>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WELCOME TO <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ___ ___ __ __ _____ ___ / __| ___ / _ \ ____ \ \ / / _ _ | __ | ___ ___ / __| | (__ | _ \ | _ | |_ / \ V / | \| | | __| \ \/\/ / \__ \ \___| | / |_| |_| / / |_| | .` | |_____| \ /\ / |___/ |_|_\ /___| |_|\_| \/ \/ --- * ISSUE 8 * --- --- * C R A Z Y N E W S ! ! * --- Welcome to the eighth edition of CrazyNews: you've seen the web site, you've spodded on the talker - now read the newsletter! [please :)] --- * Contents * --- * Introduction * The News! * 69 [More] Reasons * Impressions of a Walk in Wales * Admin Admissions! * Osy's Travel Tips * Residents Homepages Competition * Big Al's Woodworking Tips * CrazyStats * CrazyLands Tutorial * Submit Stuff * Mailing Information --- * Introduction * --- Welcome to the 8th issue of CrazyNews, and boy are we going to have to produce something pretty kewl to match up to last month's bumper issue. We're starting to see more people getting involved in producing material for CrazyNews which is great as this newsletter is about you and for you. This month we carry on with the series of articles that was started last month - 69 Reasons - however sit down and don't eat or drink anything as they're a howler and we don't want to be responsible for anyone choking themselves! If you fancy writing your own 69 Reasons then get in touch with us at crazynews@crazylands.org, we'd love to hear from you. So, queue drum-roll - let the festivities begin! See you all soon. ~Raist --- * The News! * --- * UPDATE - Globe Trotting CrazyLands Residents! * Oops, there's nothing to update you about. However, Spods are constantly visiting each other around the world, and we try to keep you informed of visits - so send us a postcard here at CrazyNews (crazynews@crazylands.org)! * Marriage? * Simba and Grim have recently announced they're happily net married, but no one is really sure how real it is? Rumors are going round that Simba agreed to marry him to keep all those American ladies away from Grim. I'm sure Grim objects to the term ladies being used above, but here at CrazyNews we're really nice people, as I'm sure you've seen. * 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 --- * 69 Reasons * --- The second helping of our favorite new article! :) 69 things to say to your boss when you are caught spodding while at work: 1. I knew it was not a good idea to have the internet in the classroom! 2. What the hell is this thing? Last thing I knew I was trying to find the last project meeting minutes and then this thing came up. 3. You mean you expect me to do some real work? 4. Casket delivery? NOW??? 5. I thought that you wanted me to research net relationships firsthand 6. I just hang out on CL on my lunch time. What's that? Lunch ended 3 hours ago??? 7. Hey have you ever tried this thing? I just found it now! Oh... those 46 days I accumulated must be some bug. 8. Just recruiting some real coders... 9. Why do you people seem to need me just when I start wasting your time? 10. ACK! 11. EEP! 12. You aren't going to bop with an ewok's angry grandmother are you? 13. I still get paid, right? 14. I was on here trying to catch that dweeb in accounting net.sexing your wife. 15. I am not addicted to the net. 16. Why the hell do people have to die while I spod? 17. Well, you never have anything else for me to do! 18. You won't get me nuked will you? 19. You won't nuke me, will you? 20. Hey! It helps improve my typing skills. 21. The kids did it. I'm just trying to wipe this thing off the school's computer. 22. How many times do I have to tell you about these damn computer viruses! 23. I thought you wanted me to have more of a life besides work? 24. I don't know how the hell this thing works. I was just clicking away on the web and then I got here from some guy's web page.... I think his name was Mahiswaradas. 25. Did you know that Skid is on here way more than I am? 26. But if I don't get on there every day my character will time out! 27. But if I don't get on there every day I will not climb up the spod list. 28. But if I don't get on there every day, Ratcliffe will be ahead of me on the spod list. 29. tell boss hi there 30. You know how you wanted some charitable organization to donate tons of money to? Well, there is this site on the internet that has these really sorry people on it, and if you give them $5000 then all their problems will be solved... 31. What? Time to go home? But it is only 2:00... am!! EEP! 32. But if I don't log on what will happen to poor Id? 33. What? And leave all those newbies alone??? 34. Clients? 35. OH, just waiting to print off 900 pages... 36. But the professors at the university did not care if I spent the whole day on here... 37. The computer was kind of getting dusty so I thought that if I turned it on now and then it would be better for it. 38. You know how you said that we should invest in new computers? Well, I thought I would see if we could handle this program you see. 39. I'm giving her all I got captain... she can't take any more 40. Our competitors come on here and blab all their secrets so I thought I would get them for you. 41. At least I look productive... 42. But my mom let's me on here 43. All the cutting edge businesses are investing in having their employees learn spodding language to make them more marketable, shall I train a few of the new guys on this program? 