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petergarner.net
About Us
Welcome to my web site! I'm Peter Garner, a retired software guy but still a full-time Geek. The site's hosted on a cheap VPS located somewhere in the UK and incorporates a very active Gopher server (see below). I also write a blog. This is primarily a technical site, but I do have other interests, such as beer, coffee, home-baked bread, walking/hiking and Paganism (Pantheism). I live in Calderdale, West Yorkshire with a hyperactive rescue Wire-haired Fox Terrier. Enjoy the site, and remember folks, this site is 100% human-created and maintained, with no AI slop to be found.
What I'm Up To, Right Now
We have a Now Page!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 |
A Couple of Miscellaneous Projects
... From the earlier days of computing! It was more of a case of using random bits of hardware for unusual purposes. All good fun!Visit ..
The Projects
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.
- Can help to avoid difficult scenarios – If you're an Internet user in a region with Internet communications problems which can include intermittent connections and suppression of the usual ports, gopher represents a viable alternative due to its lean footprint and ability to "fly under the radar" of casual interception. This enables users with old, lower-powered hardware to retrieve valuable online resources more easily.
- Client Apps For All Platforms – There's no shortage of client apps available to install. Click here for a list.
Latest gopher Uploads - Today
D/L
Latest gopher Uploads - Yesterday
D/L
Top 10 Gopher Download Categories: Mar 2026
Stats
As at Tue Mar 31 16:00:01 2026:
16,130 files, 18G bytes
in our gopherspace
Access Our Gopherhole Via This Site
Due to the changing needs of various visitors to the site, I've made the decision to open up the gopherhole content via this site. You'll now be able to access 99% of our 18Gb of content from the comfort of your browser!
The link is: https://petergarner.net/gopher
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 | 37.2 % |
| ? | Imports | 6.8 % |
| N | Gas | 30.3 % |
| Y | Nuclear | 9.4 % |
| Y | Solar | 7.1 % |
| Y | Wind | 9.3 % |
Sample period 2026-03-31 15:30 UTC to 2026-03-31 16:00 UTC
Usage MODERATE, CO2 forecast 164g CO2/kW-h
Carbon-zero Fuel Percentage 25.8% Fossil Fuel Percentage 67.5%
![[Link to file]](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYAAAAf8/9hAAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAABGklEQVQ4jYXTwStEURTH8c+8JiwkTZaS/AeW/gU72VmSpsFCsp9bSiwUKUmKpZ2ysPE32Aj5D6TEpGiSJot5M57XuzNnc2+nc77nd+/v3pJYBBO4xXAm28rt70tRQBsyi0sMRCqaSR/ANebxEyspC2Ady6igAz0W1DGFcgxQEmxgT/tMX+m0C6xiBYc9NDbLqOIb04LHjPy1Ps2kcito5JoXcNCjr+tGovh8S/7uIh8nmEtVR4tuIvlT1ARXKSRq4w6OCiZXtS+2Y/FMMSCg7UIdd+lawyZ2M3VPBO+Cl4iSPPhZ8JlNJXq8soJI/P8PEnxgVDDZZ/o4RvCWTZdxhi08CF57ICoYwnkesI1BLGJMsbUtNLCfDuvGL2H2QDOO2W5KAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC "[Link to file]")
Download historical data from 2021-11-29 18:00 UTC to 2026-03-31 16:00 UTC.Download last 8 hours data (X axis=types) to 2026-03-31 16:00 UTC.Download last 8 hours data (Y axis=types) to 2026-03-31 16:00 UTC.
Data sourced from https://carbonintensity.org.uk E&OE
Local Weather Forecast, updated hourly
Weather for Halifax, GB
_`/"".-. light rain
,\_( ). 12 (12) °C
/(___(__) → 15 km/h
ʻ ʻ ʻ ʻ
ʻ ʻ ʻ ʻ 0.0 mm/h
Updated Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:00:01 +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 ;)
- A list of indie blogs - keeping blogging alive
- Derek Siver's Now Page directory - what's everyone doing right now?
- This site's Page load stats tested at pingdom.com.
We are members of the tilde.club Ring!
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Want to join the ring? Click here for info.
We are members of the Geek Ring!
This site is a proud member of the Geek Ring!Check some other geeky websites below!
