2023-09-16

ROOPHLOCH --- preparations

So, ~solderpunk has called for another issue of the outdoor challenge.

Once again, the time for ROOPHLOCH is upon us.

gemini://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/gemlog/announcing-roophloch-2023.gmi

In the past I have admired the creativity of participants, e.g. using a chain of several retro devices to get the bytes transported all the way to modern day network, or using a ham radio link or something such. Now my problem is not to come up with fancy ideas, but rather to get something going before the end of this years September, really.

The Plan

So I'll try something simple:

using my seven or so years old ACER Travelmate B116 (running Debian 12) --- the chiclet keyboard is a whole different challenge after having used a keyboard.io model 100 for too long
install emacs, git and whatnot to actually be able to edit a post and commit it to sourcehut
use an old Telekom SurfStick with an equally old SIM card still showing a few Euros worth of prepaid connection/data volume --- I have tried to use this only few times, and every time it took a lot of head scratching to get it going. Eventually I put the fancy commands into a small script, so things are not hopeless.

I believe, I have loaded everything onto this little box. This post is made while still using my home ethernet cable, such that I can verify, things are all in place. Let's go ...

I can see a rendered version of this post by pointing emacs/elpher to the file! Nice!
recreate the capsule's indices ... works, just takes some time, ok!
recreate the checksum, signatures ... hmmm, secret key missing ... try it again, Sam!
commit and push

If you can read this, it worked.

Home