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       Black
       March 10th, 2018
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       If you're reading this that means that my sdf gopher hole is dead.
       
       That's dramatic!
       
       Recently there was a second round of shake-ups in the SDF gopher
       space. Unlike sdf.org, which has been running gophernicus for
       quite a while, gopher.club suddenly forked away and started
       running a different server. This was a surprise for most of us
       since gopher.club was just an alias for SDF, or so we thought. The
       change blew up a few of the prettier gopher holes like jynx and
       cat's. Mine was relatively unscathed, but it raised an issue in my
       mind. SDF is not a safe space for things to live.
       
       SDF is a test-bed for lots of things. It does some fantastic work
       in aiding the stability of NetBSD. I know better than to host
       a critical web site there, but for some reason I thought of it as
       a place where gopher holes could persist relatively unscathed over
       time. It's been running for so long already, what could change
       that, right?
       
       Then in the matter of months we witness some pretty big shifts in
       the system. The worst part of it is the lack of communication.
       There was no warning of changes coming, no announcement of why or
       to what end, nothing. The SDF users are pretty relaxed about it,
       but it still put that nagging thought in the back of my mind. Is
       this really safe?
       
       So on a whim I bought a handful of gopher domains while at a diner
       for lunch. One of these is gopher.black, my new home. It's running
       on a raspberry pi in my spare room, clinging to my wifi and
       dangling on the edge of the desk without so much as a plastic
       case. Is this safe? Well, no. I'll get a case for it tomorrow and
       hard-wire it to the network. I've set up dynamic dns through
       namesilo.com using their API and a little python. I've still got
       to configure the pi to restart the gopher server upon reboot.
       There's plenty of work to be done.
       
       Is it reliable, is it safe? Well, no and yet yes. I'm running
       things myself and in the end that's where reliability is. Do it
       yourself, own it, and you can trust it. Anything else is false
       hope.
       
       Black thoughts for gopher.black? I think it's hopeful.
       
       I wish the SDF gopher community the best. I'll still be active all
       over SDF, in IRC, com, even anonradio. I love it there, but I've
       learned my lesson not to trust it with my stuff.