💾 Archived View for ok-techbrokedad.xyz › Gemlog › 2024-09-13-first-post.gmi captured on 2024-09-29 at 00:22:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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[2024-09-13 19:55:28 UTC-05:00]
I set up my Gemini capsule yesterday, but I’m just now getting around to my FIRST POST! Everything available on the internet about the Geminiprotocol was super helpful in getting me started. What finally inspired me to dive into smolnet was a recent article I read on Hackaday about the small web.
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard about the small web (or smolweb, slow web, whatever you want to call it), but the idea always overwhelmed me before. Lately, I’ve been learning more programming, like Python and JavaScript, which finally got me past my stubbornness. Turns out, it wasn’t so bad, and like I said, the resources were super helpful.
I’ll admit, I originally wanted to host it on my spare Raspberry Pi 4, but my internet is through Starlink. I tried setting up a Cloudflare tunnel, but it didn’t work for the free version. After spending way too much time trying other methods, I ended up using some credits I had with a VPS for now. Not my first choice—feels more in the spirit of smolnet to host it on your own hardware—but I’ll figure something out eventually. (Also, I forgot my Oracle free tier password, and they won’t send me a reset email anymore. The instance is probably long gone, and a new account wouldn’t yield much either!)
Yesterday, my wife had an experience that gave me some satisfaction in choosing Gemini. She’s an artist and dislikes AI for its issues with copyright theft. While using Startpage, she saw a suggestion to try an AI trained on Reddit, which frustrated her. She started researching alternative search engines. I told her about Gemini, but I probably didn’t win her over—yet. Still, the experience gave me a little boost in pursuing this.
I’ve been bookmarking some cool capsules to check out. I’m really enjoying the newsfeeds while playing music all displayed on cool-retro-term. There’s something satisfying about it—feels like being on an old terminal out in a wild new frontier.
I’ve also been working on some scripts to automatically update my Episcopal daily prayers page. That’s been rewarding! I still need to clean it up before turning it into a cronjob, but hey, maybe soon I’ll have it updating itself. Then I can access it on my phone and have my own little fun thing going.
I’m still getting a feel for using Gemini, beyond just posting my stuff. It’s been enjoyable, though. Gemini feels like launching out into the cold darkness of space, exploring, mixed with a bit of archaeology—finding remnants of what was, could have been, or maybe evolved out here in Geminispace. Despite all that, I’m really liking it.
Signing off for now,
Your Oklahoma TechBrokeDad
In case you stumbled onto my wandering little satellite, feel free to reach out! I don’t use it much yet, but if you want to beep/toot/yammer/stammer/dishy/beam, hit me up on Mastodon.
@OK_TechBrokeDad@mastodon.social