🦎 u/bluesman
Author of Alhena gemini client.
👤 Self description: Evidence-Based Lefty (in s/US-politics)
Posts
Onion Services — I've been messing with Tor since adding SOCKS5 support to Alhena. I think the whole onion service thing is interesting and was surprised to find a few in Gemini. I set up my own service (temporarily) to see what was involved. I like the idea for running one but I'm wondering why. Is the motivation mostly to show support for the technology?
💬 6 comments · 1 like · Oct 12 · 2 days ago
Has anyone here done the Rufus Windows 10 to 11 upgrade in place? Did your installed programs continue to work? I have three machines that aren't eligible otherwise.
💬 5 comments · Oct 03 · 10 days ago
Protocol Styles and the Flag of Sark — If you build Alhena from source, you can now create a page style by protocol (gemini, spartan, nex, http, https and file). Thanks @me for the great idea! You also get updated sprite emojis: , , , , , or and the Flag of Sark: 🇨🇶 A formal release with installs may take a few days since 5.3.8 just came out.
💬 7 comments · Sep 30 · 13 days ago
Illegal Character In URL — A link showed up in Antenna today that won't open in Alhena because the URL contains an unecoded ">". Alhena uses Java's URI class to parse out the scheme, host, path and query and since the URI class strictly implements RFC3986, trying to parse the url throws an exception. That said, the link will open in Lagrange and Amfora. I could probably do some gymnastics to make it work but I'm leaning towards displaying an error message instead. I can't find anything in the...
💬 5 comments · Sep 14 · 4 weeks ago
Is It Just Me — I feel like the news links showing up recently in Antenna makes it less pleasant to use. Just my two cents adjusted for inflation.
💬 9 comments · 1 like · Aug 14 · 2 months ago
Scriptonite Lagrange Workarounds — I put in workarounds for running Scriptonite in Lagrange. The issue is that Lagrange doesn't preserve certain percent-encoded characters in urls (whether on a page or in a redirect). The fix is to sanitize Scriptonite links coming in and base64 on redirect. The one thing I can't workaround is semicolons. If you want to use them in a pre-populated variable or auto-prompt, the Scriptonite segment must be base64 encoded in advance. That should be rare but there...
💬 13 comments · Aug 04 · 2 months ago
Lagrange and Scriptonite — After carrying on for weeks thinking Scriptonite was just fine and dandy, I find out a number of my sample scripts don't work in Lagrange. Long story short, my auto-prompt scheme relies on redirects. Right or wrong (someone tell me), Alhena redirects with the exact url sent in the status 30 message. It appears Lagrange will decode things in the url I intended to be preserved. Simple example: If my server builds a redirect url containing ";code=2%2B2", it becomes ";...
💬 3 comments · Jul 31 · 2 months ago
Gemtext Aware Titan Editor — The Alhena Subspace may have been a bad idea but I think this is a good one: A gemtext aware Titan text editor (see image at link). I edit my site, my gemlogs and my posts on BBS with Titan. This enhancement really does improve the experience. Adding a gemtext syntax parser to Alhena via the RSyntaxTextArea library wasn't too terrible. Well, except for word wrap (the library is designed for code editing). I still need to tune for themes a bit and explore some...
💬 View post · 3 likes · Jul 24 · 3 months ago
New Subspace — I created an Alhena subspace where people can report bugs and suggest enhancements. Not everyone has a GitHub account or wants to file issues there. One of the unique features of Alhena (color emojis) was born out of user feedback on GitHub. Post if you have anything to suggest.
💬 View post · 2 likes · Jul 23 · 3 months ago
AI Slop Revisited — I got some friendly feedback to my previous "AI Slop" post. The sender felt it was unfortunate I used AI to find a workaround and (more importantly) that the nature of the workaround could somehow come back to haunt me in the future. I've been around long enough to know if one person expresses an opinion, there are others "in the shadows" thinking the same thing. Here's my response to them. vert.x is an abstraction over the Netty async I/O library. It does not have an...
💬 4 comments · Jul 17 · 3 months ago
AI Slop? — So there was a known issue in Alhena. If a server sent a close_notify without actually closing the connection (I'm looking at you vger), the busy spinner would keep on spinning until the connection timed out. Yeah, you could hit the ESC key but it was annoying. Since I opted to use vert.x to take advantage of easy async I/O, I was dismayed to discover the api did not have a callback for close_notify. I could lower the read timeout but slow sites could get disconnected if they took...
💬 5 comments · 2 likes · Jul 15 · 3 months ago
On-The-Fly — I think this is kind of interesting. I wrote a simple Scriptonite app with a link that prompts for an on-the-fly JavaScript expression to execute. You can use it like a calculator. Even more weird and interesting is another link demonstrating how to leverage this same code to write a temperature conversion app by putting JS code into a URL parameter.
