Welcome to DFDN on Gemini

By David Norris - launched Sunday 17th September, 2023

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, then for every victory gained you will also

suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

Sun Tzu, Chinese military strategist and philosopher

***BREAKING NEWS***

I am to spend Christmas overseas with my partner for the first time. I am flying out from Fuzhou on December 21st, to return

(hopefully with my new wife) on March 1st. The start of the new term means that Michelle must be with me here in Fuzhou in

order to spend her birthday (March 5th) with me. This is the same date as my late father’s birthday.

Our wedding is planned during this time. Further details will be announced later.

This is family history in the making, and a radical change from previous generations of my family – something I have been

promising for some time now. This will have profound impact on the future of the family.

Meet my new partner, Michelle

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BREAKING NEWS UPDATE!

What a difference a year makes. I have a new contract at Fuzhou University of international Studies & Trade in Fujian province. The city is not far from the Taiwan Strait.

Given that my fiancée does not have a job right now (I rescued her from a man every bit as narcissistic and brutal as my former wife, who controlled her finances among other things) and given the difficulty and time of obtaining a residence permit in South Africa, I needed a new job in China. And I plan to bring her to China once her own papers are up to date; if not in Early September then at the very soonest possible time afterwards!

My contract runs from September 1st 2025 to July 15th, 2026.

See gemini:/dfdn.info/michelle or https://dfdnline.org/michelle for details about Michelle who will shortly become my wife. I will be her first (and only!) husband; she is to be my second (and last!) wife.

So once the nightmare of sorting my own work and residence permit out for the new job at Fuzhou University of International Studies & Trade is sorted out, I will spend the time in Johannesburg. I cannot wait! As I write this I await an appointment to sort this out.

Stay tuned for further updates which will follow later!

David

Tip: Wikipedia is blocked in China; but Gopherpedia and Gemipedia are not! These are mirrors of Wipipedia on Gopher and Gemini, respectively.

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Last update: 30/07/2025

Legacy job at Shanxi Normal University

Follow me on Linkedin:

Since I blocked Windows updates, I have had far less disruption to my work. Many 'upgrades' or 'security patches' are actually disguised alterations intended to increase Micro$oft's control over your computer, or force you to spend more money. I am NOT interested in spending money on a computer with a TPM to assist Micro$oft to control what software and/or operating system I am permitted to run on *MY* computer.

My computer is my work tool, paid for with my money, to be used in my work time. It belongs to me. Not to a greedy foreign corporation run by a sociopath. Download the video below for an explanation.

Windows is to operating systems what the UK is to countries. Slow, frustrating, a privacy violator and a complete rip-off...!

Contact number in China: +86 15980192051

Exclusive!

My Christmas statements have become something of a tradition. Now here on Gemini for the first time; previous years may be found on Gopher.

Why do I use Gemini to host content, or even Gopher, for that matter? To quote the Gemini FAQ - the experience is like entering a library, not a shopping mall or a casino. "The average Gemini page is at least ten times smaller than the average webpage, and a hundred times smaller than worst ones, so they load almost instantly even on old computers or flaky internet connections."

Great of you are in Africa, SE Asia or parts of Latin America and have a poor connection and/or pay by the MB. And it is free of all the rubbish on the web!!! Reading that starts as soon as the page loads, without you first having to carefully click past a pop-up window which actively tries to mislead you into "consenting" to something nobody actually wants or needs, and which continues right to the end of the page without being interrupted by another pop-up begging you to subscribe to a newsletter.

And for an academic like myself...

"Reading in peace because there's no way for a page to play music or make a sound without you actively inviting it to, so you're free to enjoy your own background music, or maybe to just keep quiet if you're reading somewhere with other people around. It's up to you, like it should be; it's your computer, and they're your ears."

You can quietly browse in an office or without any risk of disturbing anyone, without the fear that 120DB music or autoplaying videos are going to alert the boss to what you are doing or wake up evryone in the house.

