Silas S. Brown’s Gemini capsule

Hi, I’m a partially-sighted computer scientist at Cambridge University in the UK. I come from rural West Dorset on the South-West peninsula of England. I play the flute and I’ve been learning Chinese slowly since about the beginning of the century.

Contact info: I am @ssb22 on Telegram Messenger, and I have an email at cam.ac.uk with the same ID (I’m not writing it in full here in case the spam robots discover an HTTP to Gemini proxy; my Web version has some Javascript "protection" although that seems to be getting less useful these days so I have to improve my spam filters as well)

This Gemini capsule is currently mirrored on both ctrl-c.club and tilde.pink because I was using it to compare the configurations of these servers with respect to language tagging (I have both English and Chinese on my pages), see Issue 23 in the molly-brown server repository. The addresses of this capsule are gemini://gemini.ctrl-c.club/~ssb22/ and gemini://tilde.pink/~ssb22/

Below is a list of my pages. I’ve converted most of these to Gemini, but there are still a few HTTP links in the list, for example because of poetry layouts that I found awkward to convert to Gemini, or Web forms for CGI programs etc—but there might be a couple that *could* be converted when I get there. Please be assured that the HTTP links (which also support HTTPS if you prefer) do lead to “old-school” lightweight HTML; meanwhile most links below are now Gemini links.

Adding Chinese web pages to Baidu

Advantages of dark backgrounds on computer displays

Algorithmic Composition and Reductionist Analysis: Can a Machine Compose?

Android viewer app for static HTML

Anemone DAISY maker

Annotator Generator

Apology to Chinese recruiters

Blocking Russia from my website in the 2010s

Bolo Adventures “walk-through”

Cambridge to London avoiding large stations

Cat scarers becoming audible

CD recommen­dations & track listings

CedPane: Chinese-English Dictionary Public-domain Additions for Names Etc

Charlearn, a program for learning to recognise foreign characters

Chess FEN codes for handicapped games

Chinese mistakes in commercial speech synthesizers

Chinese music and CUCOS

Chords on the Flute (multiphonics)

Civica UK is wrong about middle names

Claims that the leaving-Cambridge poem was about the girl Lin Huiyin disrespect the poet Xu Zhimo

Clara Empricost

Clara Empricost: How it Works

Clara Empricost: Installation Instructions

Common problems adding pinyin to Chinese names

Compositions and arrangements

Connecting to a Psion PDA

Converting “1000 imp/kWh” to watts

Coping with exam stress: unofficial guide (Simplified Chinese + English)

Coping with exam stress: unofficial guide (Traditional Chinese + English)

Cortical visual impairment

Current-transformer “energy monitors”

C Vu articles

Desktop SSH via Android devices

Director Musices with Lilypond “Howto”

Download 4DML Transformation Utility

Eating at other Cambridge colleges

Elgar Op.74 “Give Unto the Lord” scanned score

Emacs and XEmacs configuration

Energy deals coherence checker

English phrases for tourists

Eulerian paths around polygons

Four-dimensional markup language (4DML)

Four-dimensional markup language (4DML) transformation utility v0.691 Reference Manual

FreeType in low resolution

Getty Images copied my words

GIF Patent Problems and the Language Viewer

Google Maps "Share" link simplifier

Gopher protocol considered inferior

Gradint自己學外語軟件

Gradint自己学外语软件

Gradint, a program for self-study of foreign languages

Heating a flat: vegetable-oil candles or oil-filled radiators?

"Hedgehog" magnifier

homenet.org is down

How NOT to marry a foreign national

How the Cambridge Student-Run Computing Facility started

How to deal with “rate us” boxes on Android etc

How to just about survive in Android OS

How to use Economy 7 effectively

How to work around Zoom’s no-audio bug

I am not Sina Weibo’s silascambridge: theft of a virtual identity

If We Only Understood poem

ImapFix: a filter/fixer for IMAP mailboxes

Instructions for “F95B” portable rechargeable fan

Introducing OOP in a Python game

iPhone UK billing and messaging issues with Virgin and Vectone (with workarounds)

Ipsos Mori Internet devices

Is gradint-wrapper.exe a virus?

Is the PH Corpus really public domain?

Is WeChat’s “cleaver” a death threat?

