>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WELCOME TO <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ___ ___ __ __ _____ ___ / __| ___ / _ \ ____ \ \ / / _ _ | __ | ___ ___ / __| | (__ | _ \ | _ | |_ / \ V / | \| | | __| \ \/\/ / \__ \ \___| | / |_| |_| / / |_| | .` | |_____| \ /\ / |___/ |_|_\ /___| |_|\_| \/ \/ --- * ISSUE 9 * --- --- * C R A Z Y N E W S ! ! * --- Welcome to the ninth edition of CrazyNews: you've seen the web site, you've spodded on the talker - now read the newsletter! - again! --- * Contents * --- * Introduction * The News! * 69 [More] Reasons * Grim's Spod Test * Admin Admissions! * Osy's Travel Tips * Residents Homepages Competition * Big Al's Woodworking Tips * CrazyStats * CrazyLands Tutorial * Corrections *NEW!* * Submit Stuff * Mailing Information --- * Introduction * --- Wow We've got a massive issue for you this month (despite the continuing lack of organisation down at CrazyNews HQ!) and at last count it was well over 600 lines long! Big features this week include Grim's Spod Test (complete it and mail us with your result, we'll publish the Top 10 biggest spods next month). We've also got another dose of '69 reasons' and this one seems a little bit of a tongue in cheek chapter (;P) We're low on news this month but a BIG thank you to all those that contribute especially Ostrich, Simba and Llap (Big Al) (yes he is *real* and does actually exist!). Oh, finally there's a corrections section this month. Apparently we've made some mistakes - I'd hardly have thought this was possible, being perfect and everything, but there we go. Anyway you've already spent too much time reading this introduction so get on and read the rest of this massive issue. See you all soon. ~Raist --- * The News! * --- * Comments About Mountains * After last months article, 'Impression's of a Walk in Wales', Grim was heard to comment, 'Mountains suck, I hate mountains, I'm never going near anything bigger than a small molehill without a parachute again!'. We at CrazyNews think that perhaps Grim doesn't like mountains - now all we have to do is stop laughing and write some more articles. --- * 69 Reasons * --- 69 Reasons not to date someone: 1. They offer to line you up with a hot bike on your first date. 2. They want to sleep with your sister. 3. They are already dating someone. 4. They have more than 4 syllables in their name that you can't seem to pronounce. (Sorry Mahi!) 5. They would make a really good trainer dog who sits at your heel. 6. They are supposed to be a fully grown adult but seem to act like a child. AKA the twenty something toddler syndrome. 7. They are really old. Like grandparents kind of old in compared to your age. 8. They are really young. Like has not hit puberty kind of young. 9. They ask you for your phone number midway through the song you are dancing through at that bar you went to before they even ask for your name. 10. They take you to a motel on a first date. 11. They tell you that you take everything out of context when you put the on a list like this. 12. They are at a vastly different stage of life than you. 13. They are wearing their dead uncle's running shoes that he wore when he died. 14. They wear their dead uncle's running shoes that he wore when he died because it saves them money. 15. They go by the name of Raisty-Pooh. 16. They are married. 17. They sexually harass you. 18. They write a love letter for you on the steps of your porch that say Die *^&*%! 19. They crank call you at 3am and forget to block the number so when you call *69 you find out that it was indeed that person who did crank call you. (Like hello?!? Why do a crank call hang up when the person can just *69 you!!!) 20. You were set up by your parents. 21. You were set up by someone under the age of 12. 22. They had their 9 year old daughter tell you that they were not married. 23. You teach their 9 year old daughter... 24. They want you to look like an American Gladiator. 25. They want you to look like some actor that they have fantasies over. 26. They don't have car insurance and want YOU to drive THEIR car... 27. They referred to you as their bf/gf on the FIRST date. 28. They referred to you as their spouse on the first date. 29. They take you to their ex's parent's home on a first date. 30. They take you to their ex's house on the first date. 31. Their first utterance to you is, "Wanna net.sex?" 32. Their first utterance to you is, "Wanna have sex?" 33. Their name is Shaun M. (You know who you are) 34. They pretend to be a turtle while play fighting. AKA as Complacency boy. 35. They ask you to show them your karate moves like they are some 9 year old kid into WWF. 36. They will LET you drive because they are a liberated kind of person. 