petergarner.net

About Us

Welcome to the latest version of our web site, petergarner.net. We've recently moved from our self-hosted Intel NUC box to a shiny new VPS located somewhere in the UK. The gopher server has been moved at the same time along with its 15Gb (and rising) of content files: you're able to view the latest files direct from the home page but to explore it properly you'll need a proper gopher client app; more on this later...

The site is primarily a technical site, but I do write about other things as well: if you like coffee, beer, home-baked bread, alternative beliefs, minimalist computing and walking you've come to the right place. And then there's the Green Man of course...

Blog Content

Our famed collection of technical and other ramblings is available in our blog. As is the norm here, there's an eclectic collection of articles that will inspire / amaze / offend / amuse you. Written by a human, AI-free.

Blog

RSS feed

The Green Man, Paths and Beliefs

Quite some time ago, when I was neither young nor old, I experienced a life-changing event. Like many people who have been in that situation, I imagine, I decided to take a mental step back and re-evaluate my life. I figured that it was as good a time as any, and if it prepared me for the Road Ahead, then so much the better. I made a list of things to look at and maybe change if I needed to, and one of those things was what I actually believed in. Rather than fill this page, I've decided to write a blog entry, which you can read here.

Gopherspace

Why Gopher?

There are many reasons to use gopher: here's a summary:

• Simplicity & Speed – Gopher’s plain-text, menu-driven structure makes it extremely lightweight. It loads fast even on low-bandwidth connections or old hardware.


• Focus & Minimalism – No ads, no JavaScript, no tracking. It’s purely about reading and sharing text. Great for distraction-free browsing or retro computing enthusiasts.


• Archival & Preservation – Gopher hosts valuable archives of early internet content and public-domain texts, many of which are hard to find.


• Educational Value – It’s an excellent way to learn about early internet design, protocols, and networking fundamentals.


• Nostalgia & Aesthetics – Some people simply enjoy its 1990s-era feel and the small, tight-knit Gopher community.


• Client Apps For All Platforms – There's no shortage of client apps available to install. Click here for a list.

Latest Uploads - Today

Last updated: Mon Jan 19 15:00:01 2026

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Latest Uploads - Yesterday

Last updated: Mon Jan 19 00:00:02 2026

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Stats

As at Mon Jan 19 15:00:01 2026:
15,830 files, 16,245,969,086 (16G) bytes
in our gopherspace

Monitoring Our Carbon Footprint

The whole point of this project is to run a useful, responsive web server that uses as few resources as possible. I'm attempting a design which balances form and function, and the carbon footprint of loading/viewing this, and other pages is low. This is normally just 0.01g of CO₂/view and you can verify this by visiting Website Carbon and The Green Web Foundation.

Lately, I'm taking more of an interest (and therefore an active approach) to where Skircoat's electric power comes from, and a few days of research has resulted in an up-to-date breakdown of the power sources that are used to generate the region's power. There's an update every 30 minutes via the API provided by the ESO/National Grid.

Suffice to say that the continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels is extremely worrying. Yes, 'biomass' as used in Yorkshire's Drax is still a fossil fuel, and the situation is made worse by the fact that it's "mainly imported from the Southern USA (by sea!) but also from Europe, Canada and Southern America". according to Drax. I smell greenwashing, but read this and decide for yourself. Oh, and there's a recent article in the Independent (alt link) that lays bare more of the unpleasant facts...

We run on Green Energy!

Skircoat Green Electricity Power Sources

See below for statistics, updated every 30 minutes.

Fuel sources for HX3, supplied by NG-ESO Region NPG Yorkshire

       

OK?	Fuel Type	Percentage Used
N	Biomass	31.3 %
N	Gas	53.3 %
Y	Solar	0.6 %
Y	Wind	14.8 %

Fuel sources not used (0%) are excluded: Coal, Imports, Nuclear, Other, Hydro

Sample period  2026-01-19 14:30 UTC to 2026-01-19 15:00 UTC

Usage VERY HIGH, CO2 forecast 248g CO2/kW-h

Carbon-zero Fuel Percentage 15.4% Fossil Fuel Percentage 84.6%

Download historical data from 2021-11-29 18:00 UTC to 2026-01-19 15:00 UTC.

Download last 8 hours data (X axis=types) to 2026-01-19 15:00 UTC.

Download last 8 hours data (Y axis=types) to 2026-01-19 15:00 UTC.

