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

Hello
How are you these days? Read your entry, wondered where you are...?

I'm around, just not quite as frequently as I used to be.

I'm not often around, either.
I'm new and it's still exciting to talk to new people far away, as well as find unexpected Guide entries.
How's your battle with nasty microbes these days?
I'm afraid I've been losing mine recently... Nothing serious, but it's shocking how the evil things can spoil one's day.

Me and my microbes are rather friendly at the moment, thankfully. :D

What guide entries have you most enjoyed recently? I've been trying to motivate myself to finish my entry on NFP, but I just can't seem to work up the drive.

I forget what NFP is...
It's a strange place where one can call on somebody in a casual way and then go on as if they have been good friends for ages...
Pleased to meet you, Mikey and hope to hear from you more eventually. I'm Elena and there's a lot about me on my PS.
I can't be very helpful as far as the Guide goes, because I've only been here for a couple of months, it still seems pretty confusing and I'm horribly pressed for time. When I do find time, I tend to look for specific topics connected with my work and for the kind of interesting but easy-to-read material that I can offer my students. I'm not much of a writer myself, even in my own language, let alone in English, and I certainly lack time to attempt it.
I definitely liked the essay about Kevin Carter by Skankyrich, it may still be in PR.
What kind of drive do you need to get down to work on your entry?
It's a serious question, I do wonder how people find time and will to do any voluntary work (I have to be quite mercenary these days...)

It's me again.
I've been to your page and looked up NFP.
I've seen you knew Barton. It'll soon be a year since he died .
Could you tell me a bit about him as a memorial to him on this sad anniversary.
It's something that really annoys me about cyberspace: people come and go, disappear or die, relationships seem to be much less personal than in RL. Forgive me the rant, I shouldn't judge, being a novice.

Once upon a time, just the idea of writing an entry for the Edited Guide was enough to motivate me. These days, though, I just have so much writing that I have to do for work, or that I should do for my career, or that I'd really love to do for my own personal satisfaction, that a topic needs to be really compelling for me to work on a guide entry, plus I need to feel as if my writing it will in some way fill a needed hole in the guide. My entry on nuns was like that -- it was a decent chunk of work, but I felt like it was a topic on which I could add something unique, interesting, and useful to the guide.

Barton was a good soul, who sometimes loved people more than was good for him, and had some fierce internal battles about his own limits. And I will forever remember him in his Ren faire costume.

Did you meet Barton in RL? The memories are much more real then...

Who reads the Guide apart from the researchers? 'The place of h2g2 in the internet world' is not clear to me yet. I've noticed from people's conversations the project is not exactly thriving at the moment...

Yep, met him several times.

Who reads EG entries? Well, other than h2g2 members, I'd bet that the next most common group would be people who get to an entry via a google search -- there are definitely a good number of search strings for which an EG entry shows up within the first few links on google or other search engines.

Have just tried googling a couple of subjects - 'Pascal's wager' and 'Assertiveness' - no trace of hootoo . Didn't go farther than the fifth page, though...

Hooray! 'Christmas in Lebanon' by Wilma came second on Google.
Have you read it, BTW? It's really good. I suppose, the first two subjects I tried were two well-covered.You need a less known topic for the entry to get to the top of a Google page.
Why I asked this question was that while writing informative entries people tend to think about their reader, don't they? Who is going to read your text and be grateful to you for all your efforts?
Another hootoo writer I admire is Woodpigeon. There is a good piece by him (in PR?)at the moment - 'The long tail' - worth a look.
my day starts
What's the time difference between us? As I am writing this it's 8.33 am. It's 9 hours between me and Raymond, and between me and Texas, where my sister lives.

Well, if it's 9 hours between you and Texas, it's probably 11 hours between you and Seattle, as we're 2 hours behind Texas.

with your day then!