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smolZINE - Issue 3

2021-06-01

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Table of Contents

Introduction

At last we are settling in to a release groove. The 1st and 15th of each month if you didn't catch the last issue. Let's get this party started!

Hidden (and not so hidden) Gems

Miso's Corner

Miso doesn't refer to their prescence on the smol-net as a corner as far as I know. That is just my way of saying this is going to be a 3-fer. First, there is Midnight Pub which is a virtual pub over gemini for people to hangout and converse. Miso also runs a low-tech hosted journal service called Smol Pub. The journal Miso keeps with Smol Pub is also a good read and bonus points for some good ascii art.

Midnight Pub

Smol Pub

Miso's Journal

Cosmic Voyage

Rather than butcher a description of this very cool part of gemini space I will quote Cosmic Voyage's about section:

"Cosmic Voyage is a tilde community based around a collaborative science-fiction universe. Users write stories as the people aboard ships, colonies, and outposts, using the only remaining free, interconnected network that unites the dispersed peoples of the stars."

Cosmic Voyage

Sleepytown Dot Club

No matter your age sleepytown aims to provide unique bedtime stories. You can read the stories posted and are welcome to submit your own original stories.

Sleeptown Dot Club

Harptabs Mirror

Rob Bolton has combined harmonica and gemini by making a huge database of tabs available on their capsule. It's easy to search by song or genre and you can even download the whole database.

Harptabs Mirror

e-worm.club

This is a small community of users that post fun and interesting mixture of things. Journal type entries, microblog style short posts etc. It's kind of all over the map but enjoyable to poke around and read.

e-worm.club

Emanations

"Power to Weight Ratio"

by kelbot

The gemini protocol aims to achieve a high power to weight ratio and I find the concept quite fascinating in other contexts as well. To me it's a sweet spot of efficiency that makes me feel like I'm getting a lot out of something. I look for and sometimes obsess over finding that combination that's just right. The sweet spot is certainly different for everyone because we don't all have the same wants, needs, budget, priorities or skill level.

In computing in general I find it fun to seek out the combination of hardware and software that returns a high amount of utility relative to the speed and cost. This doesn't always mean cheap and low-end stuff (though it often does). I generally trend toward the lower end of the spectrum because there is a lot of cool and useful stuff you can do with very cheap and low power computers these days.

It's fun to think about other things in terms of this power to weight ratio mindset. Does my body have a good power to weight ratio? Often instead of the more literal meaning of "power" I interpret it as how useful or fun something is. Likewise, I sometimes replace "weight" with a different characteristic. Do my house, car and bike provide a high amount of utility compared to what they cost or the amount of space they take up? If you like to nerd out about things like this the power to weight ratio wikipedia page was pretty neat to skim through while I wrote this.

Power to Weight Ratio wiki page via gemini proxy

Word-Search

by Jone

Source Material: "Split" from the Hole of Undoing

gopher://sdf.org/0/users/undo/j080

v a z z v b r g x h b u c y k m p w m k h 
t i m e v z p r s g o z f c l d q r f v n 
p w i o k l a x n r x a p a i n t i n g s
j i d e n t i t y a s i h w y m y t m p q 
p x e o b z n d v j d p j e g s w i e f f 
h d v c o n t r a d i c t i o n z n m y a
y p e n d x i z d j f n p b j t o g o c w 
s r l l y a n v w a f x p r w p h s r v k
i e o r e t g h g v e p a d d w c q y e w 
c s p t e s s f t h r e s h o l d c x b a
a e m u n a c t j a e s t t y u e u r o r
l n e j t v s p l i n t e r q i h u f i d
c t n y i s s v h s t r e t c h e d c b l
o a t a t t i t u d e s a c d v q b w m y
n z f h y s u g m p s x q g g i e a a q j
n j h a v e n y t e m p o r a l p r c l p
y e n t i t y q p u a t x w r b z y a a u 

attitudes

awkwardly

body

contradiction

development

different

entity

identity

memory

paintings

past

physical

present

splinter

stretched

temporal

threshold

time

writings

Word Search Solution

Community Contributions

Please consider taking part in making this zine better and more diverse by contributing your thoughts and finds. If you are interested in contributing a short article or capsule picks email me at: smolzine (at) cyberbot.space.

Thanks

Thank you to fellow geminauts Jone and Pixouls for their contributions to this issue of smolZINE.