Tinylogs From Outer Space

Thu 21 May 2026 00:19 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

diving back into the world of IRC. It's been fun, but mostly because of the technical side and not really the chatting. this is a common theme for me.

I've been toying with irssi and weechat, figuring out how they work and learning IRC commands again.

I even setup an IRC bouncer, znc, on my VPS just to try it out and maybe connect an android app to it. again, setup, and not so much for the chat.

Mon 18 May 2026 05:42 CET

author: martin

Tomorrow I'm leaving Da Nang after spending the past 3 months here again. This season has been different. Da Nang has hit peak indie hacker energy, and there have been an unreal number of cool, genuine people here. I've made more friends-for-life than is even reasonable in a 3-month period. The experience has been another reminder that being where "your people" are, engaging in the real world with them, and making new deep connections with people, no matter what age you are, is an insanely gratitude-giving way of living. Just wanted to share in this little moment of intense gratitude for a world full of cool, unique people, who make the whole thing much more meaningful for me. ❤️

· 1 Reply · 12 Thumbs

Wed 13 May 2026 17:50 CET

author: @zekromaster

I've been reading Jodorowsky's Psicomagia, and I've kind of realised that I have no idea why I have this book.

Like, I just... own a copy of it, apparently bought from Libraccio, which is a used book shop which I know for a fact I didn't order it from.

There's a leaf acting as a bookmark on page 97, which I assume is from the previous owner.

But for all intents and purposes, I have no clue how or when this book entered my house.

Wed 13 May 2026 03:08 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Didn't make it out to a reticulum meetup/infosession this evening, but i did install rns + nomadnet on the laptop to try out that interface. Seems neat, clearly still early days ... might look up the various LoRa boards to see what kind of radio setup might be within my (very small) budget and (very limited) technical capability. Doing some kind of solar/battery thing would be amazing, and would be more in line with the purpose of the project, but I can't really justify the expense. No idea what the reception is like where I am, or how far away any other nodes are. But a grassroots internet is extremely appealing in theory.

Tue 12 May 2026 04:38 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Finally felt ready to write the obligatory "why I like gemini" post, hopefully saying something new on the topic, which in my case means writing something related to the Borges story "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote" that I must've read well over a decade ago (and once again last week), but then realised I probably don't fully understand what Borges was getting at since I haven't actually read Don Quixote.

Well, dear reader, I'm finally remedying this, and, 19 chapters in, along with the first few of a series of recorded lectures, I can report it's not only a barrel of laughs but also a pretty deep examination of language and literature.

Essay might be a while though:)

Mon 11 May 2026 10:36 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

Rustin Dodd, "The scientific case for ping pong: Why athletes — and you — should play more table tennis"

neat

Wed 06 May 2026 01:44 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

Randomly browsing lobsters via the Gemini proxy, and unexpectedly read a blog that mentions Gemini and offpunk.

https://leetusman.com/nosebook/yvi

Tue 05 May 2026 03:51 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

couple more tweaks to the game code. Starting with the next daily reset in a few minutes, the "yesterday's top gobblers" page will also start showing the previous day's longest word(s). Great suggestion from a player to add this. Fingers crossed I didn't code any new bugs, heh, but I have a "testing" version of the page now that seems to work OK

Mon 04 May 2026 00:22 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Alright so, shrunk the grid for Gobble to 5x5, made the minimum word 5 letters, and coded in a few requirements (how many words in the board max/min, a minimum longest-word-length) for the randomized letter arrangement to be accepted. I think it's a better game now? Oh, and 50+ words will be added to the dictionary just before the game resets tonight.

shout out to @stack and @gritty for showing some of what is possible on this protocol. Had a lot of fun making this game and really glad to see people are mostly(?) enjoying it :)

Sun 03 May 2026 22:39 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

My Gemlog now finally has an Atom feed for Gemini as well as for the web at marcorocco.net/atom.xml.

Sat 02 May 2026 07:53 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

whee, here's a 6x6 boggle clone for the geminauts:

gemini://gemini.patatas.ca/gobble

suggestions and/or bug reports welcome!

Fri 01 May 2026 17:30 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

lmao so it turns out I have completely misunderstood how a CGI application works - or at least, I've been building my gemini apps completely ass-backwards compared to how most people do it. No wonder the logic kept feeling so convoluted ugh

Fri 01 May 2026 13:13 CET

author: martin

Oh, by the way: gemini://station.martinrue.com/updates

· 8 Replies · 15 Thumbs

Thu 30 Apr 2026 02:10 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Had been watching so many good movies recently that I was starting to wonder if I'd lost the ability to discern good art from bad. If you like everything, then can you really be said to appreciate what you're watching?

