Welcome to the Illuminated Space Zine issue 2! In this issue I'm going to talk about
cool stuff like the Spartan protocol(Not related to the cryptocurrency) and beefing
up your Raspberry Pi!
If you haven't already heard, if you're in Gemini Space(Which obviously you are
), there are other protocols similar to Gemini. These protocols vary greatly
in their approach and usability. One such of these is Spartan.
As you can guess from the name, it takes it's inspiration from the 300 Spartans
, which were infamous for their last stand. Anyways, I suppose it also takes
a cue from the other meaning of the word, which is to say, and I paraphrase
here 'Mostly empty, devoid of content or decorum'. That's not a bad thing
though for those who are into alternative protocols!
In any case, I test drove the reference implementation of the server on
my home system, which now runs Fedora Kinoite. The server did as expected
and was ultra similar to a Gemini server. I really do like it!
I will need to test other clients and servers, but I do hope that Gemini
clients that support other protocols besides just Gemini itself add
support for it. It feels like there could be a lot there to experiment
with and have fun with, as it says on the home page of the Spartan
protocol.
I don't expect a client like Lagrange anytime soon, but I imagine that
sometime a good graphical client will add support for it and people
will understand that no one protocol should have a monopoly on anything.
We can have an inbetween of an inbetween, now can't we?
Lots of people use their Raspberry Pi for a number of things. In
the gemini sphere, pis make great home options for self-hosting.
I myself have many pi's that I use regularly. Today tho I wanted
to talk about the Argon One. The Argon One is a Raspberry Pi
case that allows you to hook up a SSD onto your pi. This means
much faster read and write speed, of course.
At first I was very skeptical of it, but after trying it myself
and using it for Recalbox(Recalbox is a retro game emulator
OS similar to RetroPie), I can see the great value for it.
I tried to run it headless and for some reason it wouldn't do
it, but maybe I should try again later and see how that goes..
You can find the Argon One case on Amazon and probably other
sites as well.
The official Argon One case website is:
In a increasingly commercialistic and hostile web space,
we look towards Gemini more and more. But I find this
path to be a very difficult one right now.
Right now I continue to use a number of websites,
ironically to sometimes discover more about Gemini.
I'd say that the primary thing I use a web browser for
is for chatting. Yes, chatting through Discord and Matrix.
Discord, well, we know that's a bomb waiting to explode
due to it's propietary nature. Hopefully Matrix will
eventually take it's place. I have a lot of friends
on Discord and I'd say that the only thing I like about
Discord itself is how easy it is to get started using it
and creating your own server.
I also use a web browser for shopping, a wholly necessary
function... but I'd love to replace that with local stores.
Nevertheless, what I usually want you can't find easily in
stores a lot. Usually that's video games, but also computer
components...
Finally, the most important thing I use the web for is for
the news. I believe that Gemini tho has taken a step in
showing news tho, and I hope it continues in that manner.
All in all, perhaps the Gemini sphere is perfect as is right
now, and it's me who needs to change, but I am reflecting upon
it as a casual user. If you have suggestions on how I could
change it up, let me know from my email address below!
Thank you all for showing up for this issue and I hope we
can continue with even more issues and discussions in the
future!
mdsj at disroot dot org