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By David Norris - launched Sunday 17th September, 2023
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, then for every victory gained you will also
suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
Sun Tzu, Chinese military strategist and philosopher
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My Christmas statements have become something of a tradition. Now here on Gemini for the first time; previous years may be found on Gopher.
Why do I use Gemini to host content, or even Gopher, for that matter? To quote the Gemini FAQ - the experience is like entering a library, not a shopping mall or a casino. "The average Gemini page is at least ten times smaller than the average webpage, and a hundred times smaller than worst ones, so they load almost instantly even on old computers or flaky internet connections."
Great of you are in Africa, SE Asia or parts of Latin America and have a poor connection and/or pay by the MB. And it is free of all the rubbish on the web!!! Reading that starts as soon as the page loads, without you first having to carefully click past a pop-up window which actively tries to mislead you into "consenting" to something nobody actually wants or needs, and which continues right to the end of the page without being interrupted by another pop-up begging you to subscribe to a newsletter.
And for an academic like myself...
"Reading in peace because there's no way for a page to play music or make a sound without you actively inviting it to, so you're free to enjoy your own background music, or maybe to just keep quiet if you're reading somewhere with other people around. It's up to you, like it should be; it's your computer, and they're your ears."
You can quietly browse in an office or without any risk of disturbing anyone, without the fear that 120DB music or autoplaying videos are going to alert the boss to what you are doing or wake up evryone in the house.
You can be sure you will not be redirected without permission, tracked, be presurised to install junk (and potentially malicious software or browser add-ons). It is 100% free of cookies (and nagging to accept them on every page you visit), and free of CPU heating, battery draining and mobile data wasting scripts and calls to third party domains.
Young visitors can browse safely, and their parents can be sure they will not be redirected to inappropriate content.
=>/dfdn/reasons.gmi Good reasons to emigrate from the UK...
Migration risks become widespread as a toxic combination of economic stagnation and surging growth elsewhere lure young people away...
"For a decent standard of living, we all need security and stability in our lives – secure housing, a reliable income, and support when things get difficult. For too many of us, there is no such security. Millions of people in the UK are struggling to get by, leading insecure and precarious lives, held back from improving their living standards. It’s time to take action on poverty and put this right." Joseph Rowntree Foundation, January 2020. (Before COVID-19 hit, making matters worse! This was followed by the cost of living crisis.).
UPDATE!
Well, I have just returned from my second visit to China on a cultural exchange.
In theory I will be eligible each as an opportunity at a Chinese university if
I complete a third such exchange - so I am told by the organiser of the exchanges.
In the meantime, I will consider my options for English teaching.
If I can manage to get a position doing so, then I can work in a place
where living costs are low.
In the meantime, students who are among my regular core of long term students,
who have been unable to take lessons while I was in China should take advantage
of the opportunity to catch up, and I will have Christmas and new year available.
In the Christmas/New Year period in what should (I hope!) be my last in the UK.
For younger students, you have school holidays so what are you waiting for?
Older students have time off work in the majority of cases also. And when I
have reason to celebrate Christmas again, I will want time off myself. But not
this year. Strike while the iron is hot, as the saying goes! There is a story
behind this..
I have carried out an analysis of which countries pay English or engineering
teachers well? I came down to...
• South Korea;
• Japan;
• China;
• United Arab emirates.
And my conclusions?
After a long and in-depth analysis of which countries paid well, I conducted
extensive analysis of their living costs and demographics.
United Arab Emirates has high living costs, so I will struggle to save.
Japan and South Korea also have fairly high living costs, and initial interviews
in the summer of 2023 revealed a lot of competition;
China stands out as it combines low living costs with good pay for teaching
staff. And - it has the added attraction in that I have now taught (at a
Chinese University!) in person on two separate occasions now; - online on
two occasions back in the days when COVID-19 made it difficult or impossible
to visit in person.