Anyway, shout-out to "Send Help" for making it clear that no, it was just a string of excellent movies

Thu 30 Apr 2026 00:16 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

`ls -l apps/misfin/store/identities/*.pem | wc -l`

That's how many #misfin #gembox are currently registered at #WPN

Misfin

Mon 27 Apr 2026 22:31 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I'm floundering with a new project. I started one but I'm not super excited about it, so I started looking into building a TUI, but I'm not sure what to build with it: Gemini has a bunch of great terminal browsers already. I considered mirroring Amfora in Racket to learn TUI coding and adding Titan and multiline support but that seems like a big project that I probably don't have time for.

I might just stick with the original plan...

Mon 27 Apr 2026 12:15 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

a lot more people back in the cars now that there are rear view cameras and drivers assists

Sat 25 Apr 2026 21:36 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

Today I removed the floor tiles from the patio, exposing the rubble stone floor underneath.

Sat 25 Apr 2026 04:04 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

alright so, at least partly inspired by @sandra@idiomdrottning.org's www boycott efforts, my spouse and I are going to go screen-free together on Saturday afternoons, 12-6pm. No phones, laptops, video games, movies, shows, or podcasts, just board games, puzzles, talking, walking, musical instruments, books, art supplies, and records. Also no chores or errands either. Phones will go into a nice wooden box for the duration - not locked or anything, just as a kind of ritualistic gesture. I'm really looking forward to finding things to do, or even just not doing anything, honestly

Thu 23 Apr 2026 03:08 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I've messed around with Amfora before but I'm really liking it a lot more now. I've picked the dracula theme, setup my certs, started memorizing the shorcut keys, and am now setting up my bookmarks. I love not needing to remove my hands from the keyboard, and the TUI makes it feel...more gemini I guess.

Tue 21 Apr 2026 12:47 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

back from my work trip. I don't know how much time I'll have for coding projects again due to reallife™, but I'll keep plugging at my Racket project when I have time.

Sun 19 Apr 2026 21:27 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

going through cs50p; decided to remake my Gemini bookmarks page and improve the functionality (the old one is still at cgi-bookmarks.gmi while I beta test this one)

gemini://gemini.patatas.ca/bookmarks.gmi

now instead of a csv file for each link category, it's a list of dictionaries, one for each category; within each of those 'category dicts' is another list of dicts, one for each bookmark record.

the code's pretty messy, but no one ever got good at something without first doing it badly! So, even with my best efforts at exception handling etc, there's probably a couple nasty bugs still. I'll run it for a bit, and then pop it up on codeberg for anyone interested.

Wed 15 Apr 2026 16:44 CET

author: @zekromaster

I was arguing with a friend, and my point was that, if you believe eating pasture-raised eggs are a more ethical choice than industrial cage-farmed eggs, then it can be reasonable for someone else to use your same reasoning to instead explain their own veganism. I'm not vegan myself, but it seems obvious to me that, with zero insight into the inner lives of animals, any line drawn regarding animal suffering is completely arbitrary: whatever your standards are, they necessarily always can justify stricter standards, up to and including not farming animals in any way at all.

So no matter where you draw the line, if you say "these are my standards to ensure that I'm eating eggs that cause the least suffering possible", you have to admit you have no knowledge of the final amount of suffering created, and that from then on you're simply balancing your own access to eggs with hypothetical suffering you could be preventing by switching to a stricter standard. This is reasonable: if I'm not sure switching from pasture-raised eggs to something even stricter will significantly reduce suffering, but it will make it harder for me to access eggs, I have no real reason to do it.

But this means, for instance, that if at any point an egg alternative is released onto the market that covers all your usage of eggs and is as widely available to you, the sole fact you were willing to draw a line somewhere and had the goal to reduce suffering means the only logical course of action would be to switch to the alternative, since then you're reducing hypothetical suffering, but at no loss to yourself.

Does this make sense? Or does it feel like an unwarranted jump?

Wed 15 Apr 2026 14:24 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

### author: 🤘 @toby@tobykurien.com

A story in 3 photos. #birding #laughingdove #nest #chicks #photo

Life happened :)

Wed 15 Apr 2026 00:00 CET

author: 🤘 @toby@tobykurien.com

A story in 3 photos. #birding #laughingdove #nest #chicks #photo

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1776238427-0.jpg

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1776238427-1.JPG

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1776238427-2.JPG

Tue 14 Apr 2026 11:55 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

post of the day

Squall of Consciousness

Stream of consciousness is right. I appreciate the raw thoughts going from coding, to coffee, to baking fish, and back to coding. A glimpse in the life of.

