This post is part of a series of posts I am planning to write on communication over the internet. The style is slightly different from my previous posts as I am trying to use a more ’sociological’ approach to writing as an exercise for my master thesis.
It’s 11.35, I got up a few hours ago, started my two computers, reinstalled Ubuntu on my old one after not being able to make wlan run with Nexenta OS. While installing the updates for Ubuntu Gutsy on one computer, I start up my gmail, xchat-gnome, and skype on my other one. I was not able to use wireless on my new computer so far, but now it seems to work. I am just not sure how long it will last before it freezes again. I installed the proper drivers yesterday, but in a first test, it still didn’t seem to work. Maybe today’s Ubuntu Hardy updates did the trick to stabilize NetworkManager for my wlan card. It will take some time to test this though. So far, I am just happy it works.
It’s Saturday morning, Easter for Christians, most IRC channels are empty. I can see people in the channels, but there is only little discussion going on. Most of the people on IRC I know, just leave their computers on, so their name shows up in the user list, but they are really away from keyboard (afk). Some people have their IRC software configured to start up automatically when they start their computers. Most of them connect to the same channels on each startup. I currently have 18 channels in my list. However, as I am working on a new computer, I will most likely add some more channels today. I used to be in about 30 channels, but I forgot to backup my settings for gnome-xchat, I don’t want to go digg into my 3 gigabyte backup of my old system.
In most channels I am just a listener, observing what is going on. The programming language (e.g. python, ruby, erlang) and framework channels (e.g. rubyonrails, django) are always quite busy. Except if I have a question or there is a discussion about something I am familiar with, I won’t speak on these channels. I do believe though that they are a good place to see what’s happening in the programming communities. I often also pick up new technologies and stuff there that I would have not necessarily found in other places like Google search or blogs.
Right now, gnome-xchat shows activities in the channels django, haskell, python, rubyonrails, ubuntu-cn (all freenode), as well as the ubuntu channel (ubuntu server). All other channels just display notifications about who has entered and who has left. If a channel is very inactive, the log will only contain messages of people entering and leaving. Some channels I am in, are used for internal company discussions. Many companies seem to use IRC nowadays. Other channels are for events like Barcamp Bangkok, or the GNOME Asia Summit with discussions among people who know each other and who are in the channel to keep in touch, discuss event organization, technical questions, and whatever else they want to share with the channel users. On the other channels, I only know people by their IRC nicknames. Depending on where people live, they have different rhythms on IRC. European users generally log in when it’s afternoon in Asia, and American will say ‘good morning’ when I am ready to go to sleep.
Currently I am only in one channel that requires the UTF-8 character set. It’s ubuntu-cn (freenode) which is for discussions on Ubuntu in Chinese. It’s a very active channel with people constantly posting questions, answers, and remarks. At this time, they are 50 persons logged in. Unfortunately, all discussions are in Chinese. But from the English bits of text like Linux commands and user status notifications, I can partly guess what is being discussed.
As I am writing this, the computer makes regularly beeps whenever a Twitter update comes in. I have only joined Twitter some months ago, but since I have decided to follow a few people, it has become more and more an interesting tool to communicate and just send out unimportant stuff about myself. Among the people around Barcamp Bangkok, there are a number of very active Twitter users, so while I am writing this, I am constantly informed about what they are currently doing. Twitter is also used as a way of communication similar to IRC for Barcamp Bangkok. As a matter of fact, Twitter is currently even more active than the IRC channel.