Gritty's Blog

This post was originally from 2024-10-11, only on the #geminiProtocol.

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Words: 2379

I've been pretty active on Gemini for the past 2.5 to 3 years, but for the last month and a half I haven't been around quite as much. Unlike what I've seen here before, it wasn't because I was bored of Gemini, or didn't like it anymore; it was that I noticed I was on my phone too much and so I bought a “dumb phone” i.e., a flip phone with limited features. Initially I intended on performing a digital detox of sorts, but because I found that certain parts of my life improved – with overall enjoyment of life being one of them – I decided to keep it going.

My life without the Internet

Scope of the detox

For the one-month challenge I set out for myself, I resolved that I would still keep my wifi-only Android on me in the case that I needed it for something while out. At home, I would limit its use while on the home wifi. Most times it has sat on a countertop, on my nightstand, or in my pocket. My employer doesn't allow cellphone use at work, so I discovered that upon coming home and reconnecting to the home wifi, I'd not missed much at all, and I caught up on all smartphone related items in 15 minutes or less.

As for not using the internet, I chose a phone that still had navigation and voice-to-text (to ease using T9 texting again). I of course had to use the internet at work, but I do next to nothing personal on my work computer so I don't count this as avoidable addictive internet use. My wife is not part of the detox, so I do use the benefits of her having a phone, but it's in her hands not mine. I also don't consider my streaming television services as “the internet” despite the way they are delivered.

The phone itself is android based, running something like “BasicOS” which has no app store. You get what you get, and that's it outside of updates.

Now onto the details.

Mental Exhaustion

First and foremost I've found that my mental exhaustion has decreased over the last couple of months. Since I'm a knowledge worker, my job is mentally demanding, so when I was “checking out” on my phone I really wasn't giving my mind a break at all – I was continuing to engage it, even if in simple things like thinking about Spellbinding words. In fact, I've avoided playing this game right before bed because – despite my exhaustion – it would wake up my mind, causing problems falling asleep and resulting in unrestful (mental) sleep.

As another example of exhaustion, I used to listen to audiobooks and podcasts while in my car, but I abandoned this practice multiple times over the years because I was filling my only mentally restful moments with more mental engagement, and it was exhausing me.

Identifying the addiction

After detoxing, I realized that my mind was addicted to a constant, albeit mostly passive, input stream of information. Every potential moment of boredom caused my mind to drift to to my phone, resulting in my tapping my pocket to find my phone, and going to grab it, just mindlessly. I had no idea what I was going to look at on my phone, but I was drawn to it to find something. I don't have mainstream social media, but anything on the internet can be habit forming, including Gemini. I found I was refreshing BBS, Station, and going to play Gemini games, even when I'd checked all these things not five or ten minutes prior. This was a form of avoidance of what was going on around me (for whatever reason), a fear of missing something, and an addiction to constant – but shallow – mental stimulation.

I was afraid of having no stimuli.

The closest comparison I can make is to imagine one of your busiest days, and when you get home your mind refuses to stop finding things to do or think about, so you dive into your phone or computer.

Noticing the habits

After I switched to my dumb phone, I started to notice the habits I had. On more occasions than I'd like to admit, I would reach into my pocket to find my phone, presumably to check on something or other, and upon feeling my flip phone, would realize what I was mindlessly doing: I was about to check out, and I had no idea why I was going to use my phone. I also had a bad habit of checking my phone at stop lights...like all of them. I would try to find a few Spellbinding words in the 60 to 90 seconds I had there, or see if someone had posted something on Signal. No one had, and I found maybe 2 words at stop lights for Spellbinding.

Other habits/downtimes:

• Going to the toilet/bathroom – I used to read books on the toilet before I had a cellphone, but I now only have my phone. I didn't know what to do with myself at first. I'd actually flip open my flip phone, and...nothing was there. Since I'm now more comfortable with not engaging my brain all the time, I'm okay just thinking about whatever pops into my head now. Other times I'm reading a book again.
• Standing in line (anywhere)
• Waiting rooms – close to >95% of folks in waiting rooms are on their phones. I find a magazine now, entertain myself with my own thoughts, or look around the room, mostly wondering if all these people on their phones are happy.
• During commercials
• Taking a picture of things to send to people that I really don't need to send them, and they don't really need or want to see
• Thinking of how I would craft a post about something, or how to word a *log entry
• When my kids brush their teeth
• When my kids leave the room for a minute