Mon 13 Apr 2026 20:17 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

Starting now, I can post to both twtxt and tinylog at the same time.

Mon 13 Apr 2026 00:53 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I miss the smolzine

Smolzine

Sun 12 Apr 2026 01:19 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

got that meeting with my city councillor scheduled. was getting worried they might be giving me the run-around! with any luck, i'll end up with a good sense of how to most effectively oppose this huge-ass data centre proposal ...

Sun 12 Apr 2026 00:30 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

I like being up at night, when everyone's sleeping, doing IT stuff.

I don't like it so much awakening in the morning though..

Sat 11 Apr 2026 23:52 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

Today, Simone and I spent the whole day in the garden and planted the flower bed next to the garage.

Sat 11 Apr 2026 20:28 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I've been to a lot of really good BBQ places and brisket just tastes like smoked pot roast to me. I'll take pulled pork or chicken any day.

Sat 11 Apr 2026 19:23 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

It's starting to be the time of year where my interests shift away from computer hobbies and onto outdoor hobbies as the weather warms up. I own a home so there's no shortage of maintenance to be done.

Sat 11 Apr 2026 05:46 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I've been continuing to play pickleball. There's this nice kid in his 20s that's really good and coaches on the side, so I took a couple of lessons from him. Although I am probably twice his age I don't let it bother me - he's good at what he does and I need to learn. We did some drills and I got some pointers that should help my game after I do some repetitions.

Wed 08 Apr 2026 03:28 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

trying to set up a meeting with my city councillor about a proposed 180MW AI data centre that would be built just a few km from where I live. If that fails then I start calling the other councillors and will also try to get an op-ed published in the city's newspaper. No one wants these things, but this one has really flown under the radar, which is for sure deliberate on the part of the asset manager that wants to develop the site, and likely deliberate on the part of the city and province. Municipal elections in October though so now's probably a great time to raise a stink!

Tue 07 Apr 2026 21:07 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

I made a script that converts my gemini capsule to html, so it's also availabe at https://marcorocco.net now. 🙃

Mon 06 Apr 2026 13:39 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

TIL:

Antonio Diaz Diaz, "Xz format inadequate for general use"

One of the challenges of digital preservation is the evaluation of data formats. It is important to choose well-designed data formats for general use. This article explains the reasons why the xz compressed data format is inadequate for most uses, including long-term archiving, data sharing, and free software distribution. The relevant weaknesses and design errors in the xz format are analyzed and, where applicable, compared with the corresponding behavior of the bzip2, gzip, and lzip formats. Key findings include: (1) safe interoperability between xz implementations is not guaranteed; (2) xz is vulnerable to unprotected flags and length fields; (3) LZMA2 is unsafe and less efficient than the original LZMA; (4) xz's extensibility is unreasonable and problematic; (5) xz includes useless features that increase the number of false positives for corruption; (6) xz shows inconsistent behavior with respect to trailing data; (7) error detection in xz is less accurate than in bzip2, gzip, and lzip.

(...)

There are several reasons why the xz compressed data format is inadequate for general use. To begin with, xz is a complex container format that is not even fully documented and is inadequate for long-term archiving, especially of valuable data. Using a complex format for long-term archiving would be a bad idea even if the format were well-designed, which xz is not. In general, the more complex the format, the less probable that it can be decoded in the future by a digital archaeologist. For long-term archiving, simple is robust.

Mon 06 Apr 2026 10:08 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

Just installed Proxmox to try it out. The repositories (by default the paid enterprise ones) have to be changed:

Proxmox VE No-Subscription Repository

Ceph Repositories § Ceph repositories for Proxmox VE 9 § no-subscription

Then it's possible to update/upgrade the system. It will still nag occasionally that there's no subscription, though it's safe to ignore (AFAICT).

Fri 03 Apr 2026 23:29 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

Today we started repainting the kitchen and dining room. We'll continue tomorrow.

Wed 01 Apr 2026 20:05 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

Just one more day of work, and we'll have the week after Easter off 😌

Wed 01 Apr 2026 01:47 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Watched 'Sentimental Value' on the weekend and enjoyed it way more than I'd expected to. Really fascinating multi-layered story, yet not really plot-driven at all. Amazing performances and not a single line of dialogue felt unimportant by the end. I'd expected a straight-forward drama, but (for me at least) this flim was transcendent.

