Welcome to my gopher log! Why gopher? I admit to pretty much ignoring gopher during the 90s when it was in mainstream use, but lately I've come to see the appeal as a stark contrast to the world-wide dumpster fire, with its associated bloat and commercialism. I enjoy writing, and gopher seems to me to as close as you can get in digital form to pen and paper, in that there is very little distance between the act of producing the content and having it be in a form that is immediately visible to others. Not only is it easy to make content available online, the protocol is simple and as a consequence servers are easy to setup, lightweight and fast. I suppose the only "bad" thing about it is the lack of awareness of gopher as an alternative, but there is clearly a growing gopher presence, rooted in the pubnix communities and supported by gopher search engines like those hosted by floodgap and forthworks. The gopher community feels small and close-knit, a welcome change from the way the web has developed over the decades.