Breaking normal conversation (and thought) patterns, i.e., mentally living on the internet

It is said that humans can't multitask, and jumping from topic to topic is highly inefficient and mentally taxing for us. It seems odd then, that we have this object that connects us to a highly disjointed array of thought-inducing items called the internet. With rare exception, phones and the internet rarely enable one to engage in uninterrupted, deep learning of a useful topic. Podcasts and audiobooks may be the exception here, but nearly everything else is a constant back and forth of surface grazing of information. We've gotten so used to having information fed to us that we'll spend an inordinate amount of time looking for it instead of thinking what the answer is. A great example of this is when my wife and I are watching a movie and we can't think of an actor's name. We purposefully don't grab our phones for a while but inevitably there's the pull of “we can just find the answer” at the back of our minds. Granted, before phones we may have never thought of it, but, so what if we couldn't find out their name?

Since having a dumbphone, I feel like I'm back to having normal thought patterns again. I've written this before, but I'll say it again here: cellphones make your mind go down thought paths it normally wouldn't have before, and multiple ones at that...potentially all at the same time. Imagine what you'd think about if you didn't have texts in your pocket making you think about this thing or that – what so and so wants for dinner, or how cute someone's kid looks, or literally whatever. What would have that time been instead? I argue it's a thought pattern that's more rooted on what's happening in the real world than anything else. Boredom is good. Instrospective thoughts (even easy ones of “how was my day?”) are good. Uninterrupted conversations with your family are good (usually, right?).

Smartphones and the internet force the mind to think outwards all the time, to be in a place that's not really real, that's not here. I argue that this outward thinking and constant engagement of the mind of external thoughts makes one lose theirself, or, if growing up in this environment, to not really understand yourself and how you think. In short, I think the internet and cellphones prevent the development and awareness of self, and even make people afraid of it.

Not only that, but regular conversations are tough now. My wife is constantly on her phone. She's to the point where she has text messages dictated to her by her bluetooth earbud everywhere she goes – at work, while driving, and at the dinner table. To say this interrupts normal trains of thought is a gross understatement, and a point that really gets on my nerves is when I say something and have a 3-5 second delay of a response, or no response at all. the result, up until my detox, was just to join her – if I couldn't have a normal conversation, I'll just check out on my phone too. This isn't to say we don't talk, however, we've been together since before smartphones (just dumbphones) and I've watched the progression, and it's an addiction. The ever-presence (in her ear!) of the internet and other people's thoughts and opinions are everywhere we go now, interrupting the normal flow of what would be going on in our family dynamic. It's not all bad, but, at the end of the day it is a constant redirection of thoughts affecting our daily lives and decisions.

Active vs. Passive Thinking

It took a few weeks, but what I slowly noticed is that I was increasingly at ease with not staring at my phone at every down moment of time, and what happened was that I started letting my mind wander to things that it really needed to figure out. Similar to how people need to “sleep on it” to figure something out, I believe the mind needs “wakeful” rest periods to both actively and passively digest important congnitive issues. Actively, in that you're letting your mind wander to a situation or interaction that was difficult or should require more thought. This could be something as small as a passing comment or something as grand as reconsidering your life's calling. In either situation you are working it out, hopefully in a distraction-free and peaceful location. This can't effectively be done in a busy lunch room at work. I think your mind also passively digests this information because there is no one talking to you and changing how you may think about a situation (for better or worse). I believe this is important because your mind can go down its natural paths to abstracting this information and storing it in your mind.

Conversely, when you're constantly staring at your phone, watching the television, engaging in conversation, or listening to music, etc., you may be thiniking about these items in the back of your mind, or maybe even in the forefront, but it is my opinion that quiet solitude is the only way to really work out what's going on in your life and to really “wrap your head around” it in such a way that you are comfortable with your decision. I'll use my own life as an example. I have a very busy life as a father of two smaller children. I get up early, work a mentally and sometimes emotionally demanding job, return home to get my children from school, make dinner, head to sports, get them ready for bed, and then attempt to clean up the messes in our home before heading to bed to do it all over again. On its own it's a mentally and emotionally challenging life, but what I was doing, was also checking out on my phone in any moment of down time. Stupidly, I thought this was “taking a break” but it really isn't – you have blue lights going into your eyes, waking you up, and even though the information is being streamed to my brain, I still have thought processes sparking up, attempting to store information in my already tired and oversaturated brain. It was really a bad combination, and my mental health directly suffered. One, because I wasn't getting restful sleep, and two, it was compounded in that my mind never really rested, during the day, or really at night because of the evening's mental stimulation. I feel like I wasn't properly abstracting information, processing it, and storing it because my mind was just so tired all the time.

