Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2024
The ninth month of the Gregorian calendar is upon us once again, bringing with it meteorological autumn or spring (except in enlightened Nordic lands who declare such things retrospectively based on empirical criteria), their associated equinoxes, and such thrilling observances as National Payroll Week, National Lobster Day, and who could forget, Day of the Workers in the Oil, Gas, Power, and Geological Industry? Oh, and ROOPHLOCH!
In case you have only recently started living under the electronic rock that we call the smolnet, the Remote Outdoor Off-Grid Phlogging Challenge, or ROOPHLOCH, is a monthlong combined Gopher and Gemini community ritual which has happened each September since 2019. All you need to do to participate is to make a phlog and/or gemlog post sometime between September 1st and September 30th (inclusive, in your local timezone), under the following conditions: you need to make your post without being inside any kind of permanent, human-made shelter and the device you post from should not be plugged into a wall. That's it! Once you've made a post, email solderpunk@posteo.net to let me know the URL of your post. At the end of the month, I will post a roundup of everybody who participated. Participants in each year's ROOPHLOCH are listed for posterity in alphabetical order of the author's name/handle. There's no glory in being first and no shame in being last, the important thing is taking part.
The "CH" in ROOPHLOCH is short for "challenge", and specifically the challenge should be understood be against yourself and your everyday internet routines and your imagination. You can meet the criteria by taking your laptop into your backyard and relying on your home WiFi, and plenty of people do this ever year so if it's all you can manage you shouldn't feel be afraid to participate in just that way. But the spirit of the exercise is to try something different. Post from somewhere you've never posted from before, and/or using a device you've never posted from before, and/or getting your network connectivity or electricity in ways you never have before. If you've always been curious about mesh networks or LoRa or something like that, maybe this could be your opportunity to start playing around with them?
Last year's ROOPHLOCH was the biggest yet, with 17 posts in total. It would be great to break the participation record once again, of course, but I'm really hoping that maybe 2024 will finally be the year when we see a non-RF approach to the challenge. Optical communication technology has been mentioned in the context of ROOPHLOCH more than once in the past, but the title of First Person to Actually Do It remains up for grabs
As always, you can check out previous years for ideas and inspiration (Gopher-only links until 2023):
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