I vitally need to be in a position to relocate and save for the business I plan
to launch in West Africa. See:
So... I am likely to teach for one term in 2024, visit Burkina Faso in the
summer break, and complete a year in 2024/2025 to save. I think this will
suffice. I will review this in 2025. Those who know me well know my motto..
"If a vital job needs to be done, do not procrastinate. Give me the
opportunity and the resources, and I will get the job done. No excuses!"
Any questions anyone? David, December 2023
For my pictures from the visit, publiched for the first time on on Gemini:
[Can Gemini (or Gopher) display images? Yes, of course! But not inline. It saves bandwidth for those paying by the MB, a large part of why I use them! Click on the link to display.]
One thing I like about Gemini is that is simple and there is no need to render the file to another format, because it is just plain text and is easy to work with. I also like Gopher
for this reason - ***MUCH*** quicker and less error prone than writing HTML! Oh, and those not in the know can only dream about an online experience free of all the obnoxious
crap we are ***only too used to*** in the world of HTTP(S) - cookies (and being continually nagged to either accept them or change settings for every single site we visit!!!), pop-ups
getting in the way of work, incessant user tracking and invasions of our privacy, and being bombarded with autoplaying audio and video which draw the attention of colleagues (and
the boss!) or wake up everyone in the house late at night... the list goes on and on.
Why am I interested in using Gemini (and indeed Gopher) as part of my operations? Because I want to offer content which is free of cookie questions on every page, and which does not rely on megabytes of resource devouring, browser crashing javascript, request tens of megabytes of bandwith and money costing advertising, and invade the privacy of my visitors in true Orwellian style, to load. That is why. Nothing more to it than that!
How to protect (or restore) your internet freedom. And what the term "internet freedom" really means
The "old web" still exists! It's just drowned in a sea of sites bloated for the purpose of tracking and advertising. What would be nice is a no-bloat search engine, which would only
index sites that don't require 25MB of JS and 425 requests to third-party domains to load.
This is what a typical website does today...
1) Get minimal html containing links to javascript package and styling.
2) Make request to get big javascript package.
3) Make request to get relatively small css styling.
4) Load and execute javascript package.
5) Javascript makes api calls to get page content.
6) Get content and populate page.
7) Page content contains links to images and tracking/advertisement scripts.
8) Make requests to get images and tracking/ad scripts.
9) Ad scripts make more requests to get images / gifs / movies, etc.
The majority of the slowness comes from steps 2,4,5,6,8,9. Blocking ads helps steps 8, 9. The fact that people are actually using a dedicated Raspberry PI computer for
the sole sake of ad blocking on their network bears testimony to how bad the nightmare has become. However, steps 2, 4, 5 and 6 are just in-fashion bad development practices.
Looking at the above, it is very clear that the whole process is a prodidgal waste of resources - bandwidth, CPU power, memory, and the battery of the device on which the content
is displayed! An application such as Pi-hole uses DNS filtering to selectively block ads and malicious domains across your entire home network. Cool! The advantages of this
approach are clear: you don’t have to install ad-blocking software on each and every device in your household. Moreover, it only needs to be set up once. The only drawback? Of
course, it only protects you within your own network, not when on mobile data, at work/school/university, hotels etc...
Both Gopher and Gemini both are MUCH more bandwidth efficient than the web for the above reasons. Great for clients in places or on limited contracts or where one pays by
the megabyte, as well as for those for whom privacy is important. Trouble is, the less well informed nowadays have a web browser and little else. There is PLENTY more to the
internet than just the mess which they call the web - for the er, less educated, the web is synonymous with the internet. It isn't! See port numbers and services below...
The Gemini service was launched in September 2023. It has proven a success.. It is here to stay in 2024.
Users requiring NFS, AFP or (Only over VPN) Netbios access working with us in future must contact me.
Indeed I tried unsucessfully to get onto Italki. I was declined. Age descrimination is everywhere I look. You should gather by now that I am a firm
proponent of human rights - and fully behond those standing up for their human rights...