Jianpu in Lilypond

Large print in Wayland

Large-print notes on EPOC or Symbian

“Legal name fraud” nothing to worry about

lexconvert: a converter for phoneme codes and lexicon formats

Lighting notes

LINE limitations

List of my academic publications

List of vaguely-usable old Windows Mobile phones

Loophole in Microsoft YaHei font license?

Low-vision configuration for terminal applications

Low-vision X11 configuration

Mac magnification setup

Mac MIDI player utility

Magnetic field physics: is your phone charger really killing you?

Manually removing Windows “adware” with race conditions

Manuscript Writer (1993-99)

MIDI Beeper (and RISC OS Maestro / BBC Micro converter)

Minmin's reply to Xu Zhimo's Leaving Cambridge poem

Mobile-phone contract checklist

Mortgaging versus renting

Netgear VMDG280 command-line control scripts

Notes on video conversion with mencoder

Offline HTML Indexer

Offline package installation for Debian-based GNU/Linux distributions

Old CUCCS (CUCUS) website

Old notes: Windows Mobile email setup

OpenID with command-line authorisation

Openreach broadband providers

Pen-sized digital voice recorders

Polipo2: a caching Web proxy forked from Polipo

Preparing enlarged lesson notes with Unix tools

Primer Pooler

Python utilities for S60 phones

Raspberry Pi Zero W projector controller

Recent commits to ssb22's GitHub repositories

Removing Android “Clean Master” malware

RISC OS and low vision

River Snow translation

Satellite navigation devices that do not require Windows

Screenshotting Chinese Web documents for WeChat

Script-driven contact management etc in Skype

Shower-head water filter tested

Simplifying Unicode punctuation for SMS

Software patents and mental health

Solving Micropower Chess (1982)

Spaced-out audio tracks with cdrdao

Spare processor cycles

Spiral CFLs in tight fixtures

Spotify’s numerous “radio” channels

Stylesheets for low vision

TermLayout

The AI Misnomer

The “go and argue with *them*” fallacy

The Raven annotated for Chinese readers

The Telegram Borrowers

Time and item counter

Toothpastes suitable for an electric brush

Trademarks mentioned in my capsule

Transcript of Bilibili video trying to encourage Chinese with disabilities

Twitter on a 1982 BBC Micro

Typescript player for HTML5

UK citizenship application and referee requirements

UK passport application questions

Unclarity in WhatsApp’s new Terms

Undergraduate Project Dissertation (A Representation and Conversion System for Musical Notation)

Undergraduate project dissertation: errata

Understanding rejection on WeChat (Weixin)

Upgrading old Windows to GNU/Linux

UPnP router command-line control scripts

URL encoder for mobile chat

Useless metrics

Using Microsoft Windows with low vision

Using weibo.com’s S60 client

VNC with inverted colours

Volume settings for unpowered speakers

Web Access Gateway (1997-2006)

Web Access Gateway: Chinese entry page

Web Access Gateway: Japanese entry page

Web Access Gateway: Korean entry page

Web Access Gateway: Online Help

Web Adjuster

WebCheck: monitor text strings on websites

Web design advice

Web statistics services can be harmful

WeChat (Weixin) limitations

Wenlin improvements

“White noise” MIDI file

Why animated flip boxes are not always good

Why I admit to being prejudiced

Why I’m not a lecturer

Why I unsubscribe from MailChimp

Why Wi-Fi routers should be left switched on

Windows Mobile 6.1 setup notes

X11 hardware magnification

X11 low-resolution scrollable desktop

X11 software magnification: last resort

X11: Using large print when in high resolution

Xu Zhimo's Leaving Cambridge poem: rhyming translation

Xu Zhimo's Leaving Cambridge poem: rhyming translation (Full-form characters)

Xu Zhimo's Leaving Cambridge poem: rhyming translation (version with notes in Full-form Chinese)

Xu Zhimo's Leaving Cambridge poem: rhyming translation (version with notes in Simplified Chinese)

Other links

AI & copyright talk I was in (on panel's YouTube channel)

M3GAN fan novel mentioning this talk

my OpenStreetMap contributions

railway stations visited

Underground stations visited

BBC article that mentioned me for still using a Psion in 2021