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Finish March 2025 dispatch

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2025-03-04 01:32:25 -05:00
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---
title: "Dispatch #25 (March 2025)"
date: 2025-03-02T00:55:58-05:00
date: 2025-03-04T01:31:08-05:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
references:
- title: "Using Hugo to Launch a Gemini Capsule | Brain Baking"
url: https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/
date: 2025-03-04T05:38:40Z
file: brainbaking-com-ro5lug.txt
- title: "Gemini and Hugo – Sylvain Durand"
url: https://sylvaindurand.org/gemini-and-hugo/
date: 2025-03-04T05:38:56Z
file: sylvaindurand-org-jylksq.txt
- title: "Choosing my pace by shaping my thinking spaces (Part 5) – Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden"
url: https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/
date: 2025-03-04T05:41:59Z
file: tracydurnell-com-tq9kvj.txt
- title: "Zoxide and Fish Shell - Baty.net"
url: https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/zoxide-and-fish-shell/
date: 2025-03-04T06:17:33Z
file: baty-net-qdbegx.txt
- title: "My LLM codegen workflow atm | Harper Reed's Blog"
url: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/
date: 2025-03-02T05:57:54Z
@@ -43,89 +59,109 @@ references:
file: www-404media-co-3wvica.txt
---
Some thoughts here...
My family popped down for an unplanned visit, just in time for another big snow -- felt like Christmas in February. Claire headed to Mexico with some friends, and it was great to have help with the kids, but it was also pretty special to be Nico's guy for three days. A lot of the primary parenting duties fall to Claire, and he's not going to be a baby much longer, so I'm glad we got that time.
<!--more-->
* Economist
* Tech stuff
* Zoxide
* Direnv
* LocalSend
* "Slow Horses"
* Gemini capsule
* ChatGPT
* rss2email
* Snow
* Family visit
* Christmas 2
* Made wagons
* Book
* Claire trip
* Nico time
{{<dither IMG_6713.jpeg "782x600" />}}
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{{<dither IMG_7681.jpeg "782x600" />}}
{{<dither IMG_4794.jpeg "782x600" />}}
After publishing last month's dispatch, I exported the first two years of posts as a PDF and used [Lulu][1] to turn it into a physical book. Here's the result:
[1]: https://www.lulu.com/
{{<dither IMG_7709.jpeg "782x600" />}}
{{<dither IMG_7710.jpeg "782x600" />}}
I'm pretty chuffed about this (though I wish I'd heeded their warnings about the margins). And it was cheap! Like fifteen bucks! I went ahead and ordered two, and gave one to my sister. This was a cool project and definitely worth a standalone blog post.
On a whim, I made this site accessible over the [Gemini protocol][2], sort of an alternate, text-only version of the web. Two posts from [Wouter Groeneveld][3] and [Sylvain Durand][4] provided the inspiration and technical starting point, then it was a lot of regular expression wrangling with the help of ChatGPT. You can find me in your favorite Gemini client (I like [Lagrange][5] and [Amfora][6]) at <gemini://gemini.davideisinger.com>.
[2]: https://geminiprotocol.net/
[3]: https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/
[4]: https://sylvaindurand.org/gemini-and-hugo/
[5]: https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange
[6]: https://sylvaindurand.org/gemini-and-hugo/
I mentioned last month that, in an attempt to gain more control over my attention, I've blocked the websites I find most addictive, and that includes my feed reader, [Feedbin][7]. I still believe RSS is the right way to engage with the social web, but it still gives that little dopamine release every time you load it up and see something new. [Tracy Durnell says it better than I can:][8]
[7]: https://feedbin.com/
[8]: https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/
> I’ve corralled most of my media exposure into my feed reader, which helps because I must choose to open it, and have removed access from my phone. But while I generally feel RSS is a healthy way to follow writers, it’s still a feed. And feeds, whether self-curated or assembled by a corporate algorithm, are designed to be an efficient information delivery mechanism. Their function is to provide easy, immediate access to new information.
In order to keep up with the sites I like without exposing myself to an infinite content well, I set up [rss2email][9] on a schedule so that every morning at 5am, it checks the 20 or so sites I've added and emails me any new posts in a nice digest format. This way, I have a few interesting things to look at it in the morning, but no temptation to check it throughout the day -- my monkey brain knows there won't be anything new to distract myself with.
[9]: https://github.com/rss2email/rss2email
A few miscellaneous tech things: I switched to [zoxide][10], a smart `cd` replacement ([inspiration][11]). I'm using [direnv][12] to manage a Python virtual environment -- it's slick. And I'm trying out [LocalSend][13] as an AirDrop replacement. Finally, Claire and I binged _Slow Horses_ season 4 this month -- so, so good.
[10]: https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide
[11]: https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/zoxide-and-fish-shell/
[12]: https://github.com/direnv/direnv
[13]: https://localsend.org/
### This Month
* Adventure:
* Project:
* Skill:
* Adventure: Vegas for March Madness
* Project: [crochet fox][14]
* Skill: finger drumming, for real this time; I've also got some hardware on the way to connect my synths to my laptop, so time to start playing around with some <abbr title="digital audio workstation">DAW</abbr>s
[14]: https://thewoobles.com/products/fox-crochet-kit
### Reading & Listening
* Fiction: [_Sunbringer_][1], Hannah Kaner
* Non-fiction: [_Co-Intelligence_][2], Ethan Mollick ([recommended here][3])
* Music: [_Black Sands_][4], Bonobo
* Fiction: [_Sunbringer_][15], Hannah Kaner
* Non-fiction: [_Co-Intelligence_][16], Ethan Mollick ([recommended here][17])
* Music: [_Black Sands_][18], Bonobo
[1]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/sunbringer-hannah-kaner/20297610
[2]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/co-intelligence-living-and-working-with-ai-ethan-mollick/20812081
[3]: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/
[4]: https://bonobomusic.bandcamp.com/album/black-sands
[15]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/sunbringer-hannah-kaner/20297610
[16]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/co-intelligence-living-and-working-with-ai-ethan-mollick/20812081
[17]: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/
[18]: https://bonobomusic.bandcamp.com/album/black-sands
### Links
* [A Taste of Vanlife][5]
* [A Taste of Vanlife][19]
> Camping has always been one of my favorite hobbies, but I've always wondered what life might be like on four wheels. It's difficult to think about living on the road indefinitely—and understandably so. I'm not really into the idea of getting rid of all of my posessions and living out of a van, constantly on the move. But surely, there's a way to try out that lifestyle without making such a drastic commitment?
> Camping has always been one of my favorite hobbies, but I've always wondered what life might be like on four wheels. It's difficult to think about living on the road indefinitely—and understandably so. I'm not really into the idea of getting rid of all of my possessions and living out of a van, constantly on the move. But surely, there's a way to try out that lifestyle without making such a drastic commitment?
* [I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman.][6]
* [I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman.][20]
> Very earnestly I believe that despite greater access to power and resources, the box labeled “socially acceptable ways to be a man” is much smaller than the box labeled “socially acceptable ways to be a woman.”