Overall / Conclusion

What I found was that I was overstimulating my brain by jumping from task to task, having little-to-no introspective cognition. Completing tasks doesn't a person make – you're a robot. Critical introspective and existential thought is what – in my opinion – makes you a whole person with both mental and emotional faculties in working order.

I believe it's potentially easier to “be who you are” in your 20s, but then once you get settled into your life, your responsibilites can attempt to limit that. If there's anything that I've learned, it's that self-care is the one thing you don't want to skip out on, because it's the investment in yourself to “be who you are” in the midst of life's responsibilities.

I hope to keep this “new” old life going for as long as I can, because as the self-proclaimed world's worst computer nerd, I'm finding my time away from the internet wholesome and centering. If you made it this far, I hope you find internet reduction a worthy cause to persue – you may just (re)discover more of who you are.

-——

2024-10-11

Tags: dumbphones, digital detox, mental health, solitude, instropsection, self-care

Replies: gritty@smallweb.space

Gritty

With smart TV’s having embedded streaming apps, and the hotel’s custom interface just begging you to log into your service on their TV, why would you even bring a Roku or other streaming device to a hotel?

I’ll tell you: I don’t trust devices I don’t own. Hell, I don’t even trust devices I do own *cough* cellphone *cough*. So while bringing your own device only brings a modicum of data privacy if someone is still on the network monitoring your wifi data in the hotel, at least you’re not logging into an unknown hardware device.

Now, hooking up a Roku in a hotel used to be easy. Use the USB port or hook up via HDMI, grab the remote and switch inputs. Well, now there are “hospitality TVs” that have custom interfaces, and for reasons unknown, security features that disable things like changing the input, even when you use the buttons on the TV itself.

After some tinkering I finally figured it out.

Connect your device to the TV. I usually go for HDMI connections as I don’t trust how USB ports will work on different TVs.

If you look at the back of the TV, you’ll probably notice what looks like a network cable or phone cord plugged into your TV. This is what controls the hospitality portion of the TV. Pull that sucker out.

Doing so in my case allowed me to change the input – but ohhh no, not with the REMOTE – with the single button on the TV. It’s not just a power button, but is also the setup for the TV itself – this was disabled by the network cord. This also means I can’t control the volume with the remote either, but it’s a minor inconvenience for me personally.

Once I changed the input to the Roku I still had one more hurdle: the wifi login / captive portal. Luckily Roku helps you here by asking if you are at a hotel and handily starts its own wifi service that you connect to with your phone or computer so that you can get the Roku accepted through the login screen.

Once that’s all done, et voila, you can use your device in your hotel room.

—————-

Replies: gritty@smallweb.space

I realized recently that I needed to have some kind of backup for my VPS (virtual private server, i.e., a hosting service), and I had a Raspberry Pi 4 sitting at home doing nothing, so why not use my Pi and rsync?

Overview of Steps

1. Install sshd on the VPS
2. Setup SSH Keys
3. Test the ssh login
4. Install rsync on the VPS
5. Create and Test the Script
6. Add to crontab

Step 1: Install SSH on your server / VPS

There's a bunch of tutorials out there to do this, so I won't repeat here. See here

Step 2: Setup SSH Keys

Again, here's another tutorial to avoid using passwords. This is important so that your cron job can run automatically without input Setting Up SSH Keys

Step 3: Test SSH Login

If you run

$ ssh <user>@<yourserver>

You should be automatically logged into your system without the need for a password

Step 4: Installing rsync (if not already present)

Setting up rsync

Step 5: Create and Test the Script

Using rsync

rsync -aAX --delete --log-file=/home/pi/rsync.log <user>@<server>:/remote/path/to/backup/ /local/path/on/pi/

NOTE: before you blindly use this script, note that the “—delete” option is there. What this will do is remove files from the backup if they're deleted from the source (rsync keeps all files by default). If you're not careful it'll delete files you may want to keep. I suggest adding the “-n” option to do a dry-run and check the output

