h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I've been here nearly as long as Pastey, during which time the login system's gone through at least three versions, and my join date remains unchanged."

I only found out relatively recently that the site has been showing the wrong "Join Date" for me since they started displaying it in Brunel. It says sometime in June 1999, yet I joined on May 12th 1999, and have a page I created on that date to prove it... ( A61732 )

Question for you, Peet - you seem well up on these things:

How can someone who joined the site in 2009 (U14243982) have created an entry in 2000 (A266249) ?

It's possible for the Eds to transfer an A page to another account. Not sure why that would have happened in that case though.

That A page seems to be part of this series, so it's possible that the Eds did transfer it to the later account. A227440

Oo, a techy-type question I know the answer to (Hey, give me a break--it doesn't happen often)

Before a comparatively recent change (er, sometime in the last 3-4 years, maybe? Or maybe when it was made possible to post to PSs that hadn't been changed from the default yet.) "join date" was tied with "date the PS was actually opened up". Some folks, like me, changed their PSs pretty much immediately (Clive told me to rather quickly--I was getting rid of that number that I'd "never be able to remember" and hadn't even had a chance to think about my PS) so the actual join date and the displayed join date are the same. Those that waited awhile have different dates, and can appear to have entries that date from before they joined, if those got written first.

Yea, I'm one of those that lurked for a while. My "join" date is indicated as 10th October 1999, but by looking up where my user number is on SEF's chart here, A1157997 , I actually joined on 9th September 1999. I still haven't edited anything about my personal space or account since the barleyskew came out because I don't want to risk it.

I think I started fiddling with my profile pretty much as soon as I joined...

I'm confused by how SEF's chart works.

It seems to be the number of new User Numbers allocated on each particular day; the start of the row has a date and the number of Users registered at the outset of that day. I don't know where the figures came from, but it seems accurate for my U#, which is more than the BBC's system is.

SEF's chart isn't very user friendly, granted, but basically here's how it works. Down the left side is the beginning user number of that week. Each box displays the number of new users on that day of the week. If you add that to the number at the left of that row you'll get the last user number of that day. The color of each box relates to the number of new users (the day I joined, 9.9.1999, was the busiest day for new users. I logged in that day because I received an email because I registered for news about Starship Titanic, but most other folks did so that day because they saw the site mentioned on a tech show in the UK, the name of which escapes me at the moment.)

"Tomorrow's World".

Yep, that was it.

I didn't see it obviously.... I wish that clip was archived somewhere on the web, but it was way before youtube and the like.

Ah yes, I get it now... and I was right, I first edited my profile on the day I joined!

A bit of Googling suggests that the "Tomorrow's World special" is included in the "Special Features" on the US DVD release of the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series, but I suspect that's the one from eight years earlier when they showed how Zaphod's anamatronic head worked.

If it's the same Tomorrow's World Special that's on the UK DVD release then it is the one with the animatronic head.

It's not (as far as I remember) the animatronic head. It was Douglas sat in front of a big screen talking to the woman presenter. I really am bad with names. I don't remember much more about it because I was then rushing to boot up the 14.4k modem to get over here, and ended up helping crash the servers

Yup, the Anamatronic Head one was in (I think) 1981, so *eighteen* years earlier. (Not eight, sorry. I miscounted. )

I joined after seeing the site mentioned in one of the Guardian's supplements. How long ago it all seems now...

The joining date on my PS is about 6 weeks after the actual date I signed up. A little matter known as Rupert intervened...

The chart is accurate for me, U100085, Nov 5, 99. However, I had previously joined in Sept 99, but forgot my sign-in, and passward...after having had a teensie lil stroke. But, I remember finding hootoo first, by googling for Douglas Adams on my then brand spanking new PC...that puppy was 5 computers ago now.