💾 Archived View for station.martinrue.com › krixano › tinylog captured on 2024-07-09 at 02:23:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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author: krixano
Child molesters and abusers often think what they are doing isn't wrong. They create all sorts of justifications for it. But that doesn't mean what they are doing isn't wrong.
AuraGem Search now at 600,266 pages. It almost got up to where geminispace.info is now (~611,000 pages), but then Windows decided to update after me having postponed that update for several weeks, lol.
Lastest AuraGem Update: The "Edit Text" link is only shown for posts that are under 1024 bytes, because of Gemini's URL limit. However, a new "Edit with Titan" will be added later for editing bigger posts.
Plans for Future AuraGem Ask Updates:
1. Edit with Titan for small and big posts.
2. Answers will all be listed on the main question page as long as they are under 1024 bytes. If above 1024 bytes, then a link to "See More" and goto the answer's page will be provided. This will work much like how Station's homepage works.
3. Add a few more navigational links to places.
4. Answers sorted by upvotes.
5. Recent activity and questions for each topic page.
6. Deleting answers.
A lot of times I see this tendency to overgeneralize things. I wish we all could instead contextualize more.
AuraGem Ask Update: You can now upvote answers! 🎉
Note: I just started running AuraGem's crawler. Should take about 3-4 days for each run.
AuraGem Ask Bug Fix: Preformatted text works properly now.
gemini://auragem.space/~ask/dailydigest/2022-08-12
Somebody used the Answer via Gemlog feature on AuraGem Ask! :D gemini://tozip.chickenkiller.com/2022-08-11-net95.gmi
So, apparently, after XHTML 1.1, the W3C tried to move towards XHTML 2, but a new web standards group (WHATWG) worked on HTML5, so W3C ended up accepting HTML5. Now it seems they are trying to work on HTML5 and XHTML5 in parallel. What's interesting is the benefits of XHTML, the ability to use XML namespaces for combining different XML "formats" in one XML document, seems to be becomming a bit redundant since the addition of web components and custom elements (which ends up making HTML5 more extensible), as well as the ability to embed SVG and MathML. However, web components I think needs JS. Idk, feels like a bit of a mess, and a bit redundant, imo.
My ISP's DNS server went down, so switched to Cloudflare's DNS-over-HTTPS.
AuraGem Ask has had some updates:
New Daily Digest page: gemini://auragem.space/~ask/dailydigest
Ability to edit title and text of questions, and text of answers.
The Recent Activity page has new line breaks in between different days
A new Your Questions page to show all of your questions
Fixed a bug that truncated question titles
Interesting question about FreeBSD here by @mercadal . If anyone knows anything about FreeBSD and logging, you can submit an answer to help this person out :)
gemini://auragem.space/~ask/28/9
Adding a few more non-tech topics to AuraGem Ask!
gemini://auragem.space/~ask/
@freezr I see you tried out AuraGem Ask! The BSD topic has been added :)
Btw, did you have problems setting a title for your questions? I see one had just "#" and the other had an empty title.
I have finished the new service, called AuraGem Ask! It is a question and answer service, similar to StackOverflow, or Quora.
gemini://auragem.space/~ask/
Working on a new service for Gemini that will hopefully provide more content to the geminispace. Started it today. It's possible that I could finish and release it today as well.
New Stats Page on AuraGem: gemini://auragem.space/search/stats
All of indexed Geminispace is about 39 GB, and all text files are around 7.6 GB.
I don't understand why Gemini Search Engines have gotten into the habbit of not crawling big capsules, like proxies/web-mirrors and journal or news publications. I get the intention behind it, because they can sometimes skew results, or they take a long time, but those things are fixable. If big capsules and proxies skew results, then you change your searching algorithm, not take away people's ability to search that content. If they take a long time to crawl, then just do them at the end after all of the more important content has been crawled. If their contents take too much space, then be more selective on those specific sites about what you store.
AuraGem Search is now at 415,900 pages! It almost scanned all of Geminispace, and would have finished probably in another day or so, but then the crawler crashed :( I will wait until next week to crawl again, and hopefully I have fixed the problems by then.
I have just made some edits to my latest devlog post. I wanted to make very clear that this is a *descriptive* study on how well Search Engines match user expectations. It does not focus on whether this is viable, or how to achieve such accuracy. Thanks for all who read it, and hopefully these edits make the purpose of the article more clear :)
gemini://auragem.space/devlog/20220807.gmi
I have just posted a new devlog. More works needs to be done if we want to be more accurate with our conclusions, but this is a start. Hopefully it is useful.
Gemini Search Results Study, Part 1:
gemini://auragem.space/devlog/20220807.gmi
Currently analyzing the results of the 4 major gemini search engines so that I can write a post comparing them. Getting some interesting results so far!
@acidus Another thing that I think would greatly help all of the search engines is to send the lang parameter in the mimetype for gemipedia articles (and welcome page) of languages other than english.