37. They want to take you to jail for your second date to meet their business partner. 38. They are control freaks. 39. They are super clingy as in you say you will be home at 9 and they call every hour on the hour to see if you got home early. 40. They freak when you are going out with your friends. 41. They sleep with your best friend. 42. They sleep with your best friend after being caught the first time. 43. You look like their mom and/or dad. 44. Their idea of cooking a gourmet meal is spray can cheese on a triscuit. 45. They don't own soap. 46. They don't own a toothbrush. 47. Their home is condemned. 48. They have a history of beating up their significant others. 49. They tell your dad that his job sucks. 50. They tell you that you look stupid. 51. They tell you that you are stupid. 52. They are married and having an affair with your roommate. 53. They make cooler friends than a half of a couple. 54. They offer to share a pizza with you and then never come back with it after going you to pick it up. 55. You keep on confusing them with their twin and never know who it is that you are out with. 56. Your family loves them more that you could ever possibly love them. 57. Your dog positively HATES them. 58. You positively hate them. 59. They are from CL. *grin* 60. They are an admin from CL. *double grin* 61. They are an admin from CL that likes to do evil grins a lot. 62. They are annoying. 63. They have absolutely none of the same interests as you. 64. They call you obsessively all the time and even your friends are annoyed by it. 65. They wear so much makeup that they look like Mimi from The Drew Carey Show. 66. They are Drew Carey. 67. They hate BNL. (best reason not to date someone!) 68. They say that would never sleep with you because you would bark orders at them. (Like I would even *think* of sleeping with them ANYWAYS!) 69. They write up lists like this and use it as a checklist for prospective dates. *grin* - Written by Simba Any ideas for a '69 reasons' theme ? - send them to CrazyNews and we'll get our resident '69' woman to do it for you ! ;P Oooers... --- * Grim's Spod Test * --- Okee spods, here is what I threw together for Crazynews. I got 90% {:-) Section 1: Usage 1. Do you know what a talker is? 2. Have you ever used one? 3. More than once? 4. More than once a week? 5. In an average week, would you spend more than 5 hours on a talker? 6. More than 10 hours? 7. More than 50? 8. Do you ever use more than one talker at a time? 9. Do you frequently use three or more talkers at one time? 10. Can you hold conversations on several talkers at once without getting confused? 11. Do you have more than 10 days login on a single talker? 12. Do you have more than 100 days login on a single talker? 13. Do you have more than 300 days login between all the talkers you frequent? 14. Have you ever stayed logged onto a talker for a continuous 24 hour period? 15. Did you keep going past 48 hours? 16. Ever lost track of how many days you have just spent sitting logged in to a talker? 17. Ever been woken up by the computer beeping because you have fallen asleep on the keyboard and filled the keyboard input buffer? 18. Did you carry on using the talker after you had been woken up? 19. Done this more than twice in a single session on the talker? Section 2: Culture 20. Do you know what a spod is? 21. Are most of your friends spods? 22. Do they think you are a spod? 23. Do you think you are a spod? 24. Would you consider calling someone a spod as a compliment? 25. Would you feel complimented by being called a spod? 26. Do you know more than 5 Three Letter Acronyms used on talkers? 27. Do you understand what ROTFLMAO means? 28. Do you know what a smiley is? 29. Do you use smileys? 30. Do you have a particular smiley you always use? 31. Does it have a wide range of emotions whilst still retaining the basic layout? Section 3: Relationships 32. Have you met people on a talker that you consider to be close friends? 33. Are any of these close friends people you still have not met IRL? 34. Do you worry that meeting them IRL may spoil the friendship? 35. Do you have more talker friends than IRL friends? 36. Do your IRL friends more often refer to you by your net name than birth name? 37. Do your family know who to pass the phone to when someone calls you and asks for you by net name? 38. Do your family call you by your net name at your insistence? 39. Have any talker friendships developed into a romantic involvement? 40. Was this before you met the person IRL? 41. Did you meet them? 42. Get Engaged to them? 43. Get Married to them? 44. Do you know what net-sex is? 45. Ever done it? 46. Often? 