If you're not sure it's for you, watch the first ~five minutes and then I dare you to turn it off.

Tue 31 Mar 2026 14:54 CET

author: @zekromaster

I've ordered a Silhouette Cameo 5α and an Epson ET-2851. Also a laminator.

Try to guess what I'm about to do.

You wouldn't download a Polluted Delta

Sun 29 Mar 2026 12:57 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

@patatas Thank You, bookmarked!

Sun 29 Mar 2026 05:08 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

re: @roughnecks@woodpeckersnest.space 2026-03-27 19:38 +01:00

Aight I wrote up that quick gemlog post - after completely reworking my tinylog aggregator script lol

gemini://gemini.patatas.ca/posts/tinylog-aggregator.gmi

It's much better now i think? Rate-limited to one run of gtl per 10 minutes. And I learned a little bit more python :)

Sat 28 Mar 2026 12:23 CET

author: @zekromaster

So, my train arrived here yesterday around lunch time. I'm leaving before lunch. I think I've spent less than 24h in Turin.

Fri 27 Mar 2026 18:55 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

re: @roughnecks@woodpeckersnest.space 2026-03-27 19:38 +01:00

yeah maybe I'll do a short gemlog about it and let you know when i post it? I'm still very much a novice coder so it's really kind of a string-and-chewing-gum type solution though :)

Would definitely be curious to see other folks' implementations, if you're also willing to share!

Fri 27 Mar 2026 18:44 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

re: @zekromaster@zekromaster.net 2026-03-27 10:13 +0100

tbh I didn't think about it super deeply so probably more of an ease-of-implementation thing :D

My server does have some rate-limiting built in, but (and maybe I'm overthinking or not thinking about it correctly) this system for tinylogs seems like it could act as a 'force multiplier' for clogging up the resources of the gemini space, at least for folks running capsules on ultra-low-powered hardware.

Also apparently I gotta figure out a more efficient system for replying to comments like yours, because this took a bunch of clicks and copy-pastes - what's your setup for that?

Fri 27 Mar 2026 19:38 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

re: @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca 2026-03-27 07:14 +0000

I have an aggregated Tinylog for external capsuleers as well, on my capsule, but I just use crontab and refresh it every 30'.

I'm not very active on gemini lately and just today found an issue which prvented its correct output to file.

I'm also running a local-only (my server's capsules) tinylog, with the same philosophy as above; honestly I don't feel the need to have them updated on the fly, but if you want to share how are you doing it, well, I might try.. Never "messed up" with certs, so far :)

Fri 27 Mar 2026 10:13 CET

author: @zekromaster

re: @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca 2026-03-27 07:14 +0000

Is there any reason you're not doing rate-limiting? Is it just too much work for it to be worth it vis-a-vis just checking a cert before downloading everything, or are you against it?

Fri 27 Mar 2026 09:55 CET

author: @zekromaster

If wagon-lits have one fan, that fan is me. If wagon-lits have no fans, then I'm dead.

This morning I woke up, got dressed, and opened my room's door to the view of the Ligurian sea passing by. What's not to love?

Fri 27 Mar 2026 07:14 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

alright sweet - got a basic tinylog aggregator page working:

gemini://gemini.patatas.ca/gtl-reader.gmi

It updates on-the-fly for *me*; that is, as long as I'm using the correct client cert - but for everyone else, a cron job runs only once every 24h, saving the result to a file. Because if someone tries to ddos *my* server that's one thing, but I don't want to create/be a vector for the abuse of *other people's* servers!

Fri 27 Mar 2026 05:42 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

a quick test post to see if a cgi script is working

Fri 27 Mar 2026 03:38 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Polished off two more books - Charles Portis' "True Grit" and the Henrik Ibsen play "An Enemy of the People".

"True Grit" is a *very* funny romp of a western with so many memorable moments. Wish I could remember who had recommended it - probably around a year ago, I think on the fediverse? I'm surprised I'd never heard of it before then, though.

"An Enemy of the People" is gripping, unsettling, and full of contradiction, can't decide if it's supposed to be pessimistic or more of a cautionary tale - maybe both? - but I'm not surprised that Malcolm Harris discusses it in What's Left.