AuraGem Search has a new Feedback page! 🎉
I've already posted some feedback that I have for myself :D
gemini://auragem.space/search/feedback.gmi
What things do you think are missing within Geminispace?
@acidus It might be good to put your "Where in the World?" in your robots.txt so that your server won't be bombarded with a million requests from crawlers (since there's a ton of different combinations that can be crawled with 6 spots of countries). I also wanted to let you know that I've just stopped my own crawler from crawling it so that it doesn't bombard your server, and to help improve search results.
Found this interesting protocol that someone is currently working on: gemini://tilde.team/~aprilnightk/netamict/index.gmi
Interesting capsule that give you tide times in the UK: gemini://tides.grizzlybear.site/
Read this post a while ago from @acidus - gemini://gemi.dev/gemlog/2022-05-10-say-thankyou.gmi
I greatly appreciate the sentiment behind this post, because a lot of people have given up and dedicated their time for Gemini so that other's can use their projects. Their work cost them time and effort, and it's given to us for free, and that warrants saying Thank You more often.
So...
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Now that my crawler has had a bunch of issues fixed, the Page Count is up to 132,219 now, and still crawling! 🎉
gemini://auragem.space/search/
So... this is what happens when you deal with multiple languages: Turns out golang's defer acts quite different from Odin's defer. In Odin, defers happen on exit of any block/scope, whereas golang's defers only happen on exit of the function. Since I used a defer in a for loop in golang, none of my gemini client requests for my crawler were closing! Sigh... anyways, it's fixed now.
AuraGem Search can now parse dates in filenames and gemtext titles. This information is stored during crawling so that it can provide a way to list and order posts based on publication date. For example, this new page shows all posts with a publication date within the last year, ordered from newest to oldest: gemini://auragem.space/searchengine/yearposts
Trying some things for AuraGem Search: gemini://auragem.space/searchengine/test
Currently writing a 6-page article for my personal gemlog. It might take a while before I publish it, because there's a lot to discuss.
You can inspire change to happen, but you cannot shame change to happen.
Where I live we have a bunch of weird laws that are fortunately not enforced:
A man with a moustache cannot kiss a woman in public
In one city, the fire department must practice fire fighting 15 minutes before attending a fire
In another city, a man cannot wink at a women he does not know, within corporate limits of the city.
A kiss cannot last longer than 5 minutes
One-armed piano players must perform for free
Ministers must have a permit to carry liquor across state lines
You cannot read a person's palms within city limits of one of the cities.
Found an interesting robots.txt :D
gemini://gmi.derschwarzestrahler.at/robots.txt
Working on a new devlog post, since I'm now almost over being ill.
This is an interesting read, especially the "bias" section :D
It's important to learn from others' mistakes.
gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view?Google%20Knowledge%20Graph
I have been thinking about comparing how we index/organize websites to how books are indexed and organized...
So, just got an email about my article on Unix Shell History, from someone who seen it link to it (using @mozz's gemini portal) on the BSD Reddit. Someone else posted it there, 10 hours ago. I literally completely forgot that I wrote that, lol. It's been 2 years since I wrote that article.
gemini://auragem.space/~krixano/ShellHistory-Unix.pdf
There's always going to be some people who are mad when you challenge established conventions, no matter the field. Sometimes it's justified and sometimes it's not. What's important is how well they engage with what you are saying.
If they write random anonymous posts that are vague and merely attack who you are or what you know without engaging with the actual content of what you are saying, then they are not worth considering.
Some of the best achievements were by people who were attacked for thinking differently, and the Gemini protocol is one of them.
Let my devlog post be a useful lesson. When people condescend you, question your knowledge or skills, or try to make themselves look more important, smarter, or bigger than you - use the energy you get from that to come back fighting with great posts, projects, art, etc.
One of the parts of my new devlog post that I really want to stress:
This also introduces the argument that the ranking systems are really only important for underspecified queries (broad queries), so the emphasis on the problems with ranking algorithms in unwarranted. This argument hardly makes sense when the majority of searches that people make are broad. I would also argue that broad searches are most used for *discovering* pages, not for getting to a specific page. However, ranking based on popularity prioritizes what it thinks people would want, which is more suited for specific searches using broad queries, at the expense of discovery of broad topics.
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New Devlog Post: Search Engine Ranking Systems Are Being Left Unquestioned
gemini://auragem.space/devlog/20220722.gmi
gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view?Link%20farm Gemipedia on Link Farms Since people want to act like Page Ranking algorithms are not broken, I give you the article above. Not only is there link farms that artificially increase a page in search results, there is also a chance for false positives where sites are penalized for looking like a link farm, *and* whole demains have to be unsearcheable because they are removed for being a link farm. Ranking may only be used/visible in "underspecified" search queries, but the majority of all search queries are underspecified, especially if you use FTS of page contents, where even common words can be matched.
