Excerpts from the ILE backup

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

007CG4^No, you're a few months behind us. I assume you're talking about anorak Roy, Haley the trans-sexual and the little ginger kid whose name I've forgotten. Can't remember what happened there actually. Just wait till Janice starts shagging the fat, bald bloke down the garage. Poor old Les - he can't act at being a drunk to save his life.^2001-11-28^Response to Has anything ever happened on Coronation Street?^I Love Everything^Johnathan^[email protected]^007CE2 007CFN^well, actually, a shy older couple are on the run from johnny law with a nerdy young red-headed boy. that's pretty action-packed. it gives all the other random strangers something to mumble about in one of the show's 3 locations (pub, interchangable living room, chip shop). are we on the same season over here?^2001-11-28^Response to Has anything ever happened on Coronation Street?^I Love Everything^fritz^[email protected]^007CE2 007CEp^Stupid Canuck! Everything happens down Coronation Street. Aren't you being ripped to pieces by the devastation that is the separation of Janice and Les? Nothing happens? Good God man!^2001-11-28^Response to Has anything ever happened on Coronation Street?^I Love Everything^Johnathan^[email protected]^007CE2 007CE2^It's on early sunday morning here. As I involuntarily wake up at ungodly hours I've been watching it, usually in a mildly hungover state, for about 3 weeks now.

― DG, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hmm...pretty useless really, eh?

― DG, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i see what you mean: reformatting THAT back into THIS would be a big job for you!!

― mark s, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Indeed. I suggest we collectively (HA! Mark) bury our heads in the sand and hope the nasty things go away.

― DG, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i'm not a moderator on ile, just a punter, DG! it's not my fault tom went to bed. matter of interest, what are the dividers BETWEEN threads? cuz if they're *diff* to those little hats ^ then monsieur kodanshi for example cd prolly insert a kewl bit of html (or whatever) which did SOME of what was needed (you'd lose the blue line links tho)

― mark s, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sorry, crossed wires here, when did I say you were a mod? I'm confused...but anyway, it wouldn't be possible (or humane) to get someone to do that, it would have to be done to every line of every message on every thread, that's madness.

― DG, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

well if you look at the page source of that slab DG yu'll see it's a bit less undifferentiated, eg each post is sorta tagged: even i cd format what you've put up (w.one global search/change) to LOOK like a bit of a thread page, tho not necessarily to act like one. So if the beginnings and ends of threads are DIFFERENTLY signalled eg not just with ^ (or with something at the page source level), then there might be enough latent architecture to quite quickly rebuild them as ARCHIVES, tho no longer perhaps as active message boards.

― mark s, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've got out of bed now.

The archive thing is actually a separate issue from the AWFUL TERRORIST THREAT, really. Mark S started a thread on this ages back. Archiving will be useless against the NAMELESS DARK FORCES but it will preserve what has already been written. Is it worth preserving? is the question.

― Tom, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why dont we ask people what they are most proud of , record that in a capsule and then let the rest go to the ether.

― anthony, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Because as the ILE Awards demonstrated people can only actually remember about 1% of threads, mostly the ones about bums.

I would encourage everyone on ILE who does think some kind of preservation is appropriate for certain threads to save those threads privately. Then if we do all regroup after the GHASTLY DOOM comes upon us (whatever form it takes) people will have some self-selecting stuff.

― Tom, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(to be honest my fear was more "work- related" research guilt in re ILM: ie there's information and ideas that would stall me because i'd know they're there but could no longer access them: i have print-runouts of some early stuff, but then my printer broke. i would def back up, as it seems to matter to me, but i genuinely think my current machine will not take the strain)

― mark s, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't know if anyone else feels the same but I reckon even if I saved the threads I liked I probably wouldn't look at them. I don't mean to sound cold but I just think it would be like lots of things you keep for sentimental value and never look at. Obviously this is personal choice but I imagine other people might feel the same which lessens the problem if it was a problem.

― Ronan, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah Ronan I agree actually - but Mark is right - esp. on ILM there's lots of stuff I've written which I want to look at again/elaborate on, cause you have better ideas in conversation than contemplation often (well I do).

