WHERE THE GOPHER GOES, THERE GO I

(written on) Tuesday February 16, 2010

Finally!  This gopher thing was a major PITA to wrap my head around,
basically because it was much simpler than I originally thought, and
because few, if any, of the documentation I found for doing it made
sense.  Between the help of a fellow gopher newb, and my own
perserverence (something I have a short supply of, so I'm likely to run
out by years-end), I was able to get the basics down well enough to
put together this page.  Hey, baby steps, man.

Next is to get some sort of blog script running, so I can handle posting
in a more comfortable fashion.  There's a few things that might be
possible; a few blogging tools that exist for gopher.  The big hurdle,
though, is an RSS feed.  I've read about a hack or two that some people
have implemented, but I doubt I'm up to the challenge, as described,
just yet.  If all else fails, though, I'll have to make the effort.
Man, I'm just hemhoraging perserverance with this project!

I think gopher can have a comfortable place in the modern computing
world, doing what it does best (keeping things simple and -- in theory
-- well-organized) and learning a few new tricks.  Maybe it can truly be
a place of undistracting utility, where a person can express his or her
thoughts, and take a stab at bringing some structure to an increasingly
complex condition that is the common lot of the modern "cyber-citizen"
(**GACK!**).  I can blog, offer audio, video, graphic, and binary files
from within here.  I can do the same from the Web, too.  The question
is, will the inherant structure of the gopher environment actually HELP
me deliver this sort of content in a way that the Web cannot?  For most
people, the answer is probably no, but I'm enamored of gopher in a way I
haven't been about Web-based services and opportunities in, well, a long
time.

The basic question, then, for anyone setting out like this is...if I
build it, will they come?  CAN a person reasonably expect to attract
readers from OUTSIDE the gophersphere to content within it?  Maybe we
can use whatever networking tools are available, insted of doing
without, or reinventing the wheel; you know, Identi.ca, Twitter, and all
that.  And maybe we can play on any implied or contrived "retro-cool"
factor along the way.  I mean, gopher has a rich history, and its
enthusiasts don't need to compare it to anything else.  It resides
within a series of networks all its own, and a new crop of developers
implementing and experimenting with all kinds of interesting things are
actively using it.  Sounds like a winning combination to me.

********************

Nethack-N-Slash

Nothing new to report here, but I HAVE been playing Gnugo from the
command line lately.  The computer kicks my flabby ass every time, but
I'm a horrible player of strategy games anyway.  I just can never see
the board.  Whatever, I'm enjoying it.

Currently, I'm locked in an intense battle of wills with this machine,
but I'm only allowing one move each per day, then I save and shut it
down.  That way, I can focus all my meager powers of intellect on each
and every move.  AND the game lasts longer.  This way I can honestly say
that I played the machine every day for a year (or however long it'll
take) and I only lost ONCE!  Not bad, eh?