AuraGem is 1 of the 2 search engines, out of 4 overall, that returns results on binary data. The other one is GUS, but GUS doesn't save binary metadata (let alone page titles) like AuraGem. AuraGem gets metadata from ogg & mp3 files.
It is the only search engine that respects the CrawlDelay in robots.txt , afaik
AuraGem's crawler is threaded, which makes crawling faster, particularly in cases where extracting metadata information takes a long time.
It did all of the above prior to the two new search engines, Kennedy and TLGS. At that time it was called Ponix.
Finally, It might be the first gemini search engine to introduce some type of audio-to-text searching. More details coming soon...
I don't know why I have to fight off people who want to be extremely defensive about their favorite search engine algorithm. I've made my choice. I've read the papers, I've seen the band-aid fixes that are required to prevent link spam and reduce TKC effect crap, even though these two things only exist *because* of the algorithm looking at links the way it does, which is extremely explicit in the papers themselves.
I don't give a crap that these papers call it "authority" or "influence". That's just a cover-up to make it sound fancier than it really is, which is literally popularity - statistics on how many links something has, and how many pages link to it.
Read this abridged paper on SALSA (an "improved" version of HITS) yesterday, for those people who want to condescend me about rejecting other people's work. It's fine if you want popularity-searching, and it *better* fixes some of HITS's core problems that result in the TKC (Tight Knit Community) effect. It seems to me instead of picking the "best" authority to put at the top, it basically just spreads the top results a bit more between the other top authorities. The authors fully admit that anything below the top 10 results is probably not ordered well, but they justify not caring about that.
I definitely won't be using it for AuraGem.
https://www.ra.ethz.ch/cdstore/www9/175/175.html
I will be working on adding Full-Text Search to AuraGem Search today. This should hopefully significantly improve queries. This only applies to metadata - page contents will still not be cached.
One of the biggest criticisms of Google and other big search engines is that they put too much emphasis on popularity. To call this searching by *relevance* is disingenuous, imo, because popularity has nothing to do with the relevance of the search. Instead, these types of algorithms assume that people *want* the most popular or "authoritative" pages.
But the biggest mistake is presuming that more authoritative pages are ones that are linked to the most, especially when making this presumption on the internet where false information spreads like wildfire.
I'm soon going to write a few articles covering my thought processes behind the choices I've made and ideas I've had for my search engine (AuraGem Search). It will cover why I reject both HITS and PageRank -based systems, and the limitations of Full-Text Search. Should be interesting...
This isn't the only search engine I've done, even if I'm still somewhat new at it, and it won't be my last iteration.
Just got a really cool idea for my YouTube proxy that was inspired by a post by @skyjake . Working on it now....
New Devlog on AuraGem Search Engine Updates: gemini://auragem.space/devlog
Sometimes there's this tendency to claim that when someone doesn't agree with you, instead they just didn't understand you.
Sometimes there's this tendency to skim what someone says and completely misinterpret them.
Sometimes a person is incapable of truly understanding someone because of context that they don't have, or problems with non-verbal queues, intonation, etc.
And sometimes someone doesn't understand you because your words are vague, confusing, too general, etc.
Sometimes not every situation is alike.
@acidus Just wanted to say, your Kennedy search engine is really cool! I started my own search engine a year ago, but I've been completely failing keeping it running and maintaining it. It stalled early on because I was getting frustrated with the querying being too slow. I'm just now starting to improve it. I really liked that you added Gemipedia search directly into the search results. I really like that feature.
It seems like my search engine is a difference purpose from yours so maybe there's room for two different types of search engines :D
Blech! Numbers are so inconsistent! Half of them are even and half are odd, and then there's only some that are prime and some that are not. And you can't even use all of them in place of one another. And don't even get me started on decimals and base systems! It's about as inconsistent as languages, with their different types of words that can only be put in very specific places with all these weird rules and exceptions.
AuraGem progress update so far for July: Access to Qur'an, Christian Bibles, and Jewish Texts (Sefaria Proxy), security.txt, youtube proxy updates, github proxy updates (issues), new Twitch Proxy, Guestbook, AuraGem Music, and brought back up the Search Engine. I've done quite a lot so far this month!
What's next: Github Branches, Search Engine improvements, finish fixing up the Sefaria Proxy, more religious texts, and a few new service ideas that I want to try out.
gemini://republic.circumlunar.space/users/flexibeast/gemlog/2022-07-14.gmi
I'm glad at least one other person finds my Sefaria proxy useful :D
Also wanted to write that I haven't forgotten about the bugs in the proxy. I'm working on fixing them, I just have 5 million projects I'm working on for gemini, lol.
It seems like midnight.pub and smol.pub both might be sending the wrong mimetypes for images and other files. If I continue to run into this problem, I will probably contact the owners of these two capsules.
