[M] Hello?

[Daibhid Ceannaideach]

Hi? Anyone here?

With the Ex-Twitter busy doing whatever it's doing, I'm hedging my
social media bets, and someone on Mastodon recommended a free Usenet
server (eternal.september, which is a fun name for such a thing) so I
thought I'd pop back here and see how things are doing.

Um, it's quiet, isn't it? Although that's better than my other stomping
grounds of the Doctor Who groups, which now appear to be entirely
dominated by one poster, who I'm afraid I never had much time for at the
best of times.

Anyway, it looks like I'm sort of back, although I don't know *how* back
I am. I'm accessing eternal.september via Thunderbird, which I'm rapidly
realising was the Wrong Choice.

If anyone, for whatever weird reason, actually wants to follow me
elsewhere, then I'm "daibhidc" wherever poorly-thought-out opinions are
sold (Mastodon, Bluesky, still Twitter out of habit, and Dreamwidth when
I remember) but hopefully I will be back to sharing poorly-thought-out
opinions here as well.

--
--
Dave
[Insert insightful Discworld quote here]

[Nigel Stapley]

I still pop in if anyone has posted anything, but it's very depressing
considering how things used to be. There are only three or four people
who ever post here at all now, so it's good to see another veteran
re-appearing.

(I use Tbird for Usenet as well, and I've never had any major problems
with it)

Thanks for giving me another chance to plug my book as well:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/nigelstapley

--
Regards

Nigel Stapley

www.thejudge.me.uk

<reply-to will bounce>

[Daibhid Ceannaideach]

On 18/09/2023 22:20, Nigel Stapley wrote:

> (I use Tbird for Usenet as well, and I've never had any major problems
> with it)

I'm probably still getting used to it -- for instance I didn't realise
"Reply" would send an e-mail and "Followup" was the one I wanted. I was
also a little annoyed that, given the bulk of alt.drwho.creative
apparently being one person with stuff I'm not interested in, there
doesn't seem to be a killfile so I can filter all that out and see
what's left.

[John Williamson]

On 19/09/2023 12:25, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:
> On 18/09/2023 22:20, Nigel Stapley wrote:
>
>> (I use Tbird for Usenet as well, and I've never had any major problems
>> with it)
>
> I'm probably still getting used to it -- for instance I didn't realise
> "Reply" would send an e-mail and "Followup" was the one I wanted. I was
> also a little annoyed that, given the bulk of alt.drwho.creative
> apparently being one person with stuff I'm not interested in, there
> doesn't seem to be a killfile so I can filter all that out and see
> what's left.
>

If you tell Thunderbird that this is a newsgroup, "reply" replies to the
group, and if you right click on the sender name in the headings, you
get an option to "create a filter" for either just the group or for your
whole news account.

Unless they've changed it since this version came out.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Steveski]

Still here :-)

--
Steveski

[Steveski]

On 18/09/2023 21:49, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:
> Hi? Anyone here?

Shit! Top-posted. Soz

Forgot that I'd changed the setting . . . Oh, the embarrassment.

--
Steveski

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

It's Turtles all the way up?

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[Gary R. Schmidt]

On 19/09/2023 21:25, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:
> On 18/09/2023 22:20, Nigel Stapley wrote:
>
>> (I use Tbird for Usenet as well, and I've never had any major problems
>> with it)
>
> I'm probably still getting used to it -- for instance I didn't realise
> "Reply" would send an e-mail and "Followup" was the one I wanted. I was
> also a little annoyed that, given the bulk of alt.drwho.creative
> apparently being one person with stuff I'm not interested in, there
> doesn't seem to be a killfile so I can filter all that out and see
> what's left.
>

Something is mis-configured, or you have an ancient and bug-ridden
version of TB installed. (Or it's 115 and they've broken something else.)

What does "Help->About" tell you?

If you created things using "File->New->Newsgroup Account" it should do
the right things.

And message filters are available via "Tools->Message Filters".

Cheers,
Gary B-)

[Daniel Goldsmith]

On 2023-09-18, Daibhid Ceannaideach <daibhidc...@aol.com> wrote:
> Hi? Anyone here?

I'm here and so are some others. ppint ppops along once in a while, for
example. It _has_ been quieter here than usual recently.

> With the Ex-Twitter busy doing whatever it's doing, I'm hedging my
> social media bets, and someone on Mastodon recommended a free Usenet
> server (eternal.september, which is a fun name for such a thing) so I
> thought I'd pop back here and see how things are doing.

The name still gives me the yips. While its nice to remember that period
via rose-coloured glasses, the actualité was... not always all that.