You can be sure you will not be redirected without permission, tracked, be presurised to install junk (and potentially malicious software or browser add-ons). It is 100% free of cookies (and nagging to accept them on every page you visit), and free of CPU heating, battery draining and mobile data wasting scripts and calls to third party domains.

Young visitors can browse safely, and their parents can be sure they will not be redirected to inappropriate content.

And yes, in alphabetical order. We (dfdn.info) are there!

Gopherpedia is a little known mirror of Wikipedia on Gopher. Works well on mobile devices or slow connections, and for the bandwidth deprived.

Note to authors - please don't use spaces in file names - they are a real kludge causing endless problems...

And keep in mind, that the teaching material I make is created in Openoffice. And PDF is available where required. I do not own the megaexpensive Adobe software before you ask. I am a divorced man without money to burn.

The word "investment" here is about as accurate the the name "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea"...

In the UK, the government dumps the cost of elderly parents onto their descendants, simply because they are of no further economic value...

How can you take seriously a country which cannot evn house people?

"There is no such thing as society". Margaret Thatcher.

If anyone were to ask me: "What is your most enduring mamory of the 1980s?" I would not be answering the Rubik Cube, Sinclair Spectrum or BMX bikes. Oh no. My most enduring memory has to be? The godawful grating voice of Margaret Thatcher - all through my formative years. Little wonder, then, that when she appears on television now, I change the channel.

Migration risks become widespread as a toxic combination of economic stagnation and surging growth elsewhere lure young people away...

"For a decent standard of living, we all need security and stability in our lives – secure housing, a reliable income, and support when things get difficult. For too many of us, there is no such security. Millions of people in the UK are struggling to get by, leading insecure and precarious lives, held back from improving their living standards. It’s time to take action on poverty and put this right." Joseph Rowntree Foundation, January 2020. (Before COVID-19 hit, making matters worse! This was followed by the cost of living crisis.).

UPDATE!

Well, I have just returned from my second visit to China on a cultural exchange.

In theory I will be eligible each as an opportunity at a Chinese university if

I complete a third such exchange - so I am told by the organiser of the exchanges.

In the meantime, I will consider my options for English teaching.

If I can manage to get a position doing so, then I can work in a place

where living costs are low.

In the meantime, students who are among my regular core of long term students,

who have been unable to take lessons while I was in China should take advantage

of the opportunity to catch up, and I will have Christmas and new year available.

In the Christmas/New Year period in what should (I hope!) be my last in the UK.

For younger students, you have school holidays so what are you waiting for?

Older students have time off work in the majority of cases also. And when I

have reason to celebrate Christmas again, I will want time off myself. But not

this year. Strike while the iron is hot, as the saying goes! There is a story

behind this..

I have carried out an analysis of which countries pay English or engineering

teachers well? I came down to...

• South Korea;

• Japan;

• China;

• United Arab emirates.

And my conclusions?

After a long and in-depth analysis of which countries paid well, I conducted

extensive analysis of their living costs and demographics.

United Arab Emirates has high living costs, so I will struggle to save.

Japan and South Korea also have fairly high living costs, and initial interviews

in the summer of 2023 revealed a lot of competition;

China stands out as it combines low living costs with good pay for teaching

staff. And - it has the added attraction in that I have now taught (at a

Chinese University!) in person on two separate occasions now; - online on

two occasions back in the days when COVID-19 made it difficult or impossible

to visit in person.

I vitally need to be in a position to relocate and save for the business I plan

to launch in West Africa. See:

So... I am likely to teach for one term in 2024, visit South Africa in the

summer break, and complete a year in 2024/2025 to save. I think this will

suffice. I will review this in 2025. Those who know me well know my motto..

"If a vital job needs to be done, do not procrastinate. Give me the

opportunity and the resources, and I will get the job done. No excuses!"

