My personal sites for different protocols and purposes

Website          http://irek.gabr.pl
Microblog        http://irek.gabr.pl/blog.txt
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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2025-05-01 Thu 10:57 How do you feel?

Alive.  Still going strong.  I wrote more posts in first year quarter
than in entire last year.  Nothing has changed.  I still do it the
same way.  Website is used mostly for posts about personal projects.
Gemini is a often a commentary for videos and articles related to
programming.  Gopher for everything else.

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2025-05-31 Sat 08:49 Microblog

I started microblog using idea of Twtxt.  It's essentially a plain
text, decentralized Twitter.  But make it into a social network a bit
of more work is required but the core idea is good for microblogging
which is also fine according to design of this protocol.  Initially I
intended to make it pretty but yesterday I decided to just keep it
raw, as plain text file.  I could make it available on Gopeher and
Gemini but Website is the best fit for now.

The main idea for microblog was to have a place where I can easily
post fast updates on my programming projects, like text editor.  Will
see if this will work out for me once I get back to it.  ATM I use it
for random stuff.

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