#Malta, the one and only Undernet IRC channel wt which all Maltese are meeti
Bob Sharp
>-I wish to inform the readers that all Maltese are meeting every
>-evening on the #Malta Undernet IRC channel.
>-It's worth taking a look. There are an average of 20 regular users.
>-Please add to this number !!! Join and have fun !!!!!!
>=
Would love to, if someone would tell me how it works !!!
Lots of comments around but no instructions !
8-}}
.
Charles Sammut
Marcus Borg
bobs...@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Bob Sharp") wrote:
>>-I wish to inform the readers that all Maltese are meeting every
>>-evening on the #Malta Undernet IRC channel.
>>-It's worth taking a look. There are an average of 20 regular users.
>>-Please add to this number !!! Join and have fun !!!!!!
>>=
>Would love to, if someone would tell me how it works !!!
>Lots of comments around but no instructions !
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a communication method that uses a text
based interactive chat. Users can join a channel (in this instance
#malta) and communicate with others that are on the channel at that
particular time. You simply type what you want to say and press
enter, with your contribution appearing in the main chat window.
There are also options to chat directly with a user in a private link,
which is very secure and very, very difficult to hack.
There are quite a few IRC clients available, the best IMHO is mIRC,
which has just turned shareware. The last freeware version was 4.1,
and the new shareware version is 4.5.
There are a number of sites, shareware and otherwise, that hold the
client available for downloading. The easiest way is to jump onto a
web brower, and search for MIRC in a search engine such as Lycos or
Alta Vista etc, to ascertain your nearest site fro download. If you
can bear wait, however, point your web browser at:-
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mooremt/get.html
Once you have got your IRC client installed, you will have to think up
a nickname for yourself, make it as personal or obscure as you can for
the reason that there will be thousands of people on IRC at any one
time and no two nicknames can be the same...for unique identification
purposes. e.g. someone called Billy may use B1lly to prevent a
nickname clash with the person using Billy.
mIRC in particular, comes with a number of servers available to log
into. As #Malta is on UNDERNET, ensure that the word undernet appears
in the server name that you select. Other servers are connected to
EFnet, which does not see undernet, and visa versa.
Once you have set up your nickname and connected to a server, you will
see the Message Of The Day and then you are ready.
To join #Malta, (the # indicates a channel name), in your status box,
type /join #malta and then press enter. Your nickname will then
appear in the channel and you can then chat to the people that are in
there.
IRC is a complex and easy beast at the same time. The best thing to
do is use it and play around for a while. Be sure not to swear or be
abusive in certain"family channels" as the operators in the channel
can kick yuo off it and ban you from the channel (operators appear
with a @ sign in front of their name in the channel).
Unless there is a robot running in a channel, then it dies once the
last user has left it. If you join a channel that is not already
formed, you will be the only person in there and automatically become
the channel operator. Only channel Ops can kick and ban people,
restrict logins and various othr tasks.
BTW, the help file on mIRC is very good indeed, and you should read
through it once you have had a play and understand what the basics do.
I heartily recommend that you have a play with IRC as it is one of the
more "human" parts of the internet, communicating with people
worldwide.
I will endevour to start a #malta channel on EFnet to run in parrallel
with the one on Undernet, when I am online of course.
I can be found on IRC under the Nickname of MacUK, if you fancy a chat
sometime!!!.
Good luck and hope this helps a bit..."there is a whole new world out
there!"
Marcus Borg
mar...@borg1.demon.co.uk