44. Just spying... 45. Why can't there be a real Alien who can yoyo me right now! 46. boot boss 47. Time to go to bed! Everyone now! Disappear! 48. Just doing some research on the computer user demographics... 49. I am a counselor, right? Do I really have to have paying customers? 50. Huh? what? yeah... whatever... DOH! A voice! 51. Did you know that Simba can add binary numbers? We really should hire that girl... 52. This is the only way you can get a hold of that techie guy on the 34th floor... 53. Just sending off an email... 54. Do you want residency too? 55. This is a great place for the next company social! All it will cost you is a terminal for everyone and network the connections! 56. Like tech support people every do anything anyways... 57. You actually need me to do something for a change? 58. Who are you??? 59. But I live on this place! 60. You know how you can't fire a person if they are in Alcoholics Anonymous... well, I'm a member of Netaholics Anonymous. 61. All these damn windows! Someone was playing around with my machine while I took my coffee break again! 62. I have no idea how that thing got on there.. someone must be trying to make me look bad. 63. But I learned everything about computers on there! 64. I'm trying to set up my own business so I can ditch this lousy job, do you mind??? 65. Is surfing on the web not allowed or something? 66. But I can multi really well! 67. Can you wait until I am done writing my issue for CrazyNews? 68. Hi! Where are you from? 69. You won't fire me will you? --- * Impressions of a Walk in Wales * --- Wales - for those of you that don't know - is a small country which is on the west of Britain (which is where they keep England). A few weeks ago, on a supposedly rainy weekend (it always rains in Wales), several spods set out to walk up a mountain. Well, scramble, climb, walk. And apparently it was definitely a mountain. The spods who went on our little hiking adventure were Raist, Grim, Merlin, Gordo, my brother - Blain on the talker, and of course myself. We decided we wanted to tackle a few peaks, so we went for a nice walk around a small mountain range, just north of Snowdon which is the biggest mountain in Wales. We camped Friday night, intending to walk on the Saturday. Packs were filled up with waterproof gear and we were expecting the normal Wales rain, and some of the edge of the hurricane winds that the weather reports had been speaking off. Naturally then, we woke early on Saturday morning to bright sunshine! We'd had a late night cause we were driving all the way from various parts of the country and then had had to set up tents and the like. The walk started off quite interestingly. We drove to the supposed start point, but couldn't find the exact start position as described in the magazine I had for the route. Eventually, we just struck out into the foothills and headed in the correct general direction. After much map comparing and guessing, we figured roughly where we were supposed to be, so we crossed a river and lots of muddy ground and found the path. Things went a bit better from there, for a while. The walk was really HOT, the valley acting like a sun trap. Great, the only heat wave in Wales (ever?) and we find it :) We made our way along the valley to the foot of our intended scramble - straight up the side of the mountain - 3000 foot, almost, to the top. After some relaxing by a really clear cool stream, and much drinking of water from bottles, we decided to start. The first stage was grassy, and really easy. In no time, we'd found the first plateau a couple of hundred feet above the valley floor. A 20 minute walk across this led us to a large scree (loose rock and stones) section, leading us to the bottom of the REAL work. This stuff probably constituted a walk according to the books, but it was hard going. The proper grade one (easiest grade) scramble started at the top of the scree. Easy as it looked, the scree was a bit unnerving. As we walked, or crawled, the stones slipped away beneath our feet. eventually though, we made it to the bottom of a 'chimney' on the side of the hill. Everyone was a bit tired and it was still warm. Grim was somewhat nervous by now because of the scree slipping away and the fact we were now at about 500 feet - being afraid of heights is not a good thing on a mountain. After a short rest we decided to tackle the scramble proper. The advance party (consisting of Merlin, Gordo and Blain) started and were making their way in good time up the chimney in sections. Raist and myself followed more slowly, with Grim, who needed a bit of a guide over the harder bits. The view was marvelous at points when it was clear. As we got higher, the clouds drew in a bit to obscure the view sometimes. By the time we made it to the top, nothing could be seen unfortunately. At the top, the photos were taken (look out for those on the web soon!) and people celebrated still being alive. Those of us with phones admired the perfectly clear signal once they were switched on, and we called a few people to say hi! After that, it was a casual walk down the back of the mountain. The clouds soon cleared (STILL no rain!) and views were great, all the way to the sea, north of Wales. Some of the more insane