Relaunch
- Posted 2022-04-06
So I've relaunched yeel.es again, but this time, I've migrated it off of the Web and on to Gemini. I've really been enjoying Geminispace over the past few years, and this has been on my to-do list for a long time. I'm maintaining a Web presence as well, which is automatically generated from the Gemini content. This not only gives me a satisfyingly minimalist Web site, but also greatly streamlines the process of writing content. And besides, browsing Geminispace is just a very pleasant experience, and I highly recommend it. It's definitely the best way to view this Gemini capsule, anyway.
What is Gemini?
If you're viewing the Web version of this capsule, you may be wondering what I mean by "Gemini capsule". Gemini is an alternative protocol to HTTP, aiming to provide a lightweight alternative to the increasingly bloated Web. It's a text-only protocol, and is a bit like Gopher, but with some minimal text formatting. A Gemini "capsule" is equivalent to a Web site. To view Gemini content, you'll need a Gemini browser: a nice one, Lagrange, is linked below. I have, however, put together a script to share my Gemini content over HTTP as well, so you can still view yeel.es over the normal Web.
Gemini protocol Lagrange Gemini browserBut why?
I just think it's nice. The limited environment is nice to work in, and moves the focus on to the content. It's also a more pleasant browsing experience, without ads and multi-megabyte Web sites cluttering everything up and slowing everything down. It's a bit like the Web was in the mid-'90s. I've tended to maintain a fairly minimalist Web site design in the past anyway, so Gemini neatly streamlines the workflow.
The future
I'm hoping to use this a bit more now that it's on Gemini. I've stripped away all the cruft and can now just focus on the content. I'm particularly hoping to do some more data science work, using kral, the crappy kind-of alternative to Jupyter Notebooks that I've been working on. It parses K code embedded in Gemtext documents, and will hopefully be good enough at least for me to generate some fun content. Check it out at the link below. It's very much a work in progress.
kralSo, fingers crossed that I can keep this up. At the very least, this time I am at least motivated to support the Gemini community, so you never know!