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

i know i shouldn't call you shirely,

just wandering past and i thought i'd pass and say hello .... hello


so what sort of geeky things d'you like?

sad that you don't think you've got any friends here, you've got to get yourself out there, as it were - can't be doing too badly you've got a girlfriend! (more than me, girl or boy friend!)

Naah, it's never *that* bad. I'm not saying that people aren't friendly or anything, I just don't really know anyone that well on here.

As for the girlfriend - well, only been together for about a month. Early days yet. Whilst it'd be nice to say "everything's going fine", if the universe were to catch me saying something like that, it would almost certainly take steps to ensure that things weren't "going just fine" for much longer. It is a curse I've learned to endure

Anyhow, since I've actually bothered to learn a bit of GuideML, write a couple of (admittedly not very good) entries with it and actually get involved in some conversations, I have noticed that I'm getting to "meet" a few more peeps on here.

Well know you me too!

Well, now I know you, yeah

Quite...

so what are these geeky things you like to do?

Oh, yeah. The geeky things.

Well, where do I begin?

Generally playing around with computers is one thing, I guess. Not very good at coding, but I like breaking things.

I can be found on a talker called ektosphere for the mostpart of the day. At the current time, I have spent 29 days, 19 hours, 15 mins and 41 secs of my lifetime logged into it. That's got to count as geeky. When there used to be a talker called Terminus, I was an admin on it! That was the highlight of my week. Being made admin on what is essentially a geekier version of a chat room

I've also spent a very long time in usenet. I hardly ever post stuff anymore, but I used to be a "reg" in at least one alt group.

Oh, and I run a little website for my cirlce of friends. And I write my own PHP stuff for it, too. I like PHP. That's another geeky trait of mine.

And science fiction. I'm quite a Babylon 5 fan, and can usually be found watching different guises of Star Trek®. Also, I'm quite getting into Asimov, too.

I'm sure there must be more than that.....

Goodness, you do a lot, i've got some questions (i'm not very techie, just bored at work)

what's ektosphere? a talker? what do you talk about in these places? it all sounds a little .... anarchistic

what's a reg in an alt group? again it sounds like you're trying to change to world! (i truely know nothing about the inner world of computers - shallow depth me!)

PHP? come on, i think you're making it up now!

Babylon 5 - first couple of series were good ... well the first series was great, then they brought in that big american... bruce thingymabobbery and it all got a bit gung-ho. and then it lost the plot, probably because the show was threatened with cancellation so they thought we'd better hurry up and end, then season 5 had nothing much going for it (too harsh?) started with promise, but kinda fell apart. much preferred deep space 9 when it comes to space station action - a lot to do with the presence of avery brooks!

i don't read much sci-fi any more, used to. i found asimov quite difficult, i read i robot, but couldn't finish foundation

god, really sorry, i feel as though all i've done is slagg everything, don't take it like that - i'm opinionated!

Heh-heh,

Ektosphere is a talker, and a website, too. You can find out more about talkers at - http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A603730/ [plugs a guide entry he wrote]. In talkers, we generally talk about, well, anything. In ektosphere there's alot of tech-talk type of stuff, but that's not true of all talkers. It's pretty much an anything-goes kind of thing, but the most common topics are along the lines of Unix, Pubs, what everyone's up to at the week-end and generally taking the out of each other.

A reg - is short for regular. Like a regular in a pub. Usenet is divided into lots of sections, like rec. groups for recreation, comp. groups for computer stuff and alt. means alternative. Alt groups are pretty much a wild jungle compared to the rest of usenet.

PHP means Hypertext Preprocessor. It's a way of doing fancy things with webpages, like making them grab data from databases. There's all sorts of wonderful things you can do with PHP.

As for B5 - I'd have to disagree there. I started watching it when it was just after the beginning of season 2. I've watched all seasons now, but I think that season 1 was basically just introducing the characters, etc and the real story didn't really get going until season 2. I agree with you about season 5- bit of a let-down really. Must say I think seasons 2 and 3 were best. I quite missed the Vorlons when they left

I know what you mean about Asimov and Foundation. I read Prelude To Foundation and quite liked it - so I went to read Foundation and didn't even get half way through before giving up on it. In fact, I remember when I was about 13 at school - I wrote a book review on Foundation and basically slagged it off and admitted not having read the whole thing because it was a pile of . And they gave me an "A".

so ... h2g2 is a talker then? do you actually talk - like physically (yep, i really know nothing about the ins and outs of these things.

all the webby stuff sounds good - i can do a wee bit of html - enough to maintain our website, once it gets sorted, but i don't have time to teach myself anything else (i'm basically abusing my internet privilages at work!)- so you'll be handy to know if i ever get stuck!

nope, i'm still disagreeing - captain sinclair (was that the first chap's name?) looked far better in polyester than captain sherridan (i'm really getting into this - i'm on a roll....) they did some interesting stories with sinclair later one, going back in time and him turning out to be galen (?) god haven't watched it in ages - i was MADE to watch it.

what kinda music you into?

