Hurrah!
=======

I was trying various things and different combinations of things, and all of
a sudden things started to work the way I wanted. This phlog finally seemed
to appear in the gopher://gopher.club directory as intended. Hurrah!

But I still didn't know what went wrong, or what I did right when it
actually worked! Then I found this simple and straightforward guide written
by candide (shared by someone else on sdf bboard), and it clarified
everything I was confused about: gopher://sdf.org/0/users/candide/noob.txt
Thank you, candide :)

In recent weeks, my interest in Gopher was renewed by two things. First, by
the 'lispy gopher show' presented by screwtape. I almost never get to tune
in to it during the live stream because of time zone differences. But I do
listen to the archived show. He shares so many interesting finds and
information about Gopher. Most importantly, I think his relaxed and laid
back tone makes Gopher less intimidating to newbies like myself. :)

The second one is not really a positive thing: it is Google's newest
proposal to standardize the web: the so-called Web Integrity API. If I
remember right, this too was mentioned by screwtape on his show. There's
plenty of news coverage and comments about it all over the Internet. Many
people are rightly outraged by this development. Anyway, while it is still
supposed to be an ongoing discussion/proposal, Google is working to develop
a prototype of it for Chrome browser. If I understood it right, this is
going to turn the web browser and web servers (in a combined process) into
user-trackers on behalf of the powerful aka Google and the advertisers. The
user/reader/"consumer" of the web will be at their mercy. The free and open
web as we know it will cease to exist. If the web is damaged beyond repair,
imho, a significant portion of serious, cultural/intellectual and social
activities that take place on the web will be affected. While I am certain
that it is unlikely to be a solution adapted for mass-scale use, some people
will probably start finding Gopher useful for specific purposes; by "some
people" I mean the "rest of the population", some of those who belong to
generations that got to know the Internet through web 2.0 and social media
etc.

- LohanG | [email protected]