@eph This fontpack file at gemini://eph.smol.pub/Alegreya.fontpack is being sent with a mimetype of text/gemini. I found it because it broke my search engine crawler, lol
My search engine's database is fully updated and is now crawling completely from scratch. I wanted to start from scratch because I made significant changes to the database. The search engine should also now be much faster.
gemini://auragem.space/searchengine/
Hm, this is interesting:
https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/the-2021-tls-telemetry-report#:~:text=In%20total%2C%20well%20over%2095,of%20sites%20(Figure%203).
Regardless of the type of certificate in use, certificate revocation methods are almost entirely broken. That’s why desire is growing across the certificate authorities (CAs) and browser industry to move toward extremely short-term certificates. Revoking a stolen certificate becomes much less of an issue if it will expire in just a few weeks.
Are there any security experts here (@acidus ?) that can explain if this affects Geminispace, and what should be done about it? Many people on gemini have been creating long certs.
Looks like according to Lupa, 94% of all capsules use TLS 1.3!
A very brief response to this post: gemini://ew.srht.site/en/2022/20220716-re-cash-ocalypse.gmi
In the US, the authorities can't access digital records of what you paid for or sold to begin with, unless they have a warrant. And to get a warrant you must have reasonable suspicion of illegal activity. Additionally, banks use higher encryption standards than the rest of the internet because... they are banks. Finally, Internet traffic is at least much hard*er* to spy on now than before, since the use of TLS, and with each new version, more parts get encrypted (like SNI and cert in TLS 1.3).
However, if you are in a country that doesn't have privacy laws, then I would understand this post.
Just spent 5 million years updating my search engine server and database. It's not completely finished yet, but it should be done tomorrow maybe.
New DevLog on AuraGem Music, with more information about the service: gemini://auragem.space/devlog/20220715.gmi
I have just been approved to use the ESV API to provide the ESV Bible translation on AuraGem!
Future plans for AuraGem Music Updates:
The ability to change the tags (Title, Album, AlbumArist) of songs.
Possibly a "Jukebox" mode that offers an infinite stream of songs played from your library.
I'm also considering the idea of allowing musicians to publish their music to the capsule so that users can browse and add this music into their library. Let me know if anyone would find this interesting.
Ok, this is pretty exciting! I have finally finished one of my Gemini projects that I started almost 2 years ago, since just before Lagrange gained Titan support.
Introducing AuraGem Music - a free music hosting service that will let you upload mp3's via Titan to your own private library so that you can play them from the capsule. Because of limited storage, there is a quota system, which you can find more information about on the capsule.
gemini://auragem.space/music/
@acidus Just read your latest post. It is really interesting!
gemini://gemi.dev/gemlog/2022-07-09-html-converters.gmi
[POLL Ok, so... Do I spend a billion hours today trying to fix up and finish off my Sefaria proxy (providing Jewish Texts), because the API for it is terrible, or do I finish off one of my projects I have been planning for almost 2 years now that is gemini-native?] Sefaria | Other Project
This gemini-based MUSH, ijirait, looks pretty cool. Just needs more people on it. gemini://campaignwiki.org/play/ijirait
Fun Fact: I have two hidden sections of my capsule that I started about 2 years ago that were supposed to be new services specifically for Gemini. I never ended up finishing them.
New Devlog: gemini://auragem.space/devlog/20220709.gmi
AuraGem now has a guestbook! You can add to it using the Titan protocol. gemini://auragem.space/guestbook.gmi
While the YT and Twitch proxies allow you to download videos, unfortunately my internet upload speed is terrible (1.25 MB/s), so they are likely not very useful atm. Once I am able to get enough money, I will hopefully be getting a server from a service provider. But right now, I don't have the means to do so.
Currently working on a Twitch proxy so that Twitch VODs can be downloaded :D
gemini://auragem.space/twitch/channel/24713999
Project Idea: Video Player (like VLC) that supports gemini links.
Been using my YouTube proxy with gemini subscriptions to see new videos each day, and then download them all within Gemini. Probably going to switch to this completely now, especially since I added a download option for 720p :D
I'm finally getting closer to completely replacing my web browsing!!! Now if only we could get twitch in gemini.....
You can now view issues and comments on issues from my Github Proxy! Here's an example repo to try it out on: gemini://auragem.space/github/repo/295608796/issues/
The Jewish Texts on AuraGem now link to the most important Commentaries (Tosafot, Rashi, Rashbam, Tur, Shulchan Arukh, etc.) at the bottom of the text. gemini://auragem.space/texts/jewish
I have been using Lagrange's split view to have Rashi's commentary on the right and the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) on the left. It's very useful for this, so thanks for that feature @skyjake :)
I have a title for a gemlog post idea, but I'm probably not gonna find the time to write it... so I'll just leave the provocative title here :D "Individualism is 'Just' Western Buddhism"
I'm probably pretty late with this, but... Woah, this Duckling Proxy is pretty cool! @Acidus setup a public instance at stargate.gemi.dev:1994
Then, in Lagrange's preferences, go to the Network tab, and put that url into the "http proxy" part. Now, whenever you put in an http url, or click an http url, it will automatically use that proxy to proxy http to gemini!
