NANTUCKET LIT

Support for Gemtext in Nantucket Lit

2025-11-15T00:00:00Z

Support for Gemtext in Nantucket Lit

by NJB // 2025-11-15 // Lafayette, CO

Tonight, I added support for creating Gemtext ebooks with Nantucket Lit. A new set of scripts in the repository help make it happen, currently named gemtext.js and buildgemtext.sh.

Gemtext is a bare-bones markup language used for the Gemini-protocol. Gemini is an alternative to the modern web’s HTTP/HTML. It’s meant to be very, very simple, focused on text. There are no frameworks or client-side scripting in Gemini. You can check out my own Gemini ‘capsule’ at gemini://nantucketlit.com, using a Gemini browser like Lagrange.

Gemtext has headings, single-level unordered lists, pre-formatted text, links, and paragraphs. That’s it. There are no hyperlinks. A link in Gemtext is its own thing on a separate line. It seems Spartan at first, but there is something refreshing about an internet with no-bull, just fast-loading blogs and stories from interesting people.

There are two options for Gemtext in Nantucket Lit. First, you can make an uncompressed folder containing all of your book’s text files. You can upload this folder to your Gemini server. This is analogous to the HTML ebooks on my website.

Second, you can make a compressed folder with the .gpub file extension. This is analogous to an EPUB ebook, and at least ten times simpler.

Two more options for ebooks! I’d wager that this is the best way to generate Gemtext ebooks online. It all comes from the Shanty markup language, which was designed from the ground-up for making great books.

You can follow development of Nantucket Lit, or contribute yourself, at codeberg.org/nantucketlit/nantucketlit/.

Call For Submissions to Overscan

2025-11-13T00:00:00Z

Call For Submissions to Overscan

by NJB // 2025-11-13 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

This past July, I published the anthology Overscan: Stories From Beyond the Screen’s Edge. This book collected sf and fantasy from writers who have used and/or supported what I do.

Overscan has become the #1 book on Nantucket Lit, and my best-selling book in print. It was a book for the Fediverse, and I am so proud to have included writings by Fedizens like Benjamin Hollon,Seth Patterson, and AT Gonzalez. The cover features pixel art by the wonderfully brilliant Dinchenix, who I connected with on Mastodon.

Today, I would like to announce that there will be another Overscan! I will be publishing a second volume next July.

From now until the end of April 2026, I will be accepting submissions for Overscan II. I am looking for stories of sf and/or fantasy.

Overscan covered a broad range of genres and tones. The Warden by Buffalo was psychological horror. Hers to Have by Sefton Eisenhart is the best story about AI I’ve read in years, a dark vision that’s not too far from where we are now. Galapagos Larvae is deliciously macabre monster horror, in the fashion of Mars Attacks. Those Who Breathe Easy by Benjamin Hollon is in the tradition of hard sf, with an important message about where our quest for wealth is taking us, and everything is for sale. Lonely Human is fantasy that speaks to a need for connection and hope. The Mirror is David W. Stoner’s masterful blend of the magical and the philosophical.

If you want to know what sort of stories I like, read the ones listed above. Fundamentally, sf is about taking a moral or scientific concept, and exploring all its implications through a narrative. That’s very different from sci-fi, which is where you travel to the other end of the known universe and have a big ol’ gunfight. In the same way, fantasy is not about tromping around in the forest playing a lute. I don’t publish that kind of fantasy, and I don’t publish sci-fi. I was proud of the kinds of stories I published in Overscan, and now I will dare you to do even better.

I am paying for stories. Writers will also receive a copy of the print edition. I’ll be making a new Apple II floppy disk edition as well, with updated software. Maybe an audiobook? That would be nice.

I especially encourage you to submit if you are on Mastodon or a similar Fediverse social media. The Fediverse is the community that has supported my work the most, and so I want to show the same support in return.

If you would like to submit a story for Overscan II, or have a question, please email me at njb@nantucketlit.com. Please put Overscan 2 in your subject line. I look forward to seeing what you have to share.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Bernhard
Nantucket Lit

Signup Form for First-Class Fiction

2025-10-25T00:00:00Z

Signup Form for First-Class Fiction

by NJB // 2025-10-25 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

First, I want to thank my followers on Mastodon. To get my social media handles consistent, I had to migrate instances, and some followers got lost in the shuffle. Today, I got back to 500 followers.