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We are members of the Resistance Infrastructure Movement
| ✊ | Proud Member of the Resistance Infrastructure Movement |
Privacy Policy
Please read our Privacy PolicySystem Info
System Statistics as at Tue Mar 31 16:00:01 2026Uptime: up 7 hours, 12 minutes since 2026-03-31 08:47:49
Disk usage: 29%
Network: TX packets 848101 bytes 3065653522 (2.8 GiB) RX packets 875726 bytes 284049927 (270.8 MiB)
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
BREAKING! Further In-depth Research and Reading Exclusively for Training of All Sorts
* NORTON - dubious business practices from everyone's favourite provider of computer bloat (collapsibletank) * SIZE DOES MATTER - stupidly simple yet effective wheeze from the magnificently titled (Cuthbert Annihilator) * ROBOCOP - wibble luminary Monkeon with another triumph. This man is unique. Treasure him (Monkeon) All these images, and the highest as voted by you can be found here: http://www.wibble.com/challenge/computer_errors/ >> New challenge: Gordon Brown << Britain has a new Prime Minister, and it's wibble's solemn duty to make him look really stupid during his first week in office. Go mental. http://www.wibble.com/challenge/gordon_brown/ ------------------------------------------------- : WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? Follow-ups on previous stories. * SELLOTAPE JAPES - last week we asked you to walk to work, leaving a trail of stickytape in your wake. Steand writes, "A quick google would suggest that this most people would have commute longer than the sellotape, which seems to be about 66 metres." Gah. Spoilsport. * VAG LADY SPEAKS - Emily writes, "As the owner of the vagina shown in your latest newsletter, I thought I'd send you a correction. The internal cast wasn't made by filling me with plaster of Paris. It was made by filling me with dental alginate, which then set, at which point I had to 'bear down' as if giving birth and pop it out. At that point, the lovely vagina caster made a mould out of it and created the cast depicted." Get your own done here, as Emily notes, "He's very professional." http://privatesculpture.co.uk/ * ANNOY-O-TRON - Nasty Pony confesses, "I bought one of the Annoy-o-tron things from ThinkGeek to get back at my Boss From Hell. Of the two sounds - one is very like a BIOS / low battery bleep, the other a sort of digital dentist's drill alarm noise, I chose the former. I'm happy to report it's been 1000% effective, with my boss swearing like a nutter and tearing the place to pieces looking for it. I'm fairly confident it won't be found though as, not being the most tech-savvy person in the world, it's unlikely they'll look INSIDE their monitor." ------------------------------------------------- : FRIDAY GAME Bloxxors Roxxors Loving this 'can you roll the block into the hole' game, great idea and lovely execution. BTW: Nintendo, if you're listening, why not great a "best 50 games from the web" package for the DS, and include most of the stuff we've linked in this section for the last few years. We'd buy it anyway. http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/bloxorz ------------------------------------------------- : STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE Make something cool and tell us about it. If you are in it then people will see your stuff. Things we'd really like to see include * COOKING WITH LIGHT BULBS - wrap bacon round a 100-watt lamp and see if it cooks. * A LION DOING A SHIT ON A TOILET - someone emailed in the old classic 'cat has crap on bog' link, and we'd like to see Hollywood special effects doing this BIGGER! BETTER! And with zoo animals. * WHICKYPEEDIAH.ORG - write a script that fills Wikipedia full of amoosing typos. Send contributions via the mail form. http://www.wibble.com/mailus/ BTW: If you've sent something in that hasn't been featured then don't be put off - we look at everything you send us. ------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] ------------------------------------------------- THANKS: This issue was written by Rob Manuel with David Stevenson. Stuff sent in by Ryz0r, Angie Davidson, elusive, Joel, dicastri, Felipe from Brazil, greenycrimson, s.mcqueenie, Josh Hunter and the stalwart hahn. Ta Easty for the joke we shoe-horned into the header, we knew there was a good reason for sticking voting on the /talk board. Hey, it's not our fault - the public has chosen! Additional linkage and image challenge by Fraser Lewry. Mike Trinder is QOTW bloke. Minty-tops to b4ta. (0898 21 21 21)
------------------------------------------------- SICKIPEDIA: I went to see the nurse this morning for my annual check-up, She said I have to stop wanking. I said 'Why?' She said, 'Because I'm trying to examine you' http://www.sickipedia.org/
_____________________ [ go ] -------------------- THIS WEEKS HEADLINES --------------------