NOTE 2: the “—log-file=/home/pi/rsync.log” will log all output to the file specified when cron runs it (below)

Step 5a: Create Script

$ touch ~/.local/bin/backup.sh
$ chmod +x ~/.local/bin/backup.sh
$ vim ~/.local/bin/backup.sh

And drop this in there:

#!/bin/bash
rsync -aAX --delete --log-file=/home/pi/rsync.log <user>@<server>:/remote/path/to/backup/ /local/path/on/pi/

Step 6: add to user's crontab

$ crontab -e

and add this line (if you want it to run a 0200, daily) 0 02 * * * /home/pi/.local/bin/backup.sh

The End

That's it. If you followed along, you should be backing up your VPS files to your Raspberry Pi (or other machine) at 0200 daily, with logs going to rsync.log in the home directory.

I wanted to implement Gemini-Mention on my Gemini capsule but I didn't want to use the existing scripts out there (Go, Lua, or Bash). Since I am most comfortable in Python, I just created my own.

If you're not familiar with Gemini-Mention, it's an RFC that defines a way for a person writing a reply gemlog (a gemlog replying to another gemlog) to be able to notify the original gemlog owner about the reply. Aside from aggregators like Cosmos and backlinks provided by some search providers, there's no real way to know if someone is replying to your gemlog. Gemini-Mention is there to hopefully solve that problem, even if it's a manual way of doing so.

Seen on my capsule: gemini://gemini.smallweb.space/gemini-mention/mention (you'll need a Gemini browser, like LaGrange )

Disclaimer, I'm a hobby programmer so there's definitely a better way to do this, but it gets the job done for me. Code follows.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

##################
# gemini-mention
# by Gritty
#
# Requires: ignition
##################

import os
import sys
import re
import ignition
import fileinput
import json
from urllib.parse import unquote

ERRORPAGE = '''
# Gemini-Mention

ERROR: Sorry, there was an issue fetching the URL you listed.  Please ensure that:
* It is percent-encoded
* Is a proper gemini:// URL

=> mention?submit Submit another link
'''

INSTRUCTIONPAGE = '''
# Gemini-Mention

=> mention?submit Submit a link

TLDR: Use the link above to notify me of a reply to one of my gemlogs.

## What is gemini-mention?
Gemini-mention alerts a capsule owner of a gemlog reply.  This is voluntary and done for the courtesy of the gemlog owner to which they are replying.

It is defined by an RFC created by @Bacardi55:
=> https://codeberg.org/bacardi55/gemini-mentions-rfc Gemini Mention RFC (HTTPS)  

### Usage
Submit a percent encoded gemini URL to the following link:
> gemini://gemini.smallweb.space/gemini-mention/mention?<percent_encoded_url_of_reply>

This capsule will then scan that page for links back to this capsule and log them for the capsule owner.  In the future I (Gritty) plan to post these replies to the bottom of their respective gemlogs.

'''

RESULTSPAGE ='''
# Gemini-Mention

Matching backlinks / mentions:
'''

FOOTER = '''
=> ../index.gmi Home
=> ../gemlog/index.gmi Gemlogs (non-technical)
=> ../tech-gemlog/index.gmi Technical Gemlogs
'''

def process_json(srcUrl, mentions):
    # expects source url that mentions this site
    # expections list of urls mentioned by the source url
    # make sure json file exists with at least one dummy entry
    # i.e., { "test" : "value"}
    with open("mentions.json", "r+") as file:
       
        # load json file
        dataDict = json.load(file)
        
        # create or update entry
        dataDict[srcUrl] = mentions
        
        # write the data, truncating file first
        file.seek(0)
        file.truncate()
        json.dump(dataDict, file, indent = 2)

def printPage(text, header=True, footer=True):
    if header:
        print("20 text/gemini; charset=utf-8", end = "\r\n")
    print(text)
    if footer:
        print(FOOTER)

