A personal ROOPHLOCH history

First published September 2, 2025.

Most recently updated October 4, 2025.

• 2023-09-02: I compose a post on my phone while getting rained on pretty close to the top of a mountain. I assume I committed the post on the phone too, but uploading it must’ve happened from an internet-accessible gap somewhere along the trail, or maybe I just waited until I got home (and indoors) before pushing and uploading.
• 2024-09-06: I sit in the shade of an umbrella a good distance away, complain about the heat, and write the post on my phone (the final upload step is handled on a real computer, indoors, probably).
• 2025-09: To compensate for not doing anything nearly as impressive and outdoorsy as posting while hiking in weather, I make up for it in volume. All Scrawlspace posts for September are end-to-end ROOPHLOCH-compliant. The maximally outdoorsy post is thie final one — largely dictated into a phone while on the home stretch of a day hike and uploaded the day after, from my backyard, after a much-needed four-hour nap. I had to go back indoors briefly to check my usual SSH key’s passphrase, though — usually my system keychain handles that kind of thing and I was repeatedly misremembering and/or mistyping it.

Related:

Roads not taken

If you’re wondering why I don’t take my laptop with me into the woods and post from there (at least for the parts that have cell-phone coverage)…

…it’s because the woods around me are very dusty. After I come home and take a shower I notice the dust on my phone as soon as I pick it up and I make sure to give it a throughly adequate wipe-down with a damp cloth.

I do NOT want that kind of dust getting into a computing device with air-intake holes and an off-screen keyboard.

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