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smolZINE - Issue 39

eZine lover (@eZine)

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smolZINE

· 25 Sep 2024

smolZINE - Issue 39

2023-06-03

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Introduction
Hidden (and not so hidden) Gems
Emanations
Spelunking
Recreation
Community Contributions & Discussion

Introduction

Loving all the activity going on around geminispace. We have a lovely submission from degrowther and some great picks. I have more picks in the queue than I can even fit into an issue! PSA: Now accepting guest submissions for Stinky Pinky. If you want to submit clues send an email (at the end of each issue) and let me know.

Hidden (and not so hidden) Gems

The Inner Teapot/Still Stream

The capsule of Joel Sutton, the self-described "Software developer. Creator of synth music. Internet radio admin of Still Stream. Friend to cats." While not streaming on the gemini protocol Joel's non-commercial ambiant internet radio station does have its own capsule.

=> gemini://innerteapot.com/ The Inner Teapot
=> gemini://gemini.stillstream.com/ Still Stream Internet Radio

DeLorean Time Machine

You may be familiar with acidus' gemini search engine Kennedy. But did you know that it also has a gemini style wayback machine? With the relative immaturity and amount of experimentation that goes on in geminispace there are bound to be capsules that disappear for one reason or another. There are quite a few such dead links in older issues of smolZINE. Now if you're reading through older smolZINE issues and encounter a dead link you can paste that into DeLorean and will likely be able to see what was originally intended!

=> gemini://kennedy.gemi.dev/archive/ DeLorean Time Machine

The Stonecutter

Who doesn't love a good story? Who doesn't love ew0k of Antenna fame? I sure do love both of those things. I have linked just the last part to the story because it contains links to all the parts at the top of the page.

=> gemini://warmedal.se/~bjorn/posts/2023-04-15-the-stonecutter-part-6.gmi The Stonecutter

Aelspire's Capsule

"Programmer, coffee, tea and good cuisine enjoyer. Wanting life to slow down. Trying to enjoy small and simple things."

=> gemini://aelspire.info/ Aelspire's Capsule

Elektito's Capsule

This capsule has a good variety of things to read like a nice gemlog, some favorite movie quotes and a favorite capsule list. Elektito has also created gemini search engine called Gemplex.

=> gemini://elektito.com/ Elektito's Capsule

Smol Long Text

If you have an interest in writing, reading or publishing this capsule is a treasure trove of information. It covers many different areas such as writing, editing, publishing, book binding, print on demand and more. Focusing on the small scale.

=> gemini://gemtext.space/ Smol Long Text

Emanations

Something Bubbling in Geminispace

Unless you've been hiding on the dark side of an asteroid you've probably at least heard mention of the hottest topic of gemini discussion lately. Bubble is a new piece of software and companion flagship instance of that software by creator of Lagrange (the immensely popular gemini browser), skyjake. The quick rundown is it's a bulletin board system for gemini. Skyjake cites influences in terms of features from station, reddit, wordpress, and issue trackers. First and foremost I would say it really does feel most like a BBS.

Bubble has been largely well received but not without some respectful criticism. The criticism has not been aimed at the software itself which everyone generally agrees is very well done and an impressive step forward for what you can do with gemini. Rather criticism has been towards the cultural impact it *could* have on the gemini community as a whole. Specifically the possibility that it will create too much centralization which is seen by many as antithetical to the spirit of gemini.

This smolZINE editor's opinion on the whole thing is that it's a great discussion to have. I don't, however, think it's likely to be much of an issue in the long run. One thing I've learned from being online since the early days is that there is no controlling or steering of how people use a protocol or an online space. People will do whatever feels natural to them regardless of whether that meshes with the original intention or design. While I do lean towards the side of centralization not being in the spirit of gemini I also think because the culture in general leans that way that it probably won't result in a mass fleeing of personal capsules to join Bubble exclusively. The more direct interaction and sharing is a nice addition to gemini. One of the things slashdot/reddit/etc. get right (IMO) is the sharing and discussion of links and posts and that's something Bubble has already proven valuable for when looking at some of the interactions already going on in it's infancy.

I mentioned before that Bubble really feels most like a BBS. The design is impressively flexible such that it can be used in multiple different ways. For example you could post exclusively to your own personal bubble feed and would end up with a gemlog that just happened to be hosted on Bubble. But ultimately it feels like a BBS which is an entirely different concept than gemlogs or personal capsules. I think it's pretty apparent that there was a level of interactivity that many geminauts were craving that Bubble provides. I don't think anyone blames the downfall of blogs on the rise of forums on the web. Maybe you will see some who just don't want the headache of selfhosting move to Bubble for the convenience. That was already possible and happening with other capsules that offer hosting.

