Letter from Eingang, May 2000

Miscellaneous Ramblings & News

Whoooosh! That's the sound that a speeding Ein makes as she zips past your window, heading for the unknown. While May was busy for me on a personal and a work level, it was a fairly quiet month for the games as I was devoting most of my attention to teaching and working.

As you probably know, we were playing server leapfrog during May. We went from raptor.dal.net, which delinked from DALnet in April, to glass.dal.net in Ohio. Glass didn't seem to work very well for us and we eventually moved to viking.dal.net in Norway. That seemed pretty good and seemed to always be connected with services, so we thought we had a new home. Ha! Viking suffered some kind of weird connection problem which won't be fixed (if ever) until July, so we were forced to go walkabout again. We're now making our home for the DALnet bots on powertech.dal.net, another Norwegian server. Let's cross our fingers and hope Powertech continues to work.

You may wonder why it takes us so long to switch servers. Most DALnet servers don't allow bots to connect and use their servers. Servers such as glass or sahara have an open "friendly bot" policy, but their servers aren't always desirable for connections. Other servers will allow us to run bots if we first secure permission, which is what we did for both Viking and Powertech.

We're still hashing over how to manage Chaos categories. One of the latest ideas suggested was to only allow categories to be in play for a certain amount of time and then rotate them forever out of play. Do you have any ideas about what to do or how to do it? Join in at http://www.eingang.org/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?29/80

Speaking of the message board, I've upgraded the software on our message board. Soon you'll be able to reply to posted messages via e-mail and we'll be able to administer the message board a lot easier. You'll probably notice the new administration features on every page (which you can't use except for the edit). Check it out at http://www.eingang.org/discus/.

We've added a new section to the Enlightenments which offers tips on how to make your game playing experience better. Check that the first installment of that this month.

I'm just about to head back to England from my "2-week" visit to Canada. I'll see you all online during June!

Game Bot Development

No news is not good news. I didn't have any time again this month to do any bot development at all although I have a huge list of things to do.

Tip of the Month

I've had reports of people complaining that they're K-lined or not allowed to use Powertech. Your game administrators do not have any control over who is or isn't allowed to use the server. If you have a problem with an IRC server, our recommendation is for you to chat with the people who run the server. Many IRC servers on DALnet operate their own channels. Viking.dal.net has #viking, for example. In the case of Powertech, visit #powertech. The people there, particularly the channel operators, will be able to advise you of who you should talk to about K-lines or who you should mail.

Category News

We had so many Chaos categories submitted in May that I ran behind in getting them processed. We had more than 100 new categories submitted and I've only processed 66 so far. When I finish doing the May batch, I'll include an equivalent number of new categories in the games in play on StarLink and DALnet.

Category Submission Winners

In Chaos, the #1 submitter of categories was {MAHAL`KITA} with more than 50 new categories. In second place, I believe it was Sevek with 14, with HawkFan in a distant third. Risky Business was mostly quiet last month, so we don't have a winner to report. Thanks to all the category writers! Will the top category submitter for Chaos or RB be you next month?

Your Game Administrators & Channel Ops

No new channel operators this month.

If you know anyone who might make a good channel operator for one of our games, encourage them to apply. You can apply via an instantly marked application form on the Games Web Site at http://games.eingang.org/Information/operators.html.

Finally, did you know that there's a list of channel operators on our Web site? You can find it at http://games.eingang.org/Information/operatorslist.html. If you're an active operator and your name isn't listed, send some mail to eingang@eingang.org.

Rumours

Rumour has it we've come into possession of a version of The Price is Right for IRC. We may see a Price is Right channel surfacing before the fall.

Contact Us Summary

Until next month, I remain...
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