>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WELCOME TO <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ___ ___ __ __ _____ ___ / __| ___ / _ \ ____ \ \ / / _ _ | __ | ___ ___ / __| | (__ | _ \ | _ | |_ / \ V / | \| | | __| \ \/\/ / \__ \ \___| | / |_| |_| / / |_| | .` | |_____| \ /\ / |___/ |_|_\ /___| |_|\_| \/ \/ --- * ISSUE 5 * --- --- * C R A Z Y N E W S ! ! * --- Welcome to the fifth edition of CrazyNews: you've seen the web site, you've spodded on the talker - now read the newsletter! --- * Contents * --- * Introduction * The News! * Impressions of a Spodmeet * Admin Admissions! * Osy's Travel Tips * The Little Debate * Residents Homepages Competition * Big Al's Woodworking Tips -!NEW!- * CrazyStats * CrazyLands Tutorial * Telnet Client Review * Submit Stuff * Mailing Information --- * Introduction * --- Well, it's time for another issue of CrazyNews, and we're back crazier than ever. Don't blame me, blame the excessive eating of tuna bake and sleep deprivation for that! For those of you who wonder what tuna bake is, it's the latest spod food that is being brought to new heights of fame in the Swiff and Merlin Household. We're still looking for people to help with content, so if you're a budding writer or just want to air a view, please email us with your articles. With virtually no-one asking to be taken off his mailing list I guess you either auto-dump this mail into your trash-can ;) or you like reading this stuff, so please email us and tell us what we're doing right and wrong. As usual, I start to waffle so I'll sign off and seeya all soon! ~Raist --- * The News! * --- * UPDATE - Globe Trotting CrazyLands Residents! * Simba and Skid are on their travels in Europe and have already visited the UK, attending the biggest UK CrazyLands spodmeet yet! Over the next few weeks they will be visiting different spods (and *real* people!). Their itinerary includes: Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Austria, Poland, Germany and back to Britain before their return home to Canada and US. Nexus visits the UK! Nexus will be touching down this month in London for a short stay with some strange spodlike people. Everyone's looking forward to the visit (especially his 'lil sis Ostrich)!! Wheezie is also heading on a European tour of her own with Contiki Tours. She and a friend from home will be visiting the high points of Europe, we think. Actually, we don't remember where exactly she's going, but we hope she has a great time and sends us a postcard! :) Last Autumn various spods visited each other around the world, so this time we'll keep you posted of any developments - send us a postcard here at CrazyNews (crazynews@crazylands.org)! If any of you are visiting anywhere this year, let us know and we'll set up our own 'CrazyWorld - Places to visit Guide'! * Gladys the Travelling cow * For those of you who haven't take a look at Gladys new website which can now be found at http://gladys.org . Her new pages include all the old stories and some new adventures, including the long awaited 'Sherman Tank Tour'. [Last months web page winner! - Ed] * CrazyLands T-Shirts: *THE* Official Spodding Gear! * Help support CrazyLands and show your true colors by getting your hands on one of the new, limited first-edition CrazyLands T-Shirts which are still available at a great price! They look great and will help to keep CrazyLands running. For more details look at the web page (http://www.crazylands.org) or email: Canada: nexus@crazylands.org Price, 20 Canadian Dollars USA: mulder@crazylands.org Price, 16 American Dollars UK (and elsewhere): swiff@crazylands.org Price, 10 UK Pounds --- * Impressions of a Spodmeet * --- The room was silent except for a faint but insistent clicking. A chuckle, then another surge of clicks, followed by an enthusiastic - and a smile. An excerpt from my first Spodmeet in Colchester. Friday evening began quietly, then expanded and grew more feverant as time went on, and more radiation arrived! The tangle of cables and wires between the machines was cunningly hidden, and at the peak time there were nine spods in all. It was discovered on Friday that much to everyone's surprise, Raist had never seen "Spaceballs"! This was promptly rectified. Tuna Bake also made a guest appearance on Saturday night. Festivities drew to a close on Sunday as spods returned to their respective servers across the country following the morning's Tarantino-fest. It was quite an experience - I recommend it. :) *** Thanks to (in alphabetical order) : Gordo; Grim; Merlin; Pumbaa; Raist; Ratcliffe; Sonnyk and Swiff for a wonderful, memorable weekend. *** By OStriCH --- * Admin Admissions! * --- Hey Gang! So here comes another issue of CrazyNews and it keeps getting better and better! Kudos go out to everyone involved with putting it together and hopefully more of you will try to get involved in the coming months. CrazyLands continues to grow more and more stable. It's a constant trade-off between stability and new features, but our top notch coding team seem to be able to keep the bugs in check as they add some great new features. It's great to see that we can continue to move CrazyLands forward without causing endless wibbles! :) Our site has now been stably running for over 4 months, and despite extreme traffic on our link due to the World Cup, lag has been kept in check for the most part (those of you with 12 people connecting over one modem are excepted). :) Anyway, I'll let you all get back to the rest of Issue #5, but a couple of reminders before I do. First, if you'd like a link to your webpage from the CrazyLands site, send me an email (nexus@crazylands.org) and I'd be glad to add you. Not only will it help to bring visitors, but it automatically enters you in our Website of the month contest! Second, there are still some T-Shirts available, from which the proceeds go directly to support the running of the site. Email crazy@crazylands.org for more on that! For those of you that are travelling for the summer, have a great trip and bring back lots of stories! For the