loyalheights.net » Loyalheights: http://loyalheights.net/ This is my neighborhood en peteyboy@sdf.org (peteyboy) Copyright 2020 PivotX - 2.3.11 Wed, 12 Aug 2020 09:54:09 +0000 60 Gemini http://loyalheights.net/?e=10 http://loyalheights.net/?e=10#comm gemini protocol.

You can read about it at https://gemini.circumlunar.space>gemini.circumlunar.space This site is the tip of the gemini web iceberg on the http world-wide-web (aka the "HTTP protocol").

As I typed above, the web you know is mostly sites with urls that are in the "HTTP" protocol, such as the site you are presently on https://www.loyalheights.net

The gemini protocol means that urls in the gemini web look like this: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space

In fact the above is the gemini web version of the circumlunar.space HTTP site (the "real" version). You can click it, but your browser will not navigate this url, because it does not understand the


So the first thing you need to do to explore geminispace is to download in build/install one of the gemini clients linked at https://gemini.circumlunar.space/clients.html. A cool thing is that once you set up a client and go to the gemini site at circumlunar.space, you will see that it actually has *more information*. That's your first stop through the rabbit hole.

So What is Gemini, anyway?

Well, gemini was developed by a sub-community of the (probably already small) Gopher community on the web. What is Gopher, you say? Well, Gopher was a pre-http/www protocol that was started around 1991 at the University of Minnesota--you can read more about Gopher in its Wikipedia entry. It was a text-only alternative to the WWW, and fell by the wayside because of it (though it was pretty cool for awhile, and stored a lot of data. You can see what's on it now through this http gateway at floodgap.com. (If you want to make your own Gopher site, you can on a free unix shell account at SDF Public Access Unix.

So for the past several years there has been a community that, seeking a simpler web, got back to the basics and started--or continued, in some cases--using the gopher protocol. Less noise, no cookies and ads, just information communicated via text. People did expand it to do some other cool things as well (cgi programs and such), but even when I dabbled in it, I found the gopher syntax frustrating. In-document links to other pages (forget in-line links!) forced you to use a complicated "menu" system that didn't make much sense to me, and the whole thing is designed to fit in text monitor-run systems, assuming a 70 char screen.

Well, smarter folks than me realized that not only is gopher a pain compared to modern ideas around web pages and web page markup languages, it's also not secure or private at all because of its text-based nature (and oldness). So they took what they liked about gopher--the text-based communications--added some modern connection privacy and security--via TLS--and made a simple markup language (very wiki/markdownish) that supports in-document, though not in-line, links--also from gopher--and wrapped it all up in its own protocol, to carve a separate gemini web.

(You may ask, why don't you just use retro HTTP 0.9 or something? Well, there are good reasons, and you can find them discussed at http://gemini.circumlunar.space or better, at gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space (go ahead, click it again, your browser can't go there!)

There are several clients and several servers that have been created for your use in gemini space. And if you are interested in putting up a gemini site, there are several gemini servers that provide hosting of your gemblog or whatever. These are purely for the good of gemini space, people allowing folks to log in to their spaces and put up gemini content.

Alternately, as I said, you can host your own server. I myself have set up a jetforce server at gemini://peteyboy.freeshell.org:32056 just for fun that you can check out, if you figure out how to get there... ]]> 10@loyalheights.net/ Default Tue, 11 Aug 2020 06:19:00 -0000 peteyboy I Like Playing Games http://loyalheights.net/?e=9 http://loyalheights.net/?e=9#comm I recently joined Toastmaster International at my work, just as they were starting a new chapter. The first speech you are supposed to give at Toastmasters is called your "Icebreaker". It's a 4-6 minute speech where you tell people something about yourself. I decided to speak about how I like playing games  I didn't deliver it very well, but I like what I wrote, so I thought I'd flesh it out and share it as a written version.

I had considered joining Toastmasters several times in the past, but the same reason I thought I should join--that I was way too nervous and uncomfortable doing public speaking--was the same thing that made me not want to join. Like if you were a kid, would you join "Broccoli Club"? I mean, it's good for you to learn to like broccoli, all the vitamins and such...