The word get thrown around a lot, but Mastodon really feels like my “community.” I’m very glad for the people I’ve met on the Fediverse. As I’ve said before, it was a blog post by Christine Lemmer-Webber, the co-founder of ActivityPub, that motivated me to make Nantucket Lit a free-software project.

Second, I am happy to debut a new sign-up form for my First-Class Fiction project. This is a new periodical that comes to your mailbox on a postcard. Each postcard will have a microfiction story or a poem on it.

Our inaugural story was Brother by Anna Frazer. This is a beautiful prose-poem which I am so excited to share with our subscribers.

I’m currently doing a free trial of First-Class Fiction. If you’re interested, you can sign up at nantucketlit.com/postcards. I’m very happy with this sign-up form, which was made by a fellow Fedizen. It requires no client-side JavaScript, and will run perfectly well in a text-based browser like Lynx.

Welcome Back: The Most Dangerous Game and Winnie-the-Pooh

2025-10-17T00:00:00Z

Welcome Back: The Most Dangerous Game and Winnie-the-Pooh

by NJB // 2025-10-17 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

I have returned two public-domain books on the site, both better than ever before.

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell

First up is The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. This is one of the most famous short stories of all time. It’s about a big-game hunter who finds himself shipwrecked on a mysterious island. His captor uses the island as his game preserve, where he hunts humans for sport.

This is an excellent story to read in October.

I’m quite fond of the cover for this book, which I designed. It uses Henri Rousseau’s painting Surprised, showing a tiger stalking its prey through the jungle in a thunderstorm.

My online ebook features a LibriVox audiobook narrated by Daly Blanton.

Winnie-the-Pooh

At the other end of the literary spectrum is Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne. First published in 1926, with illustrations by E.H. Shepard.

No horror here, this is the real deal: the gentle residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood and their cozy adventures. The final conversation between Pooh and Piglet is strangely moving for me, and I share Pooh’s love of a good breakfast.

The online edition features my “flippable images”, which you will only find in my ebooks. If you enable dark mode in your browser or the ebook itself, not only will the text invert, but Shepard’s illustrations will invert, too. The best ebooks on the planet come with the best dark mode.

I’ve also bundled a LibriVox audiobook, narrated by the Big Kahuna of Baton Rouge, Phil Chenevert. I love Chenevert’s audiobooks. Frankly, Chenevert is a national treasure in the same way that Kristen Schall and Bill Farmer are national treasures. What a remarkable talent, summonin the spirits of Pooh, Piglet, Kanga, and Owl with the same ease as pulp heroes like Conan the Barbarian and Eric John Stark.

Enjoy

More public-domain books to come. A lot more to come, in fact, through the rest of this month and November.

What books would you like to see on Nantucket Lit? Email me at the link below, and I’ll make it happen!

Public Domain Books Are Back

2025-10-11T00:00:00Z

Public Domain Books Are Back

by NJB // 2025-10-11 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

Over the course of this month, you will be seeing a return of public-domain books to Nantucket Lit.

As I have overhauled Nantucket Lit this year, my focus has been on new books from the writers who are currently using Nantucket Lit. I still feel that is the right focus. I also think that public-domain books are a net benefit for this site.

More public-domain books on Nantucket Lit means more views. It can also mean more fans of particular genres coming to the site, and finding books from new authots.

On a practical level, public-domain books help me to show off some of the best features of my ebooks: flippable images, and built-in audiobooks.

Nantucket Lit’s HTML ebooks have the best ebook dark mode in the world. Not only is there a deliciously smooth transition to dark mode, and not only does dark mode work without JavaScript enabled, but I can integrate images directly into the dark mode. If an image is monochrome with a transparent background, I can set it so that the image inverts alongside the dark mode. No other ebook format has images so seamlessly integrated with the text.

The EPUB format does support built-in audio files, but good luck finding an ereader device or app that supports them. My ebooks, based on HTML, CSS, and JS with no libraries, have the native audio support of any modern browser. As with dark mode, you get access to the audiobooks even if JavaScript is disabled. Load one of my ebooks up using the Dillo browser, or even Lynx, and those audio files will be ready to listen to.

I am still building the budget to include more illustrations and audiobooks with my ebooks for new writers. In the meantime, I can demonstrate these features with public domain illustrations, and audiobooks from LibriVox.

