Looking Back in AWW

Posted by Dylan Parry on January 3, 2006, 11:48 am

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Looking Back In AWW
A Usenet Retrospective, 2005

Well, it's been an interesting year, has 2005. A lot has happened, some
things good, others not so, but here's my pick of the interesting bits
and the bobs that we shouldn't forget. I've missed a lot out, but a
retrospective look isn't complete without the holes one's mind cannot
fill ;)

_Affordable Host_
Well, I suppose it's rather sad to start out by mentioning that AWW is
*not* the Affordable Host helpdesk, but some things just need saying :)

Affordable Host was sold to DotCanada. This resulted in a massive
fallout of former AH customers, most (okay, an exaggeration) of whom
decided to post their experiences and misery in AWW. Okay, nothing
unusual here, you say? Well I'd agree with you, but this time we saw
Tina saying that she was saddened by the way the company had gone down
the pan, and I for one agree with her. 'Twas great while it lasted.

_Forum4Designers_
This one makes me chuckle whenever I think of it. It could be a great
idea, maybe in a parallel universe where Usenet doesn't exist, and F4D
has its own content, but in this particular universe Usenet *does* exist
and F4D *doesn't* have its own content :\

Of course, most if not all attempts at emulating Google Groups will end
in failure, but maybe that's because GG is such a terrible idea in the
first place? Am I trolling enough yet? ;)

_Bill Logan_
Through investigation by GreyWyvern, members of the group became aware
of the death of Bill Logan. Bill was a much loved, member of the group
for many years until his death in late 2004. We became aware that he
hadn't posted for a while when someone began asking questions about
subdomains ¡V something that Bill had talked about previously and had
become quite a heated, if not geeky, debate. Following that, Grey
decided to investigate and discovered that Bill had passed away.

The group, as a collective, sent a card to his widow and daughter (which
can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/8rce6 and http://tinyurl.com/akdow). A
little while later we received a thank you card from her (which can be
seen at http://tinyurl.com/92bnm and http://tinyurl.com/8kp95). Note
that links redirect to the original URLs on GreyWyvern's site.

Rest in Peace, Bill.

_Spammer and Idiots_
2005 also saw our largest collection of idiots and spammers yet! In
August and September, we started to become bombarded with postings from
someone who claimed that Google were in breach of human rights
conventions by keeping their archive at Google Groups. One day in August
saw almost 100 separate threads started by this individual (one can only
assume they acted alone) in which they continued to reply to their own
posts :s

Does this mean that the September that never ended has *truly* not
ended, or could it be something entirely different behind the recent
spate? You decide ;)

_Duende and Dennis_
Duende, or someone claiming to be him, returned during September and it
transpired that he had been masquerading as another poster named Dennis
for some time! He acknowledged as much, but also hinted that he had been
posted under a third name and challenged us to find out who this third
person was.

Many regulars had their suspicions as to whom they could have been, and
discussions between some of them resulted in one or two names being
strong possibilities, yet Duende has not told the group who this person
was and so far no body has made any firm accusations! It remains a
mystery to this day.

Come on Duende, put us out of our miseries!

_Toby_
During the week of the London bombings we noticed that Toby Inkster had
suddenly stopped posting. This got a few people rather worried about
him, and many attempted to make contact with him. It later transpired,
as predicted by some, that Toby had gone on holiday a few days before
and had not told anyone (which is of course his prerogative). A couple
of weeks later, he returned in a Hawaiian shirt with much sunburn,
carrying a wicker donkey under his arm . :)

Apparently, Toby has a (smart) policy of not telling folk online when
he's going away just in case we all decide to burgle his house! I guess
it was just bad timing, but all is good as our favourite pedant is okay¡K

_brucie_
brucie (yay!) came back in October, made billions of posts, then
buggered off (he wishes!) again, just like he always does.

_Mornington Crescent_
The fantabulous game, Morning Crescent, has been making a comeback over
the last few months of the year. In case you don't know what this is, I
suggest you go to your local library to borrow a copy of the rules ¡V
they would take far too long to explain here.

_The Eternal Question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea"_
The AWW sages (and basils) came up with an answer of Hobnobs. The
reasoning behind this is that the Unicode values of the letters of
"Hobnobs" added together, cubed and then divided by 1 million leaves 1
Hobnob per day for a whole year :\

_The Notorious Sharif_
Not quite a millionaire, but getting there steadily, Sharif jumped back
into the group in the middle of December. It's early days, but I read
somewhere that he's going to pay for us all to go on holiday next year,
and it was on the Internet so it must be true ;)

_Famous Chess Players_
Last, but certainly not least, the famous American chess player (and
failed lawyer) Paul Morphy became briefly famous in the group after we
all heard his name for the first time :D

So what's going to happen in 2006? How the hell am I supposed to know?!
My crystal ball is at the dry cleaners, and my spare I lent to someone
in alt.html, but never got it back :) You'll just have to wait!

Well, here's hoping you all have a great New Year (whether you celebrate
it or not), and hopefully this year we'll settlement the "Tables vs.
CSS" argument once and for all :D

--
Dylan Parry

Disclaimer: This post does not represent the opinion of me or my cats.