Resolutions and Projects is just me going through the things i want to chip away at through the year. How much I get done with any of it is hard to say, but I do want to try working towards a few goals rather than metaphorically drift about.
2023/12/11
VideoTel The Network that Wasn't, and what if it was?
Essentially me looking at an attempt at exporting Minitel from France to the United States, and what if it hadn't fallen flat on it's face.
What is This?
This is me finally, in the age of facebook and reddit and 'social media or bust,' making a late 90's style website. Light on CSS, no dynamic elements, and largely a thing that is going to stay the way it is. Most of my content, including what passes for a blog, will be on my gemini capsule.
So, this is more me taking advantage of a resource Ctrl-C provides to scratch a Thirty Year old itch.
Ctrl-C is a small community server of roughly like-minded people, that thinks that taking a step back and doing things a bit slower is a better option, at least when it comes to the web. This is not, in my opinion, the toxic nostalgia as spouted by Boomers gushing at 'how things were better in My Day. Instead this is me looking at the trends of larger platforms towards either doing things I disagree with, utterly collapsing, or who's owners have taken sudden hard Anti-User stances I find objectionable.
What I am doing is a touch extreme. After all, Mastodon exists. Lemmy and Kbin exist, and there's bound to be other options when it comes to making platforms that better align with my wants within modern frameworks. The thing is? I like what's here. It feels very much my speed these days. Don't get me wrong, modern social media has its place and is able to spread voices far and wide. I just don't feel that these options are a good fit for me as a person.
Gemini
I mentioned Gemini earlier. This is an alternitive internet protocol that;
Follows the rule of 'One Request, One Response' for interaction with any given server.
Has no in-line elements; meaning links take up their own lines in a document.
All page elements are Client Defined, making it exceptionally disability friendly.
Makes Client-Side Tracking difficult if not outright Impossible.
Light Weight; allowing for a lot of content to fit in a small amount of space.
Is incredibly easy to make Content for.
It isn't a protocol for everyone. The ability to find new content either by search or crawling, isn't 'There.' It's fairly 'wide' but not a lot of depth in terms of content; especially content that isn't about gemini itself. This makes actually on-ramping people difficult since even people who areenthusiastic will see the lack of anything, especially compared to the wider web, then shrug before dismissing it.
Yet here I am making a go of it. Fine there are problems, but making content is easy. There are site builders, but I didn't use one for this site. Instead I built this by hand (with
a bit of help from some borrowed CSS and Googling for answers,) as I distrust builders ability to make effeciant code. At least with how I'm doing it now I don't have to look far if things aren't right. Yet at the same time even with about a hundred internal links to audit from my gemini capsule ported over from Flounder, doing that takes far less time than fiddling with this single page.
Let that sink in. One page is taking more time than several dozen Gemini Capsules. Given my disability all the flash and pomp of the web is largely lost on me, though I have
tried to make this page look like an amount of effort has been put into its appearances. With Gemini, I can focus on the content, and let the end user worry about how
everything looks.
That is why I focus on Gemini.
Who am I?
I was born in the 80's. My eyes are functional, but I can't drive. I have two special needs siblings I help care for.
All of that are either inherent or enviromental things around me, though. Now that I'm in my middle years, who am I though?
Like many in this world I'm someone who just wants a peer group, for people to be treated fairly, and I want to be able to dive into my hobbies and interests to see if I can become a better person, or at the very least more skilled, than where I started.
There are other elements I wish to work on. Pages about my family's garden, my 'adventures' in being disabled and owning a bike, Ham Radio, and a copy of The
things I write for Ctrl-C's eZine. I have no time tables for any of these. I just wanted a notice up thatthe other tradition of 90's web design is holding ture here.