💬 2 comments · Jul 12 · 3 months ago
I Added Scripting To Gemini — I wrote a gemlog about it. It doesn't break the spec and works in all clients. In a nutshell, it's a service that interprets gemini pages with embedded JavaScript. There are a couple example programs at the link including a simple game. Because scripts have the ability to request data from the user, it's much more useful than first thought.
💬 21 comments · 4 likes · Jul 09 · 3 months ago
T-Minus And Counting — It is with great fanfare and the deepest sincerity that I'm pleased to announce a new Gemini service of profound utility. "T-Minus And Counting (The Gemini Temporal Explorer)" fills, if not a gaping hole, then an extremely tiny impression in the competitive Gemini countdown clock ecosystem. But those are just words. Create your own temporal tracker and judge for yourself. One timer per cert. If you need two...
💬 1 comment · 3 likes · Jul 03 · 3 months ago
AuraGem YouTube Proxy — @clseibold I was pleasantly surprised to find myself watching YouTube videos in Alhena through your AuraGem proxy. I tried many months ago and it didn't work (although it could have been a bug in Alhena at the time). Anyway, I'm impressed! I gotta ask how it's done and if you have any bandwidth concerns piping these large files around. I assume the video isn't transcoded. If not, could you add that? (Just kidding).
💬 5 comments · 1 like · Jul 03 · 3 months ago
Take Alhena To Nightfall City — It's been a minute since I posted about Alhena. It now supports the nex protocol if you're keen to wander the streets of Nightfall City. I can't remember offhand all the additions and fixes since my last shameless plug. I think the inline player supports a few new media types including flac and wav. If you've tried Alhena and there's something you'd like to see, let me know.
💬 View post · 3 likes · May 28 · 5 months ago
CGI in Bash — Bash scripts don't get enough love around these parts so I made a surprisingly useful CGI program in Bash. Link below. Feel free to bash the refresh button (pun intended).
💬 13 comments · 4 likes · May 22 · 5 months ago
Zoe In Color & New Alhena — I got antsy and updated Zoe 3D Tic Tac Toe with color. See what I did there? I also made the first two levels open with a random move when playing O. This should make those levels slightly easier to beat. I want to do the same with X once I'm sure I'm not breaking anything. By the way, ANSI color is optional. I also fixed a few bugs in Alhena and made a release.
💬 View post · 3 likes · Apr 28 · 6 months ago
Zoe - A New Gemini Game — Happy Friday. I wrote a game. It may be the first 3D game on Gemini. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. I just want you to click the link. You'll need a client certificate and your wits to emerge victorious. Do you have what it takes? There's a gemlog on the same site with the epic backstory behind the game. Bug reports and enhancement requests welcome.
💬 13 comments · 4 likes · Apr 25 · 6 months ago
Alhena Now With Audio And Video — With a little help from VLC and the vlcj project, Alhena can play embedded audio and video. This means you need VLC 3.x on your system. For me, it worked "out of the box" on Windows, MacOS (when compiling Alhena from source) and Pi 5. The VLC snap install on Ubuntu and the Alhena MacOS installs required a config file to tell vlcj where to find VLC. Info on how to do that is in the README.md on Alhena's...
💬 1 comment · 2 likes · Apr 15 · 6 months ago
Embedded VLC — I haven't pushed the code yet but I was able to use the "vlcj" library to embed an inline audio player into Alhena. It only works if you have VLC installed but I've tested it on Windows, Mac and Pi. I coded the controls in Swing so they match the current theme, etc. It looks great. Nice and simple. I've tried ogg, opus, mp3 and m4a and all play just fine. I also did a quick test and yes, it's possible to embed an inline video player. I'm wondering though if this is something...
💬 4 comments · 2 likes · Apr 14 · 6 months ago
Maybe it's the wine talking but Apple and Google should offer an option to delete designtated apps off your phone when an emergency "unlock" code is entered. Better yet, when using your ring finger or pinky on the fingerprint reader. You never know these days when that might save you a trip overseas.
💬 9 comments · 1 like · Apr 08 · 6 months ago
Alhena Update — Lots of updates since my last post. Alhena now supports spartan and titan edit. Both of those things needed a new text editor/file chooser. Titan edit makes posting here and updating content on my own server a breeze. It has me wondering if I should add an "Edit In Titan" menu option. I'd find it useful but I'm not sure if it makes sense as a general feature. How many capsules support titan edit? There have been a...
💬 3 comments · 4 likes · Mar 30 · 6 months ago
Does anyone know what happened to Osiris? I uploaded my bitcoin wallet there. EDIT TO ADD: I'm kidding about the wallet. I found Osiris useful for other things though.
💬 10 comments · Mar 26 · 7 months ago
Status 60 — I strangely realized for the first time today I don't have to wait for a Status 60 to offer a client cert if I have an active client cert for that domain. No wonder I have to sign in to bbs all the time! I can be dense sometimes. Now I have to make another version. I'm kind of like Al Pacino in Godfather 3. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in". ("They" being my OCD.)
💬 View post · 1 like · Mar 15 · 7 months ago
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