Data sourced from https://carbonintensity.org.uk E&OE

Local Weather Forecast, updated hourly

Weather for Halifax, GB

  _`/"".-.     light rain
   ,\_(   ).   7 (7) °C       
    /(___(__)  ← 4 km/h       
      ʻ ʻ ʻ ʻ                 
     ʻ ʻ ʻ ʻ   0.1 mm/h       

Updated  Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:00:01 +0000

External Links

• Host it yourself: it's the future! Visit Homebrew Server Club.
• This site design was inspired by brutalist-web.design.
• We really like Low Tech Magazine, and especially this solar-powered version.
• We highly recommend the character-mode browser Links2 for this site.
• The cheapskatesguide.org is a great resource and a model of clear site design. W00t!
• This site is a member of the Bradley Taunt 1Mb club, for sites with home pages smaller than 1Mb.
• We're helping to rewild Scotland - please visit our grove.
• We're members of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
• Visit The Pagan Federation - discover new pathways...
• The Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker - local news for local people.
• Halifax People - Historic Halifax; Skircoat Green.
• Mastodon verification
• Carol Denney - "Music, Politics, and the Metal Reed", or, a snarkier Joni Mitchell ;)


• This site's Page load stats tested at pingdom.com.

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Privacy Policy

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System Info

System Statistics as at Mon Jan 19 15:00:01 2026
Uptime: up 1 week, 7 hours, 23 minutes since 2026-01-12 07:36:45
Disk usage: 22%
Network: TX packets 72508545 bytes 57502598288 (53.5 GiB)  RX packets 57120946 bytes 40404841799 (37.6 GiB)

Further In-depth Research and Reading

email us go to messageboard newsletter archive home NEWSLETTER: "I HOPE THIS EMAIL FINDS YOU DOWN A WELL" next issue » « previous issue

This Week: * QUIZ - How much of a flag nonce are you? * ANIMALS - Are they bastards? * IMAGE CHALLENGE - Extends a name ------------------------------------------------- ________ ____ __ ___ ____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're shitting up ___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | the collective internet __/____/____/\__/_/ |_| toilet... together" wibble electrical-e-mail 758 - 9th Feb 2021 Read this issue with trousers around your wankles: http://wibble.com/newsletter/issue758 ------------------------------------------------- : WOT wibble PEOPLE ARE MAKING THIS MONTH Other than tossing off Tory MPs for Buttcoin * HOW PATRIOTIC ARE YOU? - Ed Jeffs is asking you to draw a Union Jack to prove your commitment to flag noncery. Any score less than 6 and Priti Patel will deport you. https://edjefferson.com/howpatrioticareyou/ * MATT ROUND LIBERATES 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' - the song Happy Birthday has recently fallen out of copyright so Matt has commissioned various versions for you to freely use in your work. What a mensch. https://vole.wtf/happy-birthday/ * SHARDCORE COLLIDES MEMES - you probably didn't want to hear Bernie Sanders do sea shanties but here we go. https://wibble.com/links/when_memes_collide ------------------------------------------------- The Moon. Short for Theodore Moon. ------------------------------------------------- : FESSHOLE Your confessions, fessed up for worthless likes

Every day we read your confessions about your tawdry lives and tweet out the ones that make us giggle or gasp. * CRYING - "I do a scarily realistic impression of a crying baby. Do it at random times in the house. Neighbours ask how the baby is, didn't know we were expecting/having etc. I pull a concerned face and explain to them there is no baby, but the people living here before us had one that died." * ALEXA - "My brother lives in same street as me. He was showing off how hi tech his Xmas lights are by being wired to his Alexa. When he goes out, I shout through his letter box to turn them on or off. He has sent 2 plugs back so far." * DRUGS - "I train & handle drug sniffer dogs for the Navy. Once spent several days turning over a battleship from top to bottom after the dog kept giving clear sign. Truth is I'd realised a couple of hours in I'd brought the explosives dog by mistake but it'd gone too far by then." Don't follow this bullshit. Please. Just stop. https://twitter.com/fesshole/ ------------------------------------------------- You know what that OK feeling is? It's not having to know exactly how mad or angry Trump is at every minute of the day. ------------------------------------------------- : BUY SOME BRITISH MADE JEANS Yes you, you scruffy oik Hebtro are ok in our book as they support our projects like Fesshole and wibble - do make sure you buy their products. Thanks. https://hebtro.co/product/sweary-scarf/ ------------------------------------------------- Bananarama, Phil Collins, Tony Hadley and Status Quo singing "Nobody Does It Better" for charity. Call it Bond Aid. ------------------------------------------------- : NOT MADE BY wibbleNS But ok anyway