* [Moving on from 18F. — Ethan Marcotte][7]
* [Moving on from 18F. — Ethan Marcotte][21]
> During that time, a friend suggested that while things were calm at work, I should write down some lines I wouldn’t want to cross: things I’d want to watch out for that, if they materialized, might be a reason to leave. This was wonderful advice, and I’m grateful to them for it. Equipped with a plan, even a small one, I started thinking through what my lines would be.
* [The Tiny Book of Great Joys · Muffin Man][8]
* [The Tiny Book of Great Joys · Muffin Man][22]
> If you are interested in how I over-engineered the process of making a tiny book for my wife, using AI, a pen plotter, a 3D printer, and a lot of time, you are in the right place. The book is titled The Tiny Book of Great Joys, and here is how it turned out.
* [Ollama - NSHipster][9]
* [Ollama - NSHipster][23]
> If you wait for Apple to deliver on its promises, you’re going to miss out on the most important technological shift in a generation. The future is here today. You don’t have to wait. With Ollama, you can start building the next generation of AI-powered apps right now.
* [Is it okay?][10]
* [Is it okay?][24]
> How do you make a language model? Goes like this: erect a trellis of code, then allow the real program to grow, its development guided by a grueling training process, fueled by reams of text, mostly scraped from the internet. Now. I want to take a moment to think together about a question with no remaining practical importance, but persistent moral urgency: Is that okay?
* [I missed the memo for the outside space at this coffee shop… – Manton Reece][11]
* [I missed the memo for the outside space at this coffee shop… – Manton Reece][25]
> The bittersweet irony with parenting is not knowing until years later what you had.
* [You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism][12]
* [You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism][26]
> We don’t need any more irony-poisoned hot takes or cathartic, irreverent snark. We need to collectively decide what kind of world we actually do want, and what we’re willing to do to achieve it.
[5]: https://prayash.io/journal/vanlife
[6]: https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/hard-to-be-a-man
[7]: https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/
[8]: https://muffinman.io/blog/the-tiny-book-of-great-joys/
[9]: https://nshipster.com/ollama/
[10]: https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/is-it-okay/
[11]: https://www.manton.org/2025/02/09/i-missed-the-memo-for.html
[12]: https://www.404media.co/you-cant-post-your-way-out-of-fascism/
[19]: https://prayash.io/journal/vanlife
[20]: https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/hard-to-be-a-man
[21]: https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/
[22]: https://muffinman.io/blog/the-tiny-book-of-great-joys/
[23]: https://nshipster.com/ollama/
[24]: https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/is-it-okay/
[25]: https://www.manton.org/2025/02/09/i-missed-the-memo-for.html
[26]: https://www.404media.co/you-cant-post-your-way-out-of-fascism/

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[1]Skip to main content
[2]Baty.net
• [3]
• [4]
A blog about everything by Jack Baty 👋
[5]🏠 [6]Journal [7]Topics [8]About [9]Archive [10]🔎
Zoxide and Fish Shell
2 Feb 2025
[11]/posts/2025/02/zoxide-and-fish-shell/ [12]map[email:jack@baty.net
location:West Michigan, USA name:Jack Baty]
• [13]Software
• [14]#CLI
• [15]#Fish
I’m happy using [16]Fish for my shell. One thing I’d not gotten around to after
switching is finding a good directory jumper. The original z doesn’t work well
with Fish. I used to use fasd and autojump, but thought I’d look around for
something new.
For some reason, I’d never heard of [17]zoxide: A smarter cd command. Combined
with [18]zoxide.fish: Tab completion and initialization for zoxide in fish
shell, zoxide does the job nicely.
Installing zoxide on macOS is simple: brew install zoxide.
Then I installed zoxide.fish using [19]Fisher. fisher install icezyclon/
zoxide.fish.
zoxide.fish automatically aliases cd as z so my muscle memory is still useful.
That’s it. Now I can more easily jump around the file system in a terminal.
Read next
• [20]Adding weather to my Fish welcome message
[21]Sunday, February 2, 2025
[22]When everything is a Post
[23]✍️ Reply by email
© Jack Baty, 2025
Powered by [24]Hugo, theme [25]Anubis2.
[26]map[email:jack@baty.net location:West Michigan, USA name:Jack Baty]
References:
[1] https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/zoxide-and-fish-shell/#main
[2] https://baty.net/
[3] https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/zoxide-and-fish-shell/jack@baty.net
[4] https://baty.net/index.xml
[5] https://baty.net/
[6] https://baty.net/journal/
[7] https://baty.net/categories
[8] https://baty.net/about/
[9] https://baty.net/posts/
[10] https://baty.net/search/
[11] https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/zoxide-and-fish-shell/
[12] https://baty.net/
[13] https://baty.net/categories/software/
[14] https://baty.net/tags/cli/
[15] https://baty.net/tags/fish/
[16] http://fishshell.com/
[17] https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide
[18] https://github.com/icezyclon/zoxide.fish
[19] https://github.com/jorgebucaran/fisher
[20] https://baty.net/posts/2025/01/adding-weather-to-my-fish-welcome-message/
[21] https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/02-journal/
[22] https://baty.net/posts/2025/02/when-everything-is-a-post/
[23] mailto:jack@baty.net?subject=[baty.net]%20Re:%20Zoxide%20and%20Fish%20Shell
[24] https://gohugo.io/
[25] https://github.com/Junyi-99/hugo-theme-anubis2
[26] https://baty.net/

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[1]skip to main content
[2] [logo]
• [3]Archives
• [4]Works
• [5]About
• [6]More...
Using Hugo to Launch a Gemini Capsule
3 April 2021
As you can read in the “[7]exploring the AlterNet” article, I’ve had my eye on
Gemini for a few weeks now. Ever since discovering the new protocol thanks to a
couple of weird Mastodon toots, I’ve been thinking about how to set up a
“capsule” (they’re not called sites) for myself. I like the appeal of a
text-focused, no-whizzbang protocol where the focus is on contents, not
aesthetics, especially for blogs such as this one.
A few questions needed to be answered before switching to action modus and
letting the static site generator Hugo do our dirty Gemini work for us.
How to host a Gemini capsule?
There are many pieces of [8]Gemini software available to us, but they’re all
quite new, as the protocol itself is from 2019. I was keen on trying out a
simple Go server, but both go-gemini-server, shavit, and go-gemini required me
to build it myself and contained very little documentation. Furthermore, some
packages weren’t updated in more than a year… In the end, I decided to go with
[9]Agate, a simple Gemini server written in Rust that can serve static files.
It has binaries for every platform, was updated six days ago, and its README.md
it extensive.
Agate even generates the needed TLS certificates if none are provided. This
allowed me to quickly set up a localhost server using the command agate
--content docs/gemini --addr 0.0.0.0:1965 --hostname localhost --lang en-US.
Fun fact about the port number:
When Gemini is served over TCP/IP, servers should listen on port 1965 (the
first manned Gemini mission, Gemini 3, flew in March ‘65).
Running locally before pushing to a server was important to me as I wanted to
fiddle with the .gmi files first to see how they look like in my Gemini browser
/client, [10]Lagrange. Gotta double-check the ASCII art!
