I’ve signed up for an account on Cosmic Voyage. It’s basically a way to write a little Science-Fiction together with other people. The website reflects the Gopher mindset: it’s text based. You can visit it via Gopher, too.
If you don’t have a dedicated Gopher Client, I’ll suggest using the text browser lynx. As for dedicated gopher clients, I like VF-1 by @solderpunk. It requires Python. For iOS devices, I’ll suggest the Gopher Client by @crc. For Android devices, @ckeen suggests Pocket Gopher.
Anyway, back to *Cosmic Voyage*. It is run by @tomasino. In order to join, you don’t need much:
1. a username (used internally on the system only)
2. a first ship name (used in the story)
3. a link or contents of a public ssh key for access
You get ssh access to a directory per ship where you can dump your little stories. Refer to the others, or don’t. Post a lot, or just a little.
The ssh access means I can just use `emacs` to write and `rsync` to backup.
My first transmission from the the ship *Hoffnung*, with only the faintest idea of a plot:
-+-+-+- Regular Report -+-+-+- C51.204 -+-+-+- Green -+-+-+- Dr. med. Herbert Wullschlegel reporting on the first scheduled inspection. The passenger status in cryo sleep is nominal. We have had no failures. My companion for this roun is Dr. astr.-phys. Eng. Philomena Auerbach. We've spent the first two days reviewing the logs. This is the third day and we have had a good time running the long corridors of the ship. Philomena did go back to sector C in order to inspect a minor hydro leak. Nothing unexpected. As for myself, I'm taking advantage of the cryo break to eat some solid food. It helps with the teeth reconstruction. I'm so happy that we managed to get the newer cryo berths with the slow shaking to strengthen bones maintain muscle tissue. With so many years spent in cryo, even the very slow metabolism of space sleep changes the body. Sometimes I wonder what ships built after us would offer. Hoffnung did not get the latest Shrinivasan-Ramapattnam drive. We could not afford them. And with that I'm going to close this cover leter for the full technical report. In two days we're going back to sleep for another fifty years. Peace. -+-+-+ End of Report -+-+-+ Signed HEWUSC -+-+-+
(Continued in 2018-11-30 Ship «Hoffnung».)
To me, and apparently to other people as well, this looks like an exciting, new way to experience Gopher, a return to the spirit of public access servers, shell servers. Much more limited than a virtual machine, or even a web host, but also something you can do right now, no matter your background.
@jynx seems to share my enthusiasm. See his Gopher post: So much cool stuff going on. @solderpunk is happy, too: So much cool stuff.
Even if you’re not too technically minded, you can join.
If you’re on a Mac, you should have everything you need.
1. use Command+Space to search for *Terminal*
2. generate a key using `ssh-keygen` (just accept all the defaults)
3. your secret key is the file `~/.ssh/id_rsa`
4. your public key is the file `~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`
5. send the `id_rsa.pub` file to Tomasino, together with your user name and your ship name (see Cosmic Voyage for his email)
6. when Tomasino has set things up for you, connect using `ssh` and the user name you received, e.g. `ssh alex@cosmic.voyage`
If you’re on Windows, it’s a bit trickier.
1. download the latest PuTTY (probably `putty-64bit-0.70-installer.msi`)
2. use `puttygen` to generate a key (I don’t think you need to specify a passphrase)
3. save private and public keys
4. send the public key to Tomasino, together with your user name and your ship name (see Cosmic Voyage for his email)
5. when Tomasino has set things up for you, start `pageant` (this will put an icon of a computer wearing a hat into the System tray)
6. right click the icon and choose *View Keys*
7. click the *Add Keys* button
8. select the private key you created up above and open it
9. start `putty` and connect to your username at `cosmic.voyage`, e.g. `alex@cosmic.voyage`
You can read more about key generation in chapter 8 of the documentation. You can read more about `pageant` in chapter 9 of the documentation.
chapter 8 of the documentation
chapter 9 of the documentation
If you’re on GNU/Linux, you should have everything you need. The instructions are the same as for the Mac except opening a terminal will vary on how things are set up on your machine.
1. open a terminal
2. generate a key using `ssh-keygen` (just accept all the defaults)
3. your secret key is the file `~/.ssh/id_rsa`
4. your public key is the file `~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`
5. send the `id_rsa.pub` file to Tomasino, together with your user name and your ship name (see Cosmic Voyage for his email)
6. when Tomasino has set things up for you, connect using `ssh` and the user name you received, e.g. `ssh alex@cosmic.voyage`
I hope to hear from you, soon!
Here’s how you’d write a story. Here, my username is *alex* and my ship’s name is Mercury and I have already written my first story and I’m going to write my second story using the editor `nano`.
alex@cosmic:~$ **cd ships** alex@cosmic:~/ships$ **ls** Mercury alex@cosmic:~/ships$ **cd Mercury** alex@cosmic:~/ships/Mercury$ **ls** 001.txt alex@cosmic:~/ships/Mercury$ **nano 002.txt** alex@cosmic:~/ships/Mercury$ **log**
Other editors you can use are `editor` or `vi`. You can worry about them later. If you’re just beginning, `nano` will do.
The `log` command updates the top menus and lets other people know that your story is ready. Use `man log` to learn more about it. (`man` is the program that displays pages from the manual.)
Later, once you’ve realized that you don’t like `nano` or `vi` or any of the other editors, you can always edit the file locally and transfer it using `scp` which uses `ssh` in the background. And if you’re using PuTTY instead of `ssh`, then you transfer your file using `pscp` instead of `scp`.
#Writing #Web #Gopher
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve just joined this evening, and I’m really enjoying writing *Voortrekker*, and looking forward to reading everyone else’s stories as well - saving that for tomorrow, since I’ll likely want something that’ll make me smile then.
I’ve lately been looking for something that’d help me recover the practice of writing fiction, and I believe I have now found it. And it’s really nice, too, to be on a host again that feels like it’s alive. So thanks again for talking about it - I’m really glad you did!
– Alexis 2018-11-29 04:23 UTC
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Excellent! 😄
– Alex Schroeder 2018-11-29 07:27 UTC