looking east

I was a bit sick for the last couple of days and I still don’t feel like moving around too much tonight, so I figured I might as well come up with a useful blog post. So this is it: a tiny guide to IRC.

There are quite a few good IRC tutorials, but I thought that this might still be useful for someone. I am aware that I am a bit off-topic here, but I couldn’t think of another place to publish it (I know this should probably go in a wiki, unfortunately I don’t have access to one that is appropriate for this kind of content ).

The following commands have been tested on freenode, though they might work for other networks as well. I am using the brackets ‘[’ and ‘]’ as placeholders, so this is where your input goes.

talking to the nick name service nickserv

• register your current nick name:

  /msg nickserv register

• change your current nick name:

  /nick [nick]

• recover your registered nick when someone else is currently using it:

  /msg nickserv recover [nick] [password]

• each time you connect, sign in with your registered nick (most irc clients will do that for you):

  /msg nickserv identify [password]

getting an invitation and using it

• get an invitation (this is normally done by either asking the channel operator personally to add you or) by sending a message to the channel operator [nick]:
  /msg [nick] [please add me to the channel]
• invite a user to a channel (only the channel operator will need this command)

  /invite [nick] [#channel]

• “show” your invitation before joining:

  /cs invite [#channel]

joining a channel

• just type:

  /join [#channel]

talking to the channel service chanserv

Sometimes you will get the following message:

[#channel]: You need to be a channel operator to do that

These commands might be useful in that case:

• get channel operator status:

  /cs op [#channel] or /mode [#channel] +o [nick]

• remove channel operator status from [nick] ([nick] can be you as well):

  /mode [#channel] -o [nick]

• give voice to [nick] (mainly used on moderated channels, use the option -v to remove voice from [nick]):

  /cs voice [#channel] [nick] or /mode [#channel] +v [nick]

other useful commands

• change the channel topic:

   /topic [#channel] [this is the new topic]

• Kicking users:

  /kick user [#channel] [reason]

• Banning Users:

  /mode [#channel] +b [usermask] [reason]
  
  type "/userhost [nick]" to get the nick's usermask)

irc clients

(See wikihow for a more extensive list)

• Linux: X-Chat, or the more convenient version XChat-gnome. Pidgin still has some issues with some of the IRC commands, so I’d wait for the bug fixes before using it.

• Mac: Colloquy

• Windows: Miranda, Mirc or XChat for a more command-line like interface

Each IRC client can be configured to display a notification when someone is trying to contact you or even for some specific keywords. Other configuration options include:

No more excuses for not using IRC, innit?

David Feng started a new blog on technology in China. The blog is only six days old and he has already published 13 posts, most of which are really promising. For example, yesterday he wrote a good one about Chinese censorship, for once not just a variation of the standard rumblings on the topic. It’s the first post of a series he calls “Mind the Gap Saturday” which I guess he will be publishing every saturday:

techblog86’s Mind the Gap Saturday focuses on the Chinese tech, mobile and startup worlds and why there’s a gap between the Chinese and Western sides of things.

Anyway, here’s the link to the blog: http://www.techblog86.com.

Since I came to Bangkok, I have found myself spending much more time on the internet. I even started to add quite a few new blogs to my daily digest which means that it takes me almost two hours a day, just to read what other people have to say. And, for once, I am not just reading the blogs, but even following the links in the posts and writing comments. Now, this might sound just normal and sane to the most of you, but it really worries me. And I start asking myself: Maybe I am not so different from the geeks and nerds?

To be honest, I have spent quite a lot of energy to distance myself from the “nerds and geeks” at the computer science department at university, on the job, at geek gatherings (though I would mostly not attend in the first place) and anywhere else where the “others” were considered as geeks. Why? Well, just because I believed what the prejudice said about them: they are boring, pale, scruffy, onesided, weird and have no social competences. And when they raise their voice it would be about gadgets, borderline software and all these other geeky topics. I could go on with this list forever, but I think you get the point here.

Being constantly surrounded by geeks meant that I really had to make an effort to be different. And I was quite successful I guess. No one ever called me a geek anyway :). I also effectively ignored all invitations for social networks, friend requests and stuff, though this has become mainstream in the meantime and I might need to reconsider my stance. I only got myself a facebook account a few weeks ago, but this was for implementing a facebook app (is that geeky?).

So here I am, still not considering myself a geek, but stuck with a master thesis topic that might transform me into one. It somehow reminds me of psychology students who study psychology to learn more about themselves. Though I haven’t yet mentioned what worries me most: I have written my first completely useless application which has been inspired by no one else but myself. It’s nothing exciting, just a little unfinished web app, but still: which other non-geek would be doing this?