#### Main program starts here ####

qString = os.getenv('QUERY_STRING')

if qString:
    if qString == 'submit':
        # Prompt user for a URL that mentions a page on this capsule
        print("10 Enter a mention URL. \r\n")
    else:
        # Everything else should (hopefully) be a URL to parse
        URL = unquote(qString)
        response = ignition.request(URL) 
        if not response.success():
            printPage(ERRORPAGE)
        else:
            page = response.data()
            pattern = r"^(=>) *(gemini://gemini.smallweb.space/(gemlog|tech-gemlog)[\S]*) *(.*$)" 
            regex = re.compile(pattern, re.MULTILINE)
            matches = re.findall(regex, page)
            if matches == []:
                printPage("No matches to this capsule found")
            else:
                # process the matches
                mentionedUrls = []
                pageText = "Matched URLs\n"
                for item in matches:
                    if item[1] not in mentionedUrls:
                        pageText += f"* {item[1]} \n"
                        mentionedUrls.append(item[1])                
                process_json(URL, mentionedUrls)
                pageText += "URLs / mentions Recorded\n"
                pageText += "=>mention?submit Submit another"
                printPage(pageText)

else:
    # We have an empty query string, display instructions
    printPage(INSTRUCTIONPAGE)

CGI is alive and kicking on the #geminiProtocol, for sure.

The formative years of my life were in the 1990s, back when Common Gateway Interface, or CGI, was all the rage. I remember seeing URLs like example.com/cgi-bin/ and seeing how it generated dynamic content, but since I didn't have access to a web server like that back then, I never really got into CGI programming. After I started doing web programming, it was Javascript, Javascript, Javascript, and AJAX to save the day and goodbye old, non-secure, heavy CGI scripts.

So as you can imagine, when I stumbled across Gemini around January of 2022, I was very surprised to see that a lot of the servers being created for people to use had CGI support for creating dynamic content. At first I was baffled, but it really does make a lot of sense for a text-focused protocol such as Gemini:

• Most capsules are low traffic so spinning up these processes, while resource intensive by today's standards, aren't really too much of an issue for Gemini
• Gemini is purposely limited, and as such, things like AJAX calls to a Gemini server just aren't supported
• CGI has been around for a while, and is fairly accessible to professional and hobby coders alike

I think the beauty of CGI scripts is that it lowers the barrier for novice programmers to make an interactive capsule (gemini site) and practice their coding skills. Want to make an old school guestbook using Bash scripts and SQLite? Go for it! Want to make a commenting system using Python? Sure. No problem. It's the simplicity that I like, which is core to the theme of Gemini.

Documentation, however, on how to make a CGI script specifically for Gemini was lacking, so I ended up making my own HOWTOs on doing that. I even convinced Solderpunk to put a link on their official Gemini FAQ that goes over creating your own capsule and introducing you to CGI programming.

Again, if you have a Gemini browser – like LaGrange – you can see my HOWTO here: gemini://gemini.smallweb.space/HOWTO/managing-your-own-capsule.gmi

On the #gemini protocol there is one really prominent content aggregator (think RSS feed) that's been active over the several years of the life of Gemini: Antenna.

Antenna basically works this way: a person writes a gemlog (a blog on Gemini), and then updates an index page that's a list of links to the logs with the dates and titles. A user then submits the that index page to Antenna and it ingests it into a database and displays everyone's entries in chronological order. So instead of having an aggregator poll a list of sites periodically, a user will submit their list. In doing so, it puts the onus on the user to aggregate their content, and ensures that Antenna isn't polling dead gemlogs for months on end.

Well, for a few days I noticed (as well as the community), that Antenna was down. There was a post about it on the new BBS (bulletin board system), and it was mentioned that someone could theoretically create another Antenna. I don't know why I wanted to do this for the community, but I suddenly had to do it.

Now, I have two small kids at home so personal time is the most premium of commodities, and that free time is usually spent relaxing because I'm too tired to do anything else, but sometimes I get this idea in my head and I have to do it. So, I set out making my own version of Antenna after someone pointed me to the code repo.

Much to my chagrin, the instructions were way out of date from the actual code, but luckily it was written in Python and it gave me an opportunity to brush back up on my Python skills. After much digging around and seeing how it works, I finally got my version of Antenna up and running...and if I remember correctly it was about two evenings of trying to get things working.

I posted up on the BBS that I got it working and for folks to try it out. The creator of Gemini, Solderpunk, replied and asked if I would try and theme it so eventually I came up with Deep Space Network Antenna, named after the NASA program. I also changed the allowable posts to be non-technical. The problem with the last part was that most people only had 1 index page for all their gemlogs and in order to not submit technical gemlogs alongside non-technical ones, you'd have to have two. I went to BBS to get opinions on this and there were of course some on both sides, but in general, I decided to leave it up to the capsule owner (gemlog writer) to do this separation.