What to publish on Gemini?
This is very personal. There are a few options. People like [11]Drew DevVault
and [12]Sylvain Durand mirror their HTTP(S) blog on Gemini, meaning all blog
entries are consultable both over the web and over Gemini. Then there are more
personal articles, published solely on Gemini to accompany the usually more
technical HTTP blogs, such as [13]gemini://space.eli.li/. He claims to use it
to whine like we did on MySpace yesteryear. I’ve also seen hybrids popping up:
articles that are ported, but some exclusive content is also available through
Gemini. I like that. My method at least makes this possible.
I wanted to blog in Dutch, my mother language, for a while now, and I’ve tried
it a few years back on Brain Baking. It didn’t work out. The entries were
misplaced somehow and I wasn’t satisfied, even though I did not expect to
actually have readers. I hoped to use a new domain, wouter.gr, for a Dutch
Gemini capsule to do some personal whining. That sounded like a good plan.
The plan fell through. Instead, I decided to mirror Brain Baking. Why?
• I already whine in Dutch in my personal diaries using a fountain pen. I do
not want to give that up.
• I already have a (nice?) blog, and I’d like to expand the Gemini
space-i-verse by adding my existing articles to it. I already write in
Markdown, so a conversion would be not too difficult.
• I don’t think I can keep up with posting on yet another blog, since I also
occasionally write about retro games on [14]jefklakscodex.com.
How to publish on Gemini?
Right. Porting articles turns out to be ridiculously easy with the help of my
good old friend, Hugo. [15]Sylvain’s method for declaring Gemini as a custom
Hugo output format turned out to work flawlessly. All credits go to him.
However, I did make a few significant changes to the link replacement system.
First, something important to consider: I do not get rid of special emphasis
symbols such as underscores or stars, that are Markdown-specific. I still think
they add something when reading plain text and they’re the next best thing to
have without any markup at all. So I removed those regex-es.
Gemini pages cannot have inline links, so I had to strip out Markdown-style []
() links and place them on a separate paragraph using => link title. A simple
find-and-replace, like in Sylvain’s method, is quite ugly if you use inline
links extensively like I do. It breaks up the text and the result is a
difficult to read Gemlog (that’s a Gemini blog!). In my approach, I collect all
links, replace them with a reference number like in academic papers ([1]), and
add a section called “References” on the bottom of the article to list them
all. This is what it looks like:
[16] [gemini] My Gemini AlterNet article in Lagrange.
I’m quite pleased with the result, although the code itself is far from pretty,
as Gemini is very newline-sensitive, and I had to jam a bunch of Hugo-specific
regex functions together. Source code available at GitHub: index.gmi source,
single.gmi source (see below). Next to the link change, I also replaced all -
and 1. (number) lines, that are enumerators in Markdown, with * ones, which is
the only supported enumerator in Gemfiles.
I tried to design the index and single layout files as similar as possible to
their html variants, while focusing in simplicity. Related articles are also
visible at the end of an article, and the index file simply contains a short
bio followed by an overview of all posts, groupbed by year and month, just like
in my [17]html /post overview. After defining [outputFormats.GEMINI] in my Hugo
config.toml, all that was left is to use rsync to copy over the gemini
subfolder to an appropriate location that gets picked up by Agate. Job done!
Well, not entirely. My Markdown files are littered with surprisingly
Hugo-specific junk:
• Shortcodes, such as YouTube, embedded video or audio.
• Four hashes - h4 - which isn’t supported by the Gemini protocol.
• <span/> tags in my quotes that help with HTML markup.
• Links to aliases that are redirects, which don’t work for the Gemini output
format.
Also, after trying out a second Gemini client, the terminal-friendly [18]Amfora
, I noticed the reference numbers do not align with Amfora’s shortcut keys that
allow you to quickly navigate to a link. Reference 1 would match to key 2. Why?
Because an image is also converted to a link (=> url), wich is placed
in-between text, while the actual references are at the bottom. Hence, pressing
number one would let us download the image - except Amfora can’t handle that
(yet). I solved this by starting at a specific index, based on the number of
times the arrow notation is present in the .gmi file, before processing inline
links. These are all things to take into account when writing future posts.
Now, the the most important question, “why publish on Gemini” could be answered
with “because it’s easy!”. I’m not yet sure if that answer is very
satisfactory, but at least Brain Baking got launched into Space today 🚀! All
that is left is to submit it to the GUS Gemini Universal Search engine…
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Edit 21 June 2021: After a few months of fiddling with Gemini, I came to the
conclusion that it’s simply too early. There’s almost nothing there, and it
only increases the complexity of my website codebase. Therefore, I pulled yet
another plug. Sorry!
For future reference, the following files have been added to enable Gemini
functionality:
layouts/_default/index.atom.xml:
{{- $allowedRssSections := (slice "post") -}}
{{- $baseurl := .Site.BaseURL -}}
{{- $pctx := . -}}
{{- if .IsHome -}}{{ $pctx = .Site }}{{- end -}}
{{- $pages := slice -}}
{{- if or $.IsHome $.IsSection -}}
{{- $pages = $pctx.RegularPages -}}
{{- else -}}
{{- $pages = $pctx.Pages -}}
{{- end -}}
{{- $limit := .Site.Config.Services.RSS.Limit -}}
{{- if ge $limit 1 -}}
{{- $pages = $pages | first $limit -}}
{{- end -}}
{{- printf "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>" | safeHTML }}
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="en">
<title>{{ .Site.Title }}</title>
{{- $perm := replace .Permalink "/gemini" "" 1 -}}
{{- $alt := .Site.BaseURL | replaceRE `https?://(.+?)` "gemini://$1" -}}
{{ printf "<link rel=\"self\" type=\"application/atom+xml\" href=\"%s\"/>" $perm | safeHTML }}
{{ printf "<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\" href=\"%s\"/>" $alt | safeHTML }}
<updated>{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05-0700" | safeHTML }}</updated>
<author>
<name>{{ .Site.Author.name }}</name>
<uri>{{ .Site.BaseURL | replaceRE `https?://(.+?)` "gemini://$1" }}</uri>
</author>
<id>{{ $perm }}</id>
{{ range $pages }}
{{ if in $allowedRssSections .Section }}
<entry>
<title>{{ .Title }}</title>
{{- $entryperm := .Permalink | replaceRE `https?://(.+?)` "gemini://$1" -}}
{{ printf "<link rel=\"alternate\" href=\"%s\"/>" $entryperm | safeHTML }}
<id>{{ $entryperm }}</id>
<published>{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05-0700" | safeHTML }}</published>
<updated>{{ .Lastmod.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05-0700" | safeHTML }}</updated>
<summary>{{ if isset .Params "subtitle" }}{{ .Params.subtitle }}{{ else }}{{ .Summary | html }}{{ end }}</summary>
</entry>
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
</feed>
layouts/index.gmi:
# Brain Baking in Space
> Brain Baking: transforming personal thoughts about thoughts into well-digestible material. The reflective aroma of burnt nervous tissue. Includes a crispy crust of relations between technology, philosophy and the world.
