________ ________ ________
2018-03-20 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
Just gonna press play on tape and see / _/ / /
what loads. \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
/ \/ \/ / \
Firstly zlg has a brief insightful / _/ /_ _/
post[1] about not eschewing the lessons /- / _/ /
learned from the web just because "Gopher is \________/\________/\___/____/
not the web", a really good point that I
admit I'd never really considered. I've definitely been vocal off and on about
leaving Gopher as-is, although not to the extreme he outlines in his post.
I'll admit, though, that kind of pig-headedness kind of appeals to me because
turning your nose up at things like ASCII art and the like means I'm doing
Gopher "wrong" and that makes me happy hahaha.
I agree that if Gopher was to improve, just dismissing anything that
resembles the web just because it resembles the web is pretty ridiculous. If
you're looking to improve Gopher the state of the web probably a pretty good
place to start, though I think I'm still firmly in the Gopher-is-fine-as-it-is
camp. Gopher isn't a dead protocol but I feel like it's a dead end and any
significant change to bring it in line with modern web usage runs a very real
risk of ending up as something so alien to current Gopher users that the
appeal will be completely gone[2].
THAT SAID! I'm not a developer and I'm not an engineer, I don't understand
the protocol and don't really care to, I come at this purely from the
perspective of a user, so it's quite likely I don't know shit about shit.
Elsewhere, and I'm pretty late to the party on these, I'm slightly jealous
of Auzymoto[3] and kvothe[4] experiencing Serial Experiments Lain and William
Gibson's Sprawl stories respectively for the first time haha. It's kind of a
goofy sentiment I guess to say "this media changed my life" but they're both
titles that definitely wound themselves tight around a lot of what I've done
since. Before I read Neuromancer I really don't think I read much at all, it
resonated with me so hard that I wanted to consume more and more.
IIRC kvothe mentioned even further back that they were working through
Sterling's CYBLIB.TXT that's hiding in my files/[5] but I'll point out that
that list is pretty out of date and I'd really recommend checking out Gibson's
Bridge trilogy; Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties. I think,
maybe blasphemously IDK, that it's a much stronger series than the Sprawl
trilogy.
In other news, in the wake of the new Gopher spaces popping up I've picked
up a goofy domain for my own (that's a dumb story in itself) but at this point
I'm not sure how to use it. I'm reluctant to just mirror my SDF space,
especially the phlog since I feel like I started this stuff for SDF and it
should stay here, but at the same time just having a Gopher space to display
the uptime of the Gopher server or something stupid like that seems like a bit
of a waste haha. I'll think on it. The dumb part is I have a very clear idea
of how I want to set up the hardware and stuff for it but no clear use for it
beyond that hahaha. Oh well. It's worth doing regardless.
I'm also putting together a plan for an hour show on aNONradio; I was
tossing around the idea on Mastodon and snowdusk made the very good point that
I have nothing to lose hehehe. I think I meet the criteria of "creative and
reliable" and I'm not shy about breaking the mold a little so hopefully I can
bring something new to the stream. I think I have an interesting concept and a
good idea of the how-to but frustratingly, although it's coming together
really quickly I can't start for a couple of months because I've got travel
coming up. I don't want to run the show for a few weeks then be like "OK BYE
SEE YOU IN LIKE TWO MONTHS, here's another hour of Evan Doorbell dot mp3!"
[1] gopher://zelibertinegamer.me/0/phlog/2018-03-18_1452.txt
[2] https://social.coop/tags/gopherine
[3] gopher://auzymoto.net/0/glog/post0008
[4] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/kvothe/phlog/2018/03/12-one-more-turn
[5] gopher://baud.baby/1/files
EOF