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#Macadamia - The Channel for Nuts! (tm)

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What the hell is #Macadamia?!?

#Macadamia is a channel on the wonderful (the only one worthwhile visiting) DALnet IRC Network. If you don't know anything about IRC is, and you'd like to know, then...
  1. How on earth did you get here...?
  2. Try starting at my IRC page.
  3. How on earth did you get here...?
  4. Am I repeating myself? Damn.

"I'm Bart Simpson... Who the hell are you?"

My name is Stephen Jacob. I am better known on DALnet as Worf. In case you're incredibly stupid and haven't noticed that I'm providing links to my home page in this paragraph, here's another link you hopefully can't miss. I tell people a little more about myself on my All about me... page. I'm an IRCop on DALnet on the server rutgers.dal.net, and .... uh, I just ran out of inspiration. Tough luck. You'll just have to ask me some day. =)


How on earth did the channel come about...?

#Macadamia is one of the oldest major channels on DALnet, having been founded some time in November 1994 when I started experimenting with bots. I got myself a ComBot-Deluxe v1.20 and made some changes to it, calling it NutBot. Messing around at the start, I put it in a temporary channel, unoriginally called #talk.

After discussion with a good number of my friends on DALnet, it was decided that #Macadamia was a good name for the channel, being suitably nutty for our twisted personalities, and weird collective sense of humour. The macadamia nut is an utterly delectable nut used in wonderful cookies.... Mmmmm..... Stop! I'm getting hungry! A lot of people seem baffled by the name, but there you have it.


What on earth do you do there? ...

Um...... uh........ hmm.... mmm..... ur..... Geez, we do ask the tough questions, don't we?!? Well, the general idea of the channel is... hmmm... Ok, let's start back at the start when it was created. At the time that I started the channel, there were only a couple of major channels on DALnet. When I say major, I mean channels that anybody ever visited. ;)

DALnet was founded by Dalvenjah FoxFire aka Sven Nielsen back in June of 1994. I arrived on the scene in September 1994 after a week using just EFnet; mainly #StarTrek. They kept setting the topic on #StarTrek to things like "Come to DALnet! /server unccsun.uncc.edu". I was clueless at the time as regarded IRC and ircII, so didn't realise how to get there for a week. Duh.... seems stupid now, eh? ;) Yes, I was a newbie once too, although most of you were probably in your cybernappies back then. ;) I had been on the 'net for a year already, but only tried IRC at that stage. Anyway, I digress (regularly *grin*). Dalvenjah founded the network anyhow, it becoming a real network when Morpher linked up with dal. I could go into some torid history but I won't. Essentially when I came to it, DALnet had a userbase that was a) tiny and b) made up entirely of EFnet #StarTrek users. I remember well a time when you could connect to DALnet and wait there 3 or 4 hours before seeing 1 other person!!! I did many times. ;)

Back then, we didn't have "#StarTrek people" (DALnet-wise) and "#Whatever_channel_you_like people". We were all just "DALnet users". At first, the only channel that people used at all (even though good ol' QuarkBot sat on about 9 channels!) was #StarTrek as on EFnet. It was, honestly, a 1-channel network. Well, a couple of people started channels of their own. First of all was FireMyst (I'm not talking about unpopulated channels ;) who created #Relax. Way back then, he was called Dragon not FireMyst. Not all that long after that, I created #Macadamia, and we thus get back to what I was saying in the previous section. Thus, it was the third major channel on DALnet by my reckoning. Back then, there was only really ever one channel really in use at any one time. When connecting to DALnet, any regular would type /names and see which channel people were on. It'd be one of the three; #StarTrek, #Relax, or #Macadamia. It would be the same people whatever channel it happened to be, and so it was really pretty much irrelevant which one it was. Nobody really cared, because there were only enough people for one channel, really. 5 people was a pretty good count most of the time, and 2 was better than average for the working day in my neck of the woods (Ireland).

DALnet grew and became more than a 1 channel network, but still, everyone knew everyone until this late Summer - early Autumn. Ok... not everyone.... I did, because of my hideous online times. ;) Well, in the late Spring or Summer I stopped using #Macadamia, really. There were so many channels, and my friends had channels, so there was little point. I, as an IRCop was also meant to be on #DragonRealm, and when people started using #DragonRealm to chat on, I couldn't be bothered being on two active channels (it's a lot of work, you know!), so that also stopped me using #Macadamia. When I decommissioned NutBot (an honourable discharge =) in mid-Spring, that left the channel open less of the time, too.

Well just recently, as I am writing this, I have dragged ol' #Macadamia out of the closet, and dusted off the mothballs! It's back in commission. Do come and visit if you haven't done so already.

"What on earth do you do there?", you say, is the title of this section. "Answer the question!" you yell, forming part of an angry mob of web browsers howling for my blood for not having done so. Well... I'm sorry I digressed. :P

#Macadamia doesn't have any specific topic. In my experience, channels which have a topic never actually talk about anything to do with the topic, so there's not a lot of point in having one... is there? It's a channel for myself and my friends and weirdos to just hang around in and.... um.... I'm not really sure... chat? Well, what else is IRC? Don't tell me you use it to play online games like Risky Business... please. Anyway, we sometimes have a topic like "Equal rights for amoebae!!!" or "Forum for the discussion of RFC 16534796 on the subject of the establishment of an Internet protocol for matter-energy conversion and transmission."


Summary

I couldn't be bothered summarising. Simple tiny instruction even an idiot could understand: Come to #Macadamia!!! ;)

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