Subject: Looking Back in AWW
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 11:48:44 +0000

Looking Back In AWW
A Usenet Retrospective, 2005

Well, it's been an interesting year, has 2005. A lot has happened, some things good, others not so, but here's my pick of the interesting bits and the bobs that we shouldn't forget. I've missed a lot out, but a retrospective look isn't complete without the holes one's mind cannot fill ;)

_Affordable Host_
Well, I suppose it's rather sad to start out by mentioning that AWW is *not* the Affordable Host helpdesk, but some things just need saying :)

Affordable Host was sold to DotCanada. This resulted in a massive fallout of former AH customers, most (okay, an exaggeration) of whom decided to post their experiences and misery in AWW. Okay, nothing unusual here, you say? Well I'd agree with you, but this time we saw Tina saying that she was saddened by the way the company had gone down the pan, and I for one agree with her. 'Twas great while it lasted.

_Forum4Designers_
This one makes me chuckle whenever I think of it. It could be a great idea, maybe in a parallel universe where Usenet doesn't exist, and F4D has its own content, but in this particular universe Usenet *does* exist and F4D *doesn't* have its own content :\

Of course, most if not all attempts at emulating Google Groups will end in failure, but maybe that's because GG is such a terrible idea in the first place? Am I trolling enough yet? ;)

_Bill Logan_
Through investigation by GreyWyvern, members of the group became aware of the death of Bill Logan. Bill was a much loved, member of the group for many years until his death in late 2004. We became aware that he hadn't posted for a while when someone began asking questions about subdomains - something that Bill had talked about previously and had become quite a heated, if not geeky, debate. Following that, Grey decided to investigate and discovered that Bill had passed away.

The group, as a collective, sent a card to his widow and daughter (which can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/8rce6 and http://tinyurl.com/akdow). A little while later we received a thank you card from her (which can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/92bnm and http://tinyurl.com/8kp95). Note that links redirect to the original URLs on GreyWyvern's site.

Rest in Peace, Bill.

_Spammer and Idiots_
2005 also saw our largest collection of idiots and spammers yet! In August and September, we started to become bombarded with postings from someone who claimed that Google were in breach of human rights conventions by keeping their archive at Google Groups. One day in August saw almost 100 separate threads started by this individual (one can only assume they acted alone) in which they continued to reply to their own posts :s

Does this mean that the September that never ended has *truly* not ended, or could it be something entirely different behind the recent spate? You decide ;)

_Duende and Dennis_
Duende, or someone claiming to be him, returned during September and it transpired that he had been masquerading as another poster named Dennis for some time! He acknowledged as much, but also hinted that he had been posted under a third name and challenged us to find out who this third person was.

Many regulars had their suspicions as to whom they could have been, and discussions between some of them resulted in one or two names being strong possibilities, yet Duende has not told the group who this person was and so far no body has made any firm accusations! It remains a mystery to this day.

Come on Duende, put us out of our miseries!

_Toby_
During the week of the London bombings we noticed that Toby Inkster had suddenly stopped posting. This got a few people rather worried about him, and many attempted to make contact with him. It later transpired, as predicted by some, that Toby had gone on holiday a few days before and had not told anyone (which is of course his prerogative). A couple of weeks later, he returned in a Hawaiian shirt with much sunburn, carrying a wicker donkey under his arm . :)

Apparently, Toby has a (smart) policy of not telling folk online when he's going away just in case we all decide to burgle his house! I guess it was just bad timing, but all is good as our favourite pedant is okay...

_brucie_
brucie (yay!) came back in October, made billions of posts, then buggered off (he wishes!) again, just like he always does.

_Mornington Crescent_
The fantabulous game, Morning Crescent, has been making a comeback over the last few months of the year. In case you don't know what this is, I suggest you go to your local library to borrow a copy of the rules - they would take far too long to explain here.

_The Eternal Question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea"_
The AWW sages (and basils) came up with an answer of Hobnobs. The reasoning behind this is that the Unicode values of the letters of "Hobnobs" added together, cubed and then divided by 1 million leaves 1 Hobnob per day for a whole year :\

_The Notorious Sharif_
Not quite a millionaire, but getting there steadily, Sharif jumped back into the group in the middle of December. It's early days, but I read somewhere that he's going to pay for us all to go on holiday next year, and it was on the Internet so it must be true ;)

_Famous Chess Players_
Last, but certainly not least, the famous American chess player (and failed lawyer) Paul Morphy became briefly famous in the group after we all heard his name for the first time :D

So what's going to happen in 2006? How the hell am I supposed to know?! My crystal ball is at the dry cleaners, and my spare I lent to someone in alt.html, but never got it back :) You'll just have to wait!

Well, here's hoping you all have a great New Year (whether you celebrate it or not), and hopefully this year we'll settlement the "Tables vs. CSS" argument once and for all :D

--
Dylan Parry

Disclaimer: This post does not represent the opinion of me or my cats.