+-----------------------------------------+
| Replies, Technology, Family             |
+-----------------------------------------+--------+
|                                                  |
| Date: 20181117-19:20                             |
| Author: Sloum                                    |
| Soundtrack: Deep Sea Station by Cloakroom        |
|                                                  |
+--------------------------------------------------+----------------------+

My phlog updates yesterday got some very kind notice from a few people.
Thanks to everyone, in particular yargo[1] and solderpunk[2], for reading!
I think yargo is onto something re: gopher. Many Gopher enthusiasts seem to
be the type of people that like the handmade approach. Enjoy knowing how
things work. Many are hackers (in the old school connotation, not the
stealing your bank account information way). While the traditional web
certainly has its share of can do people, I agree that no one really makes
their own browser (though some expand the use cases of open source browser
rendering engines), it is just too big an undertaking. Whereas Gopher, and
to a degree public *nix in general, is understandable enough that even a
middling programmer like me can figure it out and contribute. Not only that
but the nature of these content systems makes for much easier community
creation; communities whose goals are not growth above all else, but more
genuine content and connection with no capitalism tossing everything out
of balance.

Solderpunk kindly e-mailed me to let me know how much they liked the ascii
art on my gopher hole, as well as my posts. They aparently worked with Tkinter
and have written a tabbed browser! That is so cool! I'm a little embarassed
about my messy code, but I think the running application is pretty nice, so
I shouldn't be that embarassed I suppose. They did have the bad news that
is another project with the name Burrow. It is apaprently a CMS style tool
for gopher. I have not checked it out yet, but I have grown to love looking
at other people's gopher projects (and have already contributed to one other
I found on git).

I think for the time being I'd like to keep the name as is for my browser.
However, I was planning on eventually re-coding the browser in Golang. If I
do that, I will give it a different name at that time. I imagine that Burrow in
its current state is nearly as complete as I will make it (it is already super
useful for me). Plus the applications, while both gopher related, operate in
different areas. All that said, if tomasino[3] (the creator of the first Burrow
project[4]) lets me know they'd prefer that I change the name I will happily
oblige them. I love the community I have found here and am definitely not
looking to step on anyone's toes!

I've been thinking of playing around with an ssh or sftp server. I really
like The Red Consensus' system. How do you go about coding something like
that? I have not ever worked on SSH server code. I heard that one was done
in BASIC? Really cool. So many talented people in this community!!! If
solderpunk or the leader of The Red Consensus wanted to do a brief writeup
of what goes into running a federated member of the Circumluna Universe,
that would be really cool/interesting.

----------

On the family side of things, I spent the day doing early thanksgiving with
my inlaws. It was really wonderful. Low key. We made egg-salad sandwiches,
salad, and cupcakes. We played celebrity (a fun game with three rounds:
description, acting, and single word. In those rounds each time tries to guess
the most characters/celebrities from a bowl of names) and capped off the night
watching Jeopardy. My inlaws also got to see our first ultrasound photos! I
am so thankful to have the family I do. I feel very lucky in life.


[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~yargo/clog
[2] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/
[3] gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tomasino/phlog
[4] https://github.com/jamestomasino/burrow