## About The Head Brain Baker
Hey! Yadda yadda
=> https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld Ko-fi Donations
=> mailto:{{ .Site.Author.email }} E-mail
## Freshly Baked Thoughts: The Gemlog
=> /atom.xml Gemini Atom Feed
{{ range (where (where (where .Site.Pages "Section" "in" (slice "post")) ".Params.type" "ne" "archive") ".Params.concept" "ne" "true").GroupByDate "2006" "desc" }}{{ $year := .Key -}}
{{ range .Pages.GroupByDate "January" }}
### {{ .Key }} {{ $year }}
{{ range .Pages.ByDate.Reverse }}
=> {{ replace .RelPermalink "/gemini" "" 1}} {{ .Date.Format ("02") }} - {{ .Title }}
{{ .Params.Subtitle }}{{ end }}
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
# That's All Folks.
=> https://brainbaking.com Brain Baking on the WWW
And lastly, layouts/_default/single.gmi: (Note the space between {{ < that
should be removed)
# {{ .Title }}{{ $scratch := newScratch }}
{{ $content := .RawContent -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `#### ` "### " -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `\n- (.+?)` "\n* $1" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `\n(\d+). (.+?)` "\n* $2" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `\[\^(.+?)\]:?` "" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `<br/??>` "\n" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `<a .*href="(.+?)".*>(.+?)</a>` "[$2]($1)" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `\sgemini://(\S*)` " [gemini://$1](gemini://$1)" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `{{ < audio "(.+?)" >}}` "=> https://brainbaking.com/$1 Embedded Audio link - $1" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `{{ < video "(.+?)" >}}` "=> https://brainbaking.com/$1 Embedded Video link - $1" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `{{ < youtube (.+?) >}}` "=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$1 YouTube Video link to $1" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `{{ < vimeo (.+?) >}}` "=> https://vimeo.com/$1 Vimeo Video link to $1" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE "([^`])<.*?>([^`])" "$1$2" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `\n\n!\[.*\]\((.+?) \"(.+?)\"\)` "\n\n=> $1 Image: $2" -}}
{{ $content := $content | replaceRE `\n\n!\[.*]\((.+?)\)` "\n\n=> $1 Embedded Image: $1" -}}
{{ $links := findRE `\n=> ` $content }}{{ $scratch.Set "ref" (add (len $links) 1) }}
{{ $refs := findRE `\[.+?\]\(.+?\)` $content }}
{{ $scratch.Set "content" $content }}{{ range $refs }}{{ $ref := $scratch.Get "ref" }}{{ $contentInLoop := $scratch.Get "content" }}{{ $url := (printf "%s #%d" . $ref) }}{{ $contentInLoop := replace $contentInLoop . $url -}}{{ $scratch.Set "content" $contentInLoop }}{{ $scratch.Set "ref" (add $ref 1) }}{{ end }}{{ $content := $scratch.Get "content" | replaceRE `\[(.+?)\]\((.+?)\) #(\d+)` "$1 [$3]" -}}
{{ $content | safeHTML }}
---
Written by Wouter Groeneveld on {{ .Lastmod.Format (.Site.Params.dateFormat | default "2 January 2006") }}.
## References
{{ $scratch.Set "ref" (add (len $links) 1) }}{{ range $refs }}{{ $ref := $scratch.Get "ref" }}{{ $url := (printf "%s #%d" . $ref) }}
=> {{ $url | replaceRE `\[(.+?)\]\((.+?)\) #(\d+)` "$2 [$3] $1 ($2)" -}}
{{ $scratch.Set "ref" (add $ref 1) }}{{ end}}
{{ $related := first 3 (where (where .Site.RegularPages.ByDate.Reverse ".Params.tags" "intersect" .Params.tags) "Permalink" "!=" .Permalink) }}
{{ if $related }}
## Related articles
{{ range $related }}
=> {{ replace .RelPermalink "/gemini" "" 1}} {{ .Title }}: {{ .Params.Subtitle }}{{ end }}{{ end }}
---
=> / Back to the Index
=> https://brainbaking.com{{ replace (replace .RelPermalink "/gemini" "" 1) "index.gmi" "" }} View this article on the WWW
For more information, feel free to contact me or to [19]plod around in the Git
repo history tab.
[20]webdesign [21]gemini [22]hugo [23]accessibility
You Might Also Like...
• [24]Why I Retired My Webmention Server 08 May 2023
• [25]Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs 27 Apr 2022
• [26]Reducing Workflow Load Facilitates Writing 03 Jul 2021
• [27]Exploring the AlterNet 24 Mar 2021
• [28]Finding Related Images in Hugo 08 Oct 2024
• [29]Visualizing Blog Post Links With Obsidian 10 Jun 2024
• [30]Displaying Series of Posts in Hugo 04 Jan 2024
Bio and Support
[avatar2024]
I'm [31]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked
thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their
brain (and bread) too.
If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [32]
PayPal or [33]Ko-Fi. I also like to hear your feedback via [34]Mastodon or
email. Thanks!
JavaScript is disabled. I use it to obfuscate my e-mail, keeping spambots at
bay.
Reach me using: [firstname] at [this domain].
↑ [35]Top | [36]Archives | [37]RSS Feed | [38]bv | [39]© CC BY 4.0 License.
[40] [brainbakin]
References:
[1] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/#top
[2] https://brainbaking.com/
[3] https://brainbaking.com/archives/
[4] https://brainbaking.com/works/
[5] https://brainbaking.com/about
[6] https://brainbaking.com/more
[7] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/03/exploring-the-alternet/
[8] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/software/
[9] https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate
[10] https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/
[11] gemini://drewdevault.com/
[12] gemini://sylvaindurand.org
[13] gemini://space.eli.li/
[14] https://jefklakscodex.com/
[15] https://sylvaindurand.org/gemini-and-hugo/
[16] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/gemini.jpg
[17] https://brainbaking.com/post
[18] https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora
[19] https://git.brainbaking.com/wgroeneveld/brainbaking/
[20] https://brainbaking.com/categories/webdesign
[21] https://brainbaking.com/tags/gemini
[22] https://brainbaking.com/tags/hugo
[23] https://brainbaking.com/tags/accessibility
[24] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/05/why-i-retired-my-webmention-server/
[25] https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/cool-things-people-do-with-their-blogs/
[26] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/07/reducing-workflow-load-facilitates-writing/
[27] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/03/exploring-the-alternet/
[28] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/10/finding-related-images-in-hugo/
[29] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/06/visualizing-blog-post-links-with-obsidian/
[30] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/displaying-series-of-posts-in-hugo/
[31] https://brainbaking.com/about
[32] https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=R2WTKY7G9V2KQ
[33] https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld
[34] https://dosgame.club/@jefklak
[35] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/#top
[36] https://brainbaking.com/archives
[37] https://brainbaking.com/index.xml
[38] https://brainbaking.com/bv
[39] https://brainbaking.com/copyright-and-tracking-policy
[40] https://brainbaking.com/links

170
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[1]sylvain durand
Gemini and Hugo
2020-12-04
For a few years, I have been using Hugo, a static site generator, to produce
these pages. At the same time very fast and corresponding perfectly to my
needs, it is above all very modular.