Re-Upload Plans

I will be re-uploading all of the public-domain books that were previously on the site through the rest of this month. This will include spooky-season titles like The Dunwich Horror by Lovecraft, and Bram Stoker’s short story collection Dracula’s Guest.

New Public-Domain Books

I am interested in focusing in a few areas of public-domain work.

First, I want to get more genre fiction up on the site. I’d like to publish a trilogy of Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark novels, which are some of the very best space operas. More mysteries, like the works of Jacques Futrelle. The essentials of horror: Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein. I’d build it out from there.

Second, I would like to upload the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction currently in the public domain. That seems like an obvious place to focus my energies.

Third, I would like to have more books for children on the site, so I’d like to upload winners of the Newbery Medal. The Newbery is the highest honor for children’s fiction in the US, seems like a good place to start. The built-in audiobooks could be a useful tool for teaching kids how to read.

Lastly, I want to offer EPUB editions of these books as well. I will be sharing the public-domain ebooks free of charge. (Though, if you like what I do, please support my work on Liberapay.

Introducing The Dark Frigate

To that end, I’m introducing the first new public-domain book to the site: The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes. If you are into pirates and adventure on the seas, this one’s for you. Charles Hawes was considered the equal of Stevenson and Dana when it came to seafaring stories. He was posthumously awarded the Newbery Medal for The Dark Frigate in 1924. The Nantucket Lit edition has the Librivox audiobook built right in, narrated by Kathrin Engan.

What Do You Want to Read?

If there’s a particular book you’d like to see on Nantucket Lit, let me know! I always enjoy hearing from readers.

Update on Book Binding

2025-10-04T00:00:00Z

Update on Book Binding

by NJB // 2025-10-04 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

I’ve mentioned on Mastodon that I do my own bookbinding. One reason is that I’m trying to do my work outside of the Amazon system. My frustrations with Amazon’s publishing process is why I started Nantucket Lit in the first place.

How I Bind Books

I currently produce two kinds of physical books: my collectible chapbooks, like Father’s Day by Sefton Eisenhart, and traditional paperback books like the sf anthology Overscan. The chapbooks are very simple: collated on the dinner table, and staple-bound.

The paperback books are a whole different animal. They use what’s called “perfect” binding. The pages are bound to the paper cover with glue, just like any paperback book you’d find at the bookstore.

There are many videos on YouTube for making perfect-bound books at home. Most of these videos describe a process that is inexpensive, but time-consuming. They generally involve applying the glue to the spine with a brush, and then keeping the books in a press while the glue sets. The cover of the book is scored using a ruler and a tool called a bone-folder.

I needed a way to produce books that I would be proud to share, reasonably quickly. I have made great strides this year, and I’m very pleased with the copies of Overscan that have gone out to readers.

I am always looking to improve, though, so I thought I would share a recent development.

The Spine Thickness Must Account for Glue

When creating the spine of your book’s cover in GIMP or Photoshop, you would start by measuring the thickness of your book’s pages. This was something that Amazon did make convenient: since Amazon controlled the paper stock, they could calculate thickness based on the number of pages in the book. I measure the spine thickness on my books using a caliper tool.

The thickness of the spine is only the first step, though! In addition to your pages, there will also be a thin layer of glue inside your cover. You must account for this layer of glue. When you fold the cover to glue the pages inside, you need to fold one-sixteenth of an inch past the spine.

If you don’t do this, the spine of the book will have a “smooshed” or bulbous appearance. If you add this extra 1/16 inch on either side, the spine is more likely to have those nice right angles.

Add The Extra Thickness in the Design Stage

If you were to follow these steps, you would notice that the folds of the spine are slightly wider than the spine itself. In other words, you can see a tiny bit of the front and back covers along the spine. To compensate for this, you would need to design a spine that is 1/8 inch thicker than the thickness of the book.

Add Score Marks

It would also help to add score marks onto the cover. These are little lines that help to calibrate your scoring equipment. These score marks go into the “bleed area” of the cover, and will be cut off in the final stage of the binding process.

Plans For a Guide

Right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossman started his work by creating a MacBook repair business. As he was building that business, he produced videos showing the repair process he learned. He did this so that he could help out the next person who wanted to get into the field. I have always admired Rossman for doing that; it sets a good example.