I have just posted two new Devlog posts for AuraGem: gemini://auragem.space/devlog
Tomasino has created an anonymous Survey for users of the small Internet. https://cloud.tomasino.org/apps/forms/KakFXPSpgj5WD9zq
Apparently Haiku OS has a gemini capsule! gemini://lofi.haiku-os.org
AuraGem's YouTube proxy will now download videos in 720p by default. Later on I will add seperate links for different qualities. You can visit the proxy here: gemini://auragem.space/youtube
Note: There are currently some bugs with showing recent videos. I am working on fixing them.
@skyjake Thanks for adding justified text to lagrange! It definitely makes pages look much nicer.
I've submitted an application to Crossway to hopefully get access to the API so that I can provide the ESV translation at AuraGem. We'll see if it gets accepted hopefully soon :D
The Qur'an in Arabic and a few other translations have been added to AuraGem! Now AuraGem has Christian Bibles, the Qur'an, and *almost* has a bunch of Jewish texts - this covers a whole branch of religions (except for the Samaritan Pentateuch and Latter-Day Saint books, which will be added later). Explore all of these religious texts here: gemini://auragem.space/texts
Started working on a Sefaria proxy for Gemini. Currently only the learning schedules are up at the moment. I will be working on the Index of texts soon. gemini://auragem.space/texts/jewish
I've decided to start back up my gemlog by posting some of my entries from my journal. It'd be an interesting experiment.
Hopefully since I've went through the process of taking my time journalling it out once prior without the urgency that often comes with posting to the internet, the gemlogs will be more fleshed out and coherent.
I'm also considering continuing the work with gemini://auragem.space soon. I still have so many ideas for it.
Because of these two things, I will probably be spending less time here on Station.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
And no one dared disturb the sound of silence
"Fools," said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops, fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
- Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence
I was sexually abused as a very little kid by 2 of my step-siblings, one of them male and the other female. And yet I don't hate all males or females. Why? Because I choose not to project what happened to me onto other people. I recognize that not everyone is the same as those people who hurt me.
This is likely my default overly-logical mode coming out, so I'm not going to pretend to try to understand how people can stereotype others based on how they've been hurt in the past. I recognize that it happens, and I would certainly be sympathetic to their hurtful experience, but I can never agree to the stereotyping.
Finally I went to the craftsmen, for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things. In this I was not mistaken; they knew things I did not know, and to that extent they were wiser than I. But,... the good craftsmen seemed to me to have the same fault as the epoets: each of them, because of his success at his craft, thought himself very wise in other most important persuits, and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had, so that I asked myself, on behalf of the oracle, whether I should prefer to be as I am, with neither their wisdom nor their ignorance, or to have both.
- Plato, Apology
Also just got the first trectate of the Talmud - Bavli Berakhot. Now when I'm not reading plato, I can temper it with Talmud, lol :D
I have a ton of catching up to do for Daf Yomi.
Here is a strange contradiction: To believe in God, we are told, is simultaneously too simpleminded and too complex. It is far easier and economical to believe the universe arose without a guiding intelligence. Yet it is also simpleminded to believe in a guiding intelligence. In other words, religious people are too unsophisticated to realize that the belief they hold is too intellectually complex for the problem.
- David J. Wholpe, Why Faith Matters
Just got my "Plato: Complete Works" book! I will now be able to finish reading Phaedrus that I started with my professor during school. I'm rereading Symposium first though :D
There is a story of a Hasidic rabbi whose child used to wander off to spend time alone in a forest. Concerned and curious, one day the rabbi pulled his boy aside to ask him what he was doing. "I go to the forest to find God," said the boy. "That's wonderful," replied his father. "But you need not go to the forest to find God. Don't you know that God is the same everywhere?" "God is," the boy answered, "but I'm not."
- Why Faith Matters, David J. Wholpe
"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" - Einstein
I have created a gemlog with images showing off my work-in-progress calendar program here:
gemini://auragem.space/~krixano/20220520-HorusProgram.gmi
@eph I was just reading up on the Eastern Orthodox hours and would like some clarification. Is the First Hour prayer at Sunrise, or at a (variable/sundial?) hour after Sunrise? I looked at one wiki, and it says the first hour was at 6:00am, but the 3rd hour at 9:00am, which I assume is a mistake (since there's 3 hours in between 6 and 9, and 6:00 is usually deemed sunrise in sundial time, and would be the zeroeth hour technically). A different wiki says the first hour is at 7:00am (sundial time). I assume the second one is correct?
I have been making a new graphical calendar program for a while now. It's not done yet, but I'm making progress. It's a custom GUI made with SDL for rendering, so it's quite responsive, and has decent animations.
It can calculate a form of Sundial Time, which is used so that it can calculate Jewish Prayer times. Islamic prayer times are more complicated to calculate, so that's not done yet.
