WHAT'S IN THIS FOR ME?

It's been a while, almost a month, since I last wrote a post for 
this Phlog.

Or of course, not for this phlog. This phlog doesn't exist, it's 
just files sitting lonely on the 20+ year old spinning rust of this 
old PC (maybe I back these things up somewhere though actually, I 
don't remember but it's the sort of things I'd do, on a floppy or a 
Zip disk probably, I'll check ther drawer... yeah on the Zip disk 
where I keep all of my humms (I record my humms because my attempts 
to learn how to actually make proper music always fail on account 
of taking more than the couple of hours that I'm willing to devote 
to them - so I just humm, and try to record the better ones 
(usually failing because my mind goes a bit blank within the time 
required to type "rec [date]" in a terminal and pick up the 
microphone - damn, how many brackets am I in now, to hell with 
this...

There, let's just start over with a new paragraph. Point is, this 
isn't a Phlog, no wait I already said that. Gah... _I've not 
published it yet!_ There, just files, not online, not seen by 
anybody. Unless you're reading this, in which case I probably did 
publish it. But not yet - this is confusing somehow.

Anyway, the question I'm debating now is whether or not I should go 
ahead and put this on some lonely Gopher server.

Arguments in favour:

Well I guess it would give a point to me writing this, given that 
past evidence is that I never much read journal-like things that 
I've written just to myself. I don't really want to see my thoughts 
less developed than they are now. Though much of it was while I was 
a teenager and you know what sort of rubbish they write when they 
think they've figured the world out. So do a lot of adults for that 
matter, but the idiot teenagers at least might grow into something 
smarter. I'm in my mid-twenties, so more or less peak brain 
development. Maybe it's all downhill from here and I'll look back 
on my past work with admiration for what I once was able to 
conceive - other people don't seem to work like that though.

Besides that, I guess there isn't much of an argument. If there 
was, I'd probably have created a blog long ago, and probably on the 
web where people would actually find it. As it is I wouldn't really 
assume that this would achieve any level of appreciation. I'm 
dumping here all of the things that I've spent my life failing to 
find a person willing to really listen to and/or understand.

Just in case I was thinking of setting up a really basic comments 
system where people just send a email with a subject header 
matching the Phlog post title, and their message gets appended to a 
text file listed alongside the phlog post in the directory listing. 
What would I get though? Maybe for this post:

"whoo! Zip disks, they were like weird floppy disks. Why not just a 
USB though?"

"Hey just do it, Phlogs are easy to set up, Just see this guide 
[standard starting-out guide that I've seen endless versions of 
already]. Mine is set up like that and I just put cool stuff up for 
whoever. Check it out, I just posted a list of all the reasons why 
I think Gopher is cool."

Then there would be the argumentive ones:

"Jeeze, why fuck about with Zip disks but not bother to just put 
stuff online? You calling people idiots, you're the one who'd 
rather write this shit than just post the stuff and be done with 
it."

I could quite enjoy arguing with such posters in a way, but I get 
enough of that on Usenet to satisfy me already. Actually I'm temped 
to write a come-back to that fictional argumentative poster, but 
I'm flirting with insanity here, I know it.

So clearly it wouldn't be worth implementing a comments system so 
that people can just post things that I know they might say anyway. 
It's not stuff that would add to my knowledge, or even that I'd 
remember reading by the next day, it would just depress me as proof 
of my words again falling on deaf ears even after me going to all 
the trouble of making them presentable.

But then maybe not, in which case it's worth doing. Truth is that 
there are a number of interesting Phlogs on Gopher, and so a number 
of people who _might_ enjoy reading my stuff (even though much of 
what I write will probably disagree with all of them, but I don't 
mind reading their stuff that I disagree with). Still don't know 
what good it does me for them to be reading my stuff, except the 
altruistic notion of "giving back" given that I enjoy reading their 
stuff. Maybe that's enough.

Some new ones that I found today, and which kind-of spurred me on 
to ask the question:

*FAX SEX Phlog: gopher://baud.baby:70/1/phlog

*Smore's "stoned.txt" (pretty much like the things that I jot down 
 on scraps of paper all over the place (even the Doctor Who fan 
 fiction - wow!) and hope to describe more readably here and in the 
 "Ideas" section - is it a worry that I don't need drugs to come up 
 with them?): gopher://tilde.black:70/1/users/smore

Arguments against:

Well I've already covered the "only posting to a bunch of idiots 
problem above".