Of course it is also an option to run Bubble anywhere and the flaship instance is not even intended to be the only one. My hope is we'll see other Bubble instances pop and I think Bubble would be a great for small community servers like tildes. I have to say that this development has been almost fun to watch because everyone involved in the discussion have been extremely thoughtful and respectful. It's great when even in disagreement a community can keep it civil and moving forward.

- kelbot

Spelunking

Note taking is useful

I am an adult with ADHD. I like to think that I manage it well, but I deal with all of the symptoms that every other person with ADHD confronts: I get distracted, I lose track of deadlines, I hyperfocus when I shouldn’t and I can’t focus when I want to. “Managing” ADHD requires a slew of coping strategies: I use the pomodoro technique¹ when I’m having trouble staying on task, I am careful about getting enough sleep and exercise², and when I’m at my most effective, I take a lot of notes.

Now I’ve been lurking around the smol web long enough to have encountered people who have elevated note taking to levels I can’t imagine. It seems like everybody has a personal wiki, or follows GTD, or maintains a Zettelkasten. If these tools work for you, that’s terrific — you’re not going to get much value from any advice I could offer. I’ve been living with my brain for a long time, and I know exactly what happens when I adopt something like a complex “note taking system”: I spend a few days (or weeks) learning everything about it, obsessively get all the digital (or analog) infrastructure set up, and then… abandon it within a month when my interests shift to something new.

Personally, I’ve had the best success when I simply keep a single physical notebook — for both personal and professional use (as a former academic, this line was often blurry) — and fill it from front to back. Sometimes it would resemble a “bullet journal”, but usually not; all my attempts to strictly adhere to any prescriptive note taking style were doomed. So my generally-free-wheeling notes were a terrific resource for nearly two decades of adulthood, and I filled several books with facts and ideas³.

My note-taking discipline fell apart around the time I started working from home full-time (which, coincidentally, happened only a few months before Covid-19 did the same to most non-essential workers). I don’t know what caused it: maybe the act of carrying my notebook around with me — to school, the office, meetings in cafes, gatherings in auditoriums — acted as a continual reminder to actually use the thing. When the world shut down in 2020, I stopped doing anything that required note taking away from my own desk. When I began interacting with the rest of the world exclusively through a computer monitor, my notebook became a neglected artifact on that same desk.

At work, I turned things around and finally started taking digital notes regularly at the beginning of last year. I’d open up a text file every morning and jot down anything important that happened that day (provided that I wasn’t either hyperfocused on a project or unable to pay attention to my meetings). The ability to grep through all of my notes is immensely powerful, one clear advantage to digital notes. However, I could never make the habit stick in my personal life. I stopped taking notes about anything outside of work, and I’ve missed it.

Enter nb

I learned about nb⁴ a month ago on the Fediverse, when I saw somebody ask for a bookmarking tool that could make local backups of webpages⁵. The command-line tool nb does exactly that, but that’s just one aspect of a fully-featured notes tool. In its own words:

nb is a command line and local web note taking, bookmarking, archiving, and knowledge base application

I’ve been using it regularly for a month and love it, and I’ve only taken advantage of a fraction of its features. Besides bookmarking and note taking, it supports encryption, it automatically tracks revisions using git, it can serve its files to a web browser, and it has flexible task-tracking capabilities.

What most impresses me about nb is that all of these features are implemented in a single (25,000 line!) bash script. Who can’t admire the audacity of this feat? Practically speaking, that maximizes nb’s portability. I’ve been using it on my work laptop, which is a remotely-administered Windows machine. I can’t install programs onto this computer, but it has Microsoft’s Terminal app and git-bash, and that’s all I need to take advantage of nb’s core features. This portability makes it more likely that I’ll use nb for a long time; should it someday be abandoned by its creator, breaking changes that I can’t fix myself should be infrequent — especially among the features that I use the most.

nb’s notes are plaintext files; its preferred format is markdown, but it can support a few other common formats just fine. I’ve been importing all of my existing notes into it as I run across them, so that I’d have everything in one place. This is a testament to nb’s searching capabilities — sure, it’s “just grep” under the hood, but it’s grep with well-formatted output by default. Whenever I do need to interact with notes or the underlying git repo directly, as opposed to using nb’s CLI, everything is reasonably organized inside ~/.nb/ (by default).