It can also handle 4 different calendars atm: Gregorian, Julian, Jewish Calendar, and Islamic Kuwait Algorithm (this usually has a setting to tweak when months start as well, but that's not finished yet).
It can calculate most Jewish holidays, and some Christian Eastern Orthodox holidays.
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It's sad when people who are opposed to a certain idea or philosophy latch onto everything they can to prove that it is bad, even if there's barely any relation.
To word it a different way: People project their hatred onto things, and then use that projection as a prime representation of what they hate.
[POLL Would you be interested in a new graphical calendar program? What features are most important to you?] yes | no
The concept of original sin is interesting, especially how Judaism and Christianity debate on the nuances of sin being passed down. There are verses in the Bible that suggest some form of passing down, while other's suggest the exact opposite. For example, Christians use the below verse to show Original Sin:
Exodus 20:5 (ESV) - "You shall not bow down to [idols] or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."
They connect this to the fall of Adam and Eve as well as the general trend of sinning, repentance, and forgiveness throughout the Bible.
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It's kinda funny how blunt Thomas Merton is. Although I don't always agree with him, he does have some good points:
"Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be His enemies on earth. Suppose they really do hate Him: nevertheless He loves them, and you cannot be united with Him unless you love them too" - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
It is unfortunate to see how slow countries are being to protect Ukraine, especially given that this slow response also happened during the Holocaust and led to ~6 millions Jews and others (those with impairments, disease, etc.) being killed.
It is also disheartening to see people stereotype all people who come from or have ancestry from Russia. Not everyone of them supports Russia and it is wrong to assume such things.
My server at gemini://auragem.space is back up and running. Had a power outage months ago and been too busy with school to get up the energy to bring it back up.
"The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is the more he is convinced of his own infallibility. And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he is really a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a nation."
- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
"Within religions, even at their most extreme times, there are those who offer a gentler reading of God's Will."
- David J. Wolpe, Why Faith Matters
Doing a Fasting project for my "Christian Spirituality and Prayer" class. My partner and I chose to fast from all digital technologies for 1 hour per day. It starts in 3 days, so we'll see how this goes :D
Psychology doesn't work by just declaring someone is mentally ill because they think differently than you. I will say this flat-out - this is a dangerous ideology that led to the oppression and killing of *a lot* of people, and goes against the very core of what we have established with modern science. Homosexuals were once considered mentally ill, for example. Christians and Jews were killed for the first 300 years of Christianity's existence because they were different from the polytheistic greek/roman religion that was popular at the time. At least have the decency to recognize the damage the Enlightenment had, leading to racism via Social Darwinism, and co-opting of evolutionary theory to justify oppression.
Fun Fact: Some Jewish traditions have developed the notion that God gives you your soul (spark/breath of life) at/near birth. Therefore, your soul already pre-existed your physical body. Additionally, when you sleep, your soul goes back to God for the night, and then when you wake up, your soul is given back to you, and that's why you thank God for "giving me back my soul in mercy" right when you wake up.
There are similar-ish conceptions of this in other religoins like Hinduism where everyone has an Atman - a divine spark - that reincarnates with the goal of getting off the cycle/wheel of life (samsara) and merging with the Brahman - the transcendent divinity within the world.
"charity is a two-way process. One receives even as one gives. This should remind us, according to the Vilna Gaon, that one who gives today may have to receive tomorrow."
- Etz Hayim (p. 523, Intro to Ki Tissa Parshah)
Got my first IPFS site up! http://auragem.space.ipns.localhost:8080/
"Avarice suggests a lengthy old age, inability to perform manual labor, famines that will come along, diseases that will arise, the bitter realities of poverty,
and the shame there is in accepting goods from others to meet one's needs"
- Evagrius Ponticus
Being "nice" on the surface means nothing if you veil your insults under sarcasm, jokes, "politeness", and snide remarks.
Fun Family History Fact: My mom was born in California near a military base, I believe, since her father was in the military. He was also a pastor.
AuraGem Search now has a page that lists all the twtxt feeds it knows about: gemini://auragem.space/searchengine/twtxt
Who can you give to if you never allow taking?
An apple is not an orange, but they are both fruits.
The irony of criticising people that are sharing their views for not allowing others to share their views...
If I say Apples are bad, I'm not saying everything in the world is bad... I'm saying *Apples* are bad.
The irony of using a written story to prove that writing things down have decreased human memory capacity...
My AuraGem Search Engine (formerly Ponix Search) is back to crawling again! More info here: gemini://auragem.space/devlog/20211205.gmi
Writing a crawler is the most annoying thing ever, lol
For any gemini server developers here, make sure that the matching/checking of the domain name is case-insensitive. It looks like a few servers are case-sensitive with this, which goes against the URI spec.
