Where In The World Is..?

Not seen anything from Rick Hamilton in a while.

I'm around, not as much here sadly, but I'm on the interwebz. Life is good, things are going reasonably well all told. About to jump into the job market again.
 
Not to knock any of my good friends or regular Ringmeeters specifically but in my experience IRC has always felt, to me at least, rather cliquey. The in jokes more specific etc etc.

A forum is just that, an open space where anyone can share their thoughts and ideas. IRC is more of a Members' Club.

Yeah I get that feeling quite a bit. IRC for me never had that much traffic so I never contributed and then I sat here wondering where the hell everyone was, but I'm almost afraid of killing off posts whenever I say something on the 'grams. If anything, Telegram groups help reduce the bullshitting that the random thoughts threads started and from what I remember hearing, caused such a big problem with migrating to the new forum software. Apparently, having threads as long as the random thoughts threads was a giant pain in the ass to have to transfer. Maybe @Quiky or @thomas can shed light on that one.
 
i think the (basically dead) awesome thread and funny pictures thread would get a lot more traffic without them, now all the contect that would go there, i just dumped in the telegram
 
If you use Tapatalk it's no more difficult.
 
As someone who used to post massive photo dumps in the Awesome Thread, its not really difficult at all..... upload to imgur, copy BBcode, paste, done. Takes all of 2 seconds per picture.
But thats besides the point. Conversations here are still easier to follow and are more structured, easier to lookup, easier to reference, etc. There are no more issues with the forum software for the most part, and no reason to keep avoiding this place where we built such a great community and where many friendships were born. I’m not going to keep going on about this like a broken record, I just think its really sad to see the forum slowly die.
 
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As someone who used to post massive photo dumps in the Awesome Thread, its not really difficult at all..... upload to imgur, copy BBcode, paste, done. Takes all of 2 seconds per picture.
But thats besides the point. Conversations here are still easier to follow and are more structured, easier to lookup, easier to reference, etc. There are no more issues with the forum software for the most part, and no reason to keep avoiding this place where we built such a great community and where many friendships were born. I’m not going to keep going on about this like a broken record, I just think its really sad to see the forum slowly die.
Yeah to also chime in? My laptop is in not great shape and frankly getting on my nerves with windows being a mess so I actually have been posting from my phone 90% of the time and it fuctions just fine for posting pictures etc.
 
I just dropped into the Telegram for the first time in a while and was sad to see that there are now FG meets being planned entirely in there with no mention on here. Not that I could make it to Icetrack meet at this point, but maybe if there was a discussion on here it could have been a possibility. Oh well, I guess there's no changing the fact that people just aren't coming back here.
 
In all fairness, Slushmeet was always this weird thing planned on WhatsApp mostly. Also, dates have been agreed on two days ago so theres still ample time to make a thread. I am sure @DaBoom will get to it soob
 
Yeah, as far as these wintermeet go, this is how we've done it for 3 years or so. Group chats are the most convenient way for figuring out most suitable dates and after things have been confirmed I'll post an info post to the forum. There's usually a delay of few days, as I mostly do these updates when I'm on the road and making longer posts with links etc is PITA on the phone.

One change I've noticed though. The more people rely on WA / T, the more I need to remind about things, resend links etc. If only there was a place where you'd find that info easily.. :geek:
 
Oh yeah, I still view Slushmeet as an extension/evolution of something gear.fi related that has grown to include international members, not an intentional way of "going into the woods and away from the forums". It's included some barely-there forum people and their friends who do not have a forum presence, so we've done a bunch of dealing on WA/TG instead. But for Finnish/perkele happenings there have been forum threads earlier as well.

But regarding the coming meet, I think we only really zeroed in on a date just now, so there's nothing that's really missed. The ass-umption is that a slushy meet with sauna and beers will happen sometime in January every year, so we start planning from that. Last year I had to miss the entire deal due to accepting a winter tester job on short notice, so this year I hope to attend.
 
I do hope to attend a Finnmeet in future. Next year is definitely out of the question - I need to be home as that sort of time is when Sam will be doing his mock exams prior to the real things in May/June and we already have some other fairly major travel plans for 2020 as well which means Ringmeet for us is also unlikely.

2021 however is a real possibility and since Sam will be at Sixth Form College by then there is a little more freedom to take him out of "school" for a few days so budget permitting I might be able to bring him along too. Not sure if HWF 3.0 would be coming as she doesn't cope well in the cold.
 
Also, dates have been agreed on two days ago so theres still ample time to make a thread.
Fair enough, I didn't scroll back far enough to see when it was planned.
 
That's why I left the main group ages ago. Unless you're glued to your phone pretty much 24/7 you can't keep track.
 
I have Telegram web idly scrolling away on a secondary monitor here at work.
 
You don't HAVE TO keep track.
Whenever you feel like, just go to the latest message and go from there. You're not missing anything and subjects change quickly.
 
I think the chats are essential for Ringmeet and roadtrip chat, but otherwise I'd prefer discussions on the forum. I only ever read the Telegram or WhatsApp chats if I randomly remember or if someone tags me.
 
@Spectre hasn't posted anything in a few months...

I have been busy with work/new clients, some local/personal issues and dealing with massive family fallout from my dad turning out to be an unrepentant serial cheating asshat who managed to irrefutably out his cheating through his own stupidity. Lots and lots and lots of fallout from that, I’ll post something in the appropriate private forum later once things eventually calm down. The local FG group (plus a
couple others) know about the ongoing saga of failure and shame.
 
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