I was therefore not surprised to see that it was quite easy to convert, with
little effort, my site for the Gemini protocol. This was not done without some
tricks. Let’s see how!
Declaring Gemini as an output format
Hugo can output content in multiple formats: most of them are already
predefined, but it is also possible to create your own. This is what we are
going to do for Gemini.
First, in the configuration file config.yml we will declare a new type text/
gemini with the file suffix .gmi:
mediaTypes:
text/gemini:
suffixes:
- "gmi"
Once this is done, we declare a new output format, which uses this type, which
is given the name GEMINI.
outputFormats:
GEMINI:
name: GEMINI
isPlainText: true
isHTML: false
mediaType: text/gemini
protocol: "gemini://"
permalinkable: true
Finally, it only remains to ask Hugo to generate pages for the different
contents. For example, in my case:
outputs:
home: ["HTML", "RSS", "GEMINI"]
page: ["HTML", "GEMINI"]
To be able to generate the files, it is now necessary to create layouts to see
how to display them!
Index page
To start with the index, we can start with layout/index.gmi. For example, here
is a simple text, followed by a list of posts:
## List of posts
{{ range .RegularPages }}
=> {{ .RelPermalink }} {{ .Title }}
{{- end }}
Here, I sort the articles in descending chronological order, grouping them by
date. This gives the following code:
## Posts grouped by year
{{ range .RegularPages.GroupByDate "2006" }}
### {{ .Key }}
{{ range .Pages.ByDate.Reverse }}
=> {{ .RelPermalink }} {{ .Title }}
{{- end }}
{{ end }}
Posts
For posts, we can create a layout/_default/single.gmi. Basically, it would
suffice to display the title and content:
# {{ .Title }}
{{ .RawContent }}
Images
For images, I extract them with a simple regex and show them as a link:
{{- $content := .RawContent -}}
{{- $content = $content | replaceRE `\!\[(.+?)\]\((.+?)\)` "=> $2 Image: $1" }}
{{ $content }}
Links
For the links, I decided to simply not use inline links on the site, but only
put the links on a single paragraph. This allows me, as before, a very simple
regex:
{{- range findRE `\[.+?\]\(.+?\)` $content }}
{{- $content = $content | replaceRE `\[(.+?)\]\((.+?)\)(.+)` "$1$3\n\n=> $2 $1 " }}
{{- end }}
However, this is not a very satisfactory method when you have a site that has a
lot of links online. A solution, proposed by the site Brain Baking, allows you
to reference each link with a number ([1], [2]…) and then to put the links
underneath, automatically, thanks to a clever code from [2]Brainbaking.
Navigation to other pages
If you want to add links for previous and next articles with:
{{ if .Next }}=> {{ .Next.RelPermalink }} ← Newer: {{ .Next.Title }}{{ end }}
{{ if .Prev -}}=> {{ .Prev.RelPermalink }} → Older: {{ .Prev.Title }}{{- end }}
Feeds
To create RSS feeds, we can create a new output format, then define its layout.
RSS
We will do the same here! In config.yml, we define:
outputFormats:
GEMINI_RSS:
baseName: "feed"
mediaType: "application/rss+xml"
isPlainText: false
outputs:
home: ["HTML", "GEMINI", ..., "GEMINI_RSS"]
Then, we create layouts/index.gemini_rss.xml with the following content:
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>{{ .Site.Title }}</title>
<description>{{ i18n "description" }}</description>
<link>{{ (replace .Permalink "https://" "gemini://") | safeURL }}</link>
<atom:link href="{{ .Permalink | safeURL }}feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
{{- range .RegularPages }}
<item>
<title>{{ .Title }}</title>
<link>{{ (replace .Permalink "https://" "gemini://") | safeURL }}</link>
<pubDate>{{ .Date.Format "Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0700" | safeHTML }}</pubDate>
<guid>{{ (replace .Permalink "https://" "gemini://") | safeURL }}</guid>
</item>
{{ end }}
</channel>
</rss>
The RSS feed is now available on /feed.xml.
Export
I use rsync to easily export my files to the server:
hugo
rsync -avz --no-perms --no-owner --no-group \
--no-times --delete public/ vps:/var/gemini
rm -rf public
This last folder is then read by a gemini server, as explained in the previous
article “[3]Discovering the Gemini protocol”.
References:
[1] https://sylvaindurand.org/
[2] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/
[3] https://sylvaindurand.org/discovering-the-gemini-protocol/

870
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[151]Culture [152]Featured [153]The Internet
Choosing my pace by shaping my thinking spaces (Part 5)
• Post author By [154]Tracy Durnell
• Post date [155]February 23, 2025
• [156]5 Comments on Choosing my pace by shaping my thinking spaces (Part 5)
• ❤️
This is part five of a series on tackling wants, managing my media diet, and
finding enough. Each post stands alone, so you don’t have to read them all.
Read the introduction on “[157]the mindset of more.”
Too much info, too fast
Information has a near-physicality to it — we feel the emotional force of
content. Although the same volume of information is coming into my feed reader
as always, the intensity of the content of late has made it feel like too much.
The perceived speed of my intellectual spaces has increased because so much of
the information I’m exposed to is emotionally distressing. And going too fast
for too long makes me tired — mentally and physically. As someone prone to
anxiety, I need to be conscious of how my body internalizes what I’m reading.
We feel the emotional intensity of what we read from a feed as speed because it
seems that a large number of consequential things have happened to us in a
short span of time. Caitlin Dewey [158]frames it as being deluged:
[W]hen it comes to political news… I sometimes feel like I’m standing at
the base of some fucked-up virtual waterfall, with thousands of gallons of
dense, icy water pounding down ceaselessly on my head.
Our bodies translate our [159]online emotional experiences into physical
realities; our bodies react to what happens in virtual spaces the same way they
react in physical spaces, releasing stress hormones and raising our heart rate
and blood pressure although we’re sitting still. Chronic stress is terrible for
our health. But we wouldn’t spend so much time online if it was only bad – we
also receive mental rewards from gathering information.
I don’t think withdrawing from information altogether is the answer, but I
wonder whether we can reclaim some agency by changing the places and ways we’re
exposed to information — by controlling our perceived intellectual pace.
Our intellectual pace is influenced by:
• the total amount of information we’re exposed to,
• how much of it we actually consume,
• the information’s emotional intensity,
• the place we’re consuming it, and
• whether we feel we can do anything about it.
Who controls our thinking spaces, controls our pace
The physical and conceptual spaces where we learn and think comprise our
intellectual environment: the places we read, listen or watch; and the places
where we process what we’ve taken in, whether by talking about it or writing
about it.
Time is experienced relativistically; some hours feel faster to us than others.
That sensation of where did the time go?! can happen whenever we’re immersed,
whether that’s in flow state, where we are working at our peak ability, or in
social media, where we are fully absorbed in the thoughts of others. These
types of fast-felt experiences sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of agency.
