2024-09-10
Oh ho ho, here I am finally browsing gemini and writing an entry for ROOPHLOCH 2024 on my ereader. I live near a huge beautiful urban park with acres of nooks and crannies and I’m esconsed in a particularly gorgeous forest canopy area with mugwort and many other reeds all around. The last time I sat in the park reading, only two days ago at this time, I was quite cold, and buffeted by soca music. Today i hear airplane overhead and a distant saxophone player murmuring an improvised jazz blues from among the trees. This is my favorite time outdoors, dinner time, when all families and sensible people have cleared out and I’m left to my own devices.
Last time I posted I wished for a gemini reader and a terminal or way to write on my new Kobo Clara. My wishes were quickly answered by mbays, who let me know about their recent KOReader plugin gemini.koplugin. KOReader is an alternate reading application. Really its a platform with lots of customizations and mods created in Lua. I used a script (after reviewing the code) that installed KOReader, plugins and the Nickelmenu UI. It was quick to install and I took it for a spin. The UI is much more full featured than the default Kobo software so it took me a couple minutes to get my bearings. To the developers‘s credit there is a quicksťart document on install, but I was still overwhelmed at first, having some confusion how to exit out to get back to my default reader with Overdrive and Pocket. The location for menus are different between the two apps, so I may need to customize later to make it smoother.
The next step was to install gemini.koplugin which was very straightfoward from the git repo. Basically I cloned the repo then moved it to a specific directory on my device. This is all done by plugging the Kobo into my computer on Linux but could also be done on Mac or Windows.
The gemini client is then accessible via the search menu. It uses a swipe up gesture to open its command menu. Here you can open a gemini URL, go back, forward, make a bookmark, go to bookmarks, go home for example. The client can also navigate Titan, and it would be cool to post directly inside the program to Gemini but my server doesn't have a Titan server and I'm not using Bubble for this gemlog for example so instead today I've launched the KOReader built in text editor. It’s not the worst way to write with the onscreen keyboard but it is tedious. Supposedly one could use a bluetooth keyboard or a wired one with OTG cable with external power. Tests for the future.
It grows darker in the park and the cicadas, crickets, birds and frogs are making a racket. I love it. Of course planes still come and go overhead. Next I wil fire up the terminal emulator and try ssh’ing to the ctrl-c server to see if I can post directly. A little birdie has walked over to examine me. I have no food to offer and it flits away.
I should mention this is my ROOPHLOCH 2024 entry, posting from the park.
Solderpunk's ROOPHLOCH 2024 Announcement
Oof, no dice. Okay, with this sentence i've now switched to my phone. i couldn't figure out if there was a ssh program to connect to a server or another method to post. But the writing application had a QR button. I tapped it and it produced a huge QR code, that copied almost all of this text. On my phone I scanned it and chose the option to copy the text. Then I opened iSH terminal emulator on my phone, ssh'ed to ctrl-c just now, navigated to my public_gemini folder, made a new text file, opened vim (this is all on my phone!) and pasted in the clipboard contents.
And that's how the sausage was made. Posting live, from an ereader and phone, in the dark, from a public park in Brooklyn and a tilde server somewhere in the world, while some nocturnal animals are now making noise all around me.
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