Curling Weather and Simulated Time

Tue 10 May 2022 09:31:01 AM EDT

Two neat little things I want to share before I end up fogetting about them; both available running online, and both having source available for runnning at home.

wttr.in

I can’t really remember how I discovered this site, though I can guarantee it while while I went on a simple little search for terminal/console based things to do. wttr.in does several neat little tricks for displaying short term weather forecasts, with a character-based display being the common thread amongst all the outputs. What caught my attention about it was that I could pull the weather via curl–sure, maybe not the most exciting thing to some, but this side of computing–doing “big” things via command-line–is still new to me. Being in an SSH seesion with my tablet, thinking “I wonder what today’s high will be,” and typing in

curl http://wttr.in/Lexington?u

just fascinates me. To check out wttr.in, head on over to the site and check out the source at github.

https://wttr.in/
https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in

WWV Simulator

Several weeks ago I started talking to my wife about shortwave radio. Okay, maybe I didn’t do so much talking as I did introducing the concept and then showing a youtube video or two on the subject; but while I was watching the videos with her, I mentioned one of my favorite things to do when I was a kid and had access to my Dad’s receiver was tune in to WWV and listen to the station announce the time. (This also helped explain why I would occasionally look at a clock and if I was in the right mood say “at the tone, one hour, forty-six minutes,”)

In order to try and give her an example of the experience I did a quick little search to see if anyone was silly enough to record a portion of the broadcast and post it somewhere online–I mean, if we have weather radio sirens and EAS headers online, surely someone has recorded that… Well, I found something even better.

The WWV simulator uses your system clock and a bit of javascript to play out recorded samples from WWV or WWVH in your browser. Pretty neat, eh? I found it awesomely fascinating, and through it had my first experience hearing Hawaii.

You can check out the simulator and source at the links below:

https://wwv.mcodes.org/
https://github.com/kalafut/wwv

Thanks for reading;

–J

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Commencing Countdown, Engines On

Sun 08 May 2022 12:44:56 PM EDT

In the last post I scraped the surface on getting myself introduced to gemini. Now, I think I’d kind of like to document what I’ve done to try and set up this little capsule and server. WARNING: this post may end up being a bit erratic–more like a scratchpad with a terrible brainstorming map scrawled on it. Apologies if that make things uninteresting or difficult to follow, but I can already feel that I’m not very focused–plus I’m attempting to lead you down a path of discovery that wasn’t very focused to begin with…

So, there I was, sitting at my desk and staring at that peculiarity on my screen:

http://homelinux.nsupdate.info:8081/x/gemini.ctrl-c.club/~nristen/gemlog/20210602.gmi

…what was this gemini protocol from which this “gemlog” entry originated?

As stated previously, a quick google search led me to find a few answers–as well as lead me to discovering that there was even more odd stuff happening on the Internet. A retro-renaissance of sorts, I guess? A revolution? I don’t quite know how to describe it, really–perhaps because I don’t really understand it, and perhaps because I was not fully a part of the birth and growth of things to begin with–prior to this particular wave of Internet communications and presence. Anyway, with regard to to gemini I discovered that someone came up with the idea of establishing a new protocol not too disimilar from an older one–gopher. (That’s something else I never really played with much, outside of a few times in school while doing research–I was just too ill-informed to realize what I was using.) Since this was something new and relatively close to an older way of doing things, I figured I’d give it a shot–as it is something that somewhat goes along with my interests and walks very closely to this silly project of mine that will likely go nowhere.

So, how do I get into the geminispace? This was a bit more confusing than I thought it should be–I mean, I saw different links around for multiple browsing clients, but which one should I choose? Okay, pause for a second to acknowledge that I did try to explore a little bit via a couple of proxies. That experience was cool, I guess, and did encourage me to press forward with finding a dedicated client. But again, which client should I choose? Is there any particular client that is better than another, with regard to usuability and feature-set? And features? Really? I mean what features am I really looking for when it comes to browsing a network of text? In the end, I figured that I was just trying to overcomplicate things and apply the logic of the current world-wide-web to a network that is a hell of a lot simpler. Simplicity; that should be the focus. So, no graphical UI; let’s go with something that is character based. After looking at a couple of options, I chose Amfora.

https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora
gemini://makeworld.space/amfora-wiki

Awesome. I have a client. Let’s get to browsing. But–heh, heh, there’s that one question again–where to start? There is no Google here, no CNN, no funky ISP splash page… so, where do I begin? Well, first I began with loading Amfora’s help page so that I could try to commit to memory a few basic key commands; knowing how to use the program is always a good idea, right? After that, I chose to simply go back to the Project Gemini page–this time natively!–and then simply follow a few links from there.

After a bit of wandering around and scraping the surface of what all is out there–and it would seem that there is liekly more out there than we actually know about–I decided it was time to set up my own little capsule.