Tue 24 Mar 2026 00:00 CET

author: 🤘 @toby@tobykurien.com

Printed a very basic quick-and-dirty 3D model of a guitar pickup cover that clips onto the pickup bobbin, to make it easy to swap out covers without needing to remove the strings or pickups. Got lucky with the first try. Looks pretty good, I think! #3dprinting #diy #maker #guitar

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1774357522-0.jpg

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1774357522-1.jpg

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1774357522-2.jpg

Mon 23 Mar 2026 23:54 CET

author: @zekromaster

Took some time today to look at the capsule and do some adjustments. I moved some stuff around, added a links.gmi page to list all my other active places online, I put more focus on the tinylog — since it seems like I mostly write here.

I like how it looks now.

Sun 22 Mar 2026 02:29 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

Announcing Pig! (yet another dice game)

I've implemented the die game Pig, but this time entirely in Racket [1], a Lisp-language relative (read: functional programming). This is BETA and open for TESTING.

The game uses SCGI instead of CGI in order to elminate repeated calls to load and unload a CGI program: Pig is loaded into memory and waits for connections. The SCGI portion was created from scratch as well.

Thanks to @stack for the Lisp inspiration.

Sat 21 Mar 2026 05:10 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

spent a week in Bogota, Colombia with spouse and their family; brother-in-law got married to a very sweet Colombian woman who he'd met via a dating app a few years ago.

we had a great time both at the wedding and sightseeing, although i feel like i'm still sort of coming to terms with the mental shakeup of travelling outside Canada for the first time since march 2020.

the effect was a bit like splashing cold water on my face.

Fri 20 Mar 2026 03:56 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I'm pretty close to done with my 1st Racket project. It's late so I'll have to test it out on the VPS later. I'm optimistic It'll be live by the weekend

Thu 19 Mar 2026 23:06 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I just scheduled a plumbing job over the phone entirely with an AI agent. What a world

Tue 17 Mar 2026 00:00 CET

author: 🤘 @toby@tobykurien.com

I built a simple #DIY #oscilloscope and logic analyser using a #RaspberryPi Pico. It uses the pico-sigrok firmware, so I can capture and decode signals using sigrok on a laptop. Tested it by adding a basic analog frontend and then playing a guitar note through a tube overdive pedal and the results look quite good!

> pico-sigrok

https://github.com/pico-coder/sigrok-pico

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1773741010-0.jpg

Mon 16 Mar 2026 03:36 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

Coded most of the day in Racket on a personal learning project for Gemini. Starting to get the hang of functional programming finally.

Fri 13 Mar 2026 20:16 CET

author: @zekromaster

I feel like we should live in 2007's 2030.

I like The Internet being a place in your house you can leave, instead of a background noise.

I like it being asynchronous.

I like your space being your space rather than a corporation's space.

I like third party hosts being tools to help those who don't have technical know-how or resources available, and I like being able to «graduate» from them at any time.

I like the version of digital sovereignty where you don't worry about who stores your chats because your chats are files on a server of your choice which might very well be in your home.

I think The Web should be in a sense «embodied» somewhere. We should all know where our PC is and where the servers it connects to are and we should not let the raw infrastructure be abstracted away just so it can follow us and get sold back to us.

Yes, an Embodied Web sounds right.

Tue 10 Mar 2026 04:58 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I hurt my lower back a little last week so I've been taking it easy and stretching. Tonight I played some pickleball and feel okay, but I know the stiffness and pain is delayed. here's to hoping tomorrow and the next day are alright. It sucks not getting cardio exercise in because it makes me feel better.

Thu 05 Mar 2026 20:05 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

Links in Evidenza

Le nostre app FreshRSS, phanpy e server misfin sono ora presenti sui rispettivi siti web upstream.

https://freshrss.org/cloud-providers.html FreshRSS Cloud Providers

https://github.com/cheeaun/phanpy?tab=readme-ov-file#community-deployments phanpy

https://misfin.gitlab.io/ misfin

\o/

Mon 02 Mar 2026 07:03 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

Really enjoying all the time & mental space created by heavily curtailing my social media use over the last couple of months.

Spouse & I watched 'Train Dreams' last night and 'Pillion' this evening. Train Dreams was great - although I think I should've read the novella first. Beautiful, huge, walking-pace movie with an almost pantheistic quality, exploring what we lose when time speeds up and space shrinks.

Pillion was fantastic: insular, unsettling, dialectical; the way it resolves seems to do the Lacanian thing of retroactively assigning meaning to the events that came before. Loved this one.

Sun 01 Mar 2026 21:17 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

New Tech-Gemlog Entry

My Foray Into Racket Programming

Tue 24 Feb 2026 05:10 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

finished reading Malcolm Harris' book What's Left yesterday. Quite enjoyed it, especially chapter 4 — which looks at ways of combining the three main strategies outlined in the previous chapters (market craft, public power, communism) and does so in a really lively and compelling style.