of us debated scrambling down the side of some of the drops we were walking against, but decided to get home alive instead. That night, back at camp, a tired but satisfied walking group enjoyed a Tuna Bake gathered around a convenient picnic table. Yes - we did manage a Tuna Bake while camping. After all, we're just spods! --- * Admin Admissions! * --- Hi everyone just to shock you all this month Swiff isn't doing admin admissions! :O Remember back to issue one of CrazyNews (hey it's not been that long has it? :) when we said that we were going to release a new version of code at least every month? Well we are going to have a long month for a bit ;) Yup - no more code updates for a while. This is because the next version of code will have a _lot_ of changes in it. Most of the stuff will be re-write to make the code better and more stable. For instance rooms shouldn't go missing anymore. It will also mean that we'll probably add a few features (as you've come to expect), and a few bugs (although we'll try not to, and hopefully we'll have even fixed some too). Alas this also means that we might be changing the way some command actually work, although we'll be keeping as much backwards compatibility in as possible. Think of this a bit like when we re-wrote news in CrazyLands and you got newsgroups, but suddenly typing news check didn't show you all the news, because we had added groups. As always, if you have an idea for CrazyNews or CrazyLands then don't hesitate to send it to crazy@crazylands.org or any of the other email addresses you see. :) On the non coding side I keep hearing rumors that Simba knows where issue 6 disappeared to, so Simba what did you do with it huh? Keep spodding! ~Nevyn --- * Osy's Travel Tips * --- * Accessories - Stuff you might (but are advised not to) forget * Okay, so you've picked up the basics for your trip. You've packed plenty of clean socks and underwear and you're set to go, right? --- Before you jump on that plane, think of any spare hours you have at home and consider this - you are about to render yourself television and computer-free! *Gasp* What will you do? Don't think you won't have spare time. With little money, you must choose your nights out wisely, and whiling away the hours on transport can be trickier than you think. Consider stuffing these into a corner of your pack, and think of me whenever you use them. I expect my ears shall be burning quite a bit! Book (tradable - don't throw it away when you've finished!) Deck of cards (even if you don't play, they'll come in handy) Journal (to record the memories and/or keep track of photographs) Pen (for journal and postcards) Consider also bringing along a sleepsheet. You can buy a manufactured one, or sew 2 of your own sheets together to make a bag. If using a sleeping bag, it is a lot easier to wash the sheet than the whole sleeping bag, and if it's warm you can sleep in only the sheet. Finally, the easily-forgotten essentials: flashlight; alarm clock; watch; camera; film; sunblock; sunglasses; telephone card; money belt. _Now_ you're prepared. Bon Voyage! << OStriCH has globetrotting plans to make !! >> --- * Residents Homepages Competition * --- This month we announce the first winner of the CrazyLands Homepage of the Month Award, and it goes to : -----~ WINNER ~---- Ostrich http://www.interlog.com/~janem/ -----~ WINNER ~----- Big thanks to Ostrich for all the work she's done for CrazyNews. Check out her kewl page with lots of travel info, pictures and kewl spod descriptions :) Please note, that adding a link to CrazyLands obviously gives you a better page and so more chance of winning. There's information at the CrazyLands web site on how to get a cool animated gif on your page which links to us. See: http://www.crazylands.org/ 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 * --- Another woodworking tip this month from our very own craftsman! "When MDF is screwed into it 'bulges' around the entry point, this can prevent a flush finish. To overcome this, simply countersink the underside of the top piece, this takes up the 'bulge' and perfect joint can be achieved." --- * 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. The new code to produce new and interesting stats has failed to appear, but we're still hoping for it one day. This months CrazyStats effort: Longest up time ever: 22 days and 7 hours+ Current Residents: 1049 Total Online time of: 1.91M minutes +3% last month Top 20 spods: 1328 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes Longest spod session by: pumbaA Their time in one session: 10 hours, 10 minutes and 51 seconds ...as of 11:27 on 4/9/98. [Coo, very up to date - Ed] --- * Classifieds, Correspondence Section, Personals * --- Wanted : one grip, last seen in the University of Essex 'spod lab' in October 1996. If anyone has seen it would they please contact Merlin on merlin@crazylands.org or find Merlin on the talker. Also wanted a plane ticket to Canada (Toronto) for any time as long as the price is good ( read FREE! ) again contact merlin@crazylands.org or find Merlin on the talker. Wanted, free regular flights to Toronto. *sigh* - Anon. * 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 anytime. --- * CrazyLands Tutorial * --- Here is the third part of the twinkles tutorial. Please see previous issues for the other