Now on Gemini
I've been experimenting with the Gemini protocol, an ultra-light internet system that's somewhere between a souped-up Gopher (for those of you who remember Gopher) and a stripped-down web. No inline images, no scripts, no styling, no cookies, no forms, no tracking - just bare-bones text, links, lists and headings. Pretty well suited for blogs.
Eleventy doesn't seem to be happy with generating multiple formats from the same source, so I ended up cobbling together some scripts combining the structure I already have here, pre-processing some of the "front matter" (like titles and dates) and piping it to md2gemini.
So now you can read this blog both as a website and as a Gemini capsule!
Project Gemini is a good introduction if you've never used it.
You do need a Gemini browser to read Gemini sites, or "capsules." 2025 update: I've reviewed several, of which Lagrange is still my favorite on both desktop and mobile devices. And if you want to go really minimalist and use a terminal app, Amfora is your best bet.
The site is a bit rough in Gemini. I've got eight years' worth of writing for the web on here, and while the actual text should be fine, an automated converter doesn't know which images, links, etc. are important and which aren't. So just as it took me a while to update all the WordPress-specific code when moving the site to Eleventy, it's probably going to take me a while to adjust my conversion scripts (and in some cases the Markdown itself) to polish up the Gemlog version of the site.
— Kelson Vibber, 2021-03-21. Updated 2025-08-01.
Next: It's 1817 All Over Again
Thoughts and commentary on Victor Hugo’s masterpiece.