Right now there are 300 million Indian workers on strike(!) and large protests in Argentina, in both cases against right-wing economic & labour policies (and US-friendly governments). Do I dare hope that workers of the world are uniting?

Mon 23 Feb 2026 21:30 CET

author: 🐦 @roughnecks

I never imagined I could have so many issues with DNS; literally, whatever server I use I have issues.. all but NEXTDNS! But than means I have to make queries from my VPS with my personal profile, which happens to be on the free tier :(

send halp, I'm tired*

Sun 22 Feb 2026 06:55 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

friend who I've been giving some craftsperson lessons went and bought me some fancy studio mixing headphones as a thank-you gift. I would never have splurged on these for myself, but they're an absolute pleasure. Ridiculously comfortable too. Been having some fun tinkering with music software again; maybe my mixes will improve too ...

Wed 18 Feb 2026 18:01 CET

author: @zekromaster

I think what makes the most sense is if I just redirect people who want to finger me to tilde.team, where I already keep a .plan and a .project.

So this is my new finger URL, also accessible as zekromaster@tilde.team

Wed 18 Feb 2026 13:59 CET

author: @zekromaster

Finger has been temporarily put out of order as I migrate stuff.

Wed 18 Feb 2026 06:31 CET

author: @zkbro@gmi.zkbro.com

Tired. Work is draining me. The whole culture is not sitting well. It is affecting my physical and mental health. More and more I contemplate selling my home and going nomad. Homesteading also enticing me again. I have enough foundational skills to get things moving there. It would mean moving though. It is not cheap here. The average house price here is $1,570,350. That's rediculous. I bought 6 years ago much cheaper using my previous home sale to get me in the door, but my mortage still hurts, and my wage is not great. Renting is expensive too, even just getting a room in a share house. Yuck. I've taken too many pay cuts chasing jobs I'm interested in, but being let down by the work environment. Maybe it's time to stop working for the man. Easier said than done. Time to start planning at least. Explore my options.

Tue 17 Feb 2026 13:26 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

the reason my new project is taking so long is that I'm using it to learn new things. I got a functional prototype and now I'm implementing different patterns. I've got the (very) beginnings of a url router working for it through study of how the net/http package works and a couple blog posts. I'll have to refactor my project to use this pattern now.

after that, I'm implementing a repository and related services. I'm currently using a bastardized version of mvc, which works, but I need to organize better with a repo.

Mon 16 Feb 2026 17:34 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I'm on a roll clogging up everyone's feed. I updated my /Now/ page and it sparked me to write a phlog about pickleball.

Pickleball

Mon 16 Feb 2026 14:34 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

Alhena Gemini / Gopher / Nex Browser - I'm not on desktop a lot but this browser has matured since I last used it. I recommend giving it a shot.

If you prefer Lagrange styling, select "Xcode Dark" theme. I also changed the scroll speed. "Drag to Scroll" is a nice feature. Many keyboard shortcuts are also available if that's your preference. It imports Lagrange PEM certs no problem, just right-click the page and select import.

Alhena Gemini Browser

Mon 16 Feb 2026 02:16 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

Created another phlog entry. This time on today's hike.

Hiking the American Southwest

Sun 15 Feb 2026 02:43 CET

author: 🥜 @patatas@gemini.patatas.ca

The Secret Agent was absolutely beautiful, what a wonderful movie

Sun 15 Feb 2026 00:00 CET

author: 🤘 @toby@tobykurien.com

Breaking the Spell of Vibe Coding - “People who go all in on AI agents now are guaranteeing their obsolescence." -- Jeremy Howard

#ai

> fast.ai

https://www.fast.ai/posts/2026-01-28-dark-flow/

Fri 13 Feb 2026 21:41 CET

author: 💡 @samhunter

So much bloat and nothing to show for it...

Honestly, there's not a single reason for `edit` to be that big - aside from edlin (a copy of yet another Micro$oft product, by the way) - there's not a single ditor below (above? smaller than?) edit that couldn't orbit around it while crunching strings... Acme brings its own tiling window manager, Sam and Vis have the wonderful structured regular expressions, elvis can render HTML and man pages, TECO is the language the first Emacs was written in (Editing MACroS)...

`edit`? iT's WrItTeN iN RuSt... by a company who created broken-by-design Notepad (a glorified text box), and then broke it anyway, to the point it has its own CVEs...

