author: jsreed5
On 2024-10-25, I will replace the server certificate on Rob's Gemini Capsule with a new one. The current cert fingerprint ends with BB6C557D; the new cert fingerprint will end with 56D4B3AF. If you see "untrusted host" warnings in the near future, please don't panic!
When the CGIs on my capsule need to store data, I use SQLite as the backend. I'd like to try out a document-oriented NoSQL database for my next project. MongoDB is the obvious choice, but I don't like its licensing terms, and I like that SQLite doesn't require a process to run all the time. Is there an open-source document-oriented database analogous to SQLite?
Gemini has changed my perspective on social media in ways I didn't expect. Even from a technical standpoint, I don't see much of a need for heavy communication platforms like Twitter, Bluesky or Mastodon. Station and Bubble have shown that it's possible to build a thriving discussion space with only a TLS certificate and a GET request.
My intermittent capsule outages are being caused by what appears to be a very aggressive crawler. The capsule's robots.txt file tells bots not to index my CGI scripts, but this crawler is ignoring the file and sending multiple requests per second against my scripts, which overloads the server and causes it to crash. I've temporarily solved the problem by blocking the crawler entirely; I'll look for a more permanent solution.
It appears my capsule gemini://jsreed5.org went down at some point yesterday evening, and I only discovered it this morning. The capsule is now back online. I apologize for any inconvenience!
jsreed5.org was down for several hours last night. A problem in the underlying EC2 instance caused it to become unreachable, and I didn't notice the issue until I woke up today. It has now been resolved and my capsule is available again. I apologize for the inonvenience!
I forgot to post about this on places other than my capsule. A major bug was discovered in my chess service last week, which often caused match invitations to be deleted while being created and locking users out of making another invitation. This bug has been fixed. Thank you all for your patience!
My capsule (gemini://jsreed5.org) will undergo a very brief outage around 18:00 CDT due to our ISP performing network maintenance. I apologize for any inconvenience!
My capsule is back online. Thanks for your patience!
jsreed5.org will be down for a short time tomorrow, and possibly on Sunday as well. We are painting the room the server is in, and it will need to be moved out of the way (and back in later). I apologize for the inconvenience!
I finally got around to installing a UPS for my home server and storage. My capsule should stay online more consistently now.
After a week of downtime and four service tickets with my ISP, Rob's Capsule is finally back online!
I apologize for the extended downtime for jsreed5.org. I've been struggling with our new ISP to get self-hosting configured correctly, and I have no migration plan in place to run the capsule from a hosting provider. I hope to be back online tomorrow or Thursday!
My capsule will go offline for a few hours today, I hope for the last time for a while. I apologize for the inconvenience!
jsreed5.org is currently back online after a two-day hiatus. There may be some more downtime in April.
jsreed5.org will be down intermittently over the next few days: I self-host the capsule and we are preparing to move. I apologize for the inconvenience!
Where might I find a deep technical dive into the `git fetch` command? For example, what data does the command check in the remote repo, and what are all the files it might decide to download? I'm especially curious how it works over FTP.
I've been using Red Hat-related OSes almost exclusively for the last several years (Fedora, Rocky Linux, etc.). If I want to go further in exploring complete control over the function and design of a Unix-like OS, is it more worth it to look into OpenBSD or Slackware?
The weather CGI on my capsule is unable to retreive forecasts right now, due to issues in the National Weather Service's API. I'm not sure when this will be fixed. I apologize for the inconvenience! (edited to share correct link) https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/status/messages/
It appears the Geminispace.info search engine is running into scaling issues. Their search service is currently broken as well. I'd hate to see the capsule fold; they've been my preferred search service on Gemini since day one. gemini://geminispace.info/news
A request for some help! I'd like to add subdomains to my capsule and gopherhole, so that they can be accessed from both the subdomain and just the jsreed5.org domain. When setting up HAProxy, I find that both services can be reached with both subdomains, and only the port number matters. I'd like to restrict the capsule to one subdomain and the goperhole to the other. I self-host, so I only have one IP address to associate to DNS records. Any ideas on how to do this?
A few weeks ago someone on Gemini posted a gemlog about an offline stream-of-consciousness text editor. Each line of text in the editor would fade away after a few more lines were written, but were still saved. Does anyone know the name of this editor, or one like it?
I added an interactive Rubik's Cube to my capsule, which works by dynamically creating links that symbolize a turn of the cube. BUT, I forgot to add the page to my robots.txt at first. Now a crawler is trying to catalog all the dynamically-generated links. There are 43252003274489856000 possible links in total...
gemini://jsreed5.org will be down for a few minutes while the server room undergoes some maintenance. I apologize for the inconvenience!
[POLL Has your experience with the small Internet ever come in handy at your job?] Yes | No
Rob's Gemini Capsule is temporarily offline due to a power failure. I'm not at home at the moment to bring the capsule back online. It should be back up later this evening. I apologize for the inconvenience!
I've finally docked at Station, now that I've gotten around to configuring my clients with a new long-term certificate. Nice to join you all!