Any questions anyone? David, December 2023

For my pictures from the visit, publiched for the first time on on Gemini:

[Can Gemini (or Gopher) display images? Yes, of course! But not inline. It saves bandwidth for those paying by the MB, a large part of why I use them! Click on the link to display.]

One thing I like about Gemini is that is simple and there is no need to render the file to another format, because it is just plain text and is easy to work with. I also like Gopher

for this reason - ***MUCH*** quicker and less error prone than writing HTML! Oh, and those not in the know can only dream about an online experience free of all the obnoxious

crap we are ***only too used to*** in the world of HTTP(S) - cookies (and being continually nagged to either accept them or change settings for every single site we visit!!!), pop-ups

getting in the way of work, incessant user tracking and invasions of our privacy, and being bombarded with autoplaying audio and video which draw the attention of colleagues (and

the boss!) or wake up everyone in the house late at night... the list goes on and on.

Why am I interested in using Gemini (and indeed Gopher) as part of my operations? Because I want to offer content which is free of cookie questions on every page, and which does not rely on megabytes of resource devouring, browser crashing javascript, request tens of megabytes of bandwith and money costing advertising, and invade the privacy of my visitors in true Orwellian style, to load. That is why. Nothing more to it than that!

Think George Orwell was wrong about 1984? He was. But how about 2084?

In fear of the 'Orwellian Future Reality'? Fear not; it's already on the way.

In my teens, I was at boarding school - making bullying a 24/7 ordeal. But it was before survailance technology was really at a point where it had become mainstream. It left me in trauma. But imagine how it might have been if survailance had been part of the ordeal. See 'proctoring software' in this particular regard. Some or all of the nightmares in this article could all-too-easily become a reality. And we have already taken the first steps in this diretion into the Orwellian future.

The "old web" still exists! It's just drowned in a sea of sites bloated for the purpose of tracking and advertising. What would be nice is a no-bloat search engine, which would only

index sites that don't require 25MB of JS and 425 requests to third-party domains to load.

This is what a typical website does today...

1) Get minimal html containing links to javascript package and styling.

2) Make request to get big javascript package.

3) Make request to get relatively small css styling.

4) Load and execute javascript package.

5) Javascript makes api calls to get page content.

6) Get content and populate page.

7) Page content contains links to images and tracking/advertisement scripts.

8) Make requests to get images and tracking/ad scripts.

9) Ad scripts make more requests to get images / gifs / movies, etc.

The majority of the slowness comes from steps 2,4,5,6,8,9. Blocking ads helps steps 8, 9. The fact that people are actually using a dedicated Raspberry PI computer for

the sole sake of ad blocking on their network bears testimony to how bad the nightmare has become. However, steps 2, 4, 5 and 6 are just in-fashion bad development practices.

Looking at the above, it is very clear that the whole process is a prodidgal waste of resources - bandwidth, CPU power, memory, and the battery of the device on which the content

is displayed! An application such as Pi-hole uses DNS filtering to selectively block ads and malicious domains across your entire home network. Cool! The advantages of this

approach are clear: you don’t have to install ad-blocking software on each and every device in your household. Moreover, it only needs to be set up once. The only drawback? Of

course, it only protects you within your own network, not when on mobile data, at work/school/university, hotels etc...

Both Gopher and Gemini both are MUCH more bandwidth efficient than the web for the above reasons. Great for clients in places or on limited contracts or where one pays by

the megabyte, as well as for those for whom privacy is important. Trouble is, the less well informed nowadays have a web browser and little else. There is PLENTY more to the

internet than just the mess which they call the web - for the er, less educated, the web is synonymous with the internet. It isn't! See port numbers and services below...

The Gemini service was launched in September 2023. It has proven a success.. It is here to stay in 2024.

Users requiring NFS, AFP or (Only over VPN) Netbios access working with us in future must contact me.

Indeed I tried unsucessfully to get onto Italki. I was declined. Age descrimination is everywhere I look. You should gather by now that I am a firm

proponent of human rights - and fully behond those standing up for their human rights...