I plan to produce a video series explaining the full perfect-binding process, from start to finish. Perfect-binding is a little intimidating, and I would like to make the guide that I wish I began learning all this. This guide will include the equipment you need to do it right, and why that equipment is necessary, in my opinion.

I feel that by the middle of next year, I’ll be in a place where I can produce such a series.

I know I have also promised a tour of my garage. My garage doesn’t have a Lamborghini like Tai Lopez’s, but it does contain all of my book-binding equipment. I will share that garage tour well ahead of a tutorial series.

Botober Day 2: Pinetabanous Mold

2025-10-02T00:00:00Z

Botober Day 2: Pinetabanous Mold

by NJB // 2025-10-02 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

Botober is a series of art prompts for October, found at aiweirdness.com/tiny-jello/. These prompts come from a primitive AI that was trained on nothing but 800 jello recipes.

Normally, I would not use AI for my writing, even for writing prompts. In this case, these hellish little prompts have a certain charm to them, and I thought I would give them a try.

Pinetabanous Mold

Megan wore the wrong shoes for the climb to Lake Gottschalk. At eleven thousand feet, her soles felt cushioned in her sneakers. She shuddered to think what the blisters would look like when she got back to the hotel’s jacuzzi.

The forest gave way to a clearing, revealing the lake at the base of Mt. Gottschalk. This was the last place Professor Alma Sonnet was seen before she left academia behind for the wilderness. Out here, in the Holy Cross Wilderness, she pursued her outlaw brand of ethnobotany, living off wild game… and patrons like Megan.

A crossbow bolt sunk into the dirt, inches from Megan’s feet.

“That’s far enough!” yelled a voice from the trees. “Office hours are closed!”

“I’m here for… I’m looking for the mold!”

A string dropped down from a nearby pine tree. On the end was a phial of black tar.

“Pinetanabous mold,” said the voice from the trees. “It only grows at the edge of timberline, where the afternoon thunderstorms soak the dry alpine forests. The mold soaks into the Pinon Pine and brings forth such wonders. From the Latin tenebroso, for cloudy, from the greasy black excretions of the fungus. I could sell this in Aspen for ten times its weight in gold. The Ladies Preservation Society would make potato au gratin to kill for. I could trade the recipe to Williams Sonoma for—”

“Yes, yes, I get it!” said Megan. “Look, my mother-in-law is coming for Labor Day, and I really talked up my green bean casserole. Only the eldritch mysteries of this tarry mold you discovered can save it. You escaped the partiarchal lowlands…”

From deep in the trees, the howls of wovles echoed across the lake. “QUIIIETTTT!!!” yelled the professor. The howling stopped.

Megan continued… “take pity me who hasn’t escaped!”

There was silence in the mountain wilds. Even from within the sealed phial, the scent of the Pintabanous Mold was possessing Megan’s olfactory glands. It was like black coffee, peanut butter, and cigarettes distilled into clouds of dark dreams.

A second crossbow bolt hit the ground by Megan’s feet. There was a white, square bit of plastic taped to it that flashed a green light.

Professor Sonnet instructed, “Tap or insert to pay.”

Botober Day 1: Noodle Juice

2025-10-01T00:00:00Z

Botober Day 1: Noodle Juice

by NJB // 2025-10-01 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

Normally, I would not use AI for my writing, even for writing prompts. In this case, these hellish little prompts have a certain charm to them, and I thought I would give them a try.

Botober is a series of art prompts for October, found at aiweirdness.com/tiny-jello/. These prompts come from a primitive AI that was trained on nothing but 800 jello recipes.

Normally, I would not use AI for my writing, even for writing prompts. In this case, these hellish little prompts have a certain charm to them, and I thought I would give them a try.

“Noodle Juice”

John Buren tried to keep his mind off of 800,000 cans of chicken broth in a warehouse at Denver International Airport. Pre-visualization, they called it. Use your mental powers to make it happen. See it! Believe it! Achieve it! He press ‘play’ on the video, the board members focused their attention, and John, VP of Frontera Holdings, willed it to work.

In the commerial playing on the TV, kids ollied and wheelied their way through a skate park to an alt-rock soundtrack. Little Justin missed his jump, and went crashing down into the concrete bowl.

“Sick wipeout, man!” says a frosted-tip lad.

Justin winces as he gets up. “I’m just not feeling it today.”