I have created a new page on my gemlog that contains my own notes for book readings, classes, and other various things: gemini://auragem.space/~krixano/notes.gmi
Gemini History Must-Reads: gemini://auragem.space/GeminiHistoryMustReads.gmi
Solderpunk's gopher article where Input and Input Prompts were first talked about for Gemini. Occurs a month after Gemini's first server. gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/gemini/inputs-and-client-certs.txt
I have brought back up my server. It's now rebranded as AuraGem! gemini://auragem.space
Soon my Ponix server will go through a rebranding, so lookout for that. The certificate and domain name will also change.
Wrote a new issue for Microsoft :D
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/5561
10GB file. Casey's refterm prints it in 41 seconds, Windows Terminal takes over 6 hours, and still counting.
Just wrote an issue about how Windows Terminal is terrible and that they keep making excuses when it has been proven that all their excuses are wrong because someone wrote a program in a week that can do many things Windows Terminal can't:
https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10623
I love how people claim Lagrange is so bloated when it's one of the ones that doesn't even use a GUI library - the GUI is completely custom - and tries to use very few libraries.
I suspect the people that are hating on how "bloated" it is are just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.
Saying that people should be forced to not use or advocate for a popular browser that they like is deliberately oppressive and these people need to know how dangerous this idea really is.
What reduces a "monoculture" and "monopolies" is more competition, not forcing people to use or not use specific browsers. The latter is called taking away people's freedoms.
"There will be many clients of this kind, taking different approaches. Many will be graphical. People will love some and hate others. Plenty of room for all."
- Solderpunk
So, just had a trackfire of an argument about using compressed files in geminispace on the mailing list. I should have known it was not going to be productive, lmao.
Just for anyone that doesn't know, the Gemini spec doesn't prevent or "outlaw" specific filestype from being downloaded over the protocol - that'd be called censorship, basically. Letting browsers open compressed files is not against the spec, whatsoever.
You may have your opinions on what gemini client you like to use, but getting mad at someone for supporting a client they like and looking down on a person for wanting a certain feature in a client is very insulting and not productive.
People are allowed to like the browser they like. You don't get to force people to like or hate what you like or hate.
First people complained about Windows 8 and 10 going square, and now people are complaining about "Windows 11" going back to curved design. Make up your damn mind! Do you want it curved or square?!?
"When you're falling in a forest, and there's nobody around, do you ever really crash or even make a sound."
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment.
Wanted to post this in hopes that other people are better able to recognize when they are being gaslit or manipulated. Don't ever let other people tell you that you are crazy, paranoid, etc. Unfortunately, I've had my own experiences with this, with various people, including family members.
Don't ever let others tell you that it's wrong to stick up for yourself. You have a right to stick up for yourself and to tell your side of the story, especially when someone is lying about you.
@skyjake I noticed you setup a finger server! A post on what finger server you used and how you set it up would be pretty cool - I'm considering setting up one myself.
Another really good post by mieum: gemini://mieum.smol.pub/for-the-love-of-gemini
So, for all new capsules that have been indexed by my search engine, I have stopped keyword extraction until I find a better way to do this, which means search results aren't going to be as good as they can be (and will be in the future).
The search engine isn't anywhere near complete yet. I have many things planned for it.
Cool capsule I was just told about that lets you play Zork in gemini! gemini://zork.club
It uses mbays' gemrepl.
@mozz I read this article a while ago. I wanted to tell you that it was very interesting to read, so thanks for writing it! gemini://mozz.us/journal/2021-05-27.gmi
Ok, I've done lots of work on my search engine, including improving the ranking system and it's performance. Searches should be quite fast now.
The next step is to improve the keyword extraction, and continue crawling more pages. It has currently indexed 13189 pages.
You can try it out now here: gemini://pon.ix.tc/searchengine/
My search engine has currently indexed 6583 pages so far, and still counting.
Currently running my crawler. It's quite slow right now, but it works. If anyone has problems with it hammering your server (the IP of the crawler is 67.60.37.132), do tell me so I can figure something out.
So, I just found out that geminispace.info/GUS blocks a *bunch* of stuff for various reasons, some technical, and some seemingly not. It's also just poorly designed. I'll be making my own search engine for Gemini soon. https://src.clttr.info/rwa/geminispace.info/src/branch/master/gus/excludes.py#L76
Just waiting for the day when disagreeing with another person is considered a violation of "Free Speech"...
I've just added a some books to the Star Wars Database: gemini://pon.ix.tc/starwars2/timeline/bookseries
Just added a bunch more comic issues to my Star Wars Database, including all issues of Star Wars (2015), Darth Vader (2015), Kanan (2015), and The High Republic (2021), as well as all one-shots. More will be added continually until it is complete. gemini://pon.ix.tc/starwars2/
My next Gemini project - A personal dashboard capsule! Kinda like https://productivitytab.co, for example.
I have implemented a very simple Weather thing. It has very basic information atm, but more will be added later: gemini://pon.ix.tc/weather/
Working on a new Star Wars Database for Gemini that will contain more information. You can see a sneak peak here: gemini://pon.ix.tc/starwars2/
@skyjake I have another idea for lagrange 😁 It'd be cool to have a simple table interface for csv files. Astrobotany uses them for the leaderboards, and I'm considering using them for a database project...
