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

Hi Toxx,

How are things with you?

I miss our intelligent conversations.

Icy

Yay, Icy! Dare I say 'cool'. Still zapping them thur xwords ol' buddy?

I'm still baffling the legal and forensic experts, so I remain at liberty thus far. Otherwise, I'm having a bit of an altercation on my 'No Subject' thread. I still contribute to QQ and tend to chat to The Oldie's tame rocket scientist: MarkL. I even had a piece read out by J Dimbleby on 'Any Answers' a coupla weeks ago.

How go things your end? Do join in on the 'God thread' here. Any topic admissible. Most contributors intelligent if a bit 'off the wall' - self included, I guess.

toxx

Yeah still doing the crosswords and some other wonderfully silly word games. Come and join in if you can bear it.

Lost my job in January. Frantically looking for something else. The only interest so far has been a certain organisation you may be familiar with - the kind that wear dark uniforms and drive cars with blue flashing lights. A long way to go yet, though.

Glad to hear you're still a free man. I just read your "no subject" thread. It must be very frustrating for you, but you're old and wise enough to know what to expect, I suppose.

Now I'm no longer reliant on my ex-employer's censorship of messageboards, I may get back into the QQ board once again. I bet everyone's moved on now.

If I get any philosophical insights, I'll let you know on the God thread. It's all a bit above my head, to be honest. I prefer theorems.

I did post you a mathematical riddle on JR's page a few months back - it's at F131739?thread=531955&latest=1

Anyway - stay in touch, and let me know how your battle for freedom is going.

Best wishes, Icy

My Nephew is a detective sergeant, but don't do it! Get on to The Oldie board and join in the mathematical puzzles with Exco and MarkL. Maybe they could put you in the way of employment too. Having contacts can't be bad. Anyway, you should read Mark's 'Einstein Memorial Puzzle'! I think it's now dropped off the bottom of Page 1.

toxx

Hello IcyN, back about again I see.

Always do with more folk at my place http://jamesstgeorge.proboards32.com/

Toxx I made my page here titled JamesStGeorge with no spaces as it made the search facility go directly there. I have just noticed it no longer seems to work. Any Idea why? Can I have been deliberately excluded from the search mechanism?

Hi, James. I experimented using the fact that I've recently added the word 'roxx' to my nickname. Since it's unlikely to be used elsewhere, I did a search on it and found the one and only hit to be as required.

I suggest that you add a similar enigmatic phrase to your own identifier, as an indexing element.

toxx

The point is I did remove my spaces so as to have that effect some time back and it then worked. I have been adding the instruction to search on that spaceless name to my ordinary bbc board posts to point people to my board address. Now it does not work! I begin to suspect foul play by the bbc.

I know I could supposedly add the full web address but that might well be more objected too in time, due to the frequency! From the counter data on my site I have seen the occasional referring site being my h2g2 page so it did work as hoped for.

[JamesStGeorge my h2g2 page search there with no spaces]
now changing to
[JamesStGeorge search with no spaces]
As Google works the same way on 'JamesStGeorge'

Evening James,

I'll drop in when I get a few minutes.

I read in the Times today that the BBC had cut most of the BBCi boards. Is this true (I haven't checked). What's the word on the street?

Icy

On their Points of View board I saw that Drama, North and South, Top of the Pops, and Cult(?) have all gone or about to. There may be more though if you have seen something. None that I use but the relentless culling would seem to be continuing.Usual BBC style it seems. A few days notice and get lost.

Here's what I saw...

February 26, 2005

Ladies who lunch on the net want BBC to get the message
By Stefanie Marsh

THEY are members of one of the country’s most clandestine communities. Predominantly female and in many cases highly educated, they have gathered — unbeknown even to their husbands — under assumed names to meet “like-minded people” for more than two years.

But this morning this mysterious group will wake up to find its cosy world in tatters. Yesterday the BBC axed the majority of its online message boards.

The thousands of people who spent guilty lunch hours or spare evenings logging on to the BBC website to deconstruct North & South or ruminate over Dirty Den’s unfathomable sexual charisma, say they have been maliciously turfed out of cyberspace.

Having succumbed to her favourite show’s talent for the melodramatic, one EastEnders superfan likened the cull to Hitler’s 1934 purge: “This is the BBC’s night of the long knives.”

Since Tuesday, when the BBC broke the news, users have been mobilising what little consumer power they can muster: petitioning, and being ignored by, Michael Grade, the Director-General, and appealing to journalists to take up their cause.

