I am considering a relaunch of my old gopher hole and dusting off the
old phlog.

After some thought, it seems like a cool idea to mirror that content on
my finger service.

If a gopher blog is a phlog, what would a finger blog be? A flog? Too
similar I think.

Opinions?

--
Daniel
sysop | air & wave bbs
finger | info@bbs.airandwave.net

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Daniel <me@sc1f1dan.com> writes:

I am considering a relaunch of my old gopher hole and dusting off the
old phlog.

After some thought, it seems like a cool idea to mirror that content on
my finger service.

[...]

Opinions?

I never heard a thing silliest. Cheers for Freedom,
--
A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes
all the difference. ~ Alan Alexander Milne


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Daniel <me@sc1f1dan.com> wrote:

After some thought, it seems like a cool idea to mirror that content on
my finger service.

If a gopher blog is a phlog, what would a finger blog be? A flog? Too
similar I think.

Reminds me a bit of Thimbl:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110203044006/http://www.thimbl.net/

Cheers,

Koen

--
Software architecture & engineering: https://www.sonologic.se/
Sci-fi: https://www.koenmartens.nl/
Retrocomputing videos: https://retroscandinavian.eu/


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

To: Daniel

Daniel wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

I am considering a relaunch of my old gopher hole and dusting off the
old phlog.

Bring it on - I'm enjoying seeing new Gopher content.

After some thought, it seems like a cool idea to mirror that content on
my finger service.

If a gopher blog is a phlog, what would a finger blog be? A flog? Too similar I think.

I have my old .plan file saved, and Synchronet BBS does support the
finger protocol - but I don't know where you'd enter a .plan file?

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet







--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Win32 NewsLink 1.2
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

"Kurt Weiske" <kurt.weiske@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-5g5-this> writes:

To: Daniel

Daniel wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

I am considering a relaunch of my old gopher hole and dusting off the
old phlog.

Bring it on - I'm enjoying seeing new Gopher content.

After some thought, it seems like a cool idea to mirror that content on my finger service.

If a gopher blog is a phlog, what would a finger blog be? A flog? Too similar I think.

I have my old .plan file saved, and Synchronet BBS does support the
finger protocol - but I don't know where you'd enter a .plan file?

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet

I don't have a synchronet board so that's a good question. Meatlotion
folded in his finger server with his mystic board but I'm sure he's
using some bash scripts to do it.

My finger service is custom and there are no plan files. Feel free to
peruse. I spent many hours setting it up and even more hours thinking
about how I"d do it. It's been a blast.

Have you ever thought that you could look up wikipedia articles on a
finger? Or get local movie theater times? Or, even, lookup scientific
papers? Enjoy.

--
Daniel
sysop | air & wave bbs
finger | info@bbs.airandwave.net

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

To: Daniel

Daniel wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

My finger service is custom and there are no plan files. Feel free to peruse. I spent many hours setting it up and even more hours thinking about how I"d do it. It's been a blast.

Have you ever thought that you could look up wikipedia articles on a finger? Or get local movie theater times? Or, even, lookup scientific papers? Enjoy.

I love self-contained, lo-tech systems. I started using a 2-way pager
for outage notification and had a lot of fun finding data that you
could scrape and send via email, either on-demand or in cron. With a
little twiddling, I was able to get my Outlook notes and address book
on it as well.

Being able to get random text via finger would have been interesting --
Now, I think we should encourage people to post to finger!

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Win32 NewsLink 1.2
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

"Kurt Weiske" <kurt.weiske@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-vti-this> writes:

To: Daniel

Daniel wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

My finger service is custom and there are no plan files. Feel free to peruse. I spent many hours setting it up and even more hours thinking about how I"d do it. It's been a blast.

Have you ever thought that you could look up wikipedia articles on a finger? Or get local movie theater times? Or, even, lookup scientific papers? Enjoy.

I love self-contained, lo-tech systems. I started using a 2-way pager
for outage notification and had a lot of fun finding data that you
could scrape and send via email, either on-demand or in cron. With a
little twiddling, I was able to get my Outlook notes and address book
on it as well.

Being able to get random text via finger would have been interesting --
Now, I think we should encourage people to post to finger!

I'm trying to achieve a level of digital minimalism in my household. My
ideal setup would be to operate 90% of my daily tasks on an old timey
terminal.

I spent some time investigating whether I ought to restore an old Tandy terminal or a model 4, but, thought I'd rather use something modern like
a RC2014 rig but running CP/M for its low power consumption. I recently
read a term on another NG discussing permacomputing, and that sent me
down a rabbit hole.

I don't want to chase nasty tech issues on aging hardware. On top of
that, 80s retro hardware didn't have keyboard standards yet, so the key
configs are something I'd rather not form bad habits from.

I hope you enjoy using my finger service. I don't expect more than a
dozen hits a day, a bit too esoteric for most.

--
Daniel
sysop | air & wave bbs
finger | info@bbs.airandwave.net

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:35:30 -0700, Daniel wrote:

I spent some time investigating whether I ought to restore an old
Tandy terminal or a model 4, but, thought I'd rather use something
modern like a RC2014 rig but running CP/M for its low power
consumption.

The Raspberry Pi seems to be the most popular solution for this sort
of application: powerful enough to emulate any of those old machines
and their OSes, yet consuming much less power than any of them, and of
course better supported with more up-to-date tools and documentation.
And user/developer community!

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:58:11 -0700, "Kurt Weiske" <kurt.weiske@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-vti-this> wrote:

I love self-contained, lo-tech systems. I started using a 2-way pager
for outage notification and had a lot of fun finding data that you
could scrape and send via email, either on-demand or in cron. With a
little twiddling, I was able to get my Outlook notes and address book
on it as well.

Met a guy fiddling with Meshtastic transponders in a maker lab. Self-contained, low-power radio, open-source, think SMS over ham radio.

Solar cell, battery, receiver, transmitter, mount it in on a tower -- needs enough for reasonable coverage, and there's your connectivity...

Interesting for me to see: Hardware is bought, cases 3D-printed. Unnecessary to etch you own PCB, a multilayer with mulitcolor art is just a few dollars/euros, and a few days. SMD components that could get lost under my fingernail make soldering difficult.

Software is the same: maybe different tools, different languages, same problems...

Thomas Prufer


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)