🚀 This Capsule

This page gives some details about this capsule, the motivation behind it, and my plans for it.

Navigating the capsule: every page has a "breadcrumb" link that allows you to return one page up, and also directly to the homepage.

Summary

Managing Content

Content generated with:

All content for the capsule is made by:

• Typing it up in GNU Emacs (gemini-mode).
• Invoking the `just` command runner tool.

gempost, a Gemini static site generator, builds the blog posts. tera-cli templates non-blog pages, and gmi-web makes all the HTML. Finally, `just` invokes git to store changes to the site.

Updates to the capsule are handled by a Drone CD pipeline linked to my self-hosted Gitea instance. When a commit is pushed to the capsule's git repository, a pipeline is started that builds the site using the process above, and then copies the files to the content directories using rsync. It is very simple, and also very fast.

Additionally, all posts on the main gemlog are posted to the Fediverse via a WriteFreely instance. You can follow the blog from your Mastodon/Pleroma/etc account.

Plans

The direction I want to take this capsule, and how I want to enhance its existence:

• Regular blog posts.
• Writing exercises and thought dumping ground.
• Tending to the capsule as a "digital garden" (in space!).
• Run the capsule on low-powered freedom-respecting hardware.
• SUCCESS!! -- Dual-host on HTTP as well (Gemini is not easily accessible).
• Integration of dynamically-generated content.

Dynamic Content

A smattering of ideas for dynamically generated content on the capsule. Feasibility of each not necessarily investigated yet.

• SUCCESS!! -- Integrate with WriteFreely via API and publish blog posts to the Fediverse.
• Publish select hardware stats of the capsule's host machine.

Motivation

I became interested in the concept of "digital gardening" in the second half of 2023. I tend to use writing and journaling as a both a creative outlet and therapeutic mechanism. I experimented with a few static site generators, but the amount of effort required to get a full backlinks system going, as well as the effort needed to create and maintain the site's CSS, eventually caused me to lose interest. I became lost in the minutia of building a system around creation of content, rather than building the content itself.

Gemini's purposeful text-based protocol puts the content front and center. At the time of writing this page, I've already spent a few hours in one day focusing ONLY on the content of this site, unlike before where I spent days tweaking the appearance of my static site while adding content sporadically. The excellent gempost tool acts as a minimal static site generator for most of this capsule and its blog posts.

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