Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2025
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Dear Smol Friends, September is upon us once again!  It is time to
coat our wine vessels with pitch, to pick apples, and to loosen the
compacted soil around trees.  Straw must be cut, haystacks pitched,
arable land ploughed, fodder gathered, and well-watered meadows mown.
Yes, mown a second time!  In amongst these chores, I hope that
some of you will also find the time and energy to participate in
the ancient and worthy tradition of ROOPHLOCH.

The Remote Outdoor Off-Grid Phlogging Challenge lasts for the
entire calendar month of September in all timezones of Earth.
If you choose to accept the challenge, you must author and publish
a phlog and/or gemlog post while not inside any permanent artificial
shelter and without plugging your device(s) directly into
"the grid", i.e. electricity and internet access must not come
from a socket in the wall.  Exactly how and where you choose to
post and what you write about is entirely up to you.  After making
a successful post, please email solderpunk@posteo.net with the
posts URL and you will have the mighty honour of being added,
in alphabetical order of handle, to the official ROOPHLOCH 2025
participation list at the end of the month!

(I will be travelling for the second week of the month so might not
acknowledge your submission in a timely fashion, but rest assured
that I will see it and all entries will be recorded!)

You may wish to read through entries from previous years[1] for ideas
and inspiration or just to get a feel for the event.  Some folks
like to focus specifically on the technical side of making the post,
trying to come up with more creative, interesting or challenging
ways than just using WiFi or a phone network (though those of
course meet the criteria and are enough to qualify).  Others like
to focus on the remote location aspect and post from somewhere far
away or difficult to access.  Some people just post from their
backyard using their home WiFi network and that's fine as well.
There are no losers, only winners, and the spirit of the thing is
to have fun doing something different at the same time as others
are doing likewise.  Last year we had 33 qualifying posts made by
31 distinct users, which was the best turn out in ROOPHLOCH's six
year history!  I look forward to a strong turnout for ROOPHLOCH 2025.

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/roophloch