Remember that bit just a few lines ago where I said that deciding upon a browsing client was a bit confusing and complicated for me? Well, a little more of the same happened here…

There are several hosts out there for you to create your own little capsule on–a surprising number, in my opinion. All are free at the moment, from what I see. Some are exclusive, in a sense, in that they’re running on a “club-membership” server–if you’re a member of some sort of computing club, chances are decent that you’ve got the ability to set up a capsule there; of course, chances are you already have, and are sitting there thinking I’m a blathering idiot. Anyway, I poked around looking at hosts for a very brief moment, and then realized I could simply run my own server software and not have to worry about finding shared space to occupy–and furthermore not worry about potentially upsetting someone in the future and getting kicked from there server! (I’ve never experienced anything like that, but it’s always been a constant fear of mine… but that’s definietely another story.) So, the hunt for server software…

After reading a few different reviews–which there didn’t seem to be that many in my searches–and finding a couple of personal experiences written online, I settled on Agate:

https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate

Setup and installation of Agate was pretty easy; I don’t recall having any major hoops to jump through or really any tweaks that I needed to make in order to get things up and running. Overall, I’d say that portion of things was relatively painless, once I reminded myself once again to try and keep from looking for ways to complicate things. Complicating things, however, seems to be what I do best, and leads us into the next step of what I wanted to try and achieve; I wanted to figure out a way to mirror things–just like the page that led me down this rabbit hole to begin with.

I really don’t remember the paths and searches I took next in order to get where I landed–and my browsing history is a mess on top of things, so I really have no way of trying to reconstruct the chain of events that led me there. I can, however, tell you that I did finally settle upon a little package of scripts called Gemtexter:

https://foo.zone/gemfeed/2021-06-05-gemtexter-one-bash-script-to-rule-it-all.html
gemini://foo.zone/gemfeed/2021-06-05-gemtexter-one-bash-script-to-rule-it-all.gmi
https://codeberg.org/snonux/gemtexter

…and, of course, with this, I decided to try and complicate things more. I did make a few little tweaks to the scripts in order to have it fit the way I wanted things organized… I changed the file locations and the directories referenced, as well as added in the ability to put a date stamp on pages for when it’s run. All of that probably would have went a lot better if I knew what I was doing–see, I’m very much still the novice when it comes to Linux and scripting–or coding and programming anything in any language, for that matter. After hours of struggling and discovery–again, because I don’t know what I’m doing–I got it to work the way I wanted. YAY!!!

…but can I get it to also convert and push things to a WordPress install? (There I go, trying to complicate things, again.) As of this moment, I’m going to have to say the answer is no, at least not that I’ve managed to figure out. It looks like one of the file formats that Gemtexter outputs–MarkDown–could be used very easily for ultra simplicity, and that one additional hooked script could push it into WP via the wp-cli with a few git hooks tied into the WP installation as well… but I’m not that knowledgeable. So I opted instead to create a totally different, separate script that I can run after Gemtexter to push the most recent HTML encoded entry into my WP install via the cli.

So, I don’t know… I guess that my story for now. I hope to come back soon with something other than stories surrounding trying to explore geminispace, and get a little further into what I’m really wanting to try and accomplish, here. Until then…

Thanks for reading;

–J

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Space Oddity

Sat 07 May 2022 10:08:31 AM EDT

I’ve opened countless writings with the words, “I really don’t know what to write,” or “I don’t know where to begin…”

I guess this is yet another one of those writings…

I suppose the best place to start, at least for now, is with the story of how I discovered gemini–as it does tie into what I’m thinking the whole point of this little capsule will be. But before that, I guess I should give a quick little introduction to what I’m even talking about in reference to gemini and capsules, as I am crossposting this into the web. For anyone not in the know, and somehow reading this nonsense out in the world wide web, gemini is a different kind of text and file transfer protocol–a different way for our computers to link together and share information. Instead of things being written and served up in languages being supported by hypertext–you know, that http:// bit that you might’ve seen or used in your browser’s address bar–stuff here is riding on the “simpler” gemini specification; as such, you’ll see addresses beginning with the gemini:// protocol.

I think that’s about the best and simplest way I can come up with trying to explain it. Yeah, if you’re lost, don’t worry, I can barely understand what I’m talking about, too. Anyway, that’s where this writing currently lives–at least originally–in the gemini universe, or gem-space. The whole “space thing” is also a neat little joke tying into the creation of the protocol’s name–think about NASA’s Gemini capsule… are you seeing a connection in where the different “sites” are referred to as “capsules”?

Yeah, okay, I need to move on, I see I’m losing your attention. But, if you’d like to know more about gemini, then head on over to:

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

So, anyway, back to the story of this particular capsule’s birth.