I love listening to James O'Brien. He is on LBC on 97.3 FM in London. Elsewhere, you can listen online. You can stream from their website, or try apps you have already. And here are some programs. Let us see how streaming on Gemini works. Try these examples (Lagrange for example supports MP3 streaming. See the two following links.
The people trafficing gangs tell you the UK is the promised land; just hand us your life savings, and we will give you an unseaworthy boat to reach it.... The streets of London are paved with gold (as in Dick Whittington). The 'government' talk of a strong economy. And my conservative party supporting (and niave, tragicommic mother, who has not worked since I was born) says this is the best country in the world. Oh, and by the way, Happy Christmas.
Note that unlike Gemini, Goper and HTTP are not encrypted - these pages are public access however.
Amateur Radio related pages:
The last two links testify to how I am able to succeed in the face of adversity - and you ain't seen nothing yet! David, G7VDI
As I am interested in Photovoltaic (solar) and other forms of renewable energy, I would certainly like to visit Quarzazare, Indeed,
I am intending to base a business in this in West Africa in years to come.
External links (I am not responsible for the content of external sites).
Gemini search engines currently available:
The following are here for reading practice and for general interest. For confident English students only!
Note: all available except IOS (Sorry, Apple policy not mine, Lagrange available on testflight only):
To test beta versions of apps and App Clips using TestFlight, you’ll need to accept an email or public link invitation from the developer and have a device that you can use to test. You’ll be able to access the builds that the developer makes available to you.
If you’re a member of the developer’s team, the developer can give you access to all builds or certain builds.
Required platforms:
iOS or iPadOS apps: iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 or later. App Clips require iOS 14 or iPadOS 14, or later.
macOS apps: Mac running macOS 12 or later.
tvOS apps: Apple TV running tvOS 13 or later.
visionOS apps: Apple Vision Pro running visionOS 1 or later.
watchOS apps: Apple Watch running watchOS 6 or later.
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Gemini clients include:
Name Platform License Written in
Amfora Terminal (TUI) GPL 3.0 Go
AmiGemini GUI (Intuition) MIT C, Intuition
asuka Terminal (TUI) MIT Rust, ncurses
AV-98 Terminal (CLI) 2 Clause BSD Python
Bollux Terminal MIT Bash
Bombadillo Terminal GPL 3.0 Go
Buran App (Android) GPL 3.0 Kotlin
Castor GUI (GTK) MIT Rust, GTK
Castor9 GUI (Plan 9) C
Deedum App (Android and iOS) GPL 3.0 Flutter, Dart
Diohsc Terminal (CLI) GPL 3.0 Haskell
dillo-gemini Plugin (Dillo) FSFAP Shell
Elaho (gemini-ios) App (iOS) MPL 2.0 Swift
Elpher GUI (Emacs) GPL 3.0 Emacs Lisp
Eva GUI (GTK) MIT Rust, GTK
Fafi GUI MIT Racket
GemiNaut GUI (Windows) GPL 3.0 C# for Microsoft Windows
gemini.filter.dpi Plugin (Dillo) MIT Go
Geopard GUI (GTK) GPL 3.0 Rust, GTK
gmni Terminal (CLI) GPL 3.0 C
gplaces Terminal (CLI) GPL 3.0 or later C
Jimmy App (macOS) MIT Swift
Kristall GUI (Qt) GPL 2.0 C++, Qt
Lagrange GUI (Windows, macOS, Linux) 2 Clause BSD C, SDL
wMoonlander GUI (GTK) MIT Rust, GTK
Offpunk Terminal (CLI) 2 Clause BSD Python
Rocketeer App (iOS, macOS) Swift
Seren App (Android) Kotlin
Starfish GUI (elementary OS/Linux) GPL 3.0 Vala, GTK
Telescope Terminal (TUI) ISC C
Twin Peaks GUI (Windows) GPL 3.0 C#
VIRGIL99 Terminal (TI-99) Assembly language
© David Norris, DFDN.org
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