47. Enjoy it? 48. Prefer it to the real thing? 49. Ever been net.married? 50. Ever been net.married to two or more different people at the same time? 51. Ever caught a plane to see someone you met on a talker? 52. More than twice? 53. Ever been to a spodmeet? 54. Ever organised a spodmeet? 55. Ever been to a spodmeet in another country? 56. Ever been to another country specifically for the purpose of attending a spodmeet? Section 4: Administration 57. Have you ever held a staff position on a talker? 58. Have you held staff positions on three or more talkers? 59. At the same time? 60. Have you held a staff position on any of the big three talkers (Foothills, Surfers, and Resort)? 61. On all of them? 62. At the same time? 63. Ever kicked anyone off a talker? 64. Ever deleted someones playerfiles (nuked them)? 65. Were they a staffmember? 66. Ever nuked anyone just cos you were irritated at them? 67. Did it feel good? 68. Did you do it again? 69. To the same person? Section 5: Proliferation and Multiplication 70. Ever download a talker source code? 71. Did you look at it and understand it? 72. Did you modify and/or improve the code? 73. Did you tell other people what you changed? 74. Were they impressed? 75. Did you start your own talker? 76. Did it get over 300 residents? 77. Is it still going? 78. Ever introduced a non-spod friend to the joys of spodding 79. Did they become a spod? 80. Did that person introduce people to spodding, thus bringing in new generations? 81. If yes to the above two questions, does that make you proud? Section 6: Reputation and History 82. Do you always use the same name on talkers? 83. Do you get upset when someone else has taken your name? 84. Ever asked a staffmember to nuke the person that has stolen your name? 85. Did they do it? 86. Ever get offered staff privs as soon as you connected to a talker (not your own)? 87. Without asking for them? 88. By someone you have never spoken to before? 89. Did you ever use Foothills when it was the only EW-Too talker? 90. Ever use Elsewhere before it became Foothills? 91. Ever use Cheeseplants house, before Elsewhere was invented? 92. Are you on first name terms with either Burble or Cheeseplant? Section 7: Oh Dear 93. Do you consider yourself an oldbie spod? 94. Do others consider you to be an oldbie spod? 95. Does it distress you when you realise how many days/months/years since you started using talkers? 96. Do you need both hands to count how many years since you started using talkers? 97. Feet too? 98. Are you taking this test in the hopes of getting a higher score than your friends? 99. If you got a score equal to that of a friend, would you lie on this test just to get a higher score to beat them? 100. Now you know all the questions, do you intend to try and get your score as close to 100% as you can, just for the sake of it? --- * Admin Admissions! * --- There's not a lot to actually admit this month folks! Most of the admin have been pretty busy doing one thing or another. Moving house seems to have been a common theme with half of us, and work seems to have been another (unfortunately). Appologies (again) for the delay with this issue of CrazyNews - another thing I'd attribute to moving and such. CrazyLands from a code point of view is certainly moving forward however. Nevyn is currently re-writing massive chunks of it, and soon we'll be seeing another all new batch of stuff. None of it should affect the way you use the talker, but it's another step towards that goal of being able to write some much better features for you - the users. All I can say at the moment is, watch this space! Meanwhile, I've got more unpacking to do, so I'll catch you again soon. Seeya online sometime! ~Swiff --- * Osy's Travel Tips * --- * Money - the Absent Friend * One of the more complicated details of travelling is ensuring that you have local currency. Keep in mind that the Bureaux de Change has limited opening hours and if you are entering a new country early or late in the day you may find yourself short of cash. Travellers' Cheques are probably the most reliable source of cash, provided you are able to get to a bank or Bureaux de Change to cash them. US$ are usually accepted as the standard. However if you are visiting only one country, I recommend getting the cheques in the currency of that country. Another very useful item is an ATM card from any major bank. With Cirrus or Plus you will be able to withdraw cash in the local currency in most 1st world countries - provided the link is functioning! Do not rely solely on this method however, as the links are not 100% reliable, particularly on weekends. Also bear in mind that most banks will charge a fee for withdrawals in foreign currency - I was charged CDN$3/transaction. Finally, a major credit card provides tremendous peace of mind in case of emergency and exchange rates using a credit card tend to be much better than through an ATM card. However, credit cards are accepted in very few hostels throughout Europe. To use your credit card, you will also need to arrange payment of your bill during your absence if you are to be absent for over a month. I would recommend a combination of these three methods of payment to ensure maximum security and convenience to yourself while on the road. 