A few weeks ago, I’d begun tinkering with an old tablet–a Nexus 7 (“grouper” if that matters to anyone)–trying to find some way to make it useful to me again. The whole problem I was having was that the digitizer was broken–I’d accidentally stepped on the thing about a year ago, after having rediscovered it and having already made it be a useful device again. The Nexus 7 is a pretty old device, and isn’t the easiest thing to use in the present day, due to it’s hardware limitiations. I’d managed to find good use of it as an e-reader, however, and as a quick little tool to do some light browsing. If you want to try to continue to use it today as an android device and not be as limited, I recommend seeking out instructions on changing the OS from ASUS/Google’s installed version to either CyanogenMod or LineageOS. (Personally, I’d tried the latest LineageOS release at the time and found it to be about as buggy and slow as the last “offical” Google update, so I downgraded back to the last build released under the CM name–sorry, can’t remember off-hand the version number.) Anyway…

A curious search led me to discover postmarketOS–a solution! I could install a flavor of Linux on the thing!

Yeah, okay, how’s adding a different operating system to the tablet going to fix the fact that I still can’t interact with the touchscreen, right? Well, my thoughts were that I could have it propped on my desk and remotely control it via my main PC–just kind of using it as a small, separate little PC of it’s own, and using it for only tiny little tasks–weather radar, streaming background music, running a lightweight script or two. Yeah, turning it into a bit more of a novelty, I guess–but one I could actually use!

Shortening the story, I managed to get pmOS installed and set about finding a way to control it. I could’ve went with a regular VNC method–which I did end up having to employ VNC at some point in order to do something–but I wanted something more. I wanted to more directly control the tablet with my mouse and keyboard; and if I could get a solution that would also work on a couple of netbooks I also have sitting on the desk, we’d have a winning solution to my problems. Enter “Barrier”.

Barrier is a nifty little program that does a VNC like connection, acting as an automatic KVM switch–sans the V, I guess–between computers. I’d heard of Barrier years ago on TWiT–or, at least, I think I did–and had toyed with it once before. (Okay, so my memory may be a bit fuzzy, here. It was either Barrier or the program it was forked from–and I know that somewhere in the mix was mention of a Windows PowerToy “Screen Without Borders” or something like that. I dunno. I just remember–or think I remember–that it was stuff mentioned about how Leo was able to interface between a couple of his computers and–again, I think–even the “Skype-asaurus”.)

So, anyway; Awesome. We have Barrier available on pmOS for the asus-grouper. Sweet. Of course we have Barrier for x64 Mint. Sweet. Barrier ports exist for Windows… but not for 32-bit. Well, crap. I just “upgraded” that netbook to Win 8.1, and didn’t want to turn it back into a linux machine, again. (That’s another story.) Well… time for a little lazy research. Synergy–the program that Barrier was forked from–runs on 32-bit Windows. Sweet. Can Barrier and Synergy talk to each other? No–at least not any more. Crap. Keep searching… If it had been possible–or at least this one person said they’d had them talking to each other at one point, maybe I can find where someone said which versions ended up being compatible…

…and here is where I stumbled upon a gemini capsule. (Stumble Upon… wonder if that service still exists… hmm…)

So in my search results I found a gemlog of someone going through something kinda similar. Their post caught my attention–merely because of the odd use of font and color on the page that was served to me; see, I was on the www looking at all this stuff, and I found an html mirror of this person’s gemlog. At first I was like, “Okay, what the heck is this? I’ll need to poke around here, later,” as that’s my usual response to finding geeky looking things on todays modern web. I went to look at the address and got hit with another surprise–which really wasn’t that surprising, given that whole color/font thing–“there’s a port number exposed in the url! Somebody might be serving up stuff from home!” This always excites me; I really don’t know why. I guess it’s a part of me that thinks something like, that’s the way it should be. So, anyway, I made a mental note–because I’m terrible with bookmarks–and went back to searching for an answer to my problem.

To keep you from hanging in suspense, I gave up on my search for a way to have Barrier and Synergy shake hands and went ahead with grabbing compiled Windows builds of Synergy and then building Synergy from source on Mint and pmOS. That was <sarcasm> fun </sarcasm>. (hmm… yet another aside, did the “sarc-mark” ever become a thing?)

…so eventually, I came back around to looking at that mirrored gemlog, and actually read the post, as I’d only skimmed it previously; and there, at the end, was mention of the post being a mirror of a page, revaling to me a URL with the gemini:// protocol. “gemini:// ? What the heck is that?” Needless to say, that’s when I began my search to discover what gemini is, and now Bob’s your uncle.

Wow.

That was seriously one long, rambling, pointless story. I think I’ll end this post here, and pick back up on the rest of this gemini stuff–as well as some of the other things I began to get derailed on–in another post in the near future.

Thanks for reading;

–J

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