Why plant a Gemini garden?

Simplify, and then add lightness

The above quote by the British engineer, inventor, and founder of Lotus Cars, Colin Chapman got lodged in my brain several decades ago.

Looking at updating my website I went down a rabbit hole of different CMS options and static site generators, only finding myself getting mroe and more frustrated. The complexity of it all seemed out of proportion to what I wanted.

I came across the term digital gardening, and discovered I wasn't alone in feeling frustrated and that groups were already exploring different ways to rediscover the enjoyment of simpler web experiences. Like so many I created a Neocities site, writing the html in a text editor and rejecting the complexities of CSS and JAVA as superfluous to my needs. It was closer to the simple web I was looking for, but it was built in the ecosystem of the chaos and sprawl.

Yesterday I saw someone mention Gemini as project that made them excited about technology again, and that led me down the rabbit hole to where I am now. Along the way I came across Adele who makes pollux.casa possible, and her writing about smolweb seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. The two combined seem to fit Colin Chapman's quote well, with smolweb ideals and the design of the Gemini protocol lending themselves to a simple, light online experience. Something I wanted to be part of...

It's less than twenty-four hours later and here I am, trying to decide how I want to structure my capsule, and what to put in my gemlog. I'm amazed at how intuitive and familiar the entire experience feels.