rest of you, take care, and I look forward to talking to you all online! See ya! Nexus --- * Osy's Travel Tips * --- * Choosing Your Pack * This is the single most important purchase when preparing for your trip if you plan to backpack. Even if you do not intend to do any trekking, you will have this monster on your back for more hours than you'll want to believe, and having a proper fit is essential. I recommend buying your pack from a trekking store (such as Mountain Equipment Co-Op in Canada) where there are trained personnel available to assist you. Don't be afraid to ask questions and to demand what you want - it's _your_ body that will suffer if you don't! I've had a bad back for years - I know whereof I speak! Your pack, when filled, should make you stand up straight and never make you feel as though you're tipping backwards. Have the straps lengthened or shortened to fit your body, and *always* use the hip belt. The pack should actually rest on your hips, not hang off your shoulders. it's convenient to buy a pack which has a detachable day-pack in which you can store a packed lunch and/or overnight supplies on shorter trips. Also ensure that you can reach items in the bottom of your pack without unpacking every time. Packs which load from the top don't allow for this, and you'll find yourself constantly packing and unpacking. Oh, and if you're Canadian, it's _expected_ that you'll have a Canadian Flag sewn proudly to your pack for all to see! Happy shopping! << OStriCH has globetrotting plans to make !! >> --- * The Little Debate * --- _________ / \ / \ | R.I.P. | | | | Issue 1 | | to | | Issue 4 | | | ~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~ Due to lack of response. *sob* --- * Residents' Homepages Competition * --- Well done to Pumbaa with his Gladys page for winning the Homepage Competition last month! This month's best CrazyLands Homepage Award goes to: ~~ WINNER ~~ MrRight http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/5149/ ~~ WINNER ~~ MrRight has a nicely presented and themed home page! We recommend people take the romance survey (link in the top paragraph of the page)! Nice one MrRight! If you'd like to enter this competition all you need to do is make sure that your webpage is part of the CrazyLands webring. Check out http://www.crazylands.org to see if you're webpage is included If your site doesn't appear on the web ring, email Nexus (nexus@crazylands.org), who will arrange for your link to be added. --- * Big Al's Woodworking Tips * --- Here's a series of woodworking tips for the DIY or craft minded! This series is actually written by our very own Llap from CrazyLands - so don your flannel and enjoy! "If you find your hammer skipping off nail heads as it makes contact, clean its striking face by rubbing it across a sheet of abrasive paper or emery cloth." --- * CrazyStats * --- For the number geeks among you here is CrazyStats! Every month we'll give you a list of stats that will guarantee to kill off the most lively of conversations. Thanks to some new code, we'll be getting more detailed stats soon - we hope! This months CrazyStats effort: Longest up time ever: 22 days and 7 hours+ Current Residents: 981 (up 2% on last month) Total Online time of Top 20 spods: 1.8m minutes (yes, million) or 1249 days and 17 hours+ (up 2% on last month) --- * CrazyLands Tutorial - Twinkles * --- Here it is at last, the first part of a multi-part series of tutorials on twinkles - how they work, and what you can do with them. Twinkles sound pretty daunting to most users, but they really are very easy to use with a little practice. I'm going to try and keep these tutorials really simple, and try and give people a good understanding about how things work before I even get onto the details, but please understand that twinkles can be very powerful and are practically a small scripting or coding language in themselves (you don't need to worry about this to use them). Please mail me any feedback you have from these tutorials and I'll try and answer questions in CrazyNews each month. * Twinkles Basics - Part One * Twinkles were originally called output variables. This name is actually much more descriptive of what they do. Quite simply, a twinkle is a small amount of text in a tell, a title, a prompt, a say, (almost ANYTHING on the talker), which gets replaced by a different value when it appears on the screen. It is an output which is variable - hence the old name. The most frequently used example is as follows: say hi $Recv-Name The twinkle in this case is $Recv-Name, all twinkles start with a dollar ($) sign. This twinkle will be replaced by the name of the person whose screen it appears on. For example, if there were three people in the room including yourself - Fred, Tom and Myself (that's you), they would see the following... Fred would see: Myself says 'hi Fred'. Tom would see: Myself says 'hi Tom'. ...and you would see: You say 'hi Myself'. The $Recv-Name part of your say is completely replaced by the name of the person reading it. This will work in titles, sessions, tells, remotes - almost everything. There are a couple of restrictions made so that users can't abuse twinkles to pretend to be someone else (for example in ignore messages, they won't work), but for the most part they will work anywhere you can write some text. This is just one twinkle. There are lots of them available, and many can be formatted differently to produce different output. However, this is all I want to include in the first tutorial. This should explain what a twinkle actually is and how it is used in a chunk of text. Next month I will talk about connectors, and how they give us access to different 'chunks' of information. Happy twinkling! ~Swiff --- * Telnet Client Review * --- zMUD 5.30 zMUD is a Windows MUD client. Versions are available for Win3.x, Windows 95 and Windows NT. The version reviewed here is the Windows 95 version but I understand the NT version is exactly the same just recompiled to take advantage of some of NT's network improvements. I don't know about the