_____ _           _   
|  _  | |_ ___ _ _| |_ 
|     | . | . | | |  _|
|__|__|___|___|___|_|  
                       
--------------------------------
So, what is this all about then?
--------------------------------

This is my Gopher Hole, think of it like a website but
hosted with a legacy protocal called Gopher resulting in a
very basic text only experience.

There's a lot to be said for this old school experience but
that's a topic for a different document.

---------------------------------
Explain a bit more about yourself
---------------------------------

So, I'm "woody.cool", a retro computing and retro gaming
enthusiast, who enjoys the technology of yesteryear, what
it did, why it did it and how it can be used in this modern
day.

I grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit computers, having experienced
machines from Commodore, Sinclair, Amstrad and Atari over
the years.

My first computer was a Commodore 16, which, although quite
limited, was actually a really interesting machine to start
with.

I then got into the Amstrad CPC 6128 as we also had one of
these in our house, and that's where I learnt a lot about
computers in general, as the included manual was a brilliant
resource.

Then, I upgraded to the Commodore Amiga 500+ which I really
enjoyed. I learnt a lot about scripting, operating systems,
coding, music, art, and a lot of gaming too.

It wasn't until the late 90s when we got our first PC and
I experienced Internet for the first time. Once I had
discovered the online world, my mind was blown and I
grew to really enjoy this new world.

----------------------------------
What content will be on this site?
----------------------------------

My main interest here is to document my retro computing
life, provide some downloads to some tools and generally
log what I'm doing. I don't expect it to be all that
interesting to many, but it's a way to document my
interests.

---------------------------------
How do I access this Gopher hole?
---------------------------------

Well, it's likely you've managed to do this successfully
if you are reading this, but, there's a couple of things
to note, so I will detail these below:

 - to begin with, most modern browsers do not support
   the Gopher protocol, so you will need a "Gopher
   Client" or you can use a Gopher proxy service

 - the pygopherd software that I use to host this
   does supply some basic proxying, so you can use
   a web browser pointed to port 70 and a lot of
   things will work, but note that some support is
   limited and you may run in to things that don't
   work, so get a proper Gopher client

 - if you're a Linux user, chances are you already
   have a suitable Gopher client, the "lynx" browser
   works very well here, so you can connect like so

      lynx gopher://gopher.woodycool.uk

   and this will work for you

 - if you want something a little more useful, check
   out the software downloads I've provided, where
   possible, I will include a Gopher client for each
   platform where I can find one

 - this is text only, whilst images can be attached
   they have to be downloaded - some modern GUI
   based Gopher clients may support inline images,
   this is outside of the Gopher specification

So, please do explore, hit your back button and take
some time to discover the world of Internet, 1991
style.