Making the most of nb at work has required a minor change to my workflow: instead of creating one file per day, I create a new note any time I need to record something: meetings, ideas, to-dos, useful code snippets, or anything else that seems worth saving. The task-tracking interface was initially counter-intuitive to me: to-dos are one type of note, and all notes (including to-dos) can have additional tasks. I’ve settled into using to-dos sparingly and only for bigger projects, and creating tasks for my current slate of action-items as they arise, usually interleaved with notes from the meeting that created them.

What I like the most about nb is that it’s helping me build back a habit of regular note taking outside of work. I’ve been tracking my to-dos, snapshotting useful web pages, and jotting down thoughts, quotes, and code snippets for a month now. I’d be exaggerating if I said that the fog that settled over my mind when Covid lockdowns began finally lifted (I don’t know if that’ll ever happen), but I find myself getting overwhelmed and frustrated over losing track of important thoughts less often, and these are welcome feelings.

There are two things that would make nb more useful for me.

First, I think the quality of my note-keeping would improve if I had a less rigid separation between “work notes” and “personal notes”. With nb’s effortless syncing via git, this would be fairly easy to implement, even in my job’s restrictive environment. However, I’m uncomfortable with having all of my personal notes on a machine that I don’t control, and which my employer could remotely disable and recall at any moment. I’ve come to appreciate how the restrictions they’ve placed on my laptop have encouraged a healthier separation between work and not-work — which is welcome when I work where I live — but the “one notebook” model worked well for me for a long time. I may compromise by setting up additional notebooks: personal notebooks that only live on my machines, a work-specific notebook for meeting notes and task lists, and a shared notebook for the kind of technical notes that are useful in both places. I need to figure out the trade-offs and find a compromise I’m comfortable with.

Second, it would be useful to have ready-to-use integration with my phone. It appears to be possible to run nb’s browse command as a server⁶, which would let me access notebooks through the web. I don’t use nb’s browse mode very often, so it may be a while before I get around to setting this up and trying it. In the meantime, I’m using kludges to move notes from my phone to my computer, and I manually create notes from these. This is not ideal, but it works. Still, a ready-made solution in an app store would be a boon; I spend (too) much of my day at a computer keyboard, but I almost always have my phone on me.

So who should consider nb? You’re likely to be in the sweet spot if you’re comfortable working with text files on a command-line, but aren’t quite ready to become an Emacs Org mode power user. You’ll also need to be willing to commit to sitting at a computer for most of your note taking (until you set up a server), but can’t be looking for the rigidity of a proper “note taking system”. Unless fate conspires to send me back to a lifestyle where I’m sitting in many in-person meetings without a computer, I plan to use it for the foreseeable future.

- degrowther

⁂

[1] For anyone unfamiliar, the pomodoro technique is a time-management method in which you focus on a single task in 25-minute increments, interleaved with short breaks. It’s my tool of last result when I need to plow through something and I can’t keep myself engaged.

[2] I’m sorry to say that this really does help with everything. Medication also helps some people — when they can get it.

[3] It’s interesting that “note taking” and “journaling” are two distinct tasks in my mind, and I do better with the former than the latter. As I reflect on this now, I wonder if that was a mistake.

=> https://xwmx.github.io/nb [4] nb’s homepage and user manual.

=> https://recsys.social/@karlhigley/110197585762284712 [5] The post in question. Thanks @karlhigley, a human recommender system.

=> https://github.com/xwmx/nb/issues/125 #issuecomment-885145732 [6] The git commit that made this possible, I think.

Recreation

Stinky Pinky
by kelbot

To play Stinky Pinky you will need to read the two descriptions below. They each describe a word and the two words rhyme. Example: 1. Smelly, 2. Finger; Answer: Stinky Pinky. Get it? You can email your answer to the address found at the bottom of each smolZINE to confirm if you are correct. The first to answer wins...uhhh I haven't figured that out yet so my congrats will have to do for now.

Ancient stone fruit
Percussion instrument

Community Contributions & Discussion

Please consider taking part in making this zine better and more diverse by contributing your thoughts and finds. If you are interested in contributing a short article or capsule picks email me at: smolzine (at) cyberbot.space.

If you have any feedback or just want to discuss anything related to gemini or smolZINE hit me up at the above email or ping me on the fediverse at kelbot@retro.social and/or use the #smolZINE tag.