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#1 2002-05-18 23:28:47
- Canth
- Member
- Registered: 2002-04-21
- Posts: 126
Re: Mars Society Chat - Having a chat gathering
The Mars Society has a chat area which I visted. I talked to the one member there (Bruce Mackenzie) who said very little discussion goes on there. I suggested that we organize a chat time and volunteered to get some people together from the webboard. I will contact him if I can gather at least 4 people for any particular time, maybe he will be able to get some others. If you are interested in a mars chat then I recommend you go to the Mars Society webpage and make sure you can connect to the chat through one method or another. It is a MOO chat and might cause problems for some people. You don't really have to be able to use it well but just be able to connect. Once you are sure you can connect post here and we can try to work out a date and time. I hope to be able to gather a decent number of people, but only a few would be fine. I think that a chat could provide some very meaningful and stimulating discussion. Hopefully it will become a regular occurence.
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#2 2002-05-19 04:00:19
Re: Mars Society Chat - Having a chat gathering
This is a good idea. I'd planned to set up an IRC chat room for New Mars (called #newmars, maybe on Dalnet) when we got to a certain size, since there's no point having a chat if not enough people turn up. I still think that IRC is a better format for chatting, since MOOs are unwieldy and all this guff about having environments and objects rarely turns out to be useful at all.
But what the ####, the Mars Society has set up a MOO room so I can't argue (not quite yet, anyway 
).
Things to consider for a good meeting time:
Different time zones. New Mars has an unusually high proportion of non-Americans, so along with considering the different US time zones you must also consider GMT and Europe.
A time when everyone will be able to visit. Often means Sunday, but not necessarily.
My suggestion would be to have a meeting on Sunday evening, maybe 8PM GMT (well, BST really). This would mean 12-3PM in America, and most people in Western Europe would also be able to turn up. What do people think?
Editor of [url=http://www.newmars.com]New Mars[/url]
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#3 2002-05-19 11:35:19
- Canth
- Member
- Registered: 2002-04-21
- Posts: 126
Re: Mars Society Chat - Having a chat gathering
This would likely pose a problem for people in Russia of whom there seem to be at least several active members. How well represented are the various time zones? We should try to set up a time which will be most convenient to most people. I suggest a time wait untill we have some more people and their time zones. If we have a few Russians or eastern europeans we might want to make the time earlier or later, depending on whether they want to stay up late or go to bed early. Anyway, post your time zones so we can try to make a good comprimise. I am EDT, I beleive Adrian is GMT.
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#4 2002-06-04 16:10:56
Re: Mars Society Chat - Having a chat gathering
I had a look at the Mars Society chat room the other day - to be frank, I wasn't too impressed. I understand how it might be educational for Mars Society members to develop this chat room, but frankly for discussion it is far easier to use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) which has automatic logging and a whole host of bots that fulfil a variety of needs. The only advantage that the Mars Society chat room has over IRC is that it has an easily accessible interface. And of course, it would be simple for anyone (including me) to set up a web gateway for an IRC channel.
Anyway, there's been some real activity on these forums of late. Are people still interested in taking part in a weekly or biweekly chat?
Editor of [url=http://www.newmars.com]New Mars[/url]
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#5 2002-06-06 13:00:26
- Josh Cryer
- Moderator
- Registered: 2001-09-29
- Posts: 3,830
Re: Mars Society Chat - Having a chat gathering
I'm game, if I have time. Although I'm not actually a member of the Mars Society. So, yeah.
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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#6 2002-07-05 12:38:45
- Canth
- Member
- Registered: 2002-04-21
- Posts: 126
Re: Mars Society Chat - Having a chat gathering
Sorry I was not able to post untill a few days ago due to computer trouble and a three week trip, if anyone is still up for a chat I would enjoy it. I think you are right, an irc chat would be much better than using the Mars Society chat.
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