💾 Archived View for szczezuja.flounder.online › 2023-tinylog.gmi captured on 2024-02-05 at 09:28:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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title: Szczeżuja's tinylog. A world parallel to @szczezuja@mastodon.online. Available also as `finger szczezuja@szczezuja.space`.
author: @szczezuja
avatar: 🦪 (:oyster:, U+1F9AA)
license: CC BY-SA
It's still a few hours of the old year. Happy New Year 2024 to everyone reading tinylogs!
I've spotted today a CLI tool I hadn't been aware of.
Here you are.
$ curl dict://dict.org/define:minimal 220 dict.dict.org dictd 1.12.1/rf on Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64 <auth.mime> <228140592.19502.1700389895@dict.dict.org> 250 ok 150 1 definitions retrieved 151 "Minimal" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48" Minimal \Min"i*mal\, a. Of, pertaining to, or having a character of, a minim or minimum; least; smallest; as, a minimal amount or value. [Webster 1913 Suppl.] . 250 ok [d/m/c = 1/0/17; 0.000r 0.000u 0.000s] 221 bye [d/m/c = 0/0/0; 0.000r 0.000u 0.000s]
As noticed on the Mastodon
isn't available in App Store despite its installed on my device. It's sad, because Elaho is good and stable software, even not being developed for long time. There is of course Lagrange in Test Flight. But it's a totally different approach and goals. Sometimes I've been choosing Elaho for a purpose and sometimes it has been superior to Lagrange at a certain point. Elaho was built on top of a Firefox fork so maybe it will be easy to continue development on a current iOS version in the same manner.
Yesterday I made several comments in response to question about the small web. We will probably have a new Gemlog in the Geminispace.
Today while logging here I've had a thought how the small web is different from the big one.
I'm visiting big net for a certain scope of action. The most cases are connected with e-commerce. I'd like to buy a thing, or to navigate to a shop, or to buy entertainment (video, music from streaming services). So we are clicking on a option menu rather than acting independently.
I'm on the small net to communicate with people, and to learn, or to make DIY computer things. The only e-mail I'm sending to real people outside my job is here. The most use cases of my real computer usage (creating files, transferring or transforming data, automating on a high level) is also here.
I didn't write here for a some time. I didn't have any special Gemini information to note here. Simultaneously I'm exploring every day Phlog challenge on my Gopherhole.
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/szczezuja/personal
I'm calling it /Personal Soap Opera Phlog/ and there are mainly about weather, my daily activities and other normal/boring topics.
The second thing which is worth noted is the announcement of ROOPHLOCH 2023!
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/announcing-roophloch-2023.txt
We have non-technical Antenna now. It's called /Deep Space Network/.
gemini://gemini.smallweb.space/gemlog/20230722-DSN-antenna.gmi
I had been curious for a long while since I had came across information that /ScummVM/ is supporting /The Neverhood/. So I've checked this today. It's a kind of magic. You are able to run the game from the mounted ISO image, without any configuration madness known from /Wine/, or even without extracting files from installer archives.
So you aren't bother about the original /Windows 95/ game requirement. You will be able to run the game on every device supported by /ScummVM/...
It's nice to have all #oldComputerChallenge in one place on Gopher and Gemini.
gopher://occ.deadnet.se:70/1/users
I was on a small holiday for the last few days. There was sunny and hot, but not humid. The first half of July was very pleasant this year. Especially in the green areas while slow walk in the morning, or with the sun setting down. Trees are still green and didn't suffer from the heat too much. The late sun is shining in oranges and reds. It isn't necessary to go abroad to get a positive vibe.
And in such beautiful conditions, I was able to spend those days almost offline. It wasn't a big deal. Summer is the best time for that.
There isn't much rush in the smolnet. But it's worth to mention that the #oldComputerChallenge is running. So I've tuned up my eyes for that, there are many articles in the Gophersphere, the Geminispace, and the Fediverse. I am always looking forward to that event and of course for the ROOPHLOCH. It's a good way to find interesting authors.