<snip>

> Anyway, it looks like I'm sort of back, although I don't know *how* back
> I am. I'm accessing eternal.september via Thunderbird, which I'm rapidly
> realising was the Wrong Choice.

slrn is still going, it even had a 1.0 release!! tin and trn are still doing
their thing. On the Windows end, 40tude Dialog seems popular, albeit wholly
unsupported for some considerable time. There are even some users still using
Xnews...

> If anyone, for whatever weird reason, actually wants to follow me
> elsewhere, then I'm "daibhidc" wherever poorly-thought-out opinions are
> sold (Mastodon, Bluesky, still Twitter out of habit, and Dreamwidth when
> I remember) but hopefully I will be back to sharing poorly-thought-out
> opinions here as well.

Aha! Found you on the Drum. Nice to see you Daibhid.


--
dgold <ne...@dgold.eu>

[James Kuyper]

On 9/19/23 09:11, John Williamson wrote:
> On 19/09/2023 12:25, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:

...

>> I'm probably still getting used to it -- for instance I didn't realise
>> "Reply" would send an e-mail and "Followup" was the one I wanted. I was
>> also a little annoyed that, given the bulk of alt.drwho.creative
>> apparently being one person with stuff I'm not interested in, there
>> doesn't seem to be a killfile so I can filter all that out and see
>> what's left.
>>
> If you tell Thunderbird that this is a newsgroup, "reply" replies to the
> group,

That's not been my experience - "Reply" sends an email to the sender
only - that behavior changed several years ago, to my considerable
annoyance. How do you tell Thunderbird that its a newsgroup?

I know that when I created the account, I selected "Newsgroup".
Reviewing the Settings for the account, it says "Server Type: News
Server (NNTP)". and one of the Message Storage options is "News.rc
File". Under "Synchronization and Storage" tab, there's a button for
"Select newsgroups for offline use.". When I select the account itself,
"Subscribe" takes me to a list of newsgroups to subscribe to. When I
post a message to the group with "Followup" or "New Message", the
resulting message has a "Newsgroup" header (which is not the case when I
select "Reply"). When I read messages posted to the newsgroup, the
Newsgroup header is displayed. Thunderbird seems to be very clear about
the fact that it's a newsgroup account.

[John Williamson]

On 19/09/2023 23:44, James Kuyper wrote:
> On 9/19/23 09:11, John Williamson wrote:

>> If you tell Thunderbird that this is a newsgroup, "reply" replies to the
>> group,
>
> That's not been my experience - "Reply" sends an email to the sender
> only - that behavior changed several years ago, to my considerable
> annoyance. How do you tell Thunderbird that its a newsgroup?
>

It may be a version thing, then. I am still on the version before they
killed the Leetkey plugin. Reply in the main toolbar replies to the
group, while using the icon in the message pane toolbar replies to the
sender only.

> I know that when I created the account, I selected "Newsgroup".
> Reviewing the Settings for the account, it says "Server Type: News
> Server (NNTP)". and one of the Message Storage options is "News.rc
> File". Under "Synchronization and Storage" tab, there's a button for
> "Select newsgroups for offline use.". When I select the account itself,
> "Subscribe" takes me to a list of newsgroups to subscribe to. When I
> post a message to the group with "Followup" or "New Message", the
> resulting message has a "Newsgroup" header (which is not the case when I
> select "Reply"). When I read messages posted to the newsgroup, the
> Newsgroup header is displayed. Thunderbird seems to be very clear about
> the fact that it's a newsgroup account.
>

That's what I did about 15 years ago, with the slight modification that
all my documents are on a data drive, so that's where the news.rc is kept.

[robcraine]

On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 9:49:20 PM UTC+1, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:
> Hi? Anyone here?
>

< Most of message snipped to save precious bandwidth>

I'm sort of still here. Mostly to dig up old facts and Terry utterances to answer questions posted Elsewhere. I poke my nose in occaisionally, and am definitely not using the same account as I did in the 90s. But I recognise some of the names on this thread.

When Musk started displaying his lunacy, and reddit was also facing protests, I did think maybe people would end up back here.

I suppose next I need to fire up irc and head to the mended drum.

[Dave Yeo]

John Williamson wrote:
> It may be a version thing, then. I am still on the version before they
> killed the Leetkey plugin. Reply in the main toolbar replies to the
> group, while using the icon in the message pane toolbar replies to the
> sender only.

I don't think the reply button is on the toolbar by default, in which
case, right click on an empty part of the toolbar, choose customize and
drag the reply button onto the toolbar.
Or get in the habit of pressing Followup
Dave

[James Kuyper]

On 9/20/23 07:08, John Williamson wrote:
> On 19/09/2023 23:44, James Kuyper wrote:

...

