[gopher] Fwd: Re: Feelings I got gophering around

[Timm Murray <tmurray-gopher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Looked like I forgot to send this from my Gopher address, so it didn't get to 
the list.  Apologies if you see this twice.
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Subject: Re: [gopher] Feelings I got gophering around
Date: Monday 13 December 2004 09:34 am
From: Timm Murray <tmurray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: gopher@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Your post reminded me of what I wanted to do with Gopher: a place to get all
the great hacks that have built up in computing over the years.  I want the
PDP-11 instruction set. Schmeatics for an Apple ][e.  Plans for a pringles
can wi-fi antenna.  And so on.

These sorts of things are what I wanted to add to my Gopher server
(gopher.wumpus-cave.net), but I haven't had an oppertunity to work on the
project (all I have there is a welcome notice and some pictures of a camping
trip where we set a giant stuffed Barney on fire).  I wanted a synthisis of
the web and Gopher, where people would get the documents off Gopher, but
submit new docs and give ratings to current ones on the web.

Anyway, if anybody wants to help out, let me know.  Mostly we just need to
track down documents for posting.  I can worry about web submission and
voting later.

On Saturday 11 December 2004 03:58 am, Alessandro Selli wrote:
>    So, here we are, with a couple more new Gopher
> servers running, serving something or close to
> nothing to who-knows-who, and a host of old
> Gopher servers "gone to the great Gopherhole in
> the sky" to join their ancestors.
>    Today I was wondering why am I spending my
> time considering: "how could I put this Gopher-
> stuff to use"?
>    To find out, I searched both Google and
> Veronica-2 :-)
>    Everywhere I read about Gopher it's about the
> times that are gone, the times when the Internet
> was both young and thriving with enthusiasm, rich
> in contents so varied, interesting and useful to
> the point many sought of a way to better organize
> and search it and also to make it an engine of the
> economy.
>    Though well intentioned, this effort brought
> the Internet to the ugly bloat that it is today,
> all shimmery with neon lights, flashy videos and
> streaming sounds that mostly convey nothing of
> interest, or too much to be captured and
> assimilated, or something that is potentially
> good but too ill-presented to be useful, or
> plain disgusting (unless one is interested in
> enlarging his sexual organ or finding an easy
> way to become a millionaire overnight).
>    Then one reads of what the Internet was like
> ten years ago, what was beeing posted on it and,
> at least I do, feels a grip on his heart.  And
> I was not yet there, I could only see a few
> times, with envy, some people at the University
> who where able, at the turn of the eighties, to
> connect to some BBS and from whom I could have
> a few floppies of text files, pictures and
> software to take home and read, watch and run
> on my superb, state-of-the-art 286 PC running
> DOS 3.1.  And I was dreaming I would, one day,
> have a foothold on the Internet myself (well,
> BBSs where not "the Internet", I know, but as
> I already mentioned, I was an outsider then),
> able to have a telnet access into some Unix
> machine, get myself a few manuals to learn
> about that world and...
>    Well, here I am, ten-fifteen years later, with
> a foothold of my own into that world, permanently
> connected into that world, with a profession into
> that world... that is no more.  I can only
> witness of more fragments of that world beeing
> lost, "timing out", beeing disconnected, shut down.
> Little or no more of on-line command-line dungeon
> games, telnet logins, talk sessions, gopher sites...
> I find myself connected to the Internet through an
> ISP that filters away inbound TCP port 23 SYNC
> packets.
>
>    All right, enough with the whining.
> Here I am with a SS5 with permanent ADSL connection
> to the Internet and a Gopher server running, serving
> a few ridiculous and useless text files.  Next, an
> Italian translation of the "Gopher Manifesto" will
> show up and something more, but it's software and
> ideas that I need the most.
> Gopher is the ideal tool to browse usenet archives,
> to say one.  I wandered if I could find some tool
> to create one, if there are there any ready to use.
> I searched Veronica-2 for "newsgroup archive
> software generator".  Found a lot, a lot of Usenet
> archives.  Maybe installing slrnpull and developping
> a script to be run from crontab that generates such
> archives would be both easy and efficient.  Maybe
> slrnpull+logrotate+cron are enough.
>    If anyone on the mailing list has any experience,
> please let me know.
>
>    Also, I would very much like having a gopher log file
> analizer, something like "analog" for http logs.
> Even something producing as archaic an output as this
> would be fun:
>
> gopher://gopher.well.com/00/about/statistics/Jan1995/25950.stats
>
>    But I don't think I will be able to get the program that
> used to be run on the Well:
>
> gopher://gopher.well.com/00/about/statistics/oldbutalive
>
> The statistics for the WELL's gopherspace are not up to date because we
> haven't maintained the stats programs, however the WELL gopher is still
> alive...we're still adding material, although emphasis has shifted to the
> World Wide Web.  So far, though, little or none of the WELL gopher is
> duplicated in the WELL's webspace ...
>
> (posted 1/9/96)
> .
>
>
> It's good there are a dozen new Gopher servers active since
> 1999 facing the scores that got switched off just this
> year, but I'd like to find gopher sites when doing gopher
> searches, even when searching the web.
>
>    What I mind about the Gopher community is not that it's
> small, it's the feeling one gets at every turn of the
> corner: "The Gopher is dead - Wellcome to the Gopherspace".
>
> Even
> gopher://gopher.quux.org:70/0/Archives/Mailing%20Lists/gopher
> was not updated since April 2002.  I tried to find some
> pointers to the software that was used to generate or
> manage the archive, a document about how you did that work,
> maybe a python module, a Perl/shell/AWK script, but the
> following occured while browsing:
>
> gopher://gopher.quux.org:70/1/Archives
>
> raceback (most recent call last): File
> "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pygopherd/initialization.py", line 82,
> in handle   protohandler.handle() File
> "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pygopherd/protocols/base.py", line 87,
> in handle   self.writedir(self.entry, handler.getdirlist()) File
> "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pygopherd/protocols/base.py", line
> 122, in writedir   self.wfile.write(self.renderobjinfo(direntry)) File
> "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pygopherd/protocols/rfc1436.py", line
> 35, in renderobjinfo   retval = entry.gettype() + \ypeError: unsupported
> operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'str'
>
>
>    At this point I grew too sad to search further.
>
>    I love Gopher, I detest the flash/java-script/PHP web, I'm
> fond of telnet, plain text email, I'd like to experiment with
> an stunnel gopher-over-SSL, I am thankful to the developpers
> of Bucktooth and Pygopherd, I'd like to contribute with some
> tools/ documentation of my own, I'd like to work more on my Gopher
> site rather than on my web site, but sometimes I wonder if it's
> worth the effort.  Is the Gopher community today something like
> the people who occasionally meet on a Latin Conference or a
> Sanskrit poetry contest?

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