ROOPHLOCH 2021 round up ----------------------- The third ever Remote Off-Grid Outdoor Phlogging Challenge has come to a close. As per past years, I have compiled a list[1] of all the qualifying entries I am aware of. If I have missed your ROOPHLOCH post, please let me know via email! This was the quietest ROOPHLOCH yet. In fact, the trend of annual halvings of participants continued! There were 16 posts made in 2019, 8 in 2020, and only 4 in 2021. There's now nobody who has participated in every single instance of the event (dokuja and jynx could, previously, boast this). I, myself, cannot really say anything about this as I once again failed to participate in my own challenge. I am suitably shame-faced, let me assure you. As October rolled around and I checked in on my now habitually and powerfully neglected email account and found only four emails with "ROOPHLOCH" in the subject it made me a little sad and, when I considered this in the context of my own persistent lack of interest in motivation in just about anything internet related for the past few months (I'll write more about this, at some point. On the off chance anybody has been worried, I am fine. I have spent most of my free time and energy reading books printed on paper, listening to music on CD tape, and building little medium wave receivers to play around with when the sun goes down, and I've been largely content with this life), I honestly thought that perhaps the time was right to throw in the towel. Then I went and actually read those emails, and then I read the ROOPHLOCH posts themselves, and my spirit was lifted. Okay, we lost participants, including our "regulars". But let's look on the brighter side: everybody who participated this year was a first time participant. People thanked me for putting the event on and told me they were looking forward to next year. There's life in this thing yet. Hell, after reading dear Shufei's inaugural post[2] there's more life in *me*, with respect to computing and the internet, than there has been in months. So, we'll do this again, in 2022. Please look forward to it. [1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/roophloch/2021 [2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~shufei/phlog/20210910-Life-ROOPHLOCH-Howdy.txt