Again its separate issues - the 'vibe' of ILE can move on via some other medium, all we need is a contingency list of interested people.

― Tom, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(also sentimental reasons are good reasons, generally)

― Tom, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i have printouts of all the stuff i DIDN'T post on ILM during late spring [the height of my addiction] - each piece ^a child ov it's time^

if it all goes titzup then there's at least one g-hating lurker who knows our stuff bck/frnt - up to you ^quad^!!!!

― , Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Um, that's really quite easy to reformat, you know. I'm sure Sterling, Dan or myself could knock up a bit of perl that'd punt all that into a database in short order.

― RickyT, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Possibly, but it's just there's so much of it.

― DG, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hey! It's just like Farenheit 451! I don't like all this talk of IL* disappearing. I must have written a novel's worth of words here. I demand preservation! Why can't Mr Greenspun just strip out all javascript monkey business from postings?

― Nick, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Average post length c 100 words = 600 characters, say. Plus another 150 or so for the address etc, gives us 750. Round up to 1000 for convenience. Number of posts in database currently 93000 odd. So total storage in plain text is 93000 * 1000 bytes = 93MB. Even allowing for being out by a factor of 10 this still gives us less than 1GB of info. It'd require a decent machine with a big hard drive to drop this into a MySQL database, but it really wouldn't take that long.

― RickyT, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, but Nick its a rubbish novels worth of words.

― Pete, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, if someone wants to do it, be my guest. You'd have to email me first so I could fire up THE MACHINE, though.

― DG, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pete, stop confusing quality and quantity.

― Nick, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"quantity becomes quality" hegel

― mark s, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think I have a lot of the recent stuff in my temp internet files at home...so...just opening threads again and saving them as internet documents should help? Yes?

― james, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think you can get the tcl and html source for Lusenet in a tar file from this page. However, I am being lazy and I don't really know tcl (I've spent an hour or two breaking eggdrop ircbots ages ago, but that's it), so I haven't really looked at it enough to tell whether it's helpful or whether you'd be better off writing something from scratch in a less icky language.

(There's even a comment in the source about how icky tcl is: "# there is probably something wrong with a computer language where you have to do this... " followed by 80 lines creating an array matching alphanumeric characters up with their ASCII values, I know not why...)

― Rebecca, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

can't this, or isn't this possible to view through the net archives libraries?

― geoff, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

two years pass...

Another time.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 14 October 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

"IL*" - did people really call it that? When was it supplanted by "ILX"?

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 14 October 2004 22:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe it was just me. I lost.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 14 October 2004 22:14 (twenty-one years ago)

TS: ILX vs. IL* vs. IL?

Regular Expression fans should campaign for "IL.", but I don't think we'd get anywhere.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 15 October 2004 06:11 (twenty-one years ago)

"ILX" is here to stay I think.
It just sound better to say, I mean "There was this thread on IL." ew.
And the other one, what would you say? "I read this on IL asterisk."? Gimme a break.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Friday, 15 October 2004 06:18 (twenty-one years ago)

don't forget 'IL%'

(says andy as he struggles with ejbql)

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 15 October 2004 06:49 (twenty-one years ago)

IL©

― C J (C J), Friday, 15 October 2004 06:52 (twenty-one years ago)

IL$

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Friday, 15 October 2004 07:01 (twenty-one years ago)

IL:)

― Matt (Matt), Friday, 15 October 2004 08:57 (twenty-one years ago)

"eggdrop ircbots"

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 15 October 2004 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

eggdrop ircbots

He was at right back for Lithuania against Spain on Wednesday

― Dataismus (Dada), Friday, 15 October 2004 09:17 (twenty-one years ago)

And the other one, what would you say? "I read this on IL asterisk."? Gimme a break.

ILstar

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 15 October 2004 10:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Well you can't have http://il*.p3r.net

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Friday, 15 October 2004 11:25 (twenty-one years ago)

ILXXX

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 15 October 2004 11:28 (twenty-one years ago)

ILstar sounds like a Pop Idol for Illinois or something.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Friday, 15 October 2004 13:21 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.