9th October 1999

Welcome to h2g2, unknown hiker

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A message from the editors

Welcome to the Earth Edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which we call h2g2 for short. You're probably wondering what this site is all about, which is why we've created a
welcome message just to confuse you even further.



In a nutshell we're compiling the Earth Edition of the Guide, and we need your help. We hope you will join us and the thousands of other registered Researchers by registering above -
click here to see what advantages your free registration will give you. All we require is your email address - and nothing else! We will not sell or give away your email address, or bombard you with junk email, so do register now, and start discussing the possibilities of the Guide with others like - and unlike - yourself.



If at any time you require more information, simply hit the
"Don't Panic" button, which is at the top of every page of h2g2.



Thank you - and welcome.

Some handy links to help you explore h2g2

Exploring h2g2 is the best way to get to understand our mission, but to whet your appetite, here are a few interesting links you might like to check out:

• Why not search our
  alphabetical index of all Guide Entries?
• Find out all about
  the h2g2 team.
• If you're submitting a Guide Entry for the Editors' approval, read our submission guidelines so you know what we're really after.

Editor's Recommendation for the Weekend

It's brightly coloured, it wobbles and it comes in weird shapes. Jelly is the nearest thing we have to alien goo here on Earth. And yet it's edible... Here at h2g2 we remember those particularly high additive versions that were available at children's parties in the '70s. You know, with fruit mixed in...

Other interesting entries added today include:
Lying;
Critical Mass;
Derivatives
and Journey into Space.

This selection was brought to you by the h2g2 Five-a-Day Guarantee: we promise to bring you at least five brand new official guide entries every day of your working week. You can also see
all the entries put up over the last month. Impress your friends! Develop your cocktail-party conversation skills! Learn how to integrate the word 'fecund' into everyday usage! It's all here at h2g2, the ever-growing guide to life on Earth.

Bywater@h2g2: Column 8

In his latest quest to show that all subjects are somehow interlinked and related to each other - and that concept is at the heart of h2g2, in case you hadn't spotted it -
Bywater@h2g2 takes a stroll that takes us from bingo to Jung. It's a fascinating journey...

If you've missed out on past Bywater@h2g2 columns, fear not for help is at hand. Tucked away in the bowels of h2g2 is a
complete collection of past Bywater@h2g2 articles for your delectation and edification. Share and enjoy.

More Additions to the Team

We're very pleased to announce some new additions to our team of sub-editors, the volunteers from the community that are helping us grow the Approved Guide day by day. Give a warm welcome to
Bruce, CrazyOne, Hypoman, jan*, Jimi X, Pastey,
Researcher 26199, Si, toi, The Virtual Researcher and The Wisest Fool

Why not pay a visit to their pages and wish them well?

Scheduled Maintenance of our Servers

We're going to be upgrading our database server on Sunday afternoon (that's GMT, by the way), so if you happen to be accessing the site at that time you'll be greeted by a friendly but fairly feature-free messge. Fear not, for the process should only take half of one of our Earth hours.

For the techno-freaks among you, we're upgrading our Dell SQL Server from 128Mb of RAM to 1Gb - that's eight times the memory. Having tested a server with four times as much memory that ran between two and three times faster, we thought we'd go the whole hog to ensure your h2g2 experience is as speedy as possible.

And in about a week's time we hope to introduce even more speed increases. My, isn't life simply gorgeous...

Building, building, building...

Our eager researchers never stop - when they're not stuffing the forums
with happy banter, they're making pages to serve all kinds of crazy
purposes. We'd ask them to stop and relax once in a while, but... we need the eggs.

• Vegiman's Critique Fun Run is long overdue
  for a mention on the front page, and provides a very useful service:
  providing an organised system for any researcher to assist in rating
  submitted entries, thus helping the sub-eds out no end. Brava, Mr
  Veg!
• Ginger the Feisty, nostalgiamaniac extraordinaire, is at it again:
  this time, she wants your favourite TV advertisement
  campaigns.
• If you're living in London, chances are you're probably thinking that
  none of the candidates for the post of Mayor are any good, and you know
  someone who'd be much better. Fortunately for you, Shazz's
  Virtual Mayor of London page is just the place to
  make your nomination. (Note: The front page would like to formally
  point out that, despite anything it may have said in the past, Shazz is
  most definitely female, and most gracefully forgiving as well. Thank you
  for your attention.)

A Call for Universal Laws of Life

How many times have you wondered about the unwritten laws that govern our lives? The ones that your mother kept telling you about that always seemed to be right, whatever common sense told you? Well we at h2g2 have decided that it's about time we stopped mucking around with the Unifying Theory of Physics and instead concentrated on collating a collection of the
Universal Laws of Life.

You know the ones we mean. You wait all day for a bus and two come along at the same time; it only rains on the day that you forget your umbrella; most people meet their future spouses at weddings... if only we had a book that listed all these Universal Laws then life would be so much easier.

So if you know a Universal Law of Life,
share it in the forums. Together we can make this world a better place... except, maybe, for Mondays.

A Call for Unfinished Business of the Century

In case you've been avoiding TV, newspapers and magazines for the last two years^* you'll know that it's not long to the millennium. This, however, is causing a serious problem: what about all the unfinished business we need to clear up before the rollover to 2000?

This issue has been worrying Douglas Adams for some time, so he's launched his
call for unfinished business of the century - we want you to help us identify all the loose ends we've left dangling in the twilight of the 20th century that we need to stitch up before it's too late. We just know you're up to it.

* A surprisingly sensible option, in our opinion.

Ask h2g2

It really is proving rather fun, this
Ask h2g2 section. Only the other day our Producer was telling me how he'd managed to find out the answer to a question that had perplexed him for years - why arm hair is short when head hair is long - and I discovered from the same source why adverts always sound louder than the programmes they so rudely interrupt.

You see, h2g2 is a wonderfully intelligent community, bursting with the quest for knowledge and spouting more ideas than a hyperactive child prodigy. To tap into this almost infinite resource go along and have a look at Ask h2g2 in action... and if you want to ask or answer a question yourself, fire away and wait for the response.

After all, knowledge is power, and in the absence of a carbohydrate-rich diet, we humans need all the power we can get.