How I Found Gemini

I thought it might be worth recording for posterity how I got here.

It was via a Slashdot post pointing to this article from the FSF:

Google’s decision to deprecate JPEG-XL emphasizes the need for browser choice and free formats

And, crucially, the phrase “networks beyond the web like Gemini”.

Good old Free Software Foundation, I thought to myself; if they’re plugging something it’ll be worth a look; either it’ll be good for a laugh or it will change the world. Possibly both.

Anyway, I quickly found the FAQ:

Project Gemini FAQ

And as I read, my interest grew.

I liked “always encrypted”. I liked “first class client certificates”. I liked “simple enough to fit in a weekend programming project”.

But it might have been “text/gemini” that really got me.

Gemtext

Gemtext is a beautiful format.

I guess I’m not alone in finding markdown a pretty good tool, but simultaneously too simple and too complicated. It’s not quite simple enough that I can remember all the details I use; and it’s not quite complicated enough that I never want to embed HTML.

Gemtext hits a sweet spot as sweet as a gentle scratch in that spot on your back that’s hard to reach.

Long lines means that the biggest annoyance of markdown—wrapping to 80 cols—is gone, and editing is a much lighter weight experience. I feel more in control. Paragraphs are no longer magic.

Forcing links onto their own lines simultaneously makes the format simple and forces the whole document to be simpler: you have to take care in how you use links, you can’t just scatter them through the text.

After reading the FAQ I remember thinking: okay, that’s pretty cool, it’s really pushing for as simple as possible. But maybe it’s gone too far; I think I’ll miss “anchor” tags for linking into the body of a document. I probably won’t use Gemini because of that.

Onward

Still, my curiosity was piqued, and I started reading some gemlogs.

I don’t need to tell you what’s great about reading Gemini. Pure text content, no distractions; genuine authors.

I remember being surprised the first few times I hit a “server not responding”. Apparently I had become so used to the mainstream web, I’d forgotten how dead links work.

Anyway; I was hooked.

Somewhere To Publish

I like writing and had a whole pile of ideas for articles to write bouncing about in my head, but nowhere appealing to publish them.

I didn’t want to create a splash, just put my thoughts into writing somewhere people could—if they so choose—read them.

Gemini looked perfect.

So clanmorgan.org was roped into service, and the rest is well documented history.

Thanks for reading.

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