For a while it was pretty dead on DSN Antenna, but now some folks have started posting to it, and Skyjake (the creator of the best Gemini browser, LaGrange, and gemini's first BBS) added it to Cosmos, his super aggregator, which is an aggregator of aggregators, designed to catch replies between gemlog posts. So it seems fairly official now, and I'm happy about that.

If you have a Gemini browser, you can check it out here: gemini://gemini.smallweb.space/antenna

I've been spending a lot of time on the #gemini protocol this past year, and I'm writing this post on my normal blog so that the search engine crawlers index this page for those that may be interested in it. While I know there are other introductory pages – which I'll link here as well – I feel like this is my contribution on getting the message out. If you happen to be on my gopher:// mirror of this site, just simply drop in https:// instead on a normal browser.

What is the Gemini Protocol?

Gemini FAQ on Circumlunar

Why use Gemini?

A lot of folks are disenfranchised with how the web is today. This is a mix of new and old internet users alike. As you can imagine, the old-heads that saw the internet blossom and loved the promise of a great new world, are now disenfranchised and looking to escape back to what the internet used to be: controlled by individuals, not by corporations greedily collecting your data so they can make money off of you. There's also a surprising group of younger internet citizens that grew up with a cellphone in their hand and internet all around them. They, too, it seems, see the insidious side of the internet and wish to connect with people, not endless status updates.

The second group, which also intersects with the first, are the people who like the cleanliness of text-only presentation. These are the folks that love command line and using text files. They probably use a todo.txt as well.

In a world of flashy websites, content can easily be lacking and overlooked. In the world of Gopher and Gemini, however, content is king because if you have no content there's really nothing to post.

Another group are the ones that love to blog, but they, too, felt lost at sea in the glut of the internet. Since gemini and gopher are much smaller, the interactions are admittedly less, but they are more meaningful because they are real people who stopped by to read your 5000 word #gemlog (gemini's version of a blog), and it struck a chord with them. If they take the time to fire up their email program to write you a response, you can guarantee it means a bit more than the comment section on most internet blogs.

Another reason people join is the clear lack of algorithms feeding you content. Almost everything in Gemini is pull versus push. What this means is that you have to find content instead of it being firehosed to your screen. And why would you want this? It slows you down, and it makes you the curator of your own reading lists. Part of the fun of the old internet, they say, was that you had to DIG to find content, and that the digging was part of best things of the internet then, because when you found a gem or goldmine, it meant that much more to you. That's not to say there aren't any push capabilities; there are at least 4 search engines that I know about, and several content aggregators (think #RSS feeds), and a social microblog site called Station. While these are technically centralizing parts of Gemini (and there have been many discussions about this on Gemini, both pro and con), I think they provide a modicum of convenience while sidestepping most of the bad parts of the highly centralized web.

Generally though, Gemini is just not what most people are looking for, and that's okay. It's draw, for me, is the fact that it's a small (but far from exclusive) community of people, and not big corporations and algorithms.

What can I do on Gemini?

Gemlogs (Gemini Blogs)

A lot of people on Gemini write long-form #gemlogs, which are just Gemini versions of Blogs. Gemini, however, is NOT just a blogosphere on a lesser-known internet protocol, but it does make up a lot of the content on there. When I was first joining Gemini I wasn't much of a writer, but after a while I felt encouraged to write down a few thoughts here and there. People use their gemlogs for a whole host of things that they would use a blog. such as: * Journaling thoughts, talking about your day, etc. * Note taking – this is pretty popular for those people that need a technical reference for themselves and others while the figure out a system or coding, etc.

You can subscribe to gemlogs if they are in the proper gemlog format or if the owner put the logs into an Atom feed

gemlog format for subscribing

Tinylog (microblog)

Gemini also has a version of microblogging called #tinylogs. These are shorter-form posts that don't warrant a full-fledged post. Think Twitter or Mastodon, but stripped waaayyy down to the basics. If you have your own site (or capsule as they are called in Gemini), you can start your own in a single text file, or there's a site called Station that is the closest thing Gemini has to a social network. Station is a microblog-style site that lets you post tinylogs and to like, comment, and subscribe to other people's tinylogs. Gemini is so small that the front page feed only gets a few updates a day and is easily digestable.

