20 Sep 2025
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 Thoughts: Linked

 Learned some new words along the way of using Gopher - smolnet. I still don't
 really understand the definition of smolnet, but sounds like more places to go
 to.

 After writing the first "mole" - more terms used in the Gopher settings, in
 essence a CGI script that run in a Gopherspaces - I kept thinking what kind of
 other things Gopher protocol can do while not a text replacement of what the
 modern web technology can do better.

 The first "mole" is just a game, at the "Experiments" section. It was actually
 a game on an old Casio watch, if I remember correctly, the JG-10 Infrabeamer.
 The user manual referred it as "galactic defense game", otherwise I would have
 named it "Space Defense Force" a.k.a. "SDF".

 The main challenge was to maintain "session", which doesn't exist in Gopher. I
 am sure that many of the experienced Gopher users have already implemented
 different ways to solve this problem. From observation I have seen using IP.

 But to play it on sdf.org, I definitely don't want to wait when another member
 SSH-ed into the same server as me is playing the game. Another problem that
 session was invented to solve. It may not be perfect, but in the end I decided
 to try out a room concept - to create a room that form a loop from the first
 page of the game to the last page of the game, then back to the first.

 Another problem that session solves hands-down is the state of the game, i.e.,
 which round is it now. I was pretty much inspired by event sourcing in Domain
 Driven Design, so basically a playback system that simply fast-forward to the
 current state by replaying all historical events fits quite well with this
 5-round game.

 I felt natural to use C for the game engine, and the time spent writing was
 absolutely enjoyable.

 In the end, the game worked but immediately reminded me that I could just make
 a web app which has graphics and less hassles. Felt a bit empty but I guess
 that's just why we have AJAX, session management, many things that were
 invented to solve these problems. Cool, but I was still thinking.

 I thought about a plant game, so everyone has their own plant and they have to
 take care of it everyday. But then the problem goes further - that just means
 a way to pick up your own stored data. That means account or passphrase, even
 more complicated. I thought about making a news app, but what's the point of
 transferring web content to Gopher content...

 I was thinking what is the most convenient thing about Gopher. I guess what I
 came to is the plain text nature itself. It means a lot, it means the response
 to a request needs no parsing - the response body itself is the content, the
 information in its purest form.

 Slowly exploring the Gopherland, I noticed those monthly questions and answers
 type of phlogs. Before I felt "oh, very old school blogging". But since I
 thought about the above point, I was thinking wouldn't Gopher protocol with
 CGI be a very encouraging collaborative creation tool?

 I was thinking that it is really quite hard to know who is whose buddy in the
 Gopherland, so why not we build a chain that actually tells us who befriends
 with who? But then it would be quite silly and begs question like why should
 it not be a relationship graph as someone might have more than one friend?

 I then thought about a collaborative story, like with a title "The Prince and
 The Gopher", and each person just write one sentence, leave the rest to others
 and we have a complete story when there are enough people playing. The risk
 will be it takes forever to finish the story, and what if someone wants to
 write some more?

 The next idea is more like Pictionary, or any guessing game they call it that
 the first player draw something, then the next player guess what it is, after
 that draw their own and let the next next player guess, and so on. It must be
 exciting to guess from ASCII arts. However, it would take again forever to
 scroll to the bottom, and how do we reveal the answers? Regular update?

 All these ideas make me feel that it has many possibilities. Although the
 mechanism may fail. I think it may be possible to form loops, or if someone's
 Gopher server goes offline the chain will break, etc. Well, if people want to
 do bad things they have many ways to do that so I think we can use a bit of
 trust. But it is likely something that a lightweight protocol like Gopher
 excels at, while the HTTP just wouldn't be as efficient.

 The very last one, after considering effort and, hm, age range of average
 Gopher enjoyers, instead of drawing of making stories, a simple answer then
 next question type of approach may be less demending to participate. So that's
 why I put the idea into the "Experiment" section, called "Propagate". Couldn't
 think of a better name.

 I think that's the thing - Popular people suggest something, we call it a new
 trend; Unpopular people suggest something, they call it social experiment. I
 think it is a social experiment and I just would like to see what it would
 become. It needs not to be with/from me, but I have put a simple script and
 some get-started like instruction into the propagate's landing page, so if any
 one and your friends are curious, I would like to see how you form your chain
 of interactions in this place of no trace.