>> That's not been my experience - "Reply" sends an email to the sender
>> only - that behavior changed several years ago, to my considerable
>> annoyance. How do you tell Thunderbird that its a newsgroup?
>>
> It may be a version thing, then. I am still on the version before they
> killed the Leetkey plugin. Reply in the main toolbar replies to the
> group, while using the icon in the message pane toolbar replies to the
> sender only.

I'm using 102.15.1.

[James Kuyper]

It's the "Reply" button in the Message Pane Toolbar that causes me
problems, and I have not figured out how to customize that toolbar.

> Or get in the habit of pressing Followup

I spent more than a decade hitting "Reply" when I wanted to post a
message to the newsgroup. It's been a few years since they changed the
behavior of the "Reply" button, and I still hit "Reply" more often than
"Followup". At my age (64), it starts getting difficult to change habits
- the brain gets less flexible.

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Using Betterbird 102.15.1-bb41 I managed to replicate the "send an
email" behaviour by hitting "Reply" in the "Header Toolbar", which is
possibly the first time I have ever done that in all the decades I've
used SeaMonkey/Thunderbird/Betterbird. (I'm only 62, still catching up!
[1])

Usually I hit "Reply" in the Mail Toolbar, which creates a Newsgroup
message to the appropriate group(s).

And now I've just clicked on "Hide Header Toolbar" to ensure I never,
ever, ever, do it again!

Cheers,
Gary B-)

1 - But computers, email, newsfroups, and so on is what I've been been
doing for most of my life. :-)

[Daibhid Ceannaideach]

On 19/09/2023 15:17, Gary R. Schmidt wrote:
> On 19/09/2023 21:25, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:
>> On 18/09/2023 22:20, Nigel Stapley wrote:
>>
>>> (I use Tbird for Usenet as well, and I've never had any major
>>> problems with it)
>>
>> I'm probably still getting used to it -- for instance I didn't realise
>> "Reply" would send an e-mail and "Followup" was the one I wanted. I
>> was also a little annoyed that, given the bulk of alt.drwho.creative
>> apparently being one person with stuff I'm not interested in, there
>> doesn't seem to be a killfile so I can filter all that out and see
>> what's left.
>>
> Something is mis-configured, or you have an ancient and bug-ridden
> version of TB installed.  (Or it's 115 and they've broken something else.)
>
> What does "Help->About" tell you?

It says it's 115.2.2

> If you created things using "File->New->Newsgroup Account" it should do
> the right things.
>
> And message filters are available via "Tools->Message Filters".

Thank you, that worked. And led to the depressing discovery that
*nobody* else is really contributing to adwc these day...

[Daibhid Ceannaideach]

On 19/09/2023 16:56, Daniel Goldsmith wrote:
> On 2023-09-18, Daibhid Ceannaideach <daibhidc...@aol.com> wrote:

(Flip, I did it *again*)

> Aha! Found you on the Drum. Nice to see you Daibhid.
>
>

Thank you. And oops, forgot I had to specify the "instance" for Mastodon!

[Gabe]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 16:55:11 -0700 (PDT), robcraine <robc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 9:49:20 PM UTC+1, Daibhid Ceannaideach
> wrote:
>> Hi? Anyone here?
>>
> < Most of message snipped to save precious bandwidth>

Thank you!

[...]

> I suppose next I need to fire up irc and head to the mended drum.

There's a name I haven't heard in a long...


Gabe
--
Kissing a fish is like smoking a bicycle.

[Kincaid]

Bloody AOLers...

[Kincaid]

Bit quiet on the IRC these days :-*

[Stephen Frost]

In message <uemrs6$pfkc$1...@dont-email.me>

Usenet is going quieter all the time sadly.

I have more dead groups than live ones these days...


--
Sig. under development - maybe

[Paul .Jamison]

I'm just now getting online since the first of October. I'm diagnosed with Parkinson's and it's taking some time to settle into a new routine.

[Robert Carnegie]

People are avoiding alt.*.pratchett because it's gone
so quiet. :-( And of course we're missing the
man himself.

I am following "Terry Pratchett Book Club" from
<https://www.tor.com/author/emmet-asher-perrin/>
with 2023 sexual politics which I think are passing
me by. And, don't tell 'em, I'm not re-reading the
books for this. At the same time, I got stuck in
_Raising Steam_. Partly I seem to have less and
less time these days, partly I felt or imagined
an absence.

[kyonshi]

Hello, I am sometimes checking back here, but somehow few discussions
actually take place here. ALthough I see some minimal uptick of posts in
some other groups. I even found a new newsserver for frp topics lately,
which is nice.

[Thomas Schwarzer]

Am 18.09.2023 schrieb Daibhid Ceannaideach:

> Hi? Anyone here?
>

Hello and Merry Christmas from a german lurker.