“Well then feel this” says Frosted Tip, tossing a silver object at Justin. Justin grabs the aluminum can out of the air as the soundtrack plays a guitar lick.

“Wow!” says Justin, “NOODLE JUICE!”

Now fifty kids in the skate park raised their cans of Noodle Juice. Back in the board room, men and women in suits turned from the TV set to exchange nervous looks.

The children pull the tabs on their cans and thick, brown soup broth is guzzled up by teenage mouths. “Noodle Juice!” yells the narrator, “It’s got 65 essential vitamins and minerals, and keeps you goin’ when you’re goin!”

Little Justin grinds a rail toward the camera, ready to take on the world. “Noodle Juice,” he exclaims, “It’s the juice for your noodle!”

The VCR paused on Justin’s unhinged grin, teeth slightly brown with Noodle Juice. John Buren stepped in front of the TV. Now he would own this moment.

“You know what I think?” said John, his voice cracking slightly. “When Frontera Holdings buys a bankrupt company’s assets and liabilities, and the lawyers didn’t notice the part about the chicken broth warehouse, John Buren here thinks OPPORTUNITY. This is mom’s chicken soup when you’re on the go, when you’re workin’ out, when you need a snack… The nutrition in those cans is going to take the young generation back to the moon. They’ll be so fortified we’ll go straight to Mars.” He felt his sweaty socks slipping around in his dress shoes.

“This isn’t an eight-million-dollar writeoff, nooooo. This is our time, this is our world, and let’s turn that warehouse into the future. Who’s ready to GET JUICED?”

John felt the speech was so good, he gave an encore to the airport teamsters at the warehouse from atop the mountain of broth cans. Even the airport security who removed him had to admit it inspired them.

Introducing First-Class Fiction

2025-10-01T00:00:00Z

Introducing First-Class Fiction

by NJB // 2025-10-01 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

Dear Nantucket Lit Fans,

You are invited to join a free trial subscription to a new fiction periodical.

It’s called First Class Fiction. Every two to three weeks, you’ll receive a postcard in the mail with poetry or a short story on it. Each story will be typed out on a manual typewriter. This will be art that you can hold in your hands.

I am elated with the submissions from writers who have jumped on board for this project. It’s been a great mix of flash fiction and poetry. As with the anthology Overscan published this past summer, every writer brings something different to the table. The enthusiasm has been invigorating to see. You’re going to love what they’ve written.

Since they need to fit on a postcard, these stories and poems are necessarily constrained. Each one is like a finely-crafted little jewel. By writing each one with a manual typewriter, every single postcard is unique.

The free trial will include three postcards, one every two weeks, starting in late October. This will give me time to receive feedback and make changes. I want to hear what you think.

To join the free trial, please email me at njb@nantucketlit.com. I will need a name and mailing address.

Is this trial open to international readers? Yes! If you live outside of the US, I welcome you to participate. I will just ask that you work with me to ensure the proper formatting of your mailing address.

I hope you’ll join me with the free trial for this new project. I can’t wait to share these stories and poetry with you. If you have any questions, please email them to me, or mention me on Mastodon. You may also mail me at PO Box 337, Lafayette CO 80026.

I will be on IRC tonight, October 1, to talk about First-Class Fiction. My server is nantucketlit.com/6697.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Bernhard
Nantucket Lit

Updated Catalog

2025-09-29T00:00:00Z

Updated Catalog

by NJB // 2025-09-29 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

There is a scene in the later seasons of Game of Thrones I can relate to. Queen Danaerys has just executed a surprise attack that her advisors supported. It was supposed to turn the tide of the war in her favor. Instead of victory, her naval fleet suffers a major defeat, and one of her key allies is lost in a separate battle. Her advisor was supposed to be a calculating strategist, one of the smartest men in Westeros, but his strategy has utterly failed. Fed up, she tells her retinue “Enough with the clever plans!” She forgoes further strategy in favor of brute force, using her massive cavalry force and three fire-breathing dragons to lay waste to the enemy army.

I thought about that scene while I was updating my catalog system over the past few days. I had some software that I thought was rather “clever”, but in truth it never actually worked like it was supposed to.

How I Build the Site Catalog

I write the ebooks on this website, and all my books, actually, in the Shanty markup language. The site catalog is generated by reading the metadata from each book’s .shanty file. That gets me the title, author, description, cover art, alt text, and so on. Then, it’s “just” a matter of organizing that data.