Not quite - h2g2 isn't a talker. A talker won't have any fancy graphics and you can't "post" things to message boards like on h2g2. And there's no actual voice being heard or anything like that. It's completely text based, so whatever you type, you say (or emote, etc).

I really wouldn't know about who looked better in polyester - I'm not that kind of guy The later adventures of Sinclair/Valen were certainly some of the best episodes. Or my favourites, anyway. Oh, and it was "commander Jeffrey Sinclair" - he wasn't good enough to be a captain Anyway - I think if there's ever a vote about B5 command staff - I'd vote Ivanova every time


Music?

Uh, bit of most things, really. Except anything the rude boys in Vauxhall Novas play as they cruise around town on Friday nights
Right now, I've got Blink 182 in the car and Terrorvision in the CD player at home. I'm currently refusing to listen to Robbie Williams because my girlfriend went to see a concert of his a couple of weeks ago and she hasn't shut up about it since In fact, here's how geeky I am: I'm trying to develop an in-car CD player which recognises boy-band CDs and spits them back out, refusing to play them. I know each print of a CD has a unique serial number, which is how the Windows CD player remembers what the CD is called, so I just need to get a list of "bad" CD serials and make some kind of firmware to recognise them and automatically eject them. Oh, and I haven't quite worked out how to keep the lists updated. Whaddya think? Will it sell?

you're in the car?....right now? that's clever

now remember, i'm not technical or anything, but wouldn't it just be easier not to put the offending boy band cd in the player, thus avoiding the need to hear it?

now don't slag the robmiester, god like genius to us ladies....

i'd have to say that telepath lady - the blonde one, the one that was married to bruce-willis lookalike garabaldi - she ended up doing nypd blue ... much more fancible.

What kind of music do the rude boys in Vauxhall Novas play as they cruise around town on Friday nights ?

Nah, not in the car right now. Just saying that right now in my car there's Blink and right now at home, there's terrorvision.

And I certainly never do put anysuch CD in the cd player in my car. It's when my girlfriend is in the car with me that the problem begins...

Blonde telepath married to Garibaldi? When did this happen? Must've missed some episodes or something. You mean Talia Winters, right? I was kinda hoping she'd make a reappearance before the end of B5, but I guess it wasn't to be. Did you know they're making a TV film / pilot episode called "Babylon 5 - Legend Of The Rangers"? I've put a link to the site on my personal space if you're interested.

And the rude boys? They'll play anything they can turn the bass up really high on, so that you can't hear anything except for "THUMP THUMP THUMP"

talia winters yeah that was her name; it was IRL she was married to garibaldi

ah respect... the basis for a good relationship - lover her - love robbie its a sad fact of life ... same goes with soaps

listening to mark and lard on radio 1 just now - they are my heros of comedy!

the rude boys sound interesting.

so what are plans for the weekend?

I just....ca ...ca ....can't do it! I can't bring myself to love robbie williams!

This week-end promises to be interesting! In about 10 minutes I'm off to take my Auntie to Heathrow, then later on I'm off to the pub until my Girlfriend comes down. Tomorrow, we'll both be on our way to Brighton. I don't think we'll be getting much in the way of sunny weather, but we're more interested in the bars
Sunday will be a day of recovery, I think.

Got any plans?

"then later on I'm off to the pub until my Girlfriend comes down"

oh missess

no plans, W****E no mates this weekend i think. thought you might be going to the spring onion thing in machester, apparently its a h2g2 meet, shopping, drinking and bowling (that's how it was advertised to me)

have a fun one!

hi ya,

d'u miss me?

Of course

What ya been up to lately?

good answer

Nothing much, was away at the university of warwick last week, doing a conference jolly, it was kinda fun, at least it was away from the office. what about you? been doing anything interesting with mrs Freddy [c/o cloud~9] Keeper Of The Word "fnar!", Zaphodista?

Yeah - we went to the Ministry Of Sound festival at Knebworth. I was kinda dreading it cos dance music isn't really my scene and I'm really useless at dancing. Turned out to be great, though.

cool, em'day good playing?