In a call to arms, “airsandgraces”, a long-time pundit on the board devoted to the BBC’s adaptation of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, North and South, wrote: “Why do they think they can bully a bunch of middle-aged women? I am sorry that to be middle-aged, middle class and female is to be a nonentity in this day and age.”

She, like many of her peers, is furious that while boards devoted to male-orientated factual subjects such as football have survived, message boards attached to dramas and soaps have been axed.

Particular venom is reserved for Sophie Walpole, the BBC’s head of interactive drama and entertainment, and the woman ( or “cow” as she is described by one North & South stalwart) whose decision it was to pull the plug. “I don’t think this woman has actually looked at the North & South site,” said one of the 127 women who have e-mailed The Times in the past 24 hours about the decision to shut the board. “It is full of articulate talking about conditions in Victorian times or Elizabeth Gaskell.

“We’ve got the stuff between our ears but we don’t have the opportunity to have this level of stimulating debate in our everyday lives.

“So many of the people using it are elderly or they’re stay-at-home mothers and this is their link to the world.”

Ms Walpole said that the message boards had been taken over by small cliques. “I’m quite happy they have made friends there but I’m not sure that talking about hairdressers or whether or not they fancy Ian Beale is a good use of public space,” she said. “Some of these message boards have been up for four years and they have run their course. A lot of what is said on the boards doesn’t even qualify as a conversation, it’s just noise and it puts off other users of the site.”

Her opinion is born out by one of the final notes posted on the EastEnders site. It reads: “stop being such a cow you sado, coolgirl is cool actually and we have a lot of mates on this board who are also a lot cooler then u!”

Thanks IcyN found the on line Times page with the aid of the headline and author.

Cult boards seem to be a whole set not just one. Though they did get a whole months notice and a page to post alternative sites!

Hi Doc,

You'll be delighted to hear that I won't be joining the porcine crowd after all. They didn't like me (do they like anyone?), but I expect to be back behind the desk with another employer in April.

Sorry to hear about your latest legal battle. It just doesn't make sense to me at all. I wish I had better knowledge of the legal process and could help in some way.

Icy

Hi Icy. I reckon you'd find legal study rewarding and profitable. You're perhaps too bright to be a copper. Anyway, I hope your new post suits you well.

Thanks for your kindly thoughts. I've had a bit of help from Lovewood over on the QQ board. Mostly, I guess I'm a fairly well-fledged DIY lawyer now - but 'two heads...' and all that stuff.

I have a legal team meeting in Birmingham tomorrow. The case itself is still pencilled in for 3rd April. I've just booked my train ticket online for Brum. That FastTicket system is handy when the station is busy. Return is only £8. It's avoiding having to use taxis at either end that saves the money. I used to know Birmingham, and I doubt that New Street to Steelhouse Lane has changed unrecognisably in spite of the latest road system.

Must take a squint at the online Brum map to see if memory serves.

toxx

Well good luck tomorrow.

I spent 3 years in Birmingham in my (misspent) youth. Whenever I've been back (about once every ten years) the place has changed out of all recognition. I wonder if Reddington's Rare Records still exists?

Now if you're looking for the best curry house in Selly Oak ...

Cheers, Icy. I think the barrister is stitching me up. There are loads of anomalies in the prosecution date. Thousands of files are cited with the same impossible date! The implication is some interference with the computer data, which is the guts of the evidence against me! I'm gonna contact the solicitors tomorrow. They may not be in on it!

Yup, Brum has certainly become more multi-racial than I recall. Now more similar to Wolverhampton, which I always recall as being so. I just about managed to find my way on foot from Steelhouse Lane to New Street Station (cunningly disguised as the Bull Ring centre!).

toxx

Hi Doc,

Sorry I haven't posted for a while - pressures of the new job and all that.

How are things legally? From time to time I do worry about how you're getting along.

While I'm here, can I just say how impressed I am with your new "upside down" strapline. Is it your own work?

Icy

Hi Toxx...

Did you not spot my previous posting?

I could have sworn that I'd replied, Icy.

I suspect there was a glitch that made it appear that my message had been sent. The legal stuff all comes to a head near the end of June, apparently. That's the custodial decision stuff. The eviction appeal seems to have worked. Complicated sod, ain't I!

I'm also putting in for DLA mobility component. That will be another £42 quid a week. I think I'm sure to get it. The quack says I have thoracic kyphosis. Convenient, eh? '

Well I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for all of those.

Best of luck!

Good to hear you are still on the lose Doc!

Good upsidedown stuff, only the a for e does not quite work.