Ever since discovering Gemini, I've been trying to spend more time here than on the web. Unfortunately, the things I'm looking for are more often than not to be found on the web. What I noticed though is that a lot of these sites I visit are designed in the spirit of Gemini already. They are minimialistic sites with text based content that actually focuses on the content. In my mind, I can already see how seamlessly these sites would make the transition to Geminispace. Then there's Gopher, something I discovered only days after Gemini and it is even more minimalistic than Gemini meaning it can make the jump to Geminispace even more effortlessly.
How does one go about getting this content on to Gemini though? The best way, the one that would benefit Geminispace the most would be to get in touch with these people and ask them to consider visiting and then maybe setting up a small capsule in Geminispace. It's a personal approach and one that in my mind fits in well with the vibes the Gemini community gives off. It's also one that doesn't scale all that well. I do mean to reach out to people but it turns out there's a way to view their content on Geminispace even before they get here. And so it is that I learnt about proxying, in 2020, after more than a decade on the web.
The first proxy I came across was Duckling by Luke Emmet. It's a Gemini to HTTP/HTTPS proxy written in Go and is a breeze to setup. All the information you need to have it up and running is on its readme. I ran into an issue with certificates but that was just me trying to be smarter than I am and once that was fixed, I had the proxy running on my VPS. I am still in awe over the fact that I was helped out by Luke himself on IRC. I dunno how common it is for the rest of y'all to actually speak to the author of a program you're using but this is the third time I've had that pleasure and it just doesn't get old. I love that small communities make this possible. Setting up a per-scheme proxy on Amfora is as easy as adding one line to the config and with that done, I can now pull the web into Geminispace (though I only recommend doing this for decently designed sites) and I couldn't be happier. The more time I can spend within Amfora, the happier I am.
Duckling: A HTTP/HTTPS to Gemini proxy by Luke Emmet
Exploring proxies following my discovery of Duckling led to me discovering Agena by none other than Solderpunk. This is a Gemini to Gopher proxy and it works as well as you'd expect it to. Setting it up was just as easy and now the best of my time in the internet is almost exclusively on Gemini.
Agena: Gopher to Gemini proxy by Solderpunk
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CC0 low-key, 2020-12-02