hello, hashnix and gemini!

published on 2026-04-03 at 10:11:54 UTC

hya! this is my first ever gemlog! excitinggg :3

I already have a blog over on my website, and the experience of writing over there has been really refreshing. it's really special to be able to publish my thoughts (or rather, the oh so imperfect words I gotta use to try and catch them) somewhere and know it's on my little corner on the web, just the way that I want to show it. a space for my own authentic self expression, away from all the slop of corpo dominated, algorithm run, ai generated nightmares that seemed to dominate the web, and closer to these communities of independent creatives doing stuff they really care about - and I'm so, so grateful for that.

this year, for me, has been one of rediscovering the internet. finding the beauty and the life that still burns within it and diving in with an open mind and an open heart. and it's so interesting to take a step back and see how that has fundamentally changed my daily use of it. I started exploring other people's websites on nekoweb[1], using marginalia search[2] as my default search engine, finally setup an rss reader[3], gave irc a proper shot and started regularly joining certain channels and meeting new people there, started using xmpp... and so, after a couple months running my website, I discover the world of tildes and pubnixes.

the concept immediately fascinated me. to have a community around a shared system is just right up my alley. sounds like an amazing way to get into a real collaborative group, that learns and creates stuff together. I was looking for ways of doing exactly that, and so I was sold right away. annnd now I'm here! yay for hashnix!! I have signed up for other tildes as well, and am eager to explore more as I continue this adventure. but yeah, this space here, I can already tell it's special. I really like it. thanks to everyone here that's making it possible <3

I was delighted to see the prominence of gemini around these communities, and it makes sense. command line enthusiasts... of course we would like a minimal internet protocol that's pretty much just text! xd personally, I had never actually tried gemini for real, only heard of it in passage back when it was starting out. but having gotten properly into it now - wow! this is sooo much fun! I'm really enjoying exploring geminispace.

the limitations are definitely felt - I very much enjoy my fancy graphics, fonts and complex styling over on the web. but the gemini format also leaves space for other ways of enjoying the internet to breathe. the simplicity of gemtext is elegant, and as a developer, it's actually really satisfying that I can look at what I wrote in my text editor and have it be so seamlessly brought to life on the browser, respecting whitespace and everything. and the way text based art can stand out, just beautiful!

all in all, I'm really having tons of fun, and am excited to continue writing here. at first I was conflicted over having a different blog somewhere that's not my website, but honestly, this is just too much fun to pass on. see you on the next post!

~dessholiday

[1] nekoweb - "a free website hosting service"

[2] marginalia search - "a small independent diy search engine"

[3] elfeed - "an emacs web feeds client"

all contents licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0