________  ________  ________
   2018-06-28                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   So here we are, sports fans, I've finally  /        _/         /         /
moved out of smj's  basement and into my own  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
Gopher space.  Right up  front I  want to be    /        \/        \/    /   \
clear that the move isn't out of any problem   /        _/         /_       _/
or  dissatisfaction  with  the  SDF and  its  /-        /        _/         /
Gopher space, it's an exciting community and  \________/\________/\___/____/
one completely unlike  any other you'll find
online  and  I'm proud to be an active  member of  it. If you aren't already a
member the fuck are you sleepin' on it for?

   In  line  with   Tomasino's  move   to  gopher.black  and  Solderpunk's  to
circumlunar.space, this move is more about decentralising Gopher. A large part
of the active phlogosphere makes  their home on  SDF and without a doubt  it's
still  the best place to get seen if you're  new  to Gopher.  The  downside of
that, though is  that when the SDF is down for maintenance, NetBSD testing  or
because  some dildo files a report to  whoever  and claims it's "the dark web"
that same large part of the active phlogosphere becomes unreachable.

   I'm just  doing my small part  to mitigate that a bit by  separating myself
from that single point of failure and in the process grow my  skills a little,
learning a  little server setup and maintenance skills and if  everything goes
to  plan a  little  electronics skills  too. Short term I'm just hosting  on a
cheap VPS but once  the dust settles  on some  stuff I've got going on IRL I'm
going to try and move it off onto  a Raspberry Pi or similar. I have some  fun
plans for that but we'll see how much works out haha.

   What I won't be doing  though,  is mirroring my space.  I'll leave  all the
files I already have on SDF where they are, so any references to them on other
peoples' phlog posts or whatever will  still work but I won't be mirroring any
new content back to my SDF space, it'll only be added to baud.baby.

   Since I'm moving off of the SDF, if you'll indulge me I want to revisit one
of the reasons I cited for even using Gopher and starting a phlog.

   Back in June 2017 I wrote:

      "Utilising the SDF; I've  been a  member for a while but mostly all I
      did was log in  every  now and then, type  "ls" and  log  off  again.
      There's a  lot  to the SDF and there's a lot  they do that just isn't
      done  anywhere   else.  It  really  is  a  treasure  that  should  be
      appreciated and utilised  more. I don't know shit about BSD or Gopher
      or any of that (spent over an hour last night just trying to format a
      fancy heading and failed), but trying to do as much as I can natively
      rather than doing  it all where I'm more comfortable and transferring
      it across gives me a chance to learn to do more in BSD and on SDF."

   While  I still  have  a long way to go, I'm  vastly more comfortable in BSD
than I was back  when I wrote this and know  Gopher stuff really well and, for
the most important part, I feel like I've really followed through on my desire
to utilise and contribute to the SDF more and participate in the community.

   I've gone from "just having a shell in case I need  it for whatever reason"
to  being logged  in whenever  I can, updating my  Gopher  (reasonably) often,
chatting on IRC, com  and the SDF's  Mastodon instance,  messing with the VoIP
network and tuning in to aNONradio and only recently but hopefully  more often
participated in an Open VoIP call.

   It feels good.



EOF