I don't have a few hours to spare making the music that is so often 
floating around in my head (and I really can't manage multiple 
simultaneous sounds at once just my humming away, which certainly 
limits a lot of them), why waste a day setting this up (and it will 
be a day even if it doesn't have to be - I always insist on doing 
thise sorts of things "well", however I define that)?

It clearly paints me as being fairly mad, and we're only just 
getting started. This is why I try to keep it anonymous, but it's 
becoming pretty clear that I can't open up without putting forward 
enough details that someone well aware of either my real-life or my 
online presence would be able to take a pretty good guess at who I 
am. I do try to always keep facts about myself private, even in 
person (kind-of kills some conversations, admittedly), but I live 
an unusual enough life that it doesn't take much to lay some pretty 
rare dots for somebody to join. If they join them, and post in some 
forum linking me and my business to some of the posts here, it 
might do some serious damage to my reputation (read: profits! 
Argh!!). I've put far to much work into making the little bit of 
money that my business does make, and various planned attempts to 
try to make more, it really shouldn't be something that I take 
needless risks with. Not least because I don't see many other lines 
of profitable _and_ livable work available to someone of my 
disposition.

If I did end up in a crummy job all because of this, I guess I'd 
probably end up with much more grumpy material to post about. 
"Help! My own Phlog's exploiting me"?

Gopher is having it's flash in the pan moment right now (I remember 
when I first discovered it back when I was at school (can't 
remember how, must have been randomly browsing the web for obsolete 
software and protocols - what I did while all the other boys were 
looking at porn) and it was still pretty much all left-over text 
files from the 90s - most of those bookmarks are to dead servers 
now as well). Odds are that a lot of the Phlogs etc. set up this 
year will become abandoned early into the next decade, if they 
haven't already. Servers are no better, once all the little 
Raspberry Pis that everyone is running their own little servers on 
die, odds are that most of their owners will have moved on to other 
things and not bother to replace them. These owners are mostly 
programmers after all - just look as how that industry loves to 
flock from one trendy thing to the next without even remembering 
what's left behind in its wake.

For one thing I'm concerned that I'm just caught up in that flash, 
and given the time since my last post the drive does seem to be 
winding down already. At the same time though, I know for sure many 
of the posts that I plan to write but just don't find the 
time/energy to do it. Tell you what, here's a taster:

* The Meaning of Life (yes that was meant to be my next post, and 
  you got THIS instead of all things, life ain't fair)

* A Definition of Art (so you think you're an artist, eigh? Well 
  ahh, you probably are by this definition actually)

* The Op-Shop Economy (if you're Australian then you might be 
  slightly less confused about what this will be about, but not by
  much)

* Idea - Active Shadow Projector (I probably won't write this one 
  up actually, but it was one of those ideas jotted on a scrap of 
  papaer that I was taking about earlier - and happened to be close 
  to hand)

* Idea - Fractal Programming (same as the last, I'm actaully trying 
  to remember something that I was going to post after The Op-Shop 
  Economy, or earlier, but maybe I didn't write it down after all. 
  Maybe it was this?)

The bones for most of those are already jotted down on paper in my 
"ideas pile", along with lots more, so there shouldn't be much 
doubt about material. Just my willingness to make it presentable. 
Or I could just go Smore's route and post it as-is and barely 
intelligable.

Another problem with Gopher's breif explosion of activity is that 
once the servers start to die off I'll probably have to keep 
putting time into moving the site and trying to contact admins. 
With my $5/month internet I can't host it myself (not so much due 
to the data limits, as for the fact that I'm behind a NAT), so it's 
probably all going to add up in terms of the time put into keeping 
this Phlog online long-term. Unless I just let it die like most 
other people would, but I wouldn't, I just know that. I'm not 
really so afraid of this in particular though, in fact the 
Australian server that I've got a mind to join looks like it could 
become abandoned at any minute already.

Conclusion:

The sensible conclusion is clearly not to put this online. It's 
work and risk for no tangible reward. If I really thought that 
people wanted to read the stuff that I'd be putting up, I'd write a 
book and have half a hope of making some money out of it. That's 
the stuff that I'm really interested in after all.

Yet the first argument in favour of publishing is somehow still a 
strong one: it gives a point to writing these posts. I like writing 
this stuff. For one thing it's more dignified than sitting on the 
couch talking to myself, and I do a bit of that as well. There's a 
strong pull to say "what the hell, just do it".

For now, I'll keep thinking about it. My deadline for getting this 
online was the end of the year, so if I can't be bothered writing 
more posts, or decide against publishing them, by then, well I 
guess that will be the end of it.

- The Free Thinker