Speedking :: About (the owner and the site)
Page last updated 2026-04-29T06:23:46-05:00
About me
Hi. I'm Soviet5lo, you can call me Soviet or 5lo or Sov. General internet lurker for the past 21 years. I like to play video games and tinker with tech. I'm rather boring and I prefer to do my own thing. Mildly misanthropic. I also do the occasional shitpost on twitch, but generally I prefer to lurk. A very quick rundown:
Name: Soviet5lo
Age: 3█
Location: █████████, United States
Hobbies: Games. Computers. Tech in general kinda. Tinkering with said tech. A little bit of reading. Listening to music. Enjoying the outdoors when the weather isn't oppressively hot.
If you know me from anywhere, it's either from Twitch (somehow) or from one of the projects I have on GitHub. If you came across this website not from those two spaces somehow, hello! I'm sorry this space isn't very interesting.
A page detailing projects I've worked on.
Fediverse profile.
Github profile (very much unused these days)
Codeberg Profile
Twitch profile. I occasionally stream. Very, very low effort.
Email: soviet5lo@disroot.org
Matrix: @soviet5lo:matrix.org (I don't use this very often, but it's there)
Generally, if you want to get into contact with me, just email me. I know, I know, nobody really sends emails anymore. Ask a question, or just say hi.
Where did your username/screenname come from?
It's a dumb thing that stuck.
First part is the "5lo", which came from my really dumb and stupid "l33t h4x0r" days in the mid-late 00s where I'd read up on old computer viruses on Wikipedia and adapted one as my username for a time. The second part comes from when I heavily played Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 mods (especially Mental Omega), where I mostly played as the Soviet faction. I used the old "In soviet russia" joke to combine the two.
Wikipedia article for the "5lo" virus
What on earth is that thing in your picture/avatar/display on Github/Codeberg/Snac?
It's a...Gelanla? Jaranra? From Pokemon Gold, the Spaceworld 97 Prototype. When it was first shown off back in 2017 I immediately fell in love with its design and just kinda took it as my own thing somewhat. I did (attempt to) make an OC based off of it, but due to a lack of creativity (and no art skills) I only did about half of a concept for it before stopping. Fun fact: the colorscheme I use for Speedking is the colorscheme I made for that OC (at least the hair/vines).
The Cutting Room Floor - Pokemon Gold/Silver Spaceworkd 1997 Demo Pokemon
About this site
This site is available on both the Gemini Protocol and standard HTTP. There's a 99.999999% chance you're viewing this on the HTTP site, so here's a wiki article explaining Gemini.
Wikipedia article for the Gemini Protocol
Both sites serve the same content.
What is this site running on?
It's running on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M715q that I bought to replace the LAN-only server that ran on a Raspberry Pi 3b. You can read my blog entry on Speedking 2.0 for more information.
Speedking 2.0: no longer .local, now it's .ing
Why does this site exist?
Super short answer: Why not?
Slightly longer answer: I basically wanted my own space to put my own thoughts. I also have a general disdain of the modern state of the internet. I also had a LAN-only server for a few things that I wanted to upgrade from. Combine all three of those and there you go.
How is this site made?
First everything is typed up in gemtext format, then using a script named Gemtexter everything is converted to HTML. Those pages are then synched to the server.
A link to the Gemtexter script repo (hosted on CodeBerg)
A link to an introduction to Gemtext markup
Why have it on both HTTP and Gemini?
Why not? This is primarily text based to begin with, and I like the idea/concept of Gemini. It's not perfect, but it's fine. Besides the pages are tiny so it's not like its using a bunch of resources.
Why not just use something like Github Pages? Or at least Jekyll or Zola or Hugo or...
For the Github pages part? I wanted more control via selfhosting it on my own hardware. For the Jekyll/etc part? Shrug. Jekyll and co seem like overkill for what I wanted to do. And in this case, it's being written in gemtext anyway so it can be immediately pushed to the gemini side of the site. If I really wanted to migrate to Jekyll, Gemtexter already outputs everything in Markdown format during the conversion so it wouldn't be that difficult to do.
Is this site part of the smolweb?
I wouldn't really classify it as such myself, but it is spartan in design. It follows some of the design points of smolweb sites, but not all of them. I see no point in having a heavy, fancy looking site for what amounts to just a blog.
Smolweb main site
This page will probably be updated over time.