When we lack control in our intellectual environments, our mindspaces are not
our own. Matt Haig argues in Notes on a Nervous Planet, “The trouble is that if
we are plugged in to a vast nervous system, our happiness—and misery—is more
collective than ever. The group’s emotions become our own.”
Our thoughts become dominated by others’ concerns and priorities if we cannot
regulate the pace at which we receive them — if we never have time to process
them. And given our finite schedules, there’s often an inverse relationship
between the time we spend consuming and the time we spend thinking about it.
Dewey [160]summarizes the impact of the explosion of news sources and the
never-ending sensationalized feed:
“Together, these forces have both accelerated and flattened the news:
Everything happens all at once, and everything is a crisis.”
Controlling the pace of media becomes a tool of power, with political
ramifications. If we’re busy watching, we’re not acting. If we’re stuck
listening, we’re not thinking. If we’re not sure what’s happening, we’ll wait
to gather more information. If we’re constantly playing catch up, we’re always
in reactive mode, never proactive.
Right now, the Trump administration is taking advantage of its control of our
attentional spaces to raise our collective mental pace into overdrive. As Ezra
Klein [161]puts it, “The flood is a point. The overwhelm is a point. The
message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the
cumulative effect of all of them.” The hemorrhage of horror is intended to
paralyze us by overloading us with information that we don’t have time to
process.
But as Craig Mod [162]challenges,
“The feed, the doomscroll, the hyperventilation, is the heartbeat of
political and social death. It is not life. It is a false heartbeat.”
Oliver Burkeman [163]encourages us to “make sure your psychological centre of
gravity is in your real and immediate world – the world of your family and
friends and neighborhood, your work and your creative projects, as opposed to
the world of presidencies and governments, social forces and global
emergencies.” It is too easy, Burkeman notes, to live “inside the news” rather
than our physical reality. Our tools for accessing our thinking spaces — now
almost all digital — encourage it.
The web feels infinite
Nicholas Carr [164]notices how, online and especially on our phones, our
attention transfers from what we’re consuming to how we’re consuming it: “[W]
hat engages us more and more is not the content but the mechanism. […] Whatever
lies on the other side of the interface seems less and less consequential. The
interface is the thing. The interface is the content.” The meta subsumes the
factual. The experience overshadows the information. The interface — and its
speed — are all-consuming.
We used to use specialized media, Carr points out — playing a song used a
different tool than reading the news — but generalist computers have
consolidated the vast majority of our intellectual environment into digital
devices. We both play music and read the news on our computer, whether that’s a
phone or a desktop PC. A key difference for our experience is that we lost
physical transitions between media.
Friction reduces speed. Analog media naturally provided friction — you had to
get up to flip the record, you had to go outside to grab the newspaper — while
digital media aims to remove friction from all consumption. The digital format
removed the constraints of physicality; this brought us endless scroll, which
removed a natural cue to transition activities and deprives of the
psychological satisfaction of [165]ever completing anything. Or, as Craig Mod
puts it, [166]edges. Edgeless is endless. Without waypoints, it’s easy to spend
longer than we realize consuming information and moving from one type of
content to another. Without transitions, we exist in an unbroken now that
matches the pace of our intellectual space, whether fast or slow.
Our fastest space raises our baseline pace
Spending time in a faster-paced space raises our threshold for stimulus as we
adapt to its speed. I have found that when I dip back from the slow stream into
the fast feed, even with the intention of keeping up with only one or two
people, the speed can suck me in again.
I tried lurking on Bluesky, but once enough people showed up, it had the same
delicious taste for me as old Twitter… so I logged out in December and haven’t
let myself log back in. A fast-paced environment builds a pattern of
consumption and a habit of speed. For me, it is safer to stay out of the swift
water altogether.
The mind must convince the body to change
In a culture of information superabundance, we need above all else the
discipline to say “no” or to set limits upon our engagement with the vast
proliferation of digital media.
—[167]L.M. Sacasas
To lower my pace, I want to take in less information in total. But it’s not as
simple as deciding to take in less information; living that decision is the
hard part. A change like this is not just intellectual, but embodied, too.
When I was trying to escape Twitter’s staccato mode of thinking, I found my
muscle memory challenged my mental discipline. I could fully intend not to look
at Twitter, but in moments of transition, the habitual movement of my fingers
on the keyboard carried me back again and again, forcing me to exercise [168]my
will continuously. My subconscious urge to fill any gap with stimulus was
powerful. Ultimately, I had to [169]block the site with my Hosts file (and
eventually quit my job where I had to use Twitter 😉). My body resisted my
conscious desire to stop reading Twitter, and I had to change my environment to
force myself to let it go.
I’m reminded of the Ray Bradbury story [170]Frost and Fire (spoilers for an
eighty year old novella 😉), where people’s lives last mere days — then the main
characters decide to brave the perilous journey to the spaceship their
ancestors left behind. When they enter, their bodies literally slow down, and
the hero believes himself to be dying:
“The ship he had come to for salvation was now slowing his pulse, darkening
his brain, poisoning him. With a starved, faint kind of expiring terror, he
realized that he was dying.
[…]
He had a dim sense of time passing, of thinking, struggling, to make his
heart go quick, quick…. to make his eyes focus. But the fluid in his body
lagged quietly through his settling veins and he heard his pulse thud,
pause, thud, pause and thud again with lulling intermissions.
[…]
Is this death? This slowing of blood, of my heart, this cooling of my body,
this drowsy thinking of thoughts?”
When he finally recovers from the shock, when he acclimates to the new
slowness, he realizes the ship has saved him: the slower pace means his life
will not end in eight days. The dramatic change in pace felt like dying, so he
fought it, but now that his body is no longer racing, his life is comparably
infinite. Everyone who stayed behind has grown old in the days he took to
adapt.
I think any sudden change in the pace of our intellectual environment can spark
this same kind of physical shock. At the same time, when we are immersed in the
feed, it can be hard to notice that our pace is wearing us out and recognize
that we have the power to change it.
We can change our mental — and physical — pace by changing the places where we
spend time: choosing new spaces and shaping the ones we choose. We cannot force
ourselves to change, but we can create environments for ourselves that
encourage and support what we want, and discourage what we don’t want, applying
friction with intention.
Lowering the pace of my online intellectual spaces
On the open web, we can choose our own pace of information because we — not
corporations — are in control of our environment.
Taking in information across a broad spread of paces
For finding new things to read online, I mainly turn to my feed reader. I also:
• use the library catalog and Goodreads as [171]browsing-thinking tools,
• get temperature readings from microbloggers on the Fediverse via
micro.blog,
• explore outwards through the open web from articles and personal websites,
• seek answers from DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and Reddit,
• absorb random facts from YouTubers, and
• probe more widely with Search My Site and Marginalia Search.
Some of these are fast spaces, some slow; many let me set my own pace. I’ve
corralled most of my media exposure into my feed reader, which helps because I
must choose to open it, and have removed access from my phone. But while I
generally feel [172]RSS is a healthy way to follow writers, it’s still [173]a
feed. And feeds, whether self-curated or assembled by a corporate algorithm,
are designed to be an efficient information delivery mechanism. Their function
is to provide easy, immediate* access to new information.