I collect the data from each book into a JavaScript object, and then I use the objects to write out HTML lists.

The main page for books has a list of featured ebooks, and a list of authors using the site. I also generate a separate HTML file with a list of all the books on the site.

The lists include the book’s content rating, a note if the book has a built-in audiobook, and links to purchase EPUB or paperback editions.

Again, all of this is generated from plain-text files. There is no database involved.

Author Pages

The script makes an index.html file for each author and recurring publication on Nantucket Lit. For example, here is the page for writer Seth Patterson, and here is the page for the online magazine Quarter Up. Each of these indexes has an author profile, and a list of their books, or books in the group’s series.

Simple Web Pages

You will notice that these pages are fast. These are static pages. No client-side JavaScript is required to use NantucketLit.com. If you use the uBlock Origin browser extension, you will see that NantucketLit.com has zero trackers. No prompts to log into Google. No pop-ups asking to disable ad-blocker. In fact, these pages are perfectly usable even if you are using a text-based browser like Lynx. My hope is that this also makes the site more accessible, but that’s not for me to judge. If you use accesibility tools, I’d love to hear from you about how I can improve.

Syndication

On the Fediverse, people like syndication. People on the Fediverse don’t care for the “algorithmic feeds” that determine what you’ll see next. With syndication such as RSS, you only see what you have subscribed to see.

Nantucket Lit now supports more syndication than ever before. You can now subscribe to the Nantucket Lit catalog via RSS, Atom, or JSON Feed. Subscribers will be updated on every new title from Nantucket Lit.

But wait, there’s more! You can also subscribe on a per-author basis. If you only want to be updated on new books from Seth Patterson, you can do that.

What’s Different Now

The major updates are the support for syndication, the support for payment links, and how I generate the files.

The previous version of the script used recursion to look through folders in the book section of the site, and search for the .shanty files. For the new version, I decided to make a text file containing the file path to all the author folders. The .shanty file in each author/group folder has a list of all the books in that folder. These author files are used to generate the per-author lists of books, and a list of all books in the catalog.

Because I am not publishing fifty books per month, I think I can manually maintain these text files, as a tradeoff for a more reliable script.

Further Updates

Some next steps:

* Porting the script to my Gemini capsule and Gopher hole.

* Supporting links to anthologies and other publications on the author pages.

* Creating a list of books sorted by popularity.

What Do You Think?

What do you think of the new catalog pages and author pages? How do the syndication feeds look to you? I’d love to hear if you use JSON Feed. What’s working, and what doesn’t work? When you’re the one making it, you need some outside opinions.

Cyberdeck Work

2025-09-27T00:00:00Z

Cyberdeck Work

by NJB // 2025-09-27 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

I bought an old toughbook at the local flea market last week. It was only $14, so I thought I might get Linux installed on it, since it has the look of a “cyberdeck.”

The toughbook is a Panasonic CF-18, circa 2005. It was designed for Windows XP. It has a Pentium M CPU, 1.1GHZ, and 512MB of RAM, up to a maximum of 1.5GB RAM.

I fear the laptop is a bit too old for any practical use, but I’m going to share what I have done so far.

First, I had to buy a power adapter on eBay. The adapter worked, and I was able to turn the laptop on. Surprisingly, the HDD inside still worked, and it booted up into Windows XP.

My next step was to install an SSD. This laptop uses the IDE/ATA connector, rather than a SATA connector. The drive fits into a nice shock-resistant case that slides into the laptop. In fact, the battery, hard drive, PC card slot, and most of the I/O ports are all contained in little lockable compartments. This is convenient, and adds to the “cyberdeck” feel.

The problem was finding an operating system for the laptop. The OS had to have 32-bit support, Windows XP-era system requirements, and reasonably easy networking. I’ll go over which operating systems I ruled out at the end of this blog post.

There was one other requirement: the Pentium M CPU in this laptop did not support PAE. PAE is the Physical Address Extension, and allows a 32-bit CPU to access more than 4 GB of RAM.

I eventually chose the Linux distro antiX, since it met all of my needs. Most importantly, the 32-bit version of antiX does not include PAE. Installation was no harder than Debian or Trisquel.

