Gemini

📅 19 Nov 2021

As with my posts on lynx and neofetch, this post will be yet another example of me checking things out way too late. That’s OK. I have fun on my own terms.

While preparing to write this, I was thinking a lot about the nature of this blog and the community I am part of, Fosstodon. A lot of my content is not really tech related. And my toots on Fosstodon are often not tech related either.

I have around 10 solid hobbies, and 5-10 more that I only occasionally dabble in. This means that I don’t really go too far down the rabbit hole on many of them.

The exception for me is films. I even have a separate, really bad blog that I spun up really quickly to share my film reviews. But to say I love films is an understatement. Fortunately, you can do other things while you’re watching movies, thus how I am able to watch so many (nearly 300 this year to date and nearly 2200 in my lifetime).

But anyway, all that is to say that I’m writing about Gemini today, and as is tradition, this will not be a very technical or exhaustive post. I hear about it and wanted to check it out, that’s it.

As I understand it: Gemini, put simply, Gemini is just another internet protocol. It is lighter than the modern web and takes user privacy more seriously. They do this by not only eliminating tracking features, but also eliminate features that have been used to backdoor tracking in the modern web. They say all this. I’m not a privacy/security expert, so you be the judge.

First, I needed to get a GUI to browse Gemini cause I didn’t want to be bothered with anything else. Again, with all of my hobbies, I’m looking for ease and simplicity. I chose Lagrange because it was readily available and after downloading seemed easy to use.

Next, I had no idea what to do. Well, after browsing the Gemini homepage and some documentation, I found the official Gemini search engine, “geminispace.info”.

I then wasted two hours (they weren’t really wasted) going to various pages, or “capsules” (apparently Gemini speak for blogs/sites). The easiest way to find cool capsules, divided up by themes was actually to go to “medusae.space”.

I found some really cool content in a short amount of time. It actually made me want to spin up my own Gemini capsule. But, I have so many “quick” projects on the backburner right now that I knew this was a bad idea. I have a big trip coming up and promised to bring my friends a bunch of fresh-roasted coffee. So, right now, that is my number one priority.

In the meantime, I will keep writing and sharing thoughts. I now have Lagrange installed and can check out Gemini whenever I want. Maybe I’ll discover a few new capsules when I watch a movie tonight.

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