Sizes for comparison:

     31552  qed
     59768  ed
    109392  edlin
    114448  sam
    131296  tecoc
    169344  em
    169344  uemacs
    185536  xvi
    208792  neatvi
    231184  mg
    267416  nextvi
    269376  vi
    341992  ovi
    432344  vis
    437200  acme
    484728  nvi
    530448  edit <-- really?
    741376  elvis
    743552  wily
   1560256  vile
   1649121  mesw
   2070776  xnedit
   2793163  mewb
   2803192  poe
   2893280  kak
   2946904  acvi
   4487672  vim
   7704832  edward
   7752416  edwood
   8812136  yacco
  10416608  emacs-nox
  10841880  wig
  13371168  micro
  22523264  anvil

Norton Editor (DOS, 1990) - no Unicode support, obviously, but a lot of an editor for ~110kB - it can even handle mouse and split windows.

Fri 13 Feb 2026 13:03 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

It grinds my gears when people use "AKA" incorrectly, AKA like this.

Fri 13 Feb 2026 13:05 CET

author: @zekromaster

Just finished reading 17776 (What Football Will Look Like in the Future) by Jon Bois.

It's speculative fiction with a narrative centering american football, which I only have a passing and occasional familiarity with — mostly through online acquaintances— but the point isn't really the american football.

I'd say it's about what we do with our lives, about the human need to struggle for something, about how everything should end and about how Heaven on Earth probably sucks. It made me cry at a couple points, but I won't spoil it for those interested in reading.

Its use of hypermedia is also great, it isn't often you see something like this and can't say «this could've been a book».

Fri 13 Feb 2026 10:08 CET

author: 👾 @fab@redterminal.org

RE: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net 2026-02-12 21:04 +0100

After successfully reinstalling my VPS and developing a Bash script to generate my website from my markdown documents, the Gemini capsule is now back online with my old content, including tinylog and gemlog, and will be exclusive handtyped in gemtext for the future. 👌

👍 Even the rss feed file for the gemlog? Good job!

Thu 12 Feb 2026 21:04 CET

author: @marcorocco@marcorocco.net

After successfully reinstalling my VPS and developing a Bash script to generate my website from my markdown documents, the Gemini capsule is now back online with my old content, including tinylog and gemlog, and will be exclusive handtyped in gemtext for the future. 👌

Wed 11 Feb 2026 23:29 CET

author: 💡 @samhunter

TIL - weird, advanced regular expressions in Vim.

While looking for a piece of information I stumbled upon a mention of '\%#' pattern in Vim.

A "quick" look into Vim's help ended up in a proverbial fall into a rabbit hole.

I dare you to check ':help \%#'.

(Note to self: revise my syntax files, a lot can be done better)

Wed 11 Feb 2026 21:51 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

Today I learned of the Willow protocol. From it I found the P2P Basel event.

https://willowprotocol.org

https://p2p-basel.org

This year's page has at the bottom the following book in its bibliography: Christian Cachin, Rachid Guerraoui, Luís Rodrigues, "Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming"

https://distributedprogramming.net

https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15260-3

I searched the usual places -- first log into Springer through my uni, no luck; then some archive of Anya, yes luck! Then I remembered The Wikipedia Library too, and yes luck again!

The Wikipedia Library

The official PDF from Springer is md5:5280dc2e54606741c8cd7e87859837c7, if you'd like to know (though there's a slightly smaller one with better PDF index also available; haven't compared otherwise).

Wed 11 Feb 2026 21:42 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

Built Transmission v4.1.0 following the same steps as previous builds, but the resulting binary crashes with an "Illegal Instruction" signal... :(

tinylog § 2024-05-03 19:13 +0100

The culprit is the newly introduced CRC32 library. Tried building+installing CRC32 according to the instructions of the PR I linked in the issue, but the Pi hanged... :( Waiting for it to come back to life.

transmission/transmission -- Bad CRC32 build on 32bit ARM

And because I have an SSHFS mount to it, now my desktop is sluggish too doggammit! At least GUI file dialogs etc.