'Till next time, happy travels! << 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 ~---- Annie http://www.media-net.net/ftpclients/annie -----~ WINNER ~----- Annie has some kewl tunes and some cat stuff on her page (what else would we expect from our very own catwoman), check it out! Well done Annie! 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! "For a professional varnish finish, thin with white spirit or turps to a 50-50 mix. Apply this with a brush and leave for 5 minutes, then wiping with the grain remove surplus with a fine cloth. Several coats should leave you with a smooth even finish. Note: only thin enough varnish for the job, as thinned varnish "jells" within a few days." --- * 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: 1057 Total Online time of: 1.91M minutes +2% last month Top 20 spods: 1361 days, 4 hours, 16 minutes Longest spod session by: pumbaA Their time in one session: 10 hours, 10 minutes and 51 seconds ...as of 22:40 on 5/10/98. --- * Classifieds, Correspondence Section, Personals * --- * 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 fourth 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 * Tag Lists - Part Four * In the last tutorial I talked about formatting the output of twinkles. This is something which is applicable to all twinkles that are available on the talker. The topic I am going to talk about this month however - tag lists - is okay applicaple to some twinkles. In simple terms, tag lists are a way of passing extra information to a twinkle to make it do different things. A tag list always follows a twinkle immediately, and is contained in brackets. There are no dashes or seperators between the tag list and the twinkle. For example: $Player(aname) ^ ^ | The tag list (contained in brackets) Twinkle + Simple Tag Lists + I will start off by showing you a simple tag list, one which actually contains no 'tags' as such. This will show the principal however. The twinkle $Player can be used to get a player connector for any player who has residency on the talker. Of course, there needs to be a way of telling the twinkle which person we're looking for, and this is where the simple tag list comes in. It's a way of passing a 'parameter' to the twinkle or extra information. Here's how it would look if we were looking to find a connector for Nevyn (for example): $Player(nevyn) ...of course, this will show an error if it's on it's own, cause we have to actually use the connector that's returned (as we do when we use $Recv or $From). Try this: showme $Player(nevyn)-Name ...will show you 'Nevyn' - his propper upercased name. Of course, this isn't incredably useful, but it does mean we can also get his plan, title or anything else than you can normally get from a player connector. [Reminder: $Recv-? or $From-? will show you all the twinkles that you can get from a player connector.] As you can see, this simple tag list just passes some information straight to the twinkle $Player. But what happens when we want to pass more than one bit of information? This is where normal tag lists come in. + Full Tag Lists + Full tag lists (or just tag lists) actually have tags or tag labels in them (unsurprisingly), so let me tell you what they look like. A tag label is simply a label on a parameter we're trying to pass to the twinkle so that the twinkle knows which piece of information we're talking about. For example, the $Subtract twinkle will (ta da) subract one number from another. But we need to tell the twinkle which number we'd like to subtract from which. So we label one as 1 and the second number as 2. The information after a label is put in brackets to show where it starts and ends. Here's how that looks: $Subtract( 1(first_number) 2(number_to_subtract) ) ^ ^ ^ ^ | | | Tag information for tag 2 | | Second tag label | Tag information for tag 1 First tag label Of course, the information passed to each tag should be a number, so that we can actually do a sum. Try this: showme $Subtract( 1(10) 