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

I love to meet new people - leave me a message, and help yourself to my ample supplies of and .

CLM

Felicitous greetings from...Patrick

Hello Patrick, thank you for leaving me a message!

Please toss an entire baron of beef across to Elanor for me - hope there aren't too many scorch marks on the carpet.

Thanks she'll enjoy that, also she's pretty house trained now, shes no longer setting fire to carpets.

Felicitous greetings from... Miss Tish!!
just wanted to thank you for your help in instruction on how to give myself a nickname (see above!) Seeing as you're the only name I have right now to communicate with, I may be back with more questions!! I do hope that's okay?

I'm online in my lunch hour at work (very naughty I know!) and I noticed from visiting your page that you have a guestbook thingy! How do I get one and how much do they cost?? Thanks again!

No problem, Miss Tish

Guestbooks are completely free and you create them yourself in GuideML - our markup language. It's actually pretty easy to learn, and there's loads of guidance on how to use it.

Most of my work in GuideML has been completely trial and error (mostly error!).

There's a link to the GuideML help pages on my personal space (the 'Stuff I find Useful' box) It lists all the tags there, and tells you how to use them. If that weren't helpful enough, it also lists the code as examples, which you can lift using copy and paste - which is what I did.

When you have the code, you need to link it to a conversation for people to put replies in. So you need to use the 'discuss this entry' button at the bottom of your introduction to yourself to create a conversation thread. Then you need to hover your mouse over the 'reply' button to see the number code you need to enter. It all sounds horribly complicated - but it isn't really. Well not much.

Once you've checked out the Help page to see the code, then you are welcome to see how I've customised it - click http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/guide/testuserpage187819 to see what my code looks like in comparison. It looks horrifically, stupendously incomprehensible - so just look for the bit that says "<GUESTBOOK INREPLYTO..." to find it - it's pretty close to the top. You might like to copy both sets of code into a word document so you can compare them with each other and then with the appearance on the screen on my personal space - if that helps.(!)

PS - if there are any fancy looking things on my page that you would like to try out on your personal space, feel free to try them! If you get stuck, I'm not an authority on GuideML, but the GuideML Clinic has a help forum which is visited regularly by the Gurus, who can give you any advice you need on the techie stuff.

Gracious thanks to you for your sound
help!! Thing is, I am a lowly Telewest
customer and have accessed this site
via a link sent to me by email. I have
tried clicking on to other sites
within h2g2 and am FORBIDDEN!! So,
I am mouseless!! However, I do have
access via my PC at work, and came online
yesterday lunchtime. It's my day off
today (yipee), so I'll try and set
up the guestbook tomorrow .. just hope
that after I've set it up via PC,
it'll work via Telewest .. fingers
crossed! ;0)

Personally I had my friend go over mine, cause I didn't find the Guide ML page that usefull, thou the help one was useful

I have always tended to use the Clinic as a reference point to show me a list of all the tags. Then I just tried them out to see if they worked for me (mostly they didn't at first!). But I'm one of those people who starts putting the flatpack furniture together before reading the instructions...and then wonders why their coffee table looks like a standard lamp.

FEISOR, one of the ACEs, let me do the test user page thing on their (FEISOR doesn't specify a gender) personal space to see how their GuideML was set out, and that's what got me started.

VIP (Very important princess) also gave me permission to nick her code for the bouncing smileys on her space, so that's how I did that. The rest of it is complete experimentation. If it doesn't work, the preview page will tell me so, and show me what I got wrong. If it still doesn't work, I ditch it.

There are some truly awesome personal spaces on H2G2 - and you can always pop in and ask someone how they did something. I think that's how a lot of things have proliferated - after all the 'Marquee' tag is not in the GuideML clinic. I don't mind people using stuff on my space - after all I got a lot of it from other people myself!

Share and enjoy...

Hello Megapuppy!! I assume that reply was
for me??

Funny how instructions can actually
be useful isn't it?? Although I admit
I am like you, and tend to take the
(proverbial) bull by the horns and
think to myself that I can do it
without the accompanying sheet!!

Trouble is, my coffee table didn't
turn into a standard lamp .. I ended
up with a 3 legged milking stool!
Still looking for the other leg!!

So, where did you put the bulb?

;-}

That was the point when I realised it should have been a CD cabinet.

(appropriate comedy drum riff at this point)

Aha!! It all goes to prove that the world
of flatpack furniture is not as flat
as it thinks!!!

There should be a warehouse, somewhere,
for all the furniture that has been
confused by their builders, and are
having difficulty coming to terms
with their new identities!!

And, after all that, I'll sit on my
milking stool, you can sit on your
standard lamp, and we'll have a
OR a nice with
!!!

By the way, do you believe in ?

Felicitous greetings from...SuePlusArt,

So how is the battle at the treadmill? Have you tried a Cello ever?

Hi SuePlusArt

I'm now only four pounds away from my fifth stone lost!!!!!! I have to admit that I am currently having to lose nine, so the fact that I have got more than halfway there is a major boost to my motivation. I also find that Harry Potter books help me combat the boredom of treadmill walking. They really need to create a treadmill simulator so you can feel that you're actually going somewhere!

I remember trying a Cello ages ago when I was playing in a trio and we decided to swap instruments. But I couldn't get it under my chin.

Boom Boom.

Seriously though, I made such a ghastly sound that I didn't want to insult the poor instrument and took my viola back pretty quickly!

Your doing really brilliantly by the sound of it, the Sim Walker sounds a realy cool idea; just think of the scenarios you could choose to walk through, the Sea of Tranquility or the ice wastes of Titan would be amazing.

Shame you could'nt get a feel for the Cello though the sound of the Viola is truly lovely. The Cello can be very emotionaly dynamic in the right hands.

Have you tried reading Stephen Lawheads Trilogy? Sorry we hav'nt tried J K Rowlings books as yet though we saw the film and felt it had a C S Lewis flavour to it. We're re-reading the Hobbit at the moment, which, though dated is still great fun. The Dark is Rising Trilogy is another one though we can't recall the author at the moment.

Best wishes

SuePlusArt

I agree about the emotional dynamism (neat word, wot?) of the cello, but alas I fear my hands are definitely not the right ones. Either way, I'm happy to leave the cello playing to more capable hands and I just luuuuuurve the sound of my viola - it's a truly fabulous instrument and I've never yet found anyone who doesn't like it.

I haven't tried Stephen Lawhead - but I've read all four of the Harry Potter books over and over again. They're not deep or demanding of the intellect, just a thumping good story that you can get absorbed in. They also help me on the treadmill as I prop them up and read them as I walk - there's no danger of me walking into people or trees or anything either whilst my nose is in the book!

lol for all

Hi

We'll probably give JKR a try at some time in the future.

So how about that idea of the virtual walker and what landscape would appeal to you. A stroll through Lothlorean or the Shire?

We're going down to the Seven Sisters for a night walk soon, not much to bump into there iether.

Can you recommend any peices written for the Cello we could listen to?