Wed 11 Feb 2026 15:28 CET

author: 💡 @samhunter

Inspired by Sandra's tinylog post:

  #! /usr/bin/env python3
  import socket
  from sys import argv
  
  if len(argv) == 3:
      host = argv[1]
      user = argv[2]
  elif len(argv) == 2 and argv[-1].startswith('finger://'):
      (proto, _, host, user) = argv[-1].split('/')
  else:
      print(f'./finger host user\nor\n./finger finger://host/user\n')
      exit(1)
  
  try:
      with socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) as s:
          s.connect((f'{host}', 79))
          s.sendall(bytes(f'{user}\n', 'UTF-8'))
          data = b''
          while True:
              x = s.recv(1024)
              if not x:
                  break
              data += x
      print(data.decode('UTF-8'))
  except ConnectionRefusedError as cre:
      print(f'Finger server not available:\n{cre}')

Wed 11 Feb 2026 12:05 CET

author: 💡 @samhunter

I wasn't sure how old my desktop PC is...

           Chassis: desktop ️
      Architecture: x86-64
   Hardware Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
    Hardware Model: HP Z210 Workstation
  Firmware Version: J51 v01.19
     Firmware Date: Fri 2011-08-12
      Firmware Age: 14y 6month 1d

It was a beast back then, it's still fast enough. Meanwhile I'm on my 3rd (Windoze) laptop at work... The last one wasn't compatible with Win11. Just saying.

Tue 10 Feb 2026 04:38 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I made a phlog...my gopherhole was empty for several years with only one post. So now there's 2.

Dungeon Crawlers

Mon 09 Feb 2026 16:42 CET

author: 💡 @samhunter

I guess writing a functioning tinylog posting script is a good test for python3 integration.

Wily tinylog "plugin"

Sun 08 Feb 2026 22:41 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

Today I learned about Boza, a fermented drink made from millet, wheat, corn, or bulgur that's been around for probably thousands of years.

Sun 08 Feb 2026 15:19 CET

author: 💡 @samhunter

I finally found some time and motivation to get Wily (Acme-like editor for Unix -- a project quasi-abandoned around 1996) compiled without hiccups on my Linux system.

It took a while, it still will throw a lot of warnings when compiled with -Wall, but the "regular" compilation runs and I also managed to make Python3/Tcl/Perl/shell integration work again).

There's not much reason to use Wily instead of Plan9Port (a reasonable subset of Plan9 tools for Lunix by Russ Cox) on a "normal" system with access to internet and a superuser access, but I work daily in systems where bringing in a whole ecosystem is neither allowed nor possible, but a single binary isn't much of a problem.

Thu 05 Feb 2026 14:59 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

As with neoliberal economics, I'm always suspicious of people who claim that the answer to the damage their self serving behavior is causing is actually more of that behavior. I don't see much evidence that either of these outcomes are likely.

On AI: Environmental Impact

We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.

Wirth's Revenge

Judy Hanwen Shen, Alex Tamkin, "How AI Impacts Skill Formation"

Wed 04 Feb 2026 11:35 CET

author: skyjake

There is a wee bit of a network outage affecting bbs.geminispace.org and skyjake.fi. It should be resolved in a few hours. The IP address of the server is likely to change.

· 2 Replies · 9 Thumbs

Mon 02 Feb 2026 09:00 CET

author: @siiky@siiky.srht.site

This website is dedicated to archiving and exposing atrocities of ICE.

Crimes of ICE (clear net)

Crimes of ICE (Tor)

Mon 02 Feb 2026 08:56 CET

author: 🍂 @aŭtunido

-25ºC ĉi-matene. Daŭre vintras!

Mon 02 Feb 2026 05:28 CET

author: @gritty@gemini.smallweb.space

I've been wanting to break out of this amateur programmer spaghetti code rut that I'm in so I've been diving into design patterns to figure out how to add structure to what I'm building. I am amazed at these programmers that make a YouTube video in a two hour coding session where they go from zero to full functioning API based on domain driven design with repositories and services, and all the like. the thing that gets me even more is that this guy seemed...bored? at times like he was slogging through boilerplate code, which is what it probably felt like to him.

one day I want to get to a point where I just talk about code abstracts / theory like it's nothing.

Sun 01 Feb 2026 00:00 CET

author: 🤘 @toby@tobykurien.com

First prototype of my #diy #handheld #cyberdeck powered by a #RaspberryPi Zero. Unlike my previous tablet designs, this one is aimed at low power for extended battery life, focussing on command-line use. It will be used mainly for reading ebooks/websites, e-mail, SSH, note-taking and some coding fun. It could work well as a #writerdeck too. It has a 2000mAh battery under the keyboard providing 13 hours of continuous reading time. Next I need to design and print a cover for it. The low power use means that I could also look adding a flip cover with a solar panel integrated, to increase run time when I'm outdoors.

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1769934638-0.jpg

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1769934638-1.jpg

gemini://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1769934638-2.jpg