2(3) ) ...and if I know my maths (and I often don't), then you should get 7. Tag labels are not always numbers, and there may be more than one tag you can use to pass the same information. For example, the Subtract twinkle also accepts the tags left and right instead of 1 and 2. Example: $Subtract( left(10) right(3) ) One more thing about tag lists. There can be more than just two tag items, and each tag item can be any order within the list. For example: $Subtract( right(3) left(10) ) ...demontrates any order. + Embended Tag Lists + There's one other way in which tag lists can operate. Sometimes, a tag label itself requires two bits of information. This means that tags can be 'imbedded' in other tags. Here is an example: $Atwinkle( left( first(something) last(another) ) right(more) ) ^ ^ | Second embedded tag First embedded tag In this example, the left tag has two two sub tags called first and last. Some of the more complex twinkles use this kind of 'embedding' because of the amount of information they need for each situation. I will cover this more in later tutorials when talking about the complex twinkles. + Spacing + In the above examples there is a space after the open bracket and before the close bracket. You do not need these, in fact you can usually put spaces in or leave spaces out all over the place (to improve readability, or save space). It should be obvious where you can and can't, so I'm not going into it now, though you can play around to try this out. + And Finally + Just in case you weren't sure, twinkles can be put inside tag lists, so you can have dynamic parameters to twinkles (fun, eh?). For example: $Subtract( l($Player(swiff)-Age-Short) r(10) ) ...gives you my approximate mental age. Note that l and r are other tags accepted by the Subtract alias (intended as shortcuts for left and right). Of course: $Add( l($Player(swiff)-Age-Short) r(-10) ) ...works too! :) 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 it for this month. You should now have all the information you need to understand the basic concepts of twinkles. We've been through all of the existing concepts (though more may be added later) and it should be possible to experiment now. When help files finally arrive for each twinkle, it means you'll should have a better chance at being able to understand them and what the terminology means. So what's left? Well, I'm now in a position to go for specific examples. Next month I'm going to start with some of the more powerful twinkles and give complete explanations with them. As we find out about more twinkles, I can start putting them together and showing you complete working examples. Seeya later $Recv-Name! --- * Corrections * --- Here in our newest section of the news letter, we admit our faults. It had to happen sooner or later, though the editor was surprised to see that mistakes could actually be made. Here, every month, we'll spend time correcting our faults. This is also a good way to get your name in the news letter, cause unless people tell us not to, we'll thank each person who finds a problem with the last edition. For Issue 8 (October), the following corrections are made: * In Impressions of a Walk in Wales * We didn't credit this to anyone. There's constant references to 'myself' and 'me' in it however, so we felt we should point out it was written by Swiff. * In CrazyLands Tutorial * Lot's of little faults in this one. The original text is quoted with a > at the front, with the additions made below that text. > 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: This should say 'I want a minimum of 5 characters, but a maximum of 10', as the example below it. It was also pointed out that the use of - in a formatting string was wrong in some places! The - character means your characters are padded to the left, if it is not their, the characters are padded to the right. Big mistake, sorry! The description of the 0 flag for numbers is wrong. The 0 flag for numbers actually causes any padding to be done with 0's in front of the number rather than spaces. The # flag add's the 0x of hexidecimal numbers, as stated. Unfortunately, the explanation for the # flag was repeated for the 0 flag, leaving the 0 flag unexplained - until now! Thanks to Nevyn for most of these. * In 69 Reasons * This article shgould have been credited to Simba! Thanks Simba (and to Nevyn for pointing it out)! As mentioned above, Simba seems to be our regular 69 woman. Oooer, obviously. * In CrazyStats* The date should have been the 4th of October, not September. Thanks again Nevyn. [Picky, isn't he? :) - Ed] --- * 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 9)! * ---