Does BB (bashblog) actually generate useful gemtext?
The title of this post summarizes what I’m trying to test.
tags: #test, #delete-me
Gemblog Works
It took a lot longer than it should have, but patience and persistence have paid off again – I’ve these blog entries showing up on my Gemini site as well as the web.
The default method of displaying bashblog’s markdown files didn’t work very well (especially for links in markdown format), so I’m now running the markdown through “gemgen” to create .gmi files alongside the .md and .html files. It is messy and wasteful – the same content is there in three separate files – but it works.
ToDo: hook gemgen into the bashblog script to automatically create the .gmi when the post is created.
Bigger ToDo: convince the Spartan server to read those same files. Hmmm… perhaps I can have the public_html/blog/index.gmi file also create an index.gmi (and symlinks?) for the public_spartan/blog directory.
Moving Day
Well, it’s more like moving week: I spent the past week or so migrating content from my website to my Spartan instance here on tilde.team. Things are still a bit rough here and there, but overall I’m happy with it. Some of the content did not migrate here, and some of the pages got minor updates during the process.
After that effort I must say that I really appreciate the simplicity of Spartan.
Wow! The Lagrange TUI Rocks!
I just compiled the Lagrange TUI app and installed it on my PineBook Pro (AARCH64 architecture). The executable is called “clagrange.”
When I first opened it I was confused by a message saying it had opened the requested page in an already running instance, and gave me a PID to refer to. Sure enough, I had the GUI version of Lagrange already running and it had opened a new tab with the page I requested. I closed the GUI version and tried again.
This time Lagrange was running in my terminal window and looked very much like the GUI version I was already used to. The mouse was useless here so I poked the TAB key a few dozen times, and tried a few other keys until I figured out how to navigate around enough to find the help page and the preferences setting to adjust the keybindings a little bit. The user experience was very familiar and very similar to the GUI version of Lagrange – with the obvious, and expected, differences required by running as a terminal app. Really cool!
Then I opened a Linux console window and tried the Lagrange TUI there. Amazing! It works here too, albeit with very limited color range and no Unicode fonts with emojis and other fancy stuff. I am impressed.
Now the tougher test: can I compile it in Termux on my old Android cell phone?
Sadly, no. After installing CMake and some other dependencies the compile fails trying to find openssl, which IS installed. It will require more patience and more tinkering - and probably more knowledge – than I have available now.
At least Bollux works there. It is not as nice as Lagrange but is still quite workable.
Temporarily Relocated
Saturday (two days ago) I traveled from western Washington to central California to visit my granddaughter and her famiy for a month or so. Quite a change in weather and scenery!
I definitely miss the climate of the Washington coast much more than I missed the climate of California (where I lived for a few decades) while I’ve lived in Washington.
Worth it though to have the time with the great-grandchildren.
No Slog Yet
I’ve pretty much tamed my web, gopher and gemini pages here on tilde.team.
I want to use something like bashblog to build Spartan verions of blog entries. Thankfully the Spartan protocol is very simple so my limited bash-scripting skills may just get me what I need.
So here is the question for the day: do I spend my time building a “slog” (or “splog”?) tool, or do I work on migrating and updating web content to Spartan?
Bit By Bit
Well now I’ve explored gopher a bit and I can see how cool it was in the early 90s, and how HTTP/HTML was a major improvement. It may still have some value to me, we’ll have to see how things develop.
I’ve added a bit more in my Spartan site. I’m gradually transferring my most important (according to my judgement) material from my websites to Spartan, updating and editing a bit in the process.
Now, I think I’ll pester the folks on IRC to see what else I can learn.
Settling In
I fixed the keybindings for the nano editor to be more similar to those of Windows Notepad with the help of Modern Nano Keybindings. I don’t really like Notepad, but the years I spent using Windows have my fingers trained for those keybindings. I never learned to use vim or emacs or other *nix stalwarts.
Then I installed the Sonus editor but I missed the code highlighting features of nano (and of my favorite console editor: Tilde which is not quick and easy to install.) Nope, too much like Notepad.
Next I grabbed a copy of micro and set that as my default editor. Aaahhh… (big sigh of relief) this is much better.
Once I set up an sshfs connection to my tilde.team home directory I was able to begin testing my Spartan content. It’s looking pretty good so far.
My biggest challenge now will be to quit living just in my insular world and learn to use the other features of the tildeverse to build some social connections.
Grrr… I just had to re-edit this to fix my markdown errors. Bashblog is cool, but there must be a simpler way of doing this using just gemtext.
Baby Steps
I’ve survived my first half-hour in tilde-land, it’s time to get some breakfast and return you to your normally scheduled programming.
I’ll be back to battle with nano and markdown eventually (probably later today).
Hello tildeverse!
Since my native language is HTML4 it will like take me a bit to be comfortable here. I expect to mostly use gemtext here, over the Spartan protocol, so most “blog” entries will be there.