parts of this tutorial. Back issues are available from the newsletter address: crazynews@crazylands.org * Formatting - Part Three * Last time I talked about connectors - the way twinkles can be used to get further information about specific types of events. It should now be possible for you to use twinkles quite effectively on a basic level to reveal simple information. This month, I will explain how twinkles can be formatted to display information in a neat and tidy format. This tutorial is quite long, but starts off with two tips on + Twinkle Tips + Two tips before I start talking about formatting. The 'showme' command can be used to print a twinkle result on your screen. For example: showme Hi there $Recv-Name ...will show you: Hi there Swiff ...or whatever you name happens to be. This is useful for testing and trying out twinkle strings before putting them into titles, rooms, or wherever! The second tip. If you use showme and try the twinkle: $? ...you'll be given a list of the available twinkles at that level. This can be used for any connector twinkle as well. For example: $Recv-? ...will list all the items in the player connector (which is given by using the Recv twinkle). This is incredibly useful for reminding you which twinkle you're trying to use or just to see what's available. + Back to Formatting + The way formatting can be used is as follows. It may be that you don't want the result of a twinkle to be longer than 50 alphabetic characters (so that it doesn't over run the end of your title). Formatting information can make sure that the result of the twinkle is truncated if it ever reaches 51 characters in length. It may be that you want to display the addition of two numbers in 'dollars and cents' or 'pounds and pence' format, so you always want the digits to be displayed with two numbers after a decimal place, for example: 53.42 Again, twinkle formatting can help, by making your number be displayed in this way. A twinkle always evaluates to a specific value. This value may be a 'string', as in $Recv-Name (a persons name), or a 'number' as in $Current_platers (the number of players currently on the program). If a twinkle evaluates to ONLY a number (something which contains no punctuation or letters), then it will almost always accept number formatting information. If the twinkle evaluates to anything else (anything including a space, some punctuation or a letter) then it will always accept string formatting information. Any twinkle can have it's formatting information passed to it in exactly the same way - regardless of whether it is a string or a number twinkle. This is as follows: $Twinkle-(formatting information) As you can see, the formatting information is given to the twinkle by putting on the end of the twinkle, after a dash, and enclosed in brackets ($Twinkle is just an example twinkle where the real twinkle would go). For those who are technically inclined, let me just say that the formatting string will take almost anything that the printf formatting string in C will take for %s and %d, although we don't support actual numeric conversion. If you've no idea what I just said, then you honestly don't care. You might think you care, but you honestly don't. :) + Formatting String Type Twinkles + Time to show you what this formatting information looks like. Remember, there are two types of twinkle for formatting purposes, one which evaluates to a string, and one which evaluates to a number. First of all, I will explain how to format string type twinkles. The twinkle I will use for all my string type examples is $Recv-Name. This twinkle will evaluate to the name of the person who views the twinkle. The formatting information for a string twinkle can be one or more of the following things: A - flag - This specifies that the string returned is to be left justified when it is output. This is always used in conjunction with the next number. A number - This specifies the amount of blank spaces which 'pad' the string out. If the - flag has been specified (see above) then the blank spaces are added AFTER the string. If the - flag hasn't been specified, the blank spaces will go BEFORE the string. A number - This number should be preceded by a decimal place (.) and is used to control the MAXIMUM length of the string. This means that if the twinkle evaluates to a string that is longer than this number of characters, it should be truncated (or chopped off). Here's how it looks in action: Your name is $Recv-Name-(30) okay? ^ | Formatting information! ...makes the name at least 30 characters long, by putting blank spaces in front of it. For example, this outputs: Your name is Swiff okay? Another example: Your name is $Recv-Name-(-30) okay? ...shows: Your name is Swiff okay? This demonstrates how the string can be left or right padded. But what if you only ever want the string to be a maximum of 3 characters? This is done as follows Your chopped up name is $Recv-Name-(.3) okay? ...will show you: Your chopped up name is Swi okay? If the number was bigger, and the evaluated string isn't that many characters long, then the formatting has no effect. All this number does is say 'no longer than this please'. For example Your chopped up name is $Recv-Name-(.30) okay? ...has no effect, it just shows: Your chopped up name is Swiff okay? You can of course combine