simple, great service where you don’t need to worry about managing a server.
One downside is that you are forced into a ‘static site’ mode of thinking about your content. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means you can’t do much with the content on the server side. For example, I needed to use a separate server instance for the interactive/games content that is available at dev.spool-five.com.
I’ve had a go at making a two-player chess game for Gemini. If you want to try it out it is available at the link below. There is also a version of wordle there, though I made this before I realised that there is already a much better wordle clone available on gemini, Wordo.
A week ago, I switched my life to being primarily ‘offline’. Or, perhaps it is better to say I took steps in that direction. I was still online during working hours, and I left the messaging apps on my phone online.
This is a short followup to my previous post.
The more I think about Solderpunk’s idea, the more I love it. I also really loved this recent post by mntn, which seems to provide a good solution to the question of linking:
This post is written in response to the fascinating post by Solderpunk:
Solderpunk - Low budget p2p content distribution with git
It’s a long post, but riveting. I just wanted it to keep going and going. There is so much to think about, even though it’s such a simple idea.
A few days ago on Mastodon, I came across a very useful toot by Fixato. He had provided a comprehensive shell command for updating you TLS certificates in light of the recent update to the agate server. He also kindly helped me troubleshoot additional issues I had.
Nothing much to report here. I updated the capsule structure to try make it more minimal and even easier to manage.
Now, I only have one page (Gemlog) for all my posts. I also introduced a ’tagging’ page for attempting to sort the posts be category as opposed to date. I kept the nano log separate.
I’ve added a new ‘feed’ section to my capsule. It uses ‘comitium’ by alex/nytpu.
The timing of comitium’s release was perfect. I have recently been browsing gopher a lot more and I was missing the ability to subscribe to feeds. I really love the way you can do it in Amfora.
Problems, in the best sense
Much of the Gemini ‘content’ I’ve found so far, at least, some of the most engaging and unique, centers on technical questions about Gemini itself - how to set it up, navigate it, write in it, etc. These questions are usually accompanied by musings on what we can then do with this new protocol or about what Gemini ‘means’. Neither the answers to the technical questions, nor the accompanying speculations, are fully concrete. This is because both how Gemini works and what it can do remain somewhat vague. Yes, the broad brush-strokes have been laid down, but the smaller details have yet to be filled in. This is not a bad thing at all. Gemini is still in its very early stages. Much of its appeal stems from its huge potential.
Navigation
A problem:
- ephemerality: content seems less ‘solid’ than on the web, less well mapped out and less defined.
A corresponding idea:
- ‘Maps’ are ways of drawing boundaries, of creating identities. Mapping will always, inevitably occur, the difference that matters lies in the form of map-making. How are well-defined, solid maps drawn on the web?
One way, as we know, is through sheer computational power, afforded only to the most wealthy and largest in scale. Do we, the ‘users’, have a choice in the shape of these maps? To an extent, but not a very large extent. The roadmap, the layout of the web, is like our gps. We can input destinations and even set some quasi-meaningful markers (‘home’, ‘work’) that help ‘personalise’ our gps, but not much else. Our gps is extremely efficient and effective at getting us to a desired destination. Nevertheless, we have to wonder whether our very human desire is really so uni-directional. What if, instead, we took responsibility ourselves for the task of map-making? What if we develop our own tools? These tools will inevitably be less powerful, less precise. But, isn’t that the point?