💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › phlog › announcing-roophloch-2019.txt captured on 2020-10-31 at 02:24:52.

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2020-09-24)

➡️ Next capture (2023-03-20)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2019
-------------------------

Today is the last day to submit your HAMMER-related content to
Tomasino's zine[1], Jeff!  Are you already breaking out into cold
sweats of dread, wondering how you will get through September without
an internet stranger assigning you arbitrary deadlines to dictate how
you spend your free time?

Fear not, gopherverse citizens!  I hereby declare August 2019 to be
the month of the first ever, possibly annual (if things go well),
Remote Outdoor Off-Grid Phlogging Challenge, aka ROOPHLOCH (which I'm
mentally pronouncing "Roo flock", but you do you).

In order to participate in ROOPHLOCH '19, you need to:

1. Make a phlog post,
2. From somewhere other than the place(s) you normally make phlog
   posts when you aren't participating in ROOPHLOCH,
3. Whilst not inside a permanent human-made structure,
4. Without the *direct* use of permanent infrastructure for power or
   communication.
5. Email me (solderpunk@sdf.org) informing me of the URL of your
   ROOPHLOCH post, so I can publish a list of entries for everybody to
   enjoy.
6. Complete all of the above by midnight, your local time, on
   September 30th, 2019.

Basically, if you don't have a roof over your head and your phlogging
device is not plugged into a wall via any kind of cable, you're
winning!  You can phlog about anything you like.  Obviously your
fellow ROOPLOCHers are going to be curious about where you're
phlogging from and how, but it's up to you whether your post is a
detailed technical description of your remote gophering feat or
whether you put a small footnote at the bottom of a post about
anything else.  

I am deliberately setting the bar very low for this.  If you take your
laptop out into your backyard where your home WiFi still reaches and
you make a post, you've successfully completed ROOPHLOCH and nobody
can take that away from you!  But obviously the true spirit of the
event is to push yourself to do a little bit more than that; discover
new places near to you (but not too near!), and experiment with new
devices or new technologies.  Try to come up with creative,
interesting and unusual ways to comply with the above rules from
unexpected locations.  I will not be assigning an official winner or
ranking entries by awesomness or anything like that, but rest assured
that if you you do something like use your amateur radio license to
transmit your phlog post back to a waiting upload script on your home
computer via packet radio from a solar-powered RaspberryPi on the top
of a mountain which you climbed yourself, the entire phlogosphere will
consider you the unofficial winner and you'll retain serious bragging
rights.

So, put your hiking boots on, pump up your bike tires, or buy a train
ticket!  Put a laptop, tablet, vintage PDA, or SBC in your bag!
Charge up your cell phone, your walkie talkies or your HT!  Maybe get
in touch with your local wireless community network[2]?  Start
studying a map, or perhaps the minimodem(1) man page?  Have fun, get
outdoors, learn something new and break your phlogging routine.  You
can do it!  Even you, Jeff.

[1] gopher://gopher.black:70/1/phlog/20190719-zine
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_community_network