these two features, so you can say, 'I want a minimum of 4 characters, but a maximum of 4'. You would do this as so: Your min and maxed name is $Recv-Name-(5.10) okay? ...which shows: Your min and maxed name is Swiff okay? If you name was 'Oh', then this would look like: Your min and maxed name is Oh okay? ...and if you name was 'Wubblewubbley' then it would look like this: You min and maxed name is Wubblewubb okay? Of course, you may want any text to be right aligned, so using: Your min and maxed right padded name is $Recv-Name-(-5.10) okay? ...if your name was 'Oh', it would show: Your min and maxed right padded name is Oh okay? As you can hopefully see, these features are quite powerful. This is only string formatting however, we still have to look at how numbers can be formatted. Needless to say, this is a little more complex. + Formatting Number Type Twinkles + In case you've skipped to this section, it's recommended that you read about formatting string twinkles first, because they're a lot easier to follow for a beginner. Here's an important note before you start playing with numbers. At the moment, CrazyLands doesn't support floating point numbers (numbers with decimal places in them). This is likely to change in the future, but not for a while. Unless you're trying to write a fully functional spreadsheet object or financial package this shouldn't cause you too many problems. For all my number formatting examples, I will use the twinkle $Current_players. This twinkle evaluates to a number which is the number of players currently logged on to CrazyLands. The formatting information for a number type twinkle can be one or more of the following things: A # flag - If the number is being formatted to a hexadecimal number then this adds the characters '0x' to the font of the number. A 0 flag - This flag only has an effect if the number is converted to a different base. If you don't know much about number bases, then don't worry about this flag. However, if the number is being converted to a hexadecimal number, this flag adds 0x in front of it. If it is being converted to an octal number, this just adds a 0 at the beginning. A - flag - The same as for a string, this makes the number left justify. Again, this is used with the first number specifying precision. A space - This flag causes a number to have a space in front of it if it is a positive number. If a number is negative, it will always have a negative mark in front of it. A + flag - This specifies that a sign should always be appended to the front of the number, even if it is a positive number. This will overide a space if both are provided. A number - This specifies the amount of blank spaces which 'pad' the number out. If the - flag has been specified (see above) then the blank spaces are added AFTER the number. If the - flag hasn't been specified, the blank spaces will go BEFORE the number. A letter - This letter can either be the letter x or the letter o. The letter x causes the decimal number to be converted into a hexadecimal number. If the x is upper case (X), then this causes all the letters in the hexadecimal number to be upper case. The letter o causes the decimal number to be converted to an octal number. Again, here are some examples. In these examples, assume there are 27 people connected to the talker (the same thing can be tried using $Number(27) instead of $Current_players): There are $Current_players-(5) logged on. ...shows: There are 17 players logged on. Here's an example of the use of the + character in formatting: There are $Current_players-(+8) logged on. ...shows: There are +17 logged on. You can use the - and + flags together. For example: There are $Current_players-(-+8) logged on. ...will show: There are +17 logged on. And finally, here is an example of converting to a hexadecimal number: There are $Current_players-(x) players logged on (number in hex). ...shows: There are 1b players logged on (number in hex). That kind of concludes the examples for the numbers. If you've followed the string formatting, you should understand this section okay. There is of course more you can do with the number formatting stuff that I've talked about, but I've not given all the examples here. $String(some text) and $Number(69) are useful twinkles for testing all of the formatting stuff. As always, if you have any questions, I'm happy to try and answer them (or at least forward them to Nevyn and translate the answers back to you). Just email me at: swiff@crazylands.org That's definitely it for this month! There's quite a lot to absorb here if you're unfamiliar with this kind of subject. I recommend you play with some of these ideas using the 'showme' command, and different twinkles (like $Recv-Title, $Time-Hour and so on). This should help you understand what's going on. Next month I'm going to get to something which will really start to give you access to the more interesting and powerful twinkles. After next months tutorial, you'll have all the basics of twinkles down and we can move on to specific twinkle tutorials and how to use the system as a whole. Seeya later $Recv-Name! --- * 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 - Soon to be available on the web page. Currently available at: crazynews@crazylands.org --- * 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 8)! * ---