My personal sites for different protocols

(-_- )     web-site         http://irek.gabr.pl
( ^_^)/    gemini-capsule   gemini://tilde.pink/~irek/
( ^_^)/    gopher-hole      gopher://tilde.pink/~irek/

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2023.11.01 Wed 05:56 Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?

The aim is to have an online presence and place to share my projects.  I never
felt a need to do it as stuff I produce in free time is often very obscure and
niche.  Still recently, with project gmi100 posted on Hacker News [0], I found
out that there are more crazy people enjoying such things.  Now I feel obligated
to share my work somewhere.  As I don't enjoy all those advertisement platforms
called "social media" I'm going back to the roots of World Wide Web with ugly
personal website.

The plan is to have an regular HTTP Website for public stuff like projects
description and Gemini [1] Capsule for everything else that I don't feel like
sharing with general audience as Gemini is not an mainstream web experience.
Maybe I will add other protocols like Gopher...  I will think about it.

Also I'm NOT going to make it pretty and user friendly with all modern standards
of website that everyone expect.  With that I hope to scary away people not that
interested in my content because again - this is not a platform to promote or
advertise anything, to collect most amount of views or create interest.  Even
using text as main content feels like an unbreakable barrier as reading beyond
headlines is not expected from most visiters.  Especially nowadays when even a
longer video struggles to retain attention.

I will avoid build tools, templating, frameworks, CMS etc. going full cave man
with text files that could be maintained in Ed the standard text editor [2].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36786239
[1] https://geminiprotocol.net
[2] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

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2023.11.04 Sat 20:47 Code oriented blog

The web version of website is almost ready.  I already uploaded current version
to the server.  I will have to work on Gemini next.  But what I'm thinking about
all the time is how to make whole Web/Gmi stuff around the coding.  Because this
is what I do all the time.  So I'm thinking about how to integrate repositories
with website.  Essentially that would lead me to creation of Git front-end.  But
I don't necessarily want to relay on Git.

So I'm thinking about creating front-end for file system, not for git.  That way
I can just show directory with repositories.  How would that differ from some
default servers directories view?  It would organize files by dates with recent
changes at the top.  Also it would treat README files that are inside projects
like and index.html pages.  Those are the main differences.

I like this idea as it would work with any version control system.  Also it will
work with non repositories directories.  And on top of that this is an idea for
small fun C program that I could write not only for fun this time.

Program would go over directory creating index files for HTML and Gemini that
lists recent changes and all files inside given directory.  It would also parse
README files somehow.  Most of my README files are not a Markdown files.  So
there is an open question regarding how to deal with that.  I would probably do
nothing about it.  Just show it as it is in <pre> tag.  We will see.

I'm just writing about this idea to not forget.  I will prototype it and test
once whole website and capsule is up and running.  It might be tomorrow.

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2023.11.05 Sun 21:52 Gemini launch postponed

Website is up and running.  I had to upgrade Quark server software to get latest
bug fixes.  There was very visible bug when loading gifs from server.  It works
now.  We have some changes in the source code of Quark on the server still no
conflicts after git pull.

Anyhow I want to run Gemini as well but I had no setup for it on server.  So I
tried to use Agate gemini server as I used it last time.  But it's written in
Rust.  Eh, so after updating whole system, getting Cargo I tried to build it but
it failed.  It took so long and it doesn't work.  I'm not going to fight with
it.  I don't want to have Rust software anyway as I don't know this language.
It's better for me to have server written in C.  I can modified it if needed.

I found one that looks perfect.  It's called vger [0].  Slightly inconvenient
for me as it does not perform it's own TLS stuff.  It requires other software to
do it and redirect already decrypted messages to stdin.  Actually I like and
understand this design choice but now I have to learn how to use haproxy or
stunnel [1].  I will do that later.  If this will work then I'm down to writing
my own server the same way.

[0] https://tildegit.org/solene/vger
[1] https://www.stunnel.org/

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2023.11.07 Tue 19:04 Migration

I decided to nuke old server.  It's gone.  Everything was moved original main
gabr.pl server.  Everything web related as there I have no direct control and
it's not possible to run custom server for other protocols.  But that's not a
problem.  For other protocols I choosen to join tilde.pink open server that runs
on NetBSD and provides Gopher and Gemini servers.  It's nice to be a part of
such community and I don't have to manage any servers anymore.

All content was moved to corresponding servers.  I wrote scripts that sync each
site files with server.  With that it's very easy now to update content.  And
this is what I will have to do now.  I want to have clear separation between
each protocol content.  Web is for show, Gemini probably for writing regular
logs and Gopher will be for?  Hmm maybe for some obscure list of commands like
my usual "howto" files etc.  So nothing interesting to read but something
practical for me.

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2024.03.03 Sun 04:40 Status

My 3 different sited have been up and running for 4 months now.  My observations
are as follow.  I don't use Web Site at all.  It's dead since it was born.  Last
change was committed in 19.11.2023.  The Gemini Capsule is used regularly to
write about thoughts and projects that I'm happy to share.  I especially enjoy
using it as a place to challenge myself (and maybe others) to code something
strange and unusually as a way to comment on some video or just to have fun.
But above all I enjoyed my Gopher Hole the most.  It's my go to place for
obscure projects and thoughts.  But I guess the enjoyment comes mostly from the
format.  It's the plain text.  More plain than Gemini.

So I have been thinking.  The simplicity of current setup is great.  But more
and more I write about things that would be nice to include in my Web Site.
Especially those posts that are on Gemini Capsule.  Should I do what many people
did and generate content for all 3 sites from single source?  I like this idea
as a mini side project to write in C.  I don't like this idea as the point of
making Gemini and Gopher alive is to produce unique content there.  So another
idea would be to create proxy to Gemini and Gopher on my Web Site making it just
a window to other protocols.

I don't have a clear vision yet.  But I want to do something with my Web Site.
Maybe all I need is a better separation in topics of my posts making it easier
to decide where they should go.  And one of the topic would be reserved for web.

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2024.04.19 Fri 19:10 Website update

I did a big redesign and cleanup to website.  It was a bit abandoned.  Now it
has new blog posts and it was review and rewritten in many places.  Still
follows the same spirit of plain HTML but I would say that it is now a bit more
user friendly and less messy overall.

The source code itself is now in state that makes it almost as readable as
website in browser making it very much usable when read directly as raw HTTP
response.  I like that.  It's not possible to make it as clean as for example
plain text Markdown but it's close.

I do had some thought about writing script allowing for changing color schemes
to many different options, saving user setting in cookie.  But I don't know if
my heart is in it.  Probably just a random idea.

No other particular plans for any of my sites at the moment.  All of them are
alive and well.  I have a lot of energy to code in C so no more web development
for now.

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