>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WELCOME TO <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ___ ___ __ __ _____ ___ / __| ___ / _ \ ____ \ \ / / _ _ | __ | ___ ___ / __| | (__ | _ \ | _ | |_ / \ V / | \| | | __| \ \/\/ / \__ \ \___| | / |_| |_| / / |_| | .` | |_____| \ /\ / |___/ |_|_\ /___| |_|\_| \/ \/ --- * Issue 15 * --- --- * C R A Z Y N E W S ! ! * --- Welcome to the 15th issue of CrazyNews: --- * Contents * --- * Introduction * The News! * Ossie's Travel Tips * Skid's Bonus Travel Tips * Admin Admissions! * Residents Homepages Competition * Big Al's Woodworking Tips * Mr. Skid's Woodworking Tips * Corrections * Submit Stuff * Mailing Information --- * Introduction * --- Hey, wait a minute. What am I doing here. Who volunteered me to write this? Oh, wait. It was me. Welcome to the new (although it's not really new) and improved (that's debatable, too) Skid-ized version of CrazyNews. We've got lots of interesting things to tell you in this month's issue. The big news this month is the new code. I guess Nevyn figured that if we're going to have a new editor, we may as well have a new code base for CrazyLands, too. Whatever the reason, it's kewl. Kudos to Nev for all the hard work he's put into it. Now then, on with the show... ~Skid --- * The News! * --- * No News Alert! * Well, we've told you about the new code. That news. We told you about the new editor. That's even bigger news. You want more? Well, we'd give you more, but nobody has sent anything in of interest. We could make things up but that could get messy, so you'll just get a shorter version of news this month and you'll like it, mister! * We lied, bye Big Al! * Actually, there is SOME news, all be it sad news. Big Al has written his last woodworking tip for us this issue, he's leaving us due to other work commitments and heading the same way as Raist! :( Big thanks goes to Big Al [appropriate - Ed] for all the woodworking advice we've received from him. Look out for Skid's (or someone's) bonus woodworking tips in this issue and more! * We lied again! * Just a quick reminder, CrazyNews is only delivered once every two months! --- * Ossy's Travel Tips * --- * Let's Go! * I discovered the hard way just how much better your trip can be if you are prepared with a good guidebook. I'm referring to "Let's Go!", "Lonely Planet", "Rough Guide" and other such publications. I went unprepared to Australia and New Zealand and was half way through Europe before I finally invested. I missed out, and am sorry that I did. We bought a "Let's Go" in Berlin, after we had already visited Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Holland. We had benefitted from others' guides, but would have got much more out of our trip if we'd been properly equipped from the start. The "Let's Go" provides useful phrases, exchange rates, and local history to get you started. Then, it's wonderfully organised into categories of "where to stay", "what to see", "what else is around" and so on. The guide will help you to decide what you feel it is important for you to see and what might be the best way to see it. For example, my friend and I were in Vienna. What do you want in Vienna? Viennese chocolate cake, of course! So, we flipped to the 'Vienna' section in the 'Austria' portion of our guide, and it provided a few options of places to see, recommending "Demel", a wonderful cafe offering tasteful cakes at a reasonable price. The "Let's Go" even provided an average price to expect to pay so you could decide before you even went to the restaurant whether it was something you could afford. It also gave complete and very easy to follow directions. Let me tell you - that there's good cake! The book will cost about $40 Canadian to buy, but will save you at least that much in frustration and in cash if your trip takes you for a month or so. It is well worth the investment to know where you're going, what you're going to see and how much you're going to pay to see it. You can plan your days in transit, rather than when you arrive in a city. They usually list the local Internet cafes too, so you can get your CL fix and make us all jealous by telling us what you're up to. Do remember to also check into the local Tourist Information, however, as they might know of a local event which the guide will not list - particularly if it's for a special occasion. From my experience and what I've heard from other travellers, your best bet in Europe is the "Let's Go", but if you're going 'down under', you're better off with a "Lonely Planet". --- * Skid's Bonus Travel Tips * --- I only have one tip to give all of you spods who are planning a trip. Come to Boston!!! Yes, that's right. Boston. There's really no reason to go anywhere else. Directions are fairly easy. If you're west of the Atlantic, go left. If you're east of the Atlantic, ask someone where you are. If that someone is a penguin, go south. If that person has a truck in their front yard, go north. If you can't see an Ocean, just go right and keep walking until you see water. Then go back to the asking part. It's just that easy. --- * Admin Admissions! * --- Hi everyone. Welcome to the first issue of CrazyNews that's been 