I was worried that the WiFi card in the toughbook was too old, but it does in fact support WPA. WPA is poor security in 2025, but it allows me to get online, at least. In fact, I’m typing this blog post over SSH right now.

What I Think of the Toughbook

I like how compartmentalized the toughbook is. It’s just as repairable as a classic ThinkPad. It definitely has a hardcore look to it, with its rough edges and carrying strap.

I knew the limited specs would be a problem. From what I’ve read online, the 1.1 GHz CPU would have probably been too slow to play Half-Life 2 back in 2004. Firefox is unusable, which is not surprising with a half-gig of RAM. I will be sure to upgrade to the maximum RAM next, and see if that helps. Still, it was my plan to stick with CLI applications on this laptop, in keeping with the cyberdeck aesthetic. For the command line, it’s perfectly fast.

The keyboard is very cramped. The question mark/slash key is thinner than my little finger. The arrow keys are all off: up and down are off to the side of left and right.

I would say, not bad for a cool-looking retro computer I got for $14. If I add in my adapter, the new drive, and some extra RAM, it’s still under $60.

The Operating Systems I Rejected

I’ve saved this part for last so I could focus on the main point, which is what worked.

Some people on Mastodon had suggested Linux Mint. Unfortunately, their 32-bit support ended a while ago.

I tried Damn Small Linux, but when I booted from the USB drive, I got the message “Operating System Not Found.”

Haiku offers 32-bit support. Haiku is not a Linux distro, it’s an entirely separate operating system with its own kernel, and a rather interesting history. I have been reading a book by Jean-Louis Gassee, whose BeOS is the predecessor to Haiku. The installer for Haiku froze shortly after booting, so this toughbook’s specs must be too low for it. Perhaps the PAE issue also played a role?

MX Linux did not work specifically because of the lack of PAE on the CPU. MX Linux does not offer a non-PAE version.

I could have installed FreeDOS. FreeDOS is neat because it will install on just about anything. I have run FreeDOS natively on a ThinkPad 701C from 1995, with a 486 CPU. My issue with FreeDOS is that the networking is very arcane; there is no “plug-and-play” whatsoever. If you want WiFi, you need to hunt down the packet driver for your particular WiFi card, and it’s an involved process. Since I don’t play many games these days, I don’t need FreeDOS for old DOS games, either. I do like to check my email, or edit my website through SSH. I still keep a boot stick for FreeDOS, since it’s handy to check if a computer can at least run an operating system.

Fixing a Hole

2025-09-23T00:00:00Z

Fixing a Hole

by NJB // 2025-09-23 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

Adding to My Server in Gopherspace

I decided to work a bit on my gopher hole tonight. Now that I have a gopher hole set up (gopher://nantucketlit.com), the next step was a “phlog”, or a blog in gopherspace.

I had ported my blog-generating script to produce the blog for my Gemini capsule, so I decided to port that script to produce .txt files for gopher.

Gopher takes some getting used to. In an .html file, you can have text, and hyperlinks within that text. In a Gemini capsule, the .gmi files can have text, and you can have links, but not at the same time. Links are their own thing, usually coming after a paragraph.

In Gopher, it’s a whole differest beast. You can have plain-text files, and there are menus called gophermaps. Only gophermaps can have links. The gophermap generally contains links to all the files within that particular folder. It can also include links to other directories, or other gopher holes.

The difference between gopher and HTML or Gemini is that if you’re reading a .txt file in gopher, and want to read a different one, you must go back to folder’s gophermap, and select the new .txt to open.

The gophermap file (no extension, just ‘gophermap’) is the equivalent to index.html in a folder on a web server. In a gophermap, links look like this:

[link type][title for link][tab][path to file on the server][tab][domain name for server hosting file][tab][port]

[link type] tells the gophermaps what you are linking to. ‘0’ is a link to another gophermap, including a link to another gopher hole entirely. ‘1’ is a link to a plain-text file. There are other numbers for other file formats, but ‘0’ and ‘1’ will cover most gopher needs.

This is very important: there is no whitespace between the link type and the title.

The [tab]s are literal tabs.

The other parts are only needed if you’re linking to another server. You don’t need them if you’re only linking to a file on your own server.