So the "Icebreaker" speech. As I said, it's a 4-6 minute speech that they have all these guiding materials on and worksheets to help you write. To make it easier, they have it be about yourself, since that's a topic you should be comfortable talking about. So I decided to write about how I like playing games. I started writing the speech, and I didn't give myself enough time to work on it. In the end I had to cut out a lot of stuff, because it turns out I feel like I have a ton to say about how much I like to play games. So I went up there with a less-than-well prepared speech (I also didn't practice it nearly enough). They tell you to write and memorized the opening and the ending and just have notes or bullet points for the middle. So I didn't really manage to write an ending, I just winged it along with part of the middle, the other part which I kept writing too long after the intro. I was going to revise it into everything I was going to cram in there, but I can do that in a follow up entry. This is mostly what I delivered (the bracketed asides are just comments I've added while typing it out):

"I Like Playing Games"

I like playing games. I played games the whole time I was growing up. I think I always assumed that as an adult I would give most of that up, maybe justplay poker socially, or gamble, like my father does, or have more adult past-times like bowling [I grew up watching the Flinstones, okay?] or Fantasy Football. But I didn't give it up. In still make times to play games with friends and family. And it turns out, I didn't even have to worry about giving playing games up at all.

[In my speech, I put the personal intro here, but I didn't need it because the Toastmaster introduced me, which made this part feel extraneous, even though I had a transition worked in here that was like "Well before I started working here, in grade school...]

In grade school, I was playing the heck out of typical American kids' games like Monopoly, Risk and Sorry with my brother and out friends. Then, in 5th and 6th grades, I discovered new kinds of games.  I discovered wargames, simulations of historic battles on big boards marked with hexagons and played with little cardboard counters representing tanks and infantry [Blitzkreig, Afrika Korps, Panzer Leader], and later, space tanks and spacesuited infantry [Ogre, GEV, Alpha Omega]. And I discovered role-playing games --Dungeons & Dragons--with the polyhedral dice and spell books and moster manuals. We'd ride bikes to our friends' houses and take over long dinner tables with it, and we spend our middle school recesses talking about Demogorgon, Asmodeus and Tiamat. It was just like the kids on the TV show "Stranger Things"... but without any of the weird stuff.

In college, I played war games still, and some role playing games, but not as often as I played new games--drinking games(!), like Beer 99, Zoom Schwartz Perfigliano, and my dorm at Caltech's favorite: Thumper. But they were still games, and I loved games.

After college, I spend more time doing other things besides playing games. I would go out to see bands and out to night clubs. But during this time I had a group of friends that weren't as into the music scene as I was, and they were spending time on the weekends playing new games. European board games like Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, and Power Grid. And so I started playing more with them.

As a kid, I had lots of time to play fewer longer games over and over again. As an adult I had a lot less time, but I had more money. And with money, I could buy and collect games. I now buy more games than I play, which isn't quite as fun as playing games, but it is still pretty fun getting games and having favorite games that have gone out of print.

I do have other past-times now, more "adult" ones. I play poker occasionally, but I'm not punctiious [this was the word of the day at the TM meeting] enough for most players, who get kind of tight about the rules and etiquette in games where money is involved. And I play Fantasy Football. I have a dirty secret, though. I don't watch football. It turns out that Fantasy Football is a great game! The drafting, the long season, finding subs and setting lineups is really entertaining for me. 

And nowadays there are game pubs that serve beer! Playing games is now socially acceptable, even in public. I no longer am with my friends in the nerd-corner playing games. If you have any questions about games, please feel free to ask me. I know a lot about games, and I'd love to share that knowledge with you.

So, it turns out that I've never had to stop playing games. And if you have stopped or haven't started, maybe this is a good time to start.

9@loyalheights.net/ Default Sat, 14 Apr 2018 21:45:00 -0000 peteyboy
Plays 10! http://loyalheights.net/?e=8 http://loyalheights.net/?e=8#comm So at my friendly neighborhood game store, they have this point reward system called Perkville. I end up going there a lot and spending money because they have food and beer and I take my son there to play in a D&D campaign. One of the perks, after you spend a ton of money, is $25 off your next bill. I just got to that point, so I had a decision to make.

I had been delaying buying "The Captain Is Dead", which I mentioned before, until I got the perkville perk lined up. So the time before last, I figured I was over the threshold, but I couldn't figure out my perkville password. I finally figured it out, and saw I was indeed over the required points. And so this last time, I was wandering around the store looking for "The Captain is Dead", which, curiously, wasn't in the spot I'd seen it in several times before.

Of course, they'd finally sold it. :( They offered to order it when I asked, of course, but who's got that kind of patience?  I thought about two things:

  1. My buddies and I registered to go to GenCon this year. Crazy, but I'm going.
  2. You know what I've thought would be fun to play at a convention? Camel Up.
  3. You know what seems like it could be even more fun than playing 8 player Camel Up? 10 player Camel Up, with the expansion. 

 And how much is the Camel Up expansion?  $30!  So basically I could get it for five bucks?  That's all I needed for impetus. Done deal.  Who wants to play?

8@loyalheights.net/ Default Mon, 29 Jan 2018 07:30:00 -0000 peteyboy