*(James built [174]a slow feed reader!)
Choosing quieter spaces
One of the dials I think about for media exposure is how much noise I will
tolerate to find signal; accepting more noise means I can find signal from a
broader band. The massive spectrum of information and event-dense experience of
social media creates a noisy intellectual environment. On RSS, I control how
loud my space is, how much chatter I allow in. This intellectual loudness
translates into perceived speed.
To draw on a wide pool of information and sources, I have for years permitted
my feed reader to be a noisy — thus relatively fast — space. I’ve erred on the
side of subscribing, adding blogs and newsletters to my feed reader with
abandon. The quantity and constant influx of information can impose an
artificial pressure to consume it; the fact that it exists implies we ought to
read it. Granting myself a smaller, tighter pool of reading material to choose
from could make exercising mental discipline easier.
I am starting to unsubscribe from a few feeds, though I am reluctant to remove
too many 😉 I am thinking of creating a second RSS feed for myself on a
different service, subscribing only to my favorite 20-30 feeds; I can check
that during the week, and on weekends, when I have a bit more capacity, can
take a peek at my full feed to see if there’s anything I missed. (A lot of
times, news seems to play itself out over the span of a week.)
Using the tools my spaces offer
I access my online intellectual spaces in my feed reader, read-later app, and
internet browser on my phone and desktop computer. The apps have different
levels of control, as do the devices. My phone opens me up to a world of
distractions with apps as well as access to the open web; my process of reading
only from my read-later app on the phone creates a slower environment even on a
device biased towards speed.
The overall stimulus we experience in a space influences how fast it feels. Ads
increase visual noise, so [175]I block them on desktop and use DuckDuckGo
browser on mobile, which blocks ads way better than Firefox browser. Color adds
visual stimulation, so I set up the accessibility shortcut on my phone to
toggle me into greyscale mode; if I’m feeling overwhelmed, I can hit that to
instantly drop my pace.
My current process of [176]selecting and reading at different times, using
different tools, takes advantage of my read later app’s slow environment.
Instapaper doesn’t recommend me a bunch of junk like Pocket did; it’s just my
own stuff. (One of the many reasons I quit Pocket.) Using tags — including a ⭐
tag to mark the things I most want to read — and archiving aggressively
condenses the amount of information I’m exposed to when I open the app even
more.
I use [177]micro.blog as my most social online space, which I generally look at
once or twice a day for ten minutes (and could get away with even less 😉) I
picked micro.blog as my connection to the Fediverse because it doesn’t show
follower counts or allow reposts (or quote posts, though I personally have
found these useful). It’s a pretty small community, and most people are not
heavy posters. Between the tooling and the number of users, this means the
volume of posts is much lower than Bluesky and corporate silos.
The feed offers a variety of controls for what I see; I recently muted a few
terms related to the corporate silos and generative AI because these topics
aren’t really beneficial for me to think about. I also appreciate that it
doesn’t have endless scroll, and while you can proceed through a few pages, you
cannot go backwards forever in time. The feed has an end.
Creating endings
The web may feel infinite, but we can create spaces within it that feel finite.
New material constantly flows into my feed reader. Every day, there are 20-50
new posts I could consider reading. In the past several weeks, I’ve started
“marking all as read” in my feed reader after I open anything that looks
interesting, whereas in the past I’d leave it all visible and peruse it a
second or third time.
I’m also working on leaving fewer tabs open in my phone browser. (I aim for
just one at the end of the day — my weeknotes draft post for easy access
throughout the week — but sometimes that don’t happen 😉) This is a practice in
letting go of what I won’t read or use, in acknowledging my time limitations
and sticking to my own priorities. Especially in the current news environment,
I have to be honest with myself about what information is useful *to me* ([178]
not in a capitalist sense 😉) and what I am likely to act on.
Teaching myself to expect less information
With [179]my self-imposed media diet — only allowing myself to look at my feed
reader on the desktop, and saving everything to my read later app — I’m
experiencing a lesser level of pace shock again, like I did when I quit
Twitter. I’ve been accustomed to a constant influx of information, and I get
antsy for novelty. Chris Bailey [180]points out that when you cut back
dramatically on the stimulus you take in, “what feels like restlessness is
really just your mind calming down.” I am retraining my brain about the pace of
information it can expect to receive.
Collecting less leaves me more mental space. So far, half the time I disrupt
the impulse to feed my brain something new, I read things I’ve already saved on
my read-later app, and the other half I start blogging. Both of these are a win
in my book 😄
I’m still in the transitional phase, not yet adapted, but I’ve carved out room
for myself to slow down by changing my environment. My hunger for the new will
probably never fully go away, but I think I can gradually pacify it into
subsidence.
Further reading:
[181]What is rotting, if not rest? by Haley Nahman
See also:
[182]Reclaiming intentionality in browsing and blogging
This is the (current) last article in a [183]series on the mindset of more.
•
• Previous: [184]The open web as gift economy (Part 4)
• Tags [185]agency, [186]balance, [187]bodies, [188]control, [189]FOMO, [190]
indie web, [191]IndieWeb, [192]letting go, [193]media diet, [194]open web,
[195]overwhelm, [196]pacing, [197]place, [198]Ray Bradbury, [199]slow
living, [200]social media, [201]spaces, [202]speed, [203]willpower
[b1231bba531dc25e30]
By Tracy Durnell
Writer and designer in the Seattle area. Reach me at tracy@tracydurnell.com or
@tracy@notes.tracydurnell.com. She/her.
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5 replies on “Choosing my pace by shaping my thinking spaces (Part 5)”
[b1231bba531dc] [207]Tracy Durnell says: @ [208]tracydurnell.com
[209]December 30, 2024 at 4:47 pm
I’ve been playing the game Satisfactory with my sister for about the past year.
Neither of us have played games much, and that mostly pre-2000.…
[210]Reply
[912c1c1f9a18b] Erik says:
[211]February 24, 2025 at 3:03 am
Discovering, curating and organizing RSS feeds takes more effort than scrolling
through simple algorithmic feed, but I like that it gives you a lot more
control over the way you receive information!
For me I’ve categorized my (text based) RSS feeds in three folders: 🥇, 🥈, 🥉.
It’s loosely based on how frequently they post and how frequently I read vs
skip them.
The gold ones I almost always take time to read, and they tend to be the ones
posting less frequently. Bronze is where I put all the blogs where I skip a lot
of the posts. It’s also where I put most newly added blogs, and ones I’m
considering removing. And silver is something in between.
For me this distinction works pretty well. I have different approaches and
expectations for each folder.
[212]Reply
[b1231bba531dc] [213]Tracy Durnell says:
[214]February 24, 2025 at 8:29 am
Ooh, the color tags are a great idea, thank you Erik! I have a “trying out”
tag, but it hasn’t been that useful because sometimes people only post every
few months so they are in there for a really long time, and then the folder has
so many people in it I can’t keep track of who’s who.
