● 08.09.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 09/08/2023: Risk of Proprietary Web Apps

Posted in News Roundup at 8:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• Nice looking day on tap out the front with. Occasional vehicles passing. Somehow odd to see them in the school parking lot across the street.

• I wish I could have found a way to stick with the middle-school teaching stint I attempting a couple years ago. My wife had the same kids for different subjects, and I love when either of us is suddenly remembering a specific student, their quirks, wondering how they’re doing a couple years later, what directions they’ll head post school.

• The Prince[1] recently wrote about the “modern mental illness” of being overly-concerned (neurotic) about online privacy. Maybe the same extends to privacy in general, I don’t know… but I think it mostly exhibits in the digital world.

• I enjoyed the realization he came to: that it is “an endless game,” full of players in various strata, and that the pursuit of a cure is more-than-usually vanity.

• Our house has a fence running around most of the property with a small open section left behind. One corner of the fence has several vines and shrubs that grow thick and tall. These were fairly well-shaped when we moved in, but thanks to intense sunlight and bountiful rain this summer, the shrubs are growing rapidly.

• I know nothing about gardening and plant care, but I’m trying to learn as best I can. I can’t identify the plants in the corner of the fence, but I can see plainly that they’re overgrown and about to consume the small space next to our shed.

• Right when I heard about geminispace I thought I am going to write here about the things I do not want anyone to read. Yes, it sounds kind of weird or stupid (I do not know) but I am kind of “scared” or “ashamed” to write things that my parents or relatives can read.

• There’s actually a pretty interesting example on that page where the party splits. Some characters are “resting”, presumably because their players can’t make it to the next session. That session, some other characters go and investigate a dungeon, return and rest for a few days, go again, fight a big monster and loot it. The session ends after the big monster fight and the loot. The next session, the players who didn’t participate are back and decide to go to the same dungeon! At this point in time, the big monster and all the loot is still there. Now what? You can bend reality and say the monster and loot just cannot be found because the other group will have found it in the future, or you can do what I do: force-extend their rest so that whenever there’s a session, it is “now”. Once the big monster is slain, there’s no adventuring in the same dungeon at some point in the past. The players have the choice to explain what else they were doing in the days until “now”.

• There is little point to letting a sourdough starter pizza or calzone dough rise, especially if the starter is short on yeast and long on lactic acid bacteria, or the natural yeast somehow is not the crazy mutant bread type. Also the dough is too soft to use if you rotate the starter in the morning and then want to cook the dough for dinner. One might instead rotate the starter around dinner time, let the dough “rise” for a bit, then shape it and let it dry out overnight, but that’s not when I rotate the starter. Instead, rotate the starter, use all the excess with a suitable amount of flour and some oil (or clarified butter) and salt for a pretty dry dough, shape that out, and let it sit somewhere maybe on a cutting board to dry out. This makes it much easier to manipulate without tearing or sticking to the cutting board when you want to move it into the oven.

Technology and Free Software

• I’m a free software advocate who tries to compromise as little as possible with my principles, by blocking JavaScript in my Web browser, and by not using non-free Web apps, which in most practical cases amounts to the same thing. I also recently have been trying to purchase a house. So, I have been in a position to test how much of the process can be done without violating these principles, and how difficult it is. If you have no idea what I am talking about, please read this [...]

Internet/Gemini

• When you set up a domain, it will be hosted on _both_ HTTP(s) and Gemini. So you can interleave both html and gmi files in your git repo, and it will all work out. Or you can just leave off one or the other, if you don’t care about one protocol.

• Now for the offer: if you’re reading this, just shoot me an email and I will give you the passphrase which allows you to use the instance. If you have always wanted to have a personal website or gemini capsule on your own domain, but hadn’t wanted to go through the effort of setting up hosting, this is your chance!

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.