A few days ago I recived this email (which was not directly addressed to me):
From: Rouan Lucas van Ryn <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: The Gopherspace Cookbook
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2018 08:47:45 +0000
> Greetings good people,
I have recently created a new Gopher hole, known as The Gopherspace Cookbook. It is a compendium of recipes from around Gopherspace. You're receiving this message to let you know that one or more of your recipes has been listed in the cookbook.
The cookbook is available at: > gopher://tellus.strangled.net/1/cookbook [1]
Keep on cooking! > Keep on Gophering!
Feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.
Best, > Rouan aka jandal
-- > gopher://grex.org/1/%7ejandal [2] > gopher://tellus.strangled.net/ [3]
It's not spam, as the post in question [4], does have a recipe (if you are having problems with the link, don't worry, that is expected, but in the meantime, you will probably have more luck with this link [5]). The links in question deal with Gopher [6], a protocol invented at the same time as HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol), but was soon eclipsed as you couldn't inline cat pictures in a gopher page unlike a webpage [7]. It's mostly dead [8].
But not all dead.
I'm surprised [No he's not. —Editor] that I haven't mentioned this before [He was being lazy. —Editor], but I set up a server to mainly serve up my blog via gopher: early last March. And if pressed for a reason—it was because I could [9]. I thought it might be fun to have a phlog [10] in addition to a blog [11].
It's not like it was hard to write the code [12] (alternate link [13]). It just took a day or so for me to get it working, and most of the conversion from HTML (HyperText Markup Language) to plain text is done by Lynx [14] (which is why it looks the way it looks [15]; alternate link [16]). And I do get the occasional hits on the gopher server, which I find amusing.
And yes, people do still use Gopher.
[1] gopher://tellus.strangled.net:70/1/cookbook
[2] gopher://grex.org:70/1/~jandal
[3] gopher://tellus.strangled.net:70/1
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org:70/0Phlog:2002/07/25.1
[6] https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol
[7] http://www.funnycatpix.com/
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbE8E1ez97M
[9] http://www.cartania.com/cartania.html
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlog
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
[12] gopher://gopher.conman.org:70/1Obsolete:Gopher:Src:
[13] http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://gopher.conman.org:70/1Obsolete:Gopher:Src:
[15] gopher://gopher.conman.org:70/0Phlog:2018/01/09.1
[16] http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://gopher.conman.org:70/0Phlog:2018/01/09.1