And there is a shit-storm about Threads and Mastodon federation. There is an interesting article /How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)/ by Ploum. I am feeling the same and those thoughts are close to my heart because I was a huge advocate of Jabber in that time. There were several big XMPP/Jabber servers and most of my friends in my XMPP/Jabber roster then. All that is gone. Google Talk finally was the Trojan horse rather than a good choice for XMPP/Jabber adopters.
I've caught up on all matters in my text environment. There wasn't any new e-mail. There was an interesting article on Usenet (/Retro and Smol Tools for the Text Tinker Train/ by Syber Shock on alt.bbs). There was a pull request for codeberg.org/szczezuja/gemini_PL. Day like every day.
P.S.
I've changed my Tinylog for the longer entries.
It was several weeks and I lost the habit of using Mastodon. I am looking through my timeline, and I'm not feeling the need to be active. It seems that many of followed accounts are also inactive. Maybe that feeling of novelty passed away?
I've checked my text e-mails and there were new messages. I've checked Usenet.
Now I'm sitting in my living room and I'm looking through the open windows. There is a stormy weather today and it's raining now. Clouds are hanging very low, and it's a bit foggy. I am lucky because the view from the window extends to an open urban space with lots of greenery. Many plans, are shrouded in rain and light mist.
Radio music is in the background. And the clear sound of rain.
finger warsaw@graph.no
-= Meteogram for Warsaw, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland =-
'C Rain (mm)
22 ===
21 ======^^^ ===
20======
19 ===
18 ======
17 ^^^^^^
16 | ^^^ 4 mm
15 | | ^^^ ### 3 mm
14 | | | ^^^ 2 mm
13 | | | | | | | | ### ###### 1 mm
_10_11_12_13_14_15_16_17_18_19_20 21 22 23 19/06 02 03 04_05_06_07 Hour
Legend left axis: - Sunny ^ Scattered = Clouded =V= Thunder # Fog
Legend right axis: | Rain ! Sleet * Snow
I've slowed down. I'm observing (mentioned by @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space here) discussion at:
gemini://station.martinrue.com/at_work/c6275820116d492e964f6100de46b4bb
and thinking about the activity of /bbs.geminispace.org/ and no activity on /comp.infosystems.gemini/.
I'm wondering why people have abandoned only one real distributed system for discussion. So we had boards in BBS' era, then its superior version as NNTP, and then we've gone of course and started to think that we could use for that: WWW (aka. web forums), ActivityPub (despite messages length constraint, threading lack and so on), and now Gemini (aka gemini forum).
We don't have today's software for NTTP for sure. But in the small net while we are fond of using /neomutt/, we should accept for eg. /slrn/ as well.
The last day was about /geminispace.org/ domain name. So it's nice that Skyjake tries to listen to every voice on the Geminispace. The result of that is the new domain name /bbs.geinispace.org/. The /Bubble/ user subspaces are acting like a BBS board or like a 90's forum. It's convenient to set up an article from any Gemini address and build a response thread below the original content.
For me, the better layout (without emojis etc.) of that is on /Geddit/, which as I've read is switching to an Onion address. I must look closer at the Onion workflow. There are many Gopher and Gemini resources, which I've never seen.
gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/thread?16191
gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/Geminispace/1137
I've been working much in the last weeks so I hadn't much time for a small-net browsing. But I'm alive!
I've made a quick look into the small net. Everything is on its place. I read several articles, I felt calmness of Bongusta.
It's great to hear @Deerbard transmission on Tinylog.
But the most time I've spent on the open air. Last days had beautiful sunny weather. Despite it was 20C the sun was hot in places covered by trees or other natural obstacles. So I was walking through woods and fields. The only artificial thing around me was an Boeing E-8 on the sky (which I identified on Flightradar24). The plane was flying around my area several times, marking contrail witch characteristic relapses which are made probably during their standard scanning works.
I was wondering also how Flightradar24 would like in the text version. I recall MapSCII, it would be great thing!
MapSCII is a Braille & ASCII world map renderer
gopher://quix.us/0/text/internet/zine0494.txt
So it isn't so bad. I've picked up a random pack of zines from above list. Almost all of them have a copy on the net.
Birmingham Telecommunication News
CPU: Working in the Computer Industry
...with the stunning text layout in the /The Torn Issue/ of Scream Baby
And the most impressive thing. There was a time when serious discussions on the Internet were published as a book as an index, with all the zines, magazines, etc.
Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters And Academic Discussion Lists, May 1994
I'm looking through my notes. It's worth to look at:
There is a new search engine at:
New search engine at /Gemplex.space/
And probably at:
Author of /geminispace.info/ is thinking about transfer it...
Gemini DiscoGem served on 12th of April:
gemini://discogem.gmi.bacardi55.io/capsules-of-the-day-2023-04-12/
interesting capsule:
I stopped checking DiscoGem on my daily basis, but this concept is working and that work is well done. Almost every day it has dug something new and worth to read.
I’ve read about Oumuamua aka. 1I/2017 - the first interstellar object identified in the history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ʻOumuamua
Wikipedia’s article covered many interesting facts about that.
I realized that there isn’t any true scientific capsule on #Gemini describing such space information. Who will be the first? ;-)
There are many interactions around "Gemini is boring" thread on Cosmos.
So finally we have pancake recipe!
And the Twitter-like Bash script.
It's like being a witch who sees the future state of Antenna. Many of my predictions have revealed the next day. The great vision of text console. ;-)
gemini://szczezuja.space/gemlog/2023-04-10-Why-Gemini-is-not-boring.gmi
I've done an improvement for my last script. The date is in GemSub format. It should be obvious for me earlier. ;-) The source of the script is updated on GitHub.
The second thing is a question of makeworld on Mastodon:
https://mastodon.online/@makeworld@merveilles.town/110152949860333482
His question is if the Gemini ecosystem died? There are several answers, my was:
Seeing as Gopher is still active, Gemini won't stop either. Maybe some of the hype has passed, and now things are moving at a normal pace.
Because I stopped racing. I am here and write as often as it suits me. And it's ok.
Several days ago we can read Deerbard entry on his Tinylog. The same Adele wrote something after a long break. And it's ok. It's always nice to read an activity of old friends.
I had a feeling looking at my capsule that there should be a last time stamp for every section. Because without that reader must check every link if there was any change. So I implemented a script for that:
https://github.com/szczja/scripts/blob/main/generate_file_dates.sh
So for now, my capsule should has a proper date in every local link. It's working as last commit date for linked file or directory. The concept doesn't need too much work, but it's needed to have a working Git repo behind the capsule.
Now I must add it to my automation scripts. ;-)
So it was easy. I've bought a printed rule book and a map from "Gondor: The Siege Minas Tirith" board game in secondhand bookshop for about 1 Euro. And then I printed two counters sheets from BGG on color laser printer. Then just stick the chips on a piece of paper and cut it out. And you can play the game the way games were back then.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2778/gondor-siege-minas-tirith
"The Creature That Ate Sheboygan" board game, from the 80's.
Five years a sundog - Happy birthday, circumlunar space!
It's interesting to read. There is a big anniversary, despite the fact that it is not a round number in the technical sense. ;-)
I've been playing with org mode fo a while. And today I used it for taking notes during my job. It's handy. The export function gave a clean output in plaintext and html. Nice.
I realized that I really don't have enough time to use all aspects of a small network. People often complain that the small net is empty, and if there was more content on it, they might be interested in it for longer. And I don't have enough time to keep track of everything in Gophersphere, Geminispace. Added to this is my desire to be active via text e-mail, on Usenet, at the Finger level. And after all, the text network is also entertainment, abandoned many months ago MUD game.
It's not a complaint, it's actually a kind of praise for the small net. I, on the other hand, will fight to be more active.
Continuation of the previous entry about configuring GPG. As always it was a problem between a computer screen and a chair. So GPG signing, encryption and decryption is working for me now. Because it was caused by my lack of knowledge, and bad default configuration files on SDF, I wrote a short checklist. Maybe it will be helpful for someone else.
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/szczezuja/phlog/2023-02-24-SDF-Neomutt-and-GPG-checklist.txt
I've been testing and configuring Gnus for e-mail client.
I started from
https://github.com/kensanata/ggg
there aren't too much examples for Gnus.
It was surprising that Gnus should work out of the box based on system variables, because on SDF.org it wasn't so easy. There was a need to improve config file.