So, if I were to link to an page in my gopher hole, about books I’ve read, it might look like this:

0Books I’ve Read\t./books.txt

If I were to link to Venelle’s neat gopher hole, full of travelogues and poetry, it would look like this:

1spike.nagatha.fr\t/\tspike.nagatha.fr\t70

WHAT CAN GO VERY WRONG

This was driving me crazy for two hours tonight.

I had my node.js script building .txt files for each blog/phlog entry, and creating a gophermap file with links to each of them. Problem was, I’d click on the links, and get the message “file or directory not found”

I double-checked that the links were correct, and that the .txt files did indeed exist on the server.

Was it a permissions error? I spent most of those two hours fiddling with folder and directory permissions.

When I was testing the server using the Floodgap proxy tool, I found my culprit…

In my blog-generating script, I was adding an extra space after the filepath. All the gopher clients I’ve tested on will try to include that extra space as part of the url, hence “file or directory not found.”

If you’re creating a gophermap by hand, this problem might not come up. If you are writing a script to generate a gophermap with lots of blog links… watch out for your whitespace.

Are you making a gopher hole? Do you have one up and running? Let me know by sending an email to njb@nantucketlit.com.

Clarifying Creative Commons and “Free Culture”

2025-09-19T00:00:00Z

Clarifying Creative Commons and “Free Culture”

by NJB // 2025-09-19 // Lafayette, CO

CC-BY-SA 4.0

One of the writers on Overscan recently pointed out an error that I made.

On some of my recent books, and in my promotions for those books, I described them as being “free culture.” In the case of Overscan in particular, I licensed the book under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license from Creative Commons.

Why I Used This License

I used the CC BY-NC-SA license for a few reasons.

First, I wanted to push back on the status quo of ebooks, and online media in general. Files are loaded with DRM and other spyware. In many cases you don’t own the file you paid for; you are merely leasing it for a finite period of time. This does not help the customer in any way, nor does it help me or other writers. Richard Stallman’s pamphlet The Danger of Ebooks has guided me from an early point in Nantucket Lit’s history.

This is also why Nantucket Lit is a free-software project, licensed under the GPL Version 3. There is so much software that spies on us, spies on our kids, logging ever keystroke to sell to advertisers or governments. I know ebook software isn’t too much in the grand scheme of things, but it was important to me that when I create software, people at least have the option of looking inside and seeing what makes it tick.

Secondly, I’m guided by what I and other writers want. I’ve talked to many writers over the years, and what they want is for people to read their work. If they can make money off that, that’s even better, but the validation of people finding the work and reading it is vital.

What writers do not want are for people to take the credit for their work, including sharing it without their attribution. They also don’t want other people making money off their work without their permission.

My feeling is that the BY-NC-SA license meets the wants and needs of writers. The writing can be shared, but it has to be attributed, and the sharing must be for noncommercial purposes. A good example would be a schoolteacher who makes photocopies or printouts of a story for their students. In many cases, this is technically illegal, but I would want no barriers for a teacher sharing Overscan with their students like this. At the same time, I would not want someone selling bootleg copies of Overscan out of the trunk of their car.

Why It’s Not Free Culture

This is a situation where I should have known better. Free Culture is supposed to be analogous to Free Software. Free Software gives people who use it four freedoms:

* The freedom to use the software for any purpose.

* The freedom to study the program and make changes to it.

* The freedom to share the program with others.

* The freedom to share changes you make to the program with others.

If one added the stipulation that the program could only be shared for non-commercial purposes, that would contradict the other freedoms. It would become a “non-free” license. In the past, the GNU Project has rejected licenses that required the software not be used for “evil purposes”, since that would limit the user’s freedom.

This means (if I understand it correctly) that someone else could sell a shrink-wrapped copy of my Nantucket Lit git repository at Office Depot. That’s about as likely as me having an invisible pink kangaroo hopping on my head, but it would be okay in theory.

If free-culture is applying a the Four Freedoms of free software to stories, music, and other artistic expressions, then a free-culture work cannot have a non-commercial clause in its license.

What This Means

I’m inclined to stick with the non-commercial license, though I will want to talk with other writers about what they’d want. If I do use BY-NC-SA, I’ll refrain from calling the book “free-culture.”

For books that are public-domain, or use the BY-SA license, or the GFDL, as the Shanty manual does, I could refer to that as a free-culture book.

I would usually end a post like this with the quip “I curse the lesson and bless the knowledge”, but this time… heck, I’ll bless both.