I've been lazy for the  past week procrastinating on writing about
the  joys of  retro/limited  computing, modems,  phones and  VOIP.
Well, do I have news for you: I'm *still* not going to write about
that today.

Instead,  I'm  going  to  write a  much  shorter  entry  regarding
Tomasino's recent  phlog on gophermaps  [1]. For the most  part, I
agree with  his stance  regarding this.  Gophermaps are  great for
links to  related content and in  my opinion makes for  a pleasant
experience.  Where I  feel we  diverge is  with regards  to client
choice. In my situation, using  an "outdated" client is strictly a
choice, however,  I can't assume  that everyone else has  the same
luxury.  There  may  be  users  running  on  older  equipment  and
operating systems that don't have the latest software available.

Finally, simply suggesting using client  X reminded me of the days
where  websites  were  "designed  for  Internet  Explorer  Y"  and
"designed for H x V resolution".

I  certainly hope  Tomasino  doesn't take  this  personally, as  I
understand that he's trying to do (and succeeding) what many of us
are: produce interesting content in an enjoyable format.

So  instead  of  ranting,  I've   brought  a  solution.  It's  not
production ready, more of a proof of concept -- something I bashed
together to  see if  it would  work. Because of  this, I  will not
include a handy  link but will instead just post  the URL in text.
Nillify will take a gophermap URL and try to convert it to text.

gopher://sdf.org/1/users/dokuja/nillify

It's pretty  dumb, quick, and dirty,  but it may be  useful. Maybe
I'll play around with it more when I get a chance (ha!).

On another  note, tfurrows  [2] wants to  prepare for  the general
exam. Hey! Me too! If you're  interested, maybe we can shoot study
questions or talk theory  sometime. Anything that'll make learning
fun should make it easier to recall.

Also, welcome and welcome back mnw [3] and snowdusk [4]!

Huh, maybe that wasn't so short after all...