Art: Now in fewer colors! ====

I recently converted my watercolor art  into 1-bit  PBM  bitmap images
and posted them to dedicated galleries under my /art gopher menu.

This allows my art to be viewable on my new MODEL4 ePaper   cyberdeck.
The built-in gopher client has support for these 1-bit PBM images  and
can even display them inline, depending on the size and manner      of
presentation of  the PBM within  the  gopher menu.     The FRST client
doesn't pre-fetch and render all of the images in these gallery menus,
but DOES   fetch  and  render the 'FRST'   logo  at the  top  of   the
frstcomputer.com menu.

Oh yeah, it required  me  to 'extend' the  gopher spec with a 'p' menu
type. Most gopher clients handle this gracefully enough.  I hope    it
doesn't offend the gopher  purists too  much, but I'm satisfied.   I'm
content to bring chaos to gopherspace. ;)

You can check it    all  out   on   the         web-based  emulator at
https://frstcomputer.com. (Be sure to  'attune'   to the FRST Computer
BBS in order to gain access to the /net/tcp gateway service, which  in
turn allows the 'gopher' client to surf gopherspace)

Why? Why  would I do this? Well, I  continue   to  feel  that  despite
gopher's text-oriented nature,  it is  perfectly suited for sharing my
scanned watercolor  artwork. And frankly, it feels    like gopherspace
deserves more interesting content and file types. But ultimately, this
was simply a way   for me to gain   another interesting feature for my
MODEL4 cyberdeck -- to exercise graphical content displayed inline  on
the high-resolution ePaper display.

Oh, and  it's not just the artwork. I've provided PBM alternatives  to
most of  the images   across jonsharp.net and  frstcomputer.com.  It's
pretty rad (and meta) to pull up the promotional  images of the MODEL4
deck ON the  MODEL4  deck.  Again, try     it out  for  yourself    on
frstcomputer.com! (do it. it may just become your favorite way to surf
gopherspace... )

--

On another note,  I continue to post new and interesting  files to the
files  area. If  you haven't perused  the  files  section lately,  you
should give it a look. There's  a new section for interactive  fiction
(again, in support of the MODEL4 deck --  these are downloadable to  a
deck -- and playable using the 'frotz' built-in) There are       other
goodies, too. .
.