Not using the usenet regulary anymore, but still looking sometimes for
something new in this group.

Regards,

Thomas

[ppin...@gmail.com]

On Monday 18 September 2023 at 21:49:20 UTC+1, Daibhid Ceannaideach wrote:
> Hi? Anyone here?
>
> With the Ex-Twitter busy doing whatever it's doing, I'm hedging my
> social media bets, and someone on Mastodon recommended a free Usenet
> server (eternal.september, which is a fun name for such a thing) so I
> thought I'd pop back here and see how things are doing.
>
> Um, it's quiet, isn't it? Although that's better than my other stomping
> grounds of the Doctor Who groups, which now appear to be entirely
> dominated by one poster, who I'm afraid I never had much time for at the
> best of times.
>
> Anyway, it looks like I'm sort of back, although I don't know *how* back
> I am. I'm accessing eternal.september via Thunderbird, which I'm rapidly
> realising was the Wrong Choice.
>
> If anyone, for whatever weird reason, actually wants to follow me
> elsewhere, then I'm "daibhidc" wherever poorly-thought-out opinions are
> sold

- still ppint.pinto on farcebook, theoretically still feetnotes on once-livejournal;
yr hmbl srppnt. doesn't have a newsfeed and will presumably lose what's left
of googlegropes sometime next month.

- no idea whether there's a newsreader available for tablettything on google-
games; will look once i've posted this, but without a text newsgroups source...

- happy 2024, everyone still ''here'' - hoping & trusting ukafpers stay safe and
retain their thatch/tiles/slates through the end of the current storm -

- love, ppint.
--
'tis due to ppinqueans that set light
to nelson's hat
it glows at night

[Nigel Stapley]

Sorry, ppint. Meant to send this to the froup. It really *is* time I left...

--
Regards

Nigel Stapley

www.thejudge.me.uk

<reply-to will bounce>

On 25/01/2024 15:50, Nigel Stapley wrote:
> On 24/01/2024 00:48, ppin...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> <snip>

>
>>
>> - still ppint.pinto on farcebook, theoretically still feetnotes on
>> once-livejournal;
>> yr hmbl srppnt. doesn't have a newsfeed and will presumably lose
>> what's left
>> of googlegropes sometime next month.
>>
>> - no idea whether there's a newsreader available for tablettything on
>> google-
>> games; will look once i've posted this, but without a text newsgroups
>> source...
>>
>> - happy 2024, everyone still ''here'' - hoping & trusting ukafpers
>> stay safe and
>> retain their thatch/tiles/slates through the end of the current storm -
>>
>> - love, ppint.
>

> I've come to the conclusion that I might as well bow out of afp now.
> All that's been on here for the last month has been spam, and I'm sick
> of setting up new filters.
>
> It's been fun. I miss the old days when one had to skip whole threads
> simply to keep up.
>
> Take care, old chums. It's been good to know you.
>
> Oh. and please buy my book: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/nigelstapley
>
>

[ppin...@gmail.com]

- hi; on thursday 25 january 2024, nigel stapley scripsit:

>
> Sorry, ppint. Meant to send this to the froup. It really *is* time I left...

- 's ok; errare est humanum - or in whatever order the original was,
or any tolerably sane person (or small, blue, pseudopod-extending
alien afper from arcturus) may prefer.

- love, ppint.
--
''life is sensational!''
- jackie mathews
- inadvertently punning in the hot summer of '78 -
- in 80/whatever number, regent street, lancaster

[Kyonshi]

On 1/28/2024 10:20 AM, ppin...@gmail.com wrote:
> - hi; on thursday 25 january 2024, nigel stapley scripsit:
>>
>> Sorry, ppint. Meant to send this to the froup. It really *is* time I left...
>
> - 's ok; errare est humanum - or in whatever order the original was,
> or any tolerably sane person (or small, blue, pseudopod-extending
> alien afper from arcturus) may prefer.
>
> - love, ppint.

errare humanum est

word order S-O-V (subject-object-verb) as way too many years of Latin in
school have taught me.

of course then it turns out some of the classic writers gave a shit
about word order and you can just do it however you want if you want to
make a point because the different endings indicate what is what anyway.

[kyonshi]

On 1/25/2024 8:54 PM, i.m....@aol.com wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 16:48:05 -0800 (PST), "ppin...@gmail.com"
> <ppin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> - no idea whether there's a newsreader available for tablettything on google-
>> games; will look once i've posted this, but without a text newsgroups source...
>

> Text groups only, and it's free:
>
> http://www.eternal-september.org/
>
> hth

yeah, but for a.f.p there's also the lspace server which also is free.
and, well, limited mostly to this group.