'Skid-ified'. I'm sure he's done a great job and it's nice he's been able to take over. As most of you will have seen, we've moved to the new code base recently, and we're having one or two problems with the transition. Nevyn has been hard at work on this code for several months. It's got hundreds of internal changes as well as lots of front end ones, and is practically a totally new talker base which is called Twocan. In the next few weeks, this talker base will be GPL'ed and anyone in the world will be able to contribute and offer changes to the code to make the talker more and more stable and giving more time for individual developers to work on highly spoecialised features and advancements - this is all great news for CrazyLands as we'll get both exposure and more rapid code development. Nevyn has managed to do all of these changes and most of the testing alone. I've not managed to find time to help him at all with it, despite being asked, and so if we're seeing problems it's because this huge task has been undertaken by practically one person in a very short space of time relative to the complexity of the project. The code is being fixed and patched up to solve some of the unforseen problems with running on a live site and we're getting more and more stable, with cleaner functionality all the time. Nevyn is probably working on the code as I speak, he's so busy with it that he's not even had time to write admin admissions this month, which is why you're hearing from me again (hey, stop groaning). I hope you'll all be patient and put up with the problems we're having. Right now, I know we don't even have help files. Part of this reason is that the help file format has completely changed and no one has had time to write new files (me bneing lazy again). I'd like to ask that if anyone is interested in writing help files for the talker, could they please mail us at crazy@crazylands.org as soon as possible, so we can actually get some freshly written files for our new code base. So from me, I'd just like to say a big 'well done' to Nevyn for getting this code on site and for working so hard on it to fix all the problems we've been having. Hopefully we'll have a more stable than ever talker really soon - it's already one of the most advanced servers on the net. Thanks Nev! See you all online sometime, ~Swiff --- * Residents Homepages Competition * --- This month we announce the winner of the CrazyLands Homepage of the Month Award, and it goes to: -----~ WINNER ~---- Crazylands http://www.crazylands.org -----~ WINNER ~----- It's just such a great site that it won again. If you haven't seen it recently, check it out. See pictures of your favorite spods and maybe add some of your own! --- * Big Al's Woodworking Tips * --- Due to Big Al's external commitments (his work for Raists Netview Solutions), this will be his last woodworking tip! :( Thanks to Al for all his work thus far. Good luck in new things! "Woodworking saws have a very ancient pedigree stretching back over 4000 years. Through the centuries advances in technology have improved the quality of the materials used in their production and the ingenuity of successive generations of craftsmen has supplied us with a variety of solutions to the task of cutting wood:- fast, straight, curved, and fine cutting and so on. Some saws are design to cut on the push stroke others on the pull. Nevertheless, every saw severs the wood in basically the same way. A saw has a continuous row of pointed teeth along its cutting edge or edges. Each tooth acts like a miniature chisel or knife blade cutting tiny shavings or slithers of wood which fall to the floor as saw dust." --- * Mr. Skid's Bonus Woodworking Tips * --- The pointy end of the nail goes *down*. --- * Corrections * --- Corrections? Hah! As if we ever make mistakes! --- * Submit Stuff * --- If you want to submit anything, use the following email addresses to send your stuff. Please remember that all the usual rules about content apply, and the editors reserve the right to change any submitted articles. Please make sure you say so if you do not wish your name and/or email address to be published!! crazynews@crazylands.org All submissions, jokes or debate topics, etc. crazy@crazylands.org Any email to admin, complaints, etc. Back Issues - Available on the CrazyLands web site at: http://www.crazylands.org/crazynews.html --- * Mailing Information * --- This email has been sent to you because you're a resident on CrazyLands, the talker which runs at: crazylands.org 6969 See our web page at http://www.crazylands.org for more information. If you do not wish to receive this email, please log onto the talker and type: crazynews off If you do not know why you have been sent this mail, please let us know at: crazynews@crazylands.org ...send along the email address that you received this email at and any character names you may have had on the program. Your email address is never published to users or external sources. It is a rule of the talker that you must set a valid email address however, so that you may be contacted if there is a problem or with important talker information. This is not a stored mailing list. --- * The End (of Issue 15) ! * ---