Win 3.x version. The version reviewed is 5.30. Where to start - zMUD offers such a huge range of features it would be impossible to list them all so I will stick to some of the features you may use purely for talker purposes. It supports feature-rich alias and trigger expansion, you can define variables and use them later. There are a huge number of predefined variables as well. You can get the last line sent, the currently selected text, the host to which you are connected, just about anything. There is also a HUGE list of functions you can use in triggers and aliases and there's a whole string manipulation library (len, concat, numwords, insert, remove etc. etc.) that lets you competely rewrite a string. You can open a dialog and prompt for information based on a trigger. Support is available for conditional logic (if and case statements), there's DDE support, list maintanence and there is even a built-in database that lets you store simple information and retrieve it at a later date. I have my friends list for each talker stored in the database and functions like 'friend' and 'inform' aliased so that as well as adding the list entry in the talker it ALSO adds that person to my database. I can then repair a damaged list automatically and even check who is on my list without logging on. Triggers and aliases are edited in a nice dialog. It's slightly confusing at first (if you're an old TUSh dinosaur like me) but you soon work it out. You can also add buttons that call your defined functions and even add options to the right hand mouse click menu (eg. I have one called examine that examines the currently clicked-on string). There is a huge amount of configurability also for the colours, window sizes and positions, fonts and sound effects (on connect, disconnect etc). You can configure just about anything. Another nice feature is that each open talker gets an entry in the task bar. Each entry has a white dot on it. When there is activity in that talker window and it is NOT in focus the dot turns green, showing you there has been activity in a window that you are not currently looking at. The dot is yellow when you are partially connected (waiting for a password) and goes red if the connection drops. Very useful if you're waiting for someone to connect. Support for most telnet characters is included, including ansi colours and so forth (you can even redefine the colours etc, I have blink redefined as underline for instance as blink irritates me). The only support I haven't found is for the IACGA prompt characters. Prompts show up as part of the normal talker text, which is a little irritating, but turning them off makes everything happy. By turning them off I DON'T mean using 'iacga' I mean just typing 'prompt' with no text. You can, of course, get the history of commands sent and also a history of text received. Scrolling back is handled nicely. The window splits, the bottom half is still the current text, so you can see if you get any tells etc, while the top half shows the history and you can scroll up and down with PageUp and PageDown and also with the mouse and scrollbar. There is even an automatic update facility. When started up zMUD (optionally) checks to see if there is a newer version available and if so gives you the chance to download it then, later or not at all. If you choose to download it, it handles the download, the install and keeps all your CFG files up to date so that you don't lose a thing. This is for registered versions only. I am registered and recently upgraded to 5.30 using the mechanism and it worked smoothly, no hitches at all. Okay, that's a brief introduction into zMUD. It has a HUGE number of features that I haven't even explored myself yet, and I certainly can't fit all of what I have seen into this review. One thing I will include though, is the use of special characters. There are a couple of characters that are defined to have a special purpose, % for parameters, @ for variable expansion and ; is the default separator. I mention this because this is also the emote shortcut, so when you first use zMUD it won't work, as it thinks you're just separating something. To fix this go into the View menu, select Preferences and then Special Characters. This will give you a dialog that has all these characters in it, you can disable them or change them, it should be obvious how to use it once your there. This client scores... Usability : ***** Compliancy : ****- Cost : ****- Features : ***** (and then some!) (shareware, $20 to register, excellent price for the features) Overall : ***** Summary... If you want a windows talker client then this one is excellent. Fully featured, fast, easy to use. The only drawback for talker use really is the extra 'baggage' for MUD support (auto mapping etc etc) but if you MUD as well then you're laughing. More info: http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud email zugg@zuggsoft.com Reviewed by Mack --- * Classifieds, Correspondence Section, Personals * --- Taster Required - A small company requires a taster for the growing market of Ostrich Milk. Only requisite for this job is to like the taste of pink Ostrich Milk, and be able to tell the difference between different types of breed. Apply to: The Pink Ostrich Milk Co. (A subsiduary of CLE!) Stranded Canadians seek help - Stranded Canadian geese seek free passage back to Canada. Airplane travel preferred but will consider ferry or camel riding. Canadian Geese Park, Cumbria. * FREE SPACE FOR ALL TO USE! * Your advert here! FREE! This section is where ressies can submit info for other ressies to get in touch with them, to start (or end) a love connection, or to buy or sell goods or information! Please note that all adverts are free, and any one advert will only be run for 3 issues of CrazyNews. The editors reserve the right to remove an advert or decline to display it at any time. --- * 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. --- * 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 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 5)! * ---