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

Usually, I consider this word to represent something which must be avoided as much as possible. But I just spent several minutes reading through an old forum (the one in Crater Labs when Lil was designing the CLI float for the parade and moved her studio to the second story of the main building in the CLI complex), and it was like watching an old home-video recording, and reminiscing on old times.

It's strange. Usually time on a computer can be called "wasted". But has h2g2 perhaps become a possible way to have a virtual life that can be as fulfilling and satisfying as real life?

No, it isn't. Not near as much fun as real life is (referring, of course, to when life is going well). However, I think I just saw something that made me smile inwardly more than I have in a few days: this plays permanantly stores memories to be as clear in the future as they were when posted. I actually relived that early CLI experience. Nice to know that, when I'm growing older and want to remember what I was like in my teens, I can just log on to h2g2 and read backlog to actually see what my life was like. It's not real life, and it may in fact be wasting my life, but it's nice to know that I'm at least getting *something* from sitting at h2g2 for a few hours every day, instead of *really* wasting my time on other web sites. Just food for thought.

How true. I haven't got to the stage of reading through old threads, but often i look at the very beginning of Hangar 42 to see how long the mission has been going for.

I find it fun to reread old stuff, too. But not all of it is as good as it originally was. Particularly threads that intertwine - you know, where you say in one thread "ok, I'll be back in a minute, I just have to do X", then you go to another thread and do X, then come back to the first thread. A similar case is the original Bond movie. There was one part when there were 2 threads going - I was in one thread as a bad guy in his hideout, and DD was in another as Bond tracking the bad guy. One afternoon, we were both online at the same time and posting to both threads. The tension, for us, really built until Bond came crashing through a wall into the bad guy thread. That would be impossible to recreate on rereading.

Another difficulty would be to find particular things on multi-version threads. Like finding the original UFO incident on the doughnut thread. Who knows what the thread was called then. I suppose you could search the guide if you could think of something distinctive about the post.

Anyway, even though I have to wade through lots of backlog every week (being away every Wednesday and Saturday), I do enjoy reading it. I wouldn't feel right posting to a thread if I hadn't read the backlog. In fact, that is the reason I gave up on the doughnut thread - I couldn't keep up with the backlog. Similarly, I have temporarily dropped out of the cafe thread, at least until after the election.

And speaking of backlog ... Affy - this is the second week you have been away!

Btw - I hadn't noticed that you were writing journal entries again. Otherwise I would have commented earlier.