If you make your own tinylog on your website, there's a way you can subscribe to other tinylogs and view them as a timeline (otherwise you have to constantly check the tinylogs of others that you like). The two programs are called #gtl and #lace.

Tinylog format / RFC Tinlylog tools

Games

SpellBinding My favorite all-time game on Gemini is #Spellbinding. It's a word game where you are given seven letters in a circle with one letter in the middle, and you must make as many words as possible using the center letter. words must be 4+ letters.

you'll need a Gemini browser to access the link below: gemini://tilde.cafe/~spellbinding/

Wordo A wordle clone for Gemini gemini://tilde.cafe/~spellbinding/

There are also some MUDs and other things I haven't explored yet.

Getting Started

If you're interested in getting started, here's my quickstart:

Get a browser

Lagrange. Just use this, it's the best one out there for mobile and desktop Lagrange Gemini Browser

Find some content

Point your browser to: * Antenna – content aggregator: gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/ * Cosmos – content super aggregator: gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/view.gmi * geminispace.info – search engine: gemini://geminispace.info/

Setup a capsule

Gemlog.blue SmolPub Pollux.casa

Other Getting Started Guides

Awesome Gemini – Links Gemini Quickstart

Background

Not a lot of folks use the finger command or protocol these days; however, I've been delving into the #smallweb / smolweb (i.e., the Gemini Protocol) for the past year and noticed a few people have revived this ancient protocol for status updates. I figured I'd give it a shot, and I thought it would be simple, but the lack of guidance really hindered me for a bit.

If you're wondering, efingerd / fingerd (the original) simply enables people outside of your own linux machine to use the finger command, just remotely.

Installing

Finger / efingerd is not installed on Ubuntu 22.10 by default so you have to install it:

$ sudo apt-get install finger
$ sudo apt-get install efingerd

Other finger daemons

This post only goes over efingerd, but if you want to see what other finger daemons are available:

$ apt search fingerd

Enabling efingerd

On Ubuntu 22.10, the install script should automatically update your /etc/inetd.conf file with the necessary configuration. One thing I learned is that these old programs are launched by another wrapper daemon, namely tcpd. I really tried getting cfingerd to work with systemd, xinetd, and inetd, but I kept getting errors, so I went with efingerd in the end.

If you check out /etc/inetd.conf, you'll see this line added:

:INFO: Info services
finger   stream  tcp  nowait   efingerd  /usr/sbin/tcpd   /usr/sbin/efingerd 

which I edited to:

:INFO: Info services
finger   stream  tcp  nowait   root  /usr/sbin/tcpd   /usr/sbin/efingerd -u -t 5  

• -u prevents users from using the executable ~/.efingerd file
• -t 5 sets the connection timeout
• I also changed user to root (which most other finger daemons run as) so that each user's home directory could be read by the bash scripts, otherwise the user efingerd can't see into those.

Enabling the Service

$ sudo systemctl inetd restart

Checking the service

$ sudo journalctl -f -u inetd

and

$ sudo systemctl status inetd

Configuring efingerd

make all files in /etc/efingerd executeable

sudo chmod +x /etc/efingerd/

edit them – there are a few test commands in there... check out the manpage for what they do

I pretty much got rid of everything (finger shows users logged in and their IP addresses) and crafted my own scripts inside the files to read the user's directory for the .plan, .project. and .pgpkey files, and display them if they exist.

Open port in firewall

$ sudo ufw enable 79/tcp

Testing efingerd

try to finger your server:

finger @<your server>

(responds with whatever is in “list”)

and

finger <user>@<your server>

(responds with whatever is in “luser”)

Addendum – happynetbox

I reached out to the owner of happynetbox [1], a web front-end to finger where you can sign up for your own account and have a finger account purely through the web. I found this site because of ~ruario's posting on #antenna where they were testing if antenna would allow a finger:// submission. Anyways, the owner responded to me and said they used a Node project on github as a baseline for that entire site, which, might actally be easier than setting up 30 year old finger programs on today's systems. The site can be found here: * Simple Node.js finger server * Happynetbox

After some fighting with the “simple” install, I finally have a working Writefreely instance on my server with SSL.