Gemini Articles of Interest
A Gemini client* is needed for the following links.
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Technology and Free Software
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MapTool
Recently I started running an Arden Vul campaign. You know the one: 1122 pages of PDF + maps. For my Stonehell game, I let players map and they're using Gridmapper, at the moment. I need to be precise when communicating the dungeon map to players and they need to draw it correctly. Sometimes there are questions and there is some back and forth. And I start wondering. Should I switch and do the "slow reveal of the published map"?
All I know is that I don't want to use a resource intensive web app to do it. When I start Discord, Roll20 or Jitsi, my laptop's fans start going crazy and the thing gets hot. I don't like that. So if I can get around Roll20, I'll try it.
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Status update July 2023
Over the last months I developed the features that was necessary from a freelancer perspective. Last developments concern bill style customization, brand logos URLs, and minor workflow simplification.
The installation and update workflows are spotless, and I wrote a documentation companion website to help newcomers. The first stable versions had been released, the test coverage please me and will help me for a long time maintenance, the database migration process is simple.
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How incredibly easy it is to break (weak) passwords
Just a few minutes ago, my fried sent me an encrypted ZIP file and says "This ZIP file contains some artwork, but the password is distributed in a past, live event. And it's the birthday of the artist. 8 digits. Can you crack it?" Apprantly he can't find the password. "Sure" I said. I've learned in my cryptography and security class that 8 digit passwords are really easy to crack. Worst case I can iterate through all the possible combinations with BASH within a day. But I've heard this John the Ripper thing is really good at cracking passwords. So I decided to give it a try.
I dumped the hash with `zip2john file.zip > password.hash` and started cracking it with `john password.hash`. Firs I saw john decided to use the CPU only and to myself said, well I'll have to go to bed and see what happens tomorrow.
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At This Point We’d Be Lucky to See the Best Minds of Our Generation Starving Hysterical Naked
The last job I worked at, I did some web development. It wasn't my choice. I got re-org'd away from my previous team, lead a web team where a lot of my responsibilities were webapp development. Older stuff (Java and Struts), newer stuff (React, node.js), plus traditional stuff - HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I administered servers, worked with our automation, learned the ins and outs of a CMS that is, to be polite, not exactly in a Gartner Magic Quadrant.
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Internet/Gemini
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Not Dead
I'm not dead, I'm just suddenly really fucking busy.
I have a long-form post about AI menu planners in the works, but school has to take precedence at the moment.
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Tough changes to keep gwit simple
Lately I've been updating the gwit specification to fix several issues that have surfaced during private mail exchanges and discussions with people who I consider relevant in the fields of Gemini and decentralized publishing. First, I want to thank each of them for their help and the time and effort that they have devoted to this, and for their very valuable input! 🖖 Also note that the "gwit-spec" mailing list is always open for further public discussion.
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* Gemini links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.