Three years of gopher

Today is the third anniversary of this phlog! I'm glad I noticed it

coming up before it passed - I managed the same feat for my first

anniversary[1], but completely missed the second one. Funnily enough,

I did exactly the same thing with the first and second anniversaries

of setting up the Zaibatsu! Seems to be a strength of mine.

In these three years I've made 195 posts. Which sounds pretty

substantial, but in my first anniversary post I reported that I'd made

108! That means I made more posts in my first year than in my second

two combined. Curious about how my phlogging habits were changing, I

whipped up this little ASCII graph showing the number of posts made

per month for each month since I started (not including this present

post):

--------------------+

May, 2017: 10 posts |********************

Jun, 2017: 06 posts |************

Jul, 2017: 06 posts |************

Aug, 2017: 05 posts |**********

Sep, 2017: 05 posts |**********

Oct, 2017: 12 posts |************************

Nov, 2017: 04 posts |********

Dec, 2017: 02 posts |****

Jan, 2018: 18 posts |************************************

Feb, 2018: 14 posts |****************************

Mar, 2018: 14 posts |****************************

Apr, 2018: 11 posts |**********************

May, 2018: 03 posts |******

Jun, 2018: 04 posts |********

Jul, 2018: 03 posts |******

Aug, 2018: 04 posts |********

Sep, 2018: 01 post |**

Oct, 2018: 03 posts |******

Nov, 2018: 06 posts |************

Dec, 2018: 04 posts |********

Jan, 2019: 05 posts |**********

Feb, 2019: 05 posts |**********

Mar, 2019: 04 posts |********

Apr, 2019: 03 posts |******

May, 2019: 01 post |**

Jun, 2019: 15 posts |******************************

Jul, 2019: 00 posts |

Aug, 2019: 06 posts |************

Sep, 2019: 06 posts |************

Oct, 2019: 06 posts |************

Nov, 2019: 00 posts |

Dec, 2019: 00 posts |

Jan, 2020: 02 posts |****

Feb, 2020: 00 posts |

Mar, 2020: 04 posts |********

Apr, 2020: 00 posts |

May, 2020: 03 posts |******

--------------------+

There have been ups and downs over the years, but it's only relatively

recently that I have started missing months out entirely. To some

extent I can blame this on the move to Sweden, which happened in

December last year after lots of preparation in November. But there's

something else to consider, too. That big ol' spike of activity last

June corresponds to the birth of the Gemini project, and tellingly the

first empty month appears right after it.

I'm hoping I can turn this trend around in the coming year and phlog

more regularly. I'm not sure I'll be able return to my first year

levels again anytime soon; I remember those early days extremely

fondly, but I was also putting almost all of my energy into phlogging

then, without running a pubnix or developing a new protocol on the

side. I think the other phloggers who were most active with me at

that time are also a little less active these days than then, but

maybe that's just something I tell myself...

Back in my first anniversary post I noticed that I'd done a pretty bad

job of sticking to my originally stated goal for this phlog, which was

to "put some structure to various swirling thoughts I've been having

for years on the state of the internet". I'm not sure that I've

really managed to make things any more focussed. On the whole, I

think I'm okay with this. That said, as of recently this phlog now

exists in parallel with a series of "gemlogs" (Gemini logs[2]) on

specific topics - one on cycling and a soon to be created one on

photography (maybe one on music, too? What a rampage!). This means

I'll be talking about those subjects less here. I definitely,

sincerely want to keep this phlog alive alongside my attempts to

establish Gemini, but I also really don't want it to become a "waste

paper phlog" where I stick random, low-effort content. So I do intend

to try to cultivate a slightly more narrow focus here. I'm not sure

exactly what form that will take, but don't expect a radical departure

from stuff I've written about previously!

Looking forward to many more happy years in gopherspace!

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/a-year-of-gopher.txt

[2] gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/