Gnus seems to be more polished than neomutt in sense of TUI. But it has also small oddities - for eg. default expiration of e-mails after read.
But the final thing which annoyed me is GPG decryption fault with my config. I don't know if it's a problem with Gnus config, or a problem with GPG config. GPG command is handling encryption and decryption without that errors.
I'am looking every day at the DiscoGem. I had been doing the same on the Gopher, and I felt familiar with that idea when DiscoGem launched on the Gemini. It's easy way to explore very large amounts of date. It isn't a big effort to look at a small sample every day.
As I said after launching of DiscoGem, it could have some measures and indicators to show the best and the worst samples. So I wrote a simple script as a proof of concept. As it can be seen below, the biggest and the smallest samples (only index pages) and the most useless days when almost all links are inaccessible.
https://github.com/szczja/scripts/blob/main/tott_discogem.sh
$ ./tott_discogem.sh DiscoGem top of the tops The biggest index pages day: 72184 chars 1 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-01-05/ 11185 chars 1 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2022-12-18/ 9754 chars 1 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-02-09/ The smallest index pages day: 1540 chars 0 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-02-11/ 1639 chars 1 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-01-28/ 1723 chars 0 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2022-12-25/ The most useless day: 3009 chars 3 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-02-10/ 4498 chars 2 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-01-27/ 4053 chars 2 empty capsules /capsules-of-the-day-2023-02-02/
I spotted this link on Fediverse and I was curious if it will be ok in a text web browser. So I've been browsing this in w3m on Sunday morning. Everything is ok, and the ASCII arts are beautifully displayed in my text environment.
https://www.adelfaure.net/ascii/
I was busy through past week. Today I catch up things in small net. I've sent an e-mail about Gopher, in response to a gemlog article. I've improved my mastodondigest script with ZERO WIDTH SPACE suggested by Alex. I've dug up in my memory Kelbot capsule with his TUI/tmux configuration asked about in Fediverse.
I could do probably a lot more today, but I don't have to much energy. Weather is sunless in the last days. I'm waiting for the spring time.
My tmux text information desk with GTL for Tinylogs, self-made: fingerclub.sh, astrobotanyring.sh and mastodondigest.sh scripts for gathering information from Finger, Astrobotany and Mastodon.
I've tune up my mastodondigest.sh this weekend. It's presenting information as Gemtex now and extract links at the bottom of every toot.
So It's done.
https://github.com/szczja/scripts/blob/main/mastodondigest.sh
Mastodon digest script in Bash, which reads followed accounts list and presents last toot in chronological order.
Pros:
Cons:
Today I was playing with Mastodon API and curl. It's very easy to set up token to access API. And it's easy to go through account and followed information.
But API wasn't helpful to me with pagination of the response to put it into a quick bash script. There is a bigger effort needed to do so.
I'd like to write bash script putting the last toot of every my followed account. I will make a second try in the future.
But I discovered also that in the web preferences of Mastodon account, there is a special tab to check inactive followed accounts. I didn't know about it.
Today’s Gemini DiscoGem is full of goods.
gemini://discogem.gmi.bacardi55.io/capsules-of-the-day-2023-01-07/
Last Week News capsule I didn’t know earlier.
And Kypan capsule which lead me to the main prize for all text-only folks:
telnet mapscii.me
More on the gemlog post:
gemini://kypan.me/posts/getting_a_map_outline_of_my_country_with_mapscii.gmi
Several days ago I spotted an answer to my everlasting question:
- How you were using the Internet?
gemini://ja2.one/gemlog/20221115-myinternetpast.gmi
Thanks!
New year's fireworks atmosphere themed ASCII-art. ;-)
gemini://szczezuja.space/join-the-small-net.txt
Wish you a lot of plain-text information and a renaissance of text protocols in the new year!
New Year's cleaning.
I've put all tinylog's entries for 2022 in a separate file, the same way as for 2021.
You can navigate that files through links in the header of tinylog page.
I'm preparing a new gemlog entry, but it's still in progress. This holiday season I spent mainly outside the net.
But in the last days I've got several mails from people around small net and I replied for them. It was satisfying because it's nice to use plain text mail for conversation. It's seems to be a forgotten way of communication nowadays.