[215]Reply
[912c1c1f9a18b] Erik says:
[216]February 24, 2025 at 3:22 am
Also, thanks for this series of posts! It’s been really insightful seeing not
only your own stance on things, but also the many posts of other people that
you’ve linked to.
[217]Reply
[b1231bba531dc] [218]Tracy Durnell says:
[219]February 24, 2025 at 8:31 am
Thanks! I’m glad it’s been interesting!
[220]Reply
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References:
[1] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/#site-content
[3] https://tracydurnell.com/
[5] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
[6] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
[7] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
[8] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/article/
[9] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index/
[10] https://notes.tracydurnell.com/
[11] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/links-to-blog-about/
[12] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
[13] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/future-of-the-internet/
[14] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/information-diet/
[15] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/culture/
[16] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/transforming-capitalism/
[17] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/resisting-fascism/
[18] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/feminism/
[19] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/thinking-better/
[20] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/effective-creative-processes/
[21] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/writing-fiction/
[22] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
[23] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
[24] https://tracydurnell.com/start-here/
[25] https://tracydurnell.com/now/
[26] https://tracydurnell.com/category/weeknotes/
[27] https://tracydurnell.com/pages/
[28] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
[29] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2025/
[30] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
[31] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/
[32] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/
[33] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2025/
[34] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/birthday-playlists/
[35] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/best-of-year-playlists/
[36] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/favorite-albums/
[37] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
[38] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
[39] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/recipes-to-try/
[40] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/roundups/
[41] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/
[42] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/interesting-people/
[43] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/cool-artists/
[44] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/neat-websites/
[45] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/shopping/
[46] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/graphic-design-resources/
[53] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
[55] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
[56] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
[57] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/article/
[58] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index/
[59] https://notes.tracydurnell.com/
[60] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/links-to-blog-about/
[61] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
[63] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/future-of-the-internet/
[64] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/information-diet/
[65] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/culture/
[66] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/transforming-capitalism/
[67] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/resisting-fascism/
[68] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/feminism/
[69] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/thinking-better/
[70] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/effective-creative-processes/
[71] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/writing-fiction/
[72] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
[74] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
[75] https://tracydurnell.com/start-here/
[76] https://tracydurnell.com/now/
[77] https://tracydurnell.com/category/weeknotes/
[78] https://tracydurnell.com/pages/
[79] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
[81] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2025/
[82] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
[83] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/
[84] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/
[86] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2025/
[87] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/birthday-playlists/
[88] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/best-of-year-playlists/
[89] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/favorite-albums/
[90] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
[92] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
[93] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/recipes-to-try/
[94] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/roundups/
[96] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/
[97] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/interesting-people/
[98] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/cool-artists/
[99] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/neat-websites/
[100] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/shopping/
[101] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/graphic-design-resources/
[102] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
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[105] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
[106] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/article/
[107] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index/
[108] https://notes.tracydurnell.com/
[109] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/links-to-blog-about/
[110] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
[112] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/future-of-the-internet/
[113] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/information-diet/
[114] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/culture/
[115] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/transforming-capitalism/
[116] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/resisting-fascism/
[117] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/feminism/
[118] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/thinking-better/
[119] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/effective-creative-processes/
[120] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/writing-fiction/
[121] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
[123] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
[124] https://tracydurnell.com/start-here/
[125] https://tracydurnell.com/now/
[126] https://tracydurnell.com/category/weeknotes/
[127] https://tracydurnell.com/pages/
[128] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
[130] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2025/
[131] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
[132] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/
[133] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/
[135] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2025/
[136] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/birthday-playlists/
[137] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/best-of-year-playlists/
[138] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/favorite-albums/
[139] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
[141] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
[142] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/recipes-to-try/
[143] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/roundups/
[145] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/
[146] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/interesting-people/
[147] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/cool-artists/
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[149] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/shopping/
[150] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/graphic-design-resources/
[151] https://tracydurnell.com/category/culture/
[152] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
[153] https://tracydurnell.com/category/the-internet/
[154] https://tracydurnell.com/author/tracyadmin/
[155] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/
[156] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/#comments
[157] https://tracydurnell.com/2024/12/30/mindset-of-more/
[158] https://linksiwouldgchatyou.substack.com/p/how-to-stay-sane-and-informed
[159] https://archive.org/details/the-veldt
[160] https://linksiwouldgchatyou.substack.com/p/how-to-stay-sane-and-informed
[161] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-trump-column-read.html
[162] https://craigmod.com/essays/membership_rules/
[163] https://ckarchive.com/b/4zuvhehpp24m4t6ovveola6g9z777s5
[164] https://www.newcartographies.com/p/in-the-kingdom-of-the-bored-the-one
[165] https://tracydurnell.com/2023/09/06/reaching-the-edges/
[166] https://craigmod.com/essays/unbinding/
[167] https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/desire-dopamine-and-the-internet
[168] https://tracydurnell.com/2023/07/27/willpower-is-not-the-way/
[169] https://techglimpse.com/block-social-media-websites-windows-trick/
[170] https://fliphtml5.com/xsgw/jncr
[171] https://tracydurnell.com/2021/09/17/browsing-is-learning/
[172] https://tracydurnell.com/2023/02/07/what-makes-rss-better-than-social-timelines/
[173] https://hedy.bearblog.dev/on-ideal-feeds/
[174] https://artemis.jamesg.blog/
[175] https://tracydurnell.com/2023/11/27/why-we-block-ads/
[176] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/01/04/disrupting-my-reading-habits/
[177] https://micro.blog/tracydurnell
[178] https://kottke.org/25/02/is-social-media-good-for-you-apply-the-cue-test
[179] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/01/04/disrupting-my-reading-habits/
[180] https://tracydurnell.com/2023/03/24/read-how-to-calm-your-mind/
[181] https://haleynahman.substack.com/p/208-what-is-rotting-if-not-rest
[182] https://tracydurnell.com/2023/03/10/reclaiming-intentionality-in-browsing-and-blogging/
[183] https://tracydurnell.com/2024/12/30/mindset-of-more/
[184] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/01/27/the-open-web-as-gift-economy-part-4/
[185] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/agency/
[186] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/balance/
[187] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/bodies/
[188] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/control/
[189] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/fomo/
[190] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/indie-web/
[191] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/indieweb/
[192] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/letting-go/
[193] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/media-diet/
[194] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/open-web/
[195] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/overwhelm/
[196] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/pacing/
[197] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/place/
[198] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/ray-bradbury/
[199] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/slow-living/
[200] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/social-media/
[201] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/spaces/
[202] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/speed/
[203] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/willpower/
[204] https://tracydurnell.com/author/tracyadmin/
[205] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/read-the-wild-wolfs-rejected-mate/
[206] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/25/read-wooing-the-witch-queen/
[207] https://tracydurnell.com/
[208] https://tracydurnell.com/2024/12/30/mindset-of-more/
[209] https://tracydurnell.com/2024/12/30/mindset-of-more/
[210] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/?replytocom=12111#respond
[211] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/#comment-12115
[212] https://tracydurnell.com/2025/02/23/choosing-my-pace-by-shaping-my-thinking-spaces/?replytocom=12115#respond
[213] https://tracydurnell.com/
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