Recent entries: Calabar (Travel/Nigeria) 16 Mar 2024 White-Hair Point (Travel/Caribbean Islands) 15 Mar 2024 The Haw River (Travel/North America) 1 Mar 2024 The Dogs of Delhi (Travel/India) 9 Feb 2023 The Taj Mahal (Travel/India) 7 Feb 2023 The Pines Stand in Pockets (Poetry, Travel/N.America) 7 Feb 2023 A Quiver of Pens (/Tech/Other) 28 Jan 2023 ---- You are reading this on gopher, yay! Welcome! I have fond memories of gopher and thought in a radical act of defiance against the way the modern WWW is headed, I would replicate my entire sites content on gopher. Originally it was at therandymon.com. ---- Spammers and identity thieves, please take note: I have spent most of my life living and working overseas, from Asia to Latin America to Africa. Other than travel, my biggest interests are open-source software and computer systems, writing, exploring, camping, biking, hiking, surfing, and making maps. I love languages and good books. This website reflects my passion for exploration. I am the co-author of the best-selling travel guide book Moon Nicaragua and its companion Living Abroad in Nicaragua for expats and retirees. I am also the author of the phenomenal Dictator's Handbook: a practical manual for the aspiring tyrant. In addition to those three books, I have published several other pieces as well. In my spare time I make maps and surf, play the 12-string guitar, and go hiking. I am a vocal advocate of Open Source software and love Linux and FreeBSD in particular. I dabble in server tech and retrocomputing. I much prefer email. Drop me a line if you'd like to get in touch; my current (disposable, spam-filtered) email address is zafiro17 AT gmail DOT COM. Rest assured, this server is not placing any cookies or tracking you in any way (Man, don't you miss the early days of the Internet?) As a result, I have no idea if anyone is reading this stuff. If you've gotten here by gopher, say hello. Enjoy the site, advertising-free, tracking-free, "create a profile"-free, spam free, etc. It's been my pleasure.