4 ms·

> When we have a reliable internet connection, we gather copies of all the online material we will need. We keep offline versions of entire websites, writing gu

> When we have a reliable internet connection, we gather copies of all the online material we will need. We keep offline versions of entire websites, writing guides, articles and even whole sections of Wikipedia (using wget) If we find ourselves without a connection, we can still solve our problems by using our offline mirrors. Kiwix is a good solution here. There’s also “RACHEL”, which lets has massive resources that you can save offline in case of Armageddon. The latter isn’t free, but has a good list of content worth investigating. Don’t wget wikipedia. https://www.kiwix.org/en/ https://www.kiwix.org/en/ https://worldpossible.org/ https://worldpossible.org/

joshvm 5y ago
Kiwix is nice, I maintained the the wiki server at the South Pole last year. Very useful when internet is down. However the tools are a bit janky and difficult to customise, though they’re being updated at the moment. Odd things like you can’t sort content (if you have say 30 titles) and the built in sort order is based on a random ID string, not content title (why??). I had to write a custom single file webpage with a lot of inline JS to improve things (like sorting elements after load). I also had it pull data from the station intranet so that we could have lots of relevant info in one place, but the only way to do that was to statically generate the page and then restart the wiki server every five minutes… but in the end it's incredibly useful to have that service available and it runs on crappy hardware easily.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  Wow that's a really cool gig. I've always wanted to do a summer down there but as a software engineer I doubt there's much need for me. (I have visited the continent as a tourist) What is your official job title down there?
  - joshvm 5y ago
    I was a winterover for IceCube 2020-21. Mostly sysadmin type work, and some hardware maintenance in the field. https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/ https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/

joshvm 5y ago

Kiwix is nice, I maintained the the wiki server at the South Pole last year. Very useful when internet is down. However the tools are a bit janky and difficult to customise, though they’re being updated at the moment. Odd things like you can’t sort content (if you have say 30 titles) and the built in sort order is based on a random ID string, not content title (why??). I had to write a custom single file webpage with a lot of inline JS to improve things (like sorting elements after load). I also had it pull data from the station intranet so that we could have lots of relevant info in one place, but the only way to do that was to statically generate the page and then restart the wiki server every five minutes… but in the end it's incredibly useful to have that service available and it runs on crappy hardware easily.

kilroy123 5y ago
Wow that's a really cool gig. I've always wanted to do a summer down there but as a software engineer I doubt there's much need for me. (I have visited the continent as a tourist) What is your official job title down there?
- joshvm 5y ago
  I was a winterover for IceCube 2020-21. Mostly sysadmin type work, and some hardware maintenance in the field. https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/ https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/