Gemini Articles of Interest

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 18, 2023

A Gemini client^* is needed for the following links.

• Technology and Free Software

  • I am off github — almost

    I'm not going to go deeply into the “why”, just know that this is part of my getting-off-the-clouds journey and I've grown more and more uncomfortable with the direction Microsoft is taking github as a whole and that they do with the data in there. I encourage you to do your own digging if you haven't heard of it yet, it won't be too difficult to find a few of the more controversial events surrounding github in the last few years.

    Anyway, my journey… In the end this was much easier than expected.

  • The Cost of Change

    Having worked with software for a while, in different contexts but more importantly in different stages of the "life cycle" (as if the end was somehow connected to the start), I, like many before me, have noticed that changes are easier to make in the beginning than later. This is of course nothing new revolutionary with that. Barry Boehm wrote in his 1981 book Software Engineering Economics about how changes are many times more expensive later in a project than early on [1]. Preferably all design changes should be thought of and included already in the design phase.

    [...]

    For the sake of keeping this text somewhat short and making a point that is applicable to the real world, I will narrow down the type of software development to the kind I have been doing the most. The kind that is never finished, be it a product that is sold externally or an internal system that is only used by coworkers.

  • Setting up OpenCL on RK3588 using libmali

    I finally got the OrangePi 5 Plus board I ordered. I was going to mess around with the NPU with the rknn2 SDK. However, their matrix multiplcation is broken, segfaulting, and the core SDK is closed source. Nothing I can do becides reporting a bug and wait for them to fix it. In the mean time I decide to mess around with OpenCL. Previously I've tried OpenCL on the same RK3588 on the Mixtile Blade 3 demo system. It worked fine. However, the Ubuntu image I used on the OrangePi 5 Plus board doesn't have OpenCL installed. Some googling turned up the solution. But I do need extra troubleshooting to get it working. Hence this post.

  • Gemini vs Ads

    Continuing the topic: how much privacy can we expect on Gemini, and could capsules ever track users and serve ads?

  • A Formfeed Rabbithole

    Paragraph support in vi(1) is weird, like much else. For one, formfeed characters in the first column delimit paragraphs. This was documented but not implemented historically, and a version of vi that ended up in OpenBSD went with the documentation over the implementation.

  • Mixtile Blade 3 (RK3588) OpenCL performance

    Mixtile Blade 3[1] is an intresting dev board. It runs on a RK 3855 SoC, the successor of the RK3399. Which a whole lot of other boards uses. Including QuartzPro64[2], ITX-3588J[3] and Rock Pi 5[4]. The 16GB model Blade 3 is priced at $369, much more expensive then the Rock Pi 5 at 189$ and the expected price of QuartzPro64 at ~$300.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Re: re: degrowth and its discontents

      For me the issue is path of least resistance. Gemini AND http are both quite good TCP based protocols for serving miscellaneous media. While they both have their bundled media type they're really really good at just serving any content while having a fairly robust protocol.

      So when you're designing a backend internet service or a user facing program - why bother with TCP sockets when you can just use good ol HTTP and get all the protocol design for free. And that isn't even to mention the fact that they also come with this great GUI program and its own markup language to make custom displays. And they can execute arbitrary code (web browsers). It's just starting to look more and more appealing.

    • GmCapsule v0.5: Handler Processes, Live Reloading, Custom Protocols

      I've released a significant update to the GmCapsule server. This version includes a couple of improvements I've been planning to implement for a while.

    • Setting up a daily visitors counter on Gemini

      I recently added a daily visitors count to this Capsule and wanted to share how I did it! The count updates every 15 minutes, and displays unique Gemini and HTTP visitors to my server.

    • Charting the Cosmos

      Cosmos has been up and running since the start of 2022, collecting gemlog posts and other feed entries around Geminispace. I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at the data.

    • Blog update

      I have finally updated my blog look and feel. In fact, I completely switched my static site generator from Jekyll[1] to Zola[2]!

    • Gemini TLS Client-Server compatibility

      I've set up this capsule just a few days ago and already I am dealing with first technological absurdity. One would (naively) expect that with protocol as simple Gemini, compatibility between clients and servers would be a given. A non-issue!

  • Programming

    • world-building in C++

      The bug has hit me again, I'm building a world in a C++ CLI program.

      Every now and then this happens. I feel the urge to build a world and watch its inhabitants interact. Sometimes I'm happy to implement cellular automata, sometimes it is the foundation to a roguelike.

      This time it is a game that would resemble the “Space Trader” game of old, or the more modern “”Endless Sky” or “X3”. A generated universe in which the player takes the role of a trader, pirate, or empire builder.

^* Gemini links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.