That heading works better if one is aware of how non-rhotic the Kiwi accent is.
Anyway, I was wittering away "helping" someone (Kyle Macey) with a CFML problem last night, when someone suugested taking the conversation to a different venue as the list of people being referenced in the conversation was taking up most of the Twitter message space.
And someone suggested using IRC.
Knock me over with a feather... people still use IRC?
So, anyway, not wanting to miss out, I decided to try to work out how the hell IRC works. It's one of those things I have been aware of for decades (OK, that's only two decades), but never used. So I googled "freenode" which is where people said they were going, and was confronted with this:
And having filled in those details (#coldfusion is the channel for CF stuff), I'm in:
It's all a bit text-based and raw, but I think it's better than Twitter for a few reasons:
- that channel is dedicated to ColdFusion (well: let's say "CFML");
- there are no photos of people's lunch;
- or people advising via four-square that they have arrived at a public convenience, or any other shit that makes me roll my eyes in despair of humanity (overstated slightly)
- one can type more than 140 characters!
One thing that came up in conversation there last night is that it was "busy" there, because about half a dozen people were talking (the description "busy" was applied with due irony). I'm currently speaking to Dan Skaggs on Google, and he has observed that it's fairly under utilised. I don't want to be like the "new guy" who just discovered something everyone else knows about, but I suspect an awful lot of CFers who use Twitter (or don't use Twitter) to communicate possibly don't know about this option, so I suggested to Dan I could write this article to see if I can get it onto more people's radar. Thinking more CF-oriented chatter must be a good thing.
Anyway, job done... I've mentioned it. And my lunchbreak is pretty much over, so I'll press send. Maybe see you on the IRC channel...?
--
Adam
