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2021-01-10
Iām Ploum, a SF author, writing mostly in French. Since 2004, Iāve been trying to centralise all my writings on my blog, Ploum.net. IāÆtried to not fall into the trap of "becoming a specialized media". Ploum.net is what IāÆwant to write, it can be about every subject, it can be in French or in English. If I wrote it, it probably fits on ploum.net.
Ploum.net, my www blog since 2004
As IāÆbegan my journey into Gemini, IāÆwondered how IāÆcould make my blog available on Gemini too. After months of turning my head around it, IāÆdiscovered that, if IāÆwanted to make my blog available on Gemini (still working on it), I should first wrote a true gemlog, in the spirit of those Iām currently reading.
My blog had become to high profile to be really free. When you know that your writings will end in the mailbox of hundreds of people, you care about content and form. Writing a blog post is now a process that take several days, multiple proof-reading. IāÆalso often censor myself: this is not good enough, better not post it.
Thatās also why, unlike my friend Thierry Crouzet, I donāt post my personal journal on my blog. It means that IāÆeither write for myself or take extra-step to produce good quality content for the mass.
This gemlog is an attempt at finding a middle-ground. Also, because the Gemini space is still quite small, I will write in English. I will make it a journal through a particular pet project of mine :āÆbuilding an offline-first typewriter.
My dream is to type on a true typewriter than, once happy with the text, have it scanned and automatically posted on a blog/gemlog. Both in text version (with some OCR errors) and as a picture of the typed text. Thatās my current dream.
Iāve already bought a few secondhand typewriters to play with them and explore this avenue. The process of writing mechanically and not be able to delete characters is very appealing to me. I want to try this experiment to see what IāÆcould write.
Of course, this would be a write-only system. In order to still be connected, Iām trying to setup an "offline-first" system on my laptop.
Offline first means that I could do most things I usually do on my laptop then, when plugged in, everything will synchronise. Iāve already disabled wifi on my laptop and installed a RJ45 cable on my desk. Through the free software Kiwix, IāÆhave an offline French and English wikipedia on my hard disk. Iāve offline spellcheck and synonyms through Antidote. Iām working on a mail system through mbsync/mutt/msmtp that would allow to write and reply to emails while offline and have them sent as soon as I connect. This work is currently in process and way harder than IāÆthought.
Next step would be to have my RSS feeds automatically sent to Pocket. Pocket is, of course, online but it is working well on a Kobo ereader I own. Which means IāÆcould read news immediately on the ereader (while, currently, I must manually open my feed reader, open the page and send them to pocket).
I also imagined an offline browsing mode of the Gemini space. IāÆdescribed my idea on the Amfora bug tracker but this would also apply fairly well on the Tour feature of AV-98.
Last but not least, as Iām writing this post in a connected SSH shell, IāÆshould find a way to write my gemlog and have it automatically pushed when connected (while waiting for the typewriter/scanner combo).
Thereās no rocket science involved in building this #offlinefirst mode but itās full of small tasks which are very time consuming (yes, still in the process of configuring Mutt). Those days, we assume permanent connectivity to the point itās hard to work without being connected. Most of your software will complain at some point if you are not connected.
Any tip, any help and any share of experience will be highly appreciated in this quest. You can contact me on lio at ploum.be.
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