I love listening to James O'Brien. He is on LBC on 97.3 FM in London. Elsewhere, you can listen online. You can stream from their website, or try apps you have already. And here are some programs. Let us see how streaming on Gemini works. Try these examples (Lagrange for example supports MP3 streaming. See the two following links.

The people trafficing gangs tell you the UK is the promised land; just hand us your life savings, and we will give you an unseaworthy boat to reach it.... The streets of London are paved with gold (as in Dick Whittington). The 'government' talk of a strong economy. And my conservative party supporting (and niave, tragicommic mother, who has not worked since I was born) says this is the best country in the world. Oh, and by the way, Happy Christmas.

Note that unlike Gemini, Goper and HTTP are not encrypted - these pages are public access however.

Amateur Radio related pages:

The last two links testify to how I am able to succeed in the face of adversity - and you ain't seen nothing yet! David, G7VDI

As I am interested in Photovoltaic (solar) and other forms of renewable energy, I would certainly like to visit Quarzazare, Indeed,

I am intending to base a business in this in West Africa in years to come.

External links (I am not responsible for the content of external sites).

Gemini search engines currently available:

The following are here for reading practice and for general interest. For confident English students only!

Note: all available except IOS (Sorry, Apple policy not mine, Lagrange available on testflight only):

To test beta versions of apps and App Clips using TestFlight, you’ll need to accept an email or public link invitation from the developer and have a device that you can use to test. You’ll be able to access the builds that the developer makes available to you.

If you’re a member of the developer’s team, the developer can give you access to all builds or certain builds.

Required platforms:

iOS or iPadOS apps: iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 or later. App Clips require iOS 14 or iPadOS 14, or later.

macOS apps: Mac running macOS 12 or later.

tvOS apps: Apple TV running tvOS 13 or later.

visionOS apps: Apple Vision Pro running visionOS 1 or later.

watchOS apps: Apple Watch running watchOS 6 or later.

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Gemini clients include:

Name Platform License Written in

Amfora Terminal (TUI) GPL 3.0 Go

AmiGemini GUI (Intuition) MIT C, Intuition

asuka Terminal (TUI) MIT Rust, ncurses

AV-98 Terminal (CLI) 2 Clause BSD Python

Bollux Terminal MIT Bash

Bombadillo Terminal GPL 3.0 Go

Buran App (Android) GPL 3.0 Kotlin

Castor GUI (GTK) MIT Rust, GTK

Castor9 GUI (Plan 9) C

Deedum App (Android and iOS) GPL 3.0 Flutter, Dart

Diohsc Terminal (CLI) GPL 3.0 Haskell

dillo-gemini Plugin (Dillo) FSFAP Shell

Elaho (gemini-ios) App (iOS) MPL 2.0 Swift

Elpher GUI (Emacs) GPL 3.0 Emacs Lisp

Eva GUI (GTK) MIT Rust, GTK

Fafi GUI MIT Racket

GemiNaut GUI (Windows) GPL 3.0 C# for Microsoft Windows

gemini.filter.dpi Plugin (Dillo) MIT Go

Geopard GUI (GTK) GPL 3.0 Rust, GTK

gmni Terminal (CLI) GPL 3.0 C

gplaces Terminal (CLI) GPL 3.0 or later C

Jimmy App (macOS) MIT Swift

Kristall GUI (Qt) GPL 2.0 C++, Qt

Lagrange GUI (Windows, macOS, Linux) 2 Clause BSD C, SDL

wMoonlander GUI (GTK) MIT Rust, GTK

Offpunk Terminal (CLI) 2 Clause BSD Python

Rocketeer App (iOS, macOS) Swift

Seren App (Android) Kotlin

Starfish GUI (elementary OS/Linux) GPL 3.0 Vala, GTK

Telescope Terminal (TUI) ISC C

Twin Peaks GUI (Windows) GPL 3.0 C#

VIRGIL99 Terminal (TI-99) Assembly language

© David Norris, DFDN.org