Although, there isn't hyperlinking in them. I wonder if a new document format that combines hyperlinking and CSV would be interesting....
I now have a whole set of Star Wars Canon lists for comics, books, shows, movies, etc. here: gemini://pon.ix.tc/starwars/
Testing
Multi-line input
In lagrange
Hooray!
Since I have been reading all of the Marvel Star Wars Canon Comics, I compiled a list of all the series'. I have made this available in case it could help anyone else out. gemini://pon.ix.tc/~krixano/StarWarsComics.gmi
Currently working on a new gemini service project, called LifeKept. Stay tuned for more details! :D
@mozz Your latest gemlog post about Gopher "i" type was very interesting! Thanks for posting it! gemini://mozz.us/journal/2021-05-27.gmi
@skyjake So, I have a cool idea for lagrange. On my music service, I have this URL where every refresh, it sends a random song from your library. It'd be cool if lagrange had a auto-reload setting where it auto-reloads when the song is finished playing (if the page is of an audio-file).
For server owners, I recommend reading this article to learn how Linux's disk caching works and how the swappiness value can help improve it by swapping out more to free up memory for disk caching. https://www.linuxatemyram.com/play.html
I just sped up the downloading of music files on my Music Service by almost 4 times! from 5.2 seconds to 1.5 seconds. gemini://pon.ix.tc/music/
I love the new Astrobotany changes!
Edge/Chrome: 1.4 GB; Spotify: 177MB; lagrange running my Music service: 70MB
People have been getting 404s when trying to download youtube videos from my YouTube proxy ( gemini://pon.ix.tc/youtube ). I have now fixed this. The fix should be live now.
You can now see how the quota system works for the Ponix Music Storage Service here: gemini://pon.ix.tc/music/quota
Ponix Music Service: Every user by default will have 2 songs added to their library. Upload support hasn't been added yet, but you can try out these two songs now here: gemini://pon.ix.tc/music/
The only important thing left to do for my music uploading service is to support uploading via Titan. Otherwise, it's basically done! :D
I am currently working on a new project that will be done hopefully soon! It will be a music upload service. You can upload your own music files with Titan and listen to your personal music collection with Gemini.
This Titan protocol (gemini://transjovian.org/titan) looks pretty cool. It's the flip-side to Gemini that allows for upload only. I might look into implementing some things with it. It'd be useful to have more clients supporting it though, like lagrange perhaps :D ( @skyjake )
Made a new post on my gopher phlog for the first time in a long time. gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/~krixano/phlog
Just read this book review on an introductory C programming book (gemini://hexdsl.co.uk/book_club/20210428-cprogrammingineasysteps.gmi). I just found it funny that he was expecting a beginner book on C to teach how to draw windows on Linux, lmao. Let's just say there's a *reason* literally nobody does this themselves anymore and instead uses SDL or glfw, etc. :D
History shows that Progress doesn't exist. You want to know what the most common thing to do is? Say that the previous movement sucks to justify your own movement. Then that movement becomes dominant, and then the next generation says that movement sucks and starts their own movement, oftentimes going the complete opposite direction. Imo, There is no empirical evidence to show that Progress exists.
Create inspired tonights / that sail in blue and blate / as the end argue orchid / and splash in spat of place
@skyjake I noticed in your post on lagrange 1.4 that zip viewing only works for downloaded zips because gemini servers don't know about contents of zips. That's true, but they actually don't have to. You should be able to keep the zip data in memory and parse out the zip to get the contents, all from memory (or even a temp directory, if needed).
@skyjake Looks like you can now import identities in version 1.4 of lagrange. That's a very useful feature! :)
@calgacus Btw, I just looked at your site. I see you write poetry! I will look at them when I have the chance :) I also write some poetry. I have a collection of it at: gemini://pon.ix.tc/Poetry.pdf There's also a gempub linked from the root of my site if you'd rather use than in lagrange :D
How many people would use a service that lets you upload mp3s and listen to your privately uploaded music via Gemini?
Can't wait for the next release (v1.4) of Lagrange so I can view gpubs! I'm on Windows, so compiling the latest dev is a bit... annoying, lol.
Fun Tip: Amazon sells DRM-Free mp3 downloads of music, and also has an "Auto Rip" feature on some CDs where you can buy the CD and get the mp3s as well, again, DRM-Free, from Amazon Music.
It's kinda crazy how there's not very many good email clients that both look good and don't use web crap (e.g. Electron).
Not everyone has the luxury of choosing some elite company over the "evil big tech" companies. Some people take the best job they can get because they have to. Because they have to live, which in the real world costs money.
@martin Love the new changes, including the new Links section under posts that have links :D
Been working on a gempub reader today. I've got the basics of gemtext rendering basically done. About Gempub: https://codeberg.org/oppenlab/gempub
First post on Station!