Planet Smolnet

The cybah_rig is this thing I cobbled together that would allow me to have a portable, pseudo full-immersion Linux shell environment. It is comprised of mostly off the shelf components and stuff I had lying around the lab. The main components are a Raspberry Pi 0w, an old Olympus Face-Mounted Display (FMD), folding USB keyboard, and 5 volt USB battery for power. I use it in a folding zero gravity reclining lawn chair with a Carhartt ambient light shield.

The cybah_rig has been updated to version 3. m0ar here:

gopher://booji.mutated.net/1/phlog/2023/20231205_cybah_rig_v3

xiled

gemini://misfin.org/

> 💌 manifesto > > Email is just as bad as the Web. It's grown to be complex, secure only with other protocols bolted onto it, and it supports all the nasty misfeatures that the Web does, like cookies and tracking beacons. Even worse, it's seeing active hostility from the major players of the Internet. Most ISPs block traffic on port 25, and you can't deliver mail to any of the big names (like Gmail) without jumping through hoops - and even then, it's a coin toss. > > A good piece on the topic. > > I would love it if there was a way around this, a standard way for people interested in the small web to communicate. Something like Gemini, which can be grokked and implemented by one person. To that end, I've been working on a replacement - but I need some feedback. > > 📰 the details > > I've written up specs for a protocol named Misfin, named after the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN). It's spartan, but not overly so. It's only concerned with sending messages; mailbox management and relaying are out-of-band. Neither does it do much to combat spam - it probably won't be used by enough people to matter - but it avoids the worst of SMTP's security gotchas. > > 📝 the protocol: less is more > > Maybe we should just worry about text. Maybe we don't want to accept big huge messages from strangers. Maybe we should be asking people nicely if they want to receive an attachment, rather than just sending it to them. Consider the following protocol. We send a single request, no more than 2048 bytes, and with an assumed mime of text/gemini: > > misfin://[email protected] Everything after this is the body of the message.\r\n > >And the server tells us if it was accepted: > > 20 \r\n > > Message sent, ezpz. Misfin is limited, but not crippled. Want to send a binary file? Throw it up on a Gemini server (you have one of those, yeah?) and link to it - you get the fingerprint of the receiver's certificate, so you could even gate it for them if it's eyes only. Can't fit your message into 2K? Send two, or maybe write less. (Most of the emails I got on the Gemini mailing list were smaller than that anyway). > > 🔭 but is there a better way > >Maybe. That's why I need your feedback. Download the reference specification and shoot me a Misfin letter (!) at [email protected] > >Or, make a ticket on Sourcehut, or Github, or post about it on Station. Up to you. But you could be the first to send me a Misfin letter...

gemini://ayushnix.com/gemlog/2023-08-13-pouncing-an-irc-bouncer.gmi

I wrote a blog post about setting up pouncer and calico to use as an IRC bouncer and improving the pouncer package in Alpine Linux.

I recently transitioned back to working in academia after 6.5 years at a MegaCorp, and by the end I was pretty burned out.

I got better, and I'd like to think I learned a few things along the way. that I wanted to pass on to folks in case they might help somebody.

I recently created a gemini capsule for myself and hosted it on my Raspberry Pi.

gemini://ayushnix.com

I came across a Wi-Fi issue in my OpenWrt router and made a gemlog post about it.

gemini://ayushnix.com/gemlog/2023-07-31-dynamic-frequency-selection.gmi

This is my smol.pub blog! It's on gemini, gopher and the web. I'm super stoked about this tiny interent. Here's the gemini link:

gemini://okasen.smol.pub/about

I'm also really liking astrobotany. Gemini link to my garden:

gemini://astrobotany.mozz.us/public/8a025bdd014c443e8fa21282674fa99b/m1

Put these gemini links into wobbly if you don't have a gemini browser!

https://warmedal.se/~wobbly/

Gopher link: Bongusta!

I appreciate the effort of this community to share random posts on the gopher space. I'm the same vein, here's Bongusta!, an effort to aggregate many phlogs in the same place, scrap them, and present new posts in descending order for all of them.

I've been using that for a few years now and it's pretty neat to discover cool phlogs !

Edit: sorry for the http link, Jerboa wouldn't let me post a gopher:// scheme.