Want to know what happens when the Micro$oft
Word 2000 spell checker encounters the dodgy
word w*nker? Read on!
The pages contain conversations I've been involved
in [I'm
eadon-com]. The online chats
took place on the Internet Chess Club, on channel
103 - the Religious Discussions channel. Even
though 103 is called that, the topic of conversation
varies, covering non-religious topics much of
the time.
The volotile mixture of the bright and the dim
amongst the chatters is a fertile recipe for
surreal, amusing moments as well as startling
philosophy and raging arguments. These transcripts
were taken from the best of these conversations
in the year 2000. (Most of the conversations
are actually quite tedious, only occasionally
does inspiration strike).
I have changed many of the names, mainly of
the christians. This is to protect the innocent
(and the guilty.) Also this allows me to label
most of the religious people with pseudo names
that have religious connotations, making it
easier to follow a religious debate. I edited
down the tells within passages too, removing
most "lols" and other exclamations of delight
and appreciation. I also removed some tells
that were off-subject or irrelevant and didn't
add anything. This was to improve the flow of
the conversation for the reader. I have not
changed the wording of tells except in a few
cases where I have corrected spelling/typo/abbreviated
words or occasionally added punctuation. I often
lengthened people's nicknames to their full
names. This looks unnaturally formal on the
page, with everyone seemingly addressing one
another by their full names, but it helps the
uninitiated reader to follow the arguments.
I used search and replace tools to add in the
formatting html. I put all the conversations
into a single document, edited, then cut and
pasted into individual web pages. Yes, this
took ages, far longer than I thought :)
Notice how spellings are generally uncannily
accurate. Whilst all the material was in a single
document I ran the spell checker to clean up
typos but kept the deliberate/interesting spelling
mistakes. You would be amazed how often the
words consciousness and palaeontologist are
misspelled in so many different ways. Incidentally,
spellchecking 100,000 words of raw chat takes
an unfeasibly huge chunk of time. It didn't
help when Micro$oft Word kept crashing on me
when I was using the Spell Checker. My next
computer will have Linux. It was particularly
peculiar that when MS Word came across the word
w*nking (which cropped up during an intellectual
[
yeah right, I hear you say] discussion
of the nuts bible chapter Deuteronomy). My machine
crashed! I had to insert a * into the word to
stop the Word spell checker from crashing my
machine! Windows eh? W*nkdows more like.
Heed Mr Hofstadter's Law (I apologies for mangling
this from memory): "Any software project will
take longer than you think, even if you take
Hofstadter's law into account." -This is certainly
true of webpage creation. Make that
thrice
as long as you think.
If you are unfamiliar with online chat, it works
a bit like a real-time conversation, except
[in 2000] everyone is typing instead of talking
vocally. One side effect of this dynamic is
that several comments - called "tells" - can
be sent simultaneously, and often are. Particularly
when there are several people debating, this
means that occasionally a person has not been
able to read the immediately preceding tell(s)
before posting his own. Unlike most face-to-face
conversations, online chat doesn't necessitate
turn taking. This quirk might explain why some
tells look quirky if viewed in a sequential
context.
The speed of the chat varies, generally ranging
from and average 1 tell every 8 seconds or so
to spurts of 1 tell or more per second if things
get really heated! So many of these comments
are made off the cuff and so might not be as
considered as their submitters would prefer,
which makes them all the more interesting and
insightful. Also some tells may be made by the
inebriated or even stoned :)
As far as I know,
not one atheist has
been converted and
not one Christian
lost his faith over the course of these multilogs.
This goes to show how closed minded we all are.
To be a member at ICC costs cash, which has
the positive effect of excluding much of the
rif-raf out there (except me). The people who
do are present have a tendency to enjoy playing
the odd game of chess and so are perhaps slightly
better educated (and probably more eccentric)
than average. Other than that they have little
in common, being of a wide variety of ages,
nationalities, backgrounds and beliefs. For
a week long free trial see
www.chessclub.com
Once you are up and running, type
"help
channel" to find
out about making channel tells, i.e. chatting.
Channel 103 is the religious discussions channel.
Tip - assign channel 103 to its own window.
(See the window menu. You will know what I mean
when the time comes).
There is an Atheists and Agnostics group on
ICC too. The official home page of the group
is
here.
Glossary
ICC - Internet Chess Club
103- the number representing the ICC religious
discussions chat channel
channel, place where people chat. Different
channels are for different topics.
A tell - a message/contribution to the chat
handle - the name
representing the person. eg.
eadon-com
is my handle.
fundy/ fundie -
Fundamentalist Christian, i.e. an extreme Christian
who takes the entire bible literally and as
truth.
xtian - Christian
Chat
lingo
jk
or
j/k
- joke
:)
:-) ;) ;-P etc. = smiley's: used
with tells that indicate that the person is
joking
heh,
ha, hehe etc - laughs
lol
- laugh out loud
rofl
- roll on floor laughing
roflmao
- roll on floor laughing my arse off (or ass,
if you are a Yank)
brb
= be right back - the teller is leaving the
discussion for a short interval
mg/omg
- oh my god
imo
- in my opinion
imho
- in my humble opinion. Although at least one
christian thinks it means In My Holy Opinion
;-)
bf/gf
boyfriend/girlfriend
<
> Text inside angle brackets
usually indicates an action. For example
<shakes
fist>
Please
add your comment to this page
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| From: |
James Plaskett | Subject: | 2001-02-08 16:15:06 |
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| From: |
paul ngalle | Subject: | 2001-10-25 06:27:49 |
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| From: |
Kev | Subject: | 2002-01-20 18:58:53 |
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| From: |
Ticcer | Subject: | 2002-01-23 07:52:45 |
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| From: |
Ticcer | Subject: | 2002-01-23 07:53:20 |
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| From: |
Ticcer | Subject: | 2002-01-23 08:08:25 |
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| From: |
menessier ngalle paul | Subject: | 2002-10-23 07:14:47 |
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| From: |
Paul Menessier Ngalle | Subject: | 2005-06-09 16:16:51 |
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| From: |
Thomas Channing | Subject: | 2005-12-20 20:07:19 |
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