Published 2024-07-23
tag(s): #meta #blogging #smallweb
I don't know why I feel a first entry needs to explain anything, but here we are.
I just wrote an post putting my Gemini capsule in a suspended state and I guess that's a good
place to start with.
Gemini[1] is a lightweight protocol, an alternative to HTTP. What this
means (among many other things, but relevant to this conversation) is that you cannot access
it using a regular web browser[2].
Instead of using HTML, Gemini uses its own simplified markup, Gemtext. There is no support for
JavaScript or CSS.
I read about Gemini a couple years ago, and fell in love with its ideals of simplicity and
focus on content over bling. I checked it out here and there.
Eventually, mid 2023, after finding out that Source Hut
included Gemini hosting, I created a capsule.
In my latest (maybe, last?) post in it, I wrote:
Of course this is just how I felt, probably because of how I approached the idea of having a capsule and blog. I think everyone should check out Gemini space, they might be surprised! It is a nice, small community, very welcoming.Gemini feels like disliking the city you live in, and moving to a farm, or an island. Versus staying and being a contrarian and (idealistically, truth is no one cares) attempting to change things in your city from the inside: leading by example, and also showing that something different is possible.
As anyone that has met me can attest, I walk a strange line between minimalism and hyper
-specialization. No other aspect of my life in computing represents this better than Emacs,
famously described as
[...] a sort of hybrid between Windows Notepad, a monolithic-kernel operating system, and the
International Space Station
.
Given those inclinations, it is really no surprise that I loathe the current trends
on the web. From social networks (that I am still trying to quit) to SEO, the very high level
of noise vs information, and the general heaviness of it, for lack of a better
word.
This approach to minimalism and the preference for distraction-free[3]
environment, just as it made me interested in Gemini, also led me to finding over time a big
number of pages and online services that work fine in EWW, the built-in, text-only, Emacs web
browser.
Some of these people were _handcrafting their HTML_. The exact same thing I do with Gemtext, and I assumed would be crazy for a regular site. There are even WEB RINGS (remember those?) and a whole network of people linking these plain sites, so you can avoid as much as possible of the modern web.
Which leads me to this site. I am using Fastmail's static website hosting, writing some
HTML like a caveman and just generally enjoying setting up tools and a publishing
workflow.
I don't know how often I will update this (if the gemlog is any indication...not often). I am
not even sure what I need or want to say, nor if I will post in Spanish, or are there any
topics I am leaving out (football?).
All I know is that I wanted the goodness of having a personal space, just like in the gemlog.
But also I wanted it to be accessible and "open" in a way the capsule wasn't.
So, welcome, dear reader.