The MUCK has settled into a new home and a new server. Lots of niceness and upgrade. With a new server comes a new IP, so be sure to update your settings if you use IPs instead of the hereliemonsters.org hostname:

69.61.98.139 9999
69.61.98.139 7777 (SSL)

We suffered a power failure last night, but the MUCK and Windwhip are back up. Puck won with a 125 day connect time.

[11:23] McGroarty says, "Coworker asked boss if he could have eBay Motors: Ferrari (item 4624325790 end time Mar-30-06 17:11:45 PST) instead of his remainin vacation time. Boss offered eBay: BBURAGO 1962 FERARRI 1:18 512R TESTEROSSA IOB NR (item 7019382522 end time Apr-04-06 18:47:07 PDT) instead."
[11:52] McGroarty says, "Stuff's all linked at Google Labs"
[12:22] Puck says, "Why can't my car do this?  < YouTube - Transformer >  ;.;"
[12:56] McGroarty < YouTube - sexual harasment >
[13:45] Rayce says, "Hey look I found your mom Free Ping Pong Table"
[14:17] McGroarty says, "Then it is allll yours! < iGoatse. the new skin for your iPod >"
[14:24] McGroarty says, "Oops. Gateway spoiled the fun for Intel. < DailyTech - Gateway Jumps The Gun on Intel, Accidentally Announces New CPU >"

I added a few enhancements to the MUCK's sms system last week. Now instead of only actual player names, you can send to any aliases you have set with page #alias or the alias command. (Multi-player aliases do not work.) In addition, the following special commands exist; send a message from your phone to these names @hereliemonsters.org to use them:

shout

Sending a message to this address will @shout it to folks on the MUCK listening to public shouts.

test

Sending any message (try a short one, like "!") here will respond with a message. Send a message here to make sure you have the SMS gateway configured correctly.

check

Sending any message will respond with the number of page #mail messages you have waiting.

wf

Sending any message will respond with the folks in your watchfor list on the MUCK right now.

Send any feedback or bug reports to me on the MUCK or in the issue tracker. Thanks! —Natasha

Sorry for the system bounces this morning. A spammer was attempting to submit thousands of comments per second to a MovableType blog on our server. I've blocked the offending IP and am in communication with the netblock owner.

The MUCK has moved. If you're connecting by IP, the old IP will stop forwarding to the new one in a couple of days. Be sure you are connecting, by name, to hereliemonsters.org.

We're now using a version of cmd-page that I cleaned up to remove old facilities like proplocs, summoning, and integrated mail. (Property locations, or 'proplocs,' allowed you to store your page-related properties on a different object. This was useful before properties were organized in directories, or 'propdirs.' According to Usenet, propdirs were new in TinyMUCK 2.2 Fuzzball, circa 1991.) I also made many small changes to use Fuzzball 6 features where available, such as using arrays and array sorting where possible, as well as making the system-wide libraries like lib/alias, lib/away, and lib/ignore more integrated and less hacked in. The changes reduced the program from the 3120 line, 85 kb fbmuf version down to 1254 lines and 40 kb.

This means a better and hopefully faster page program that will be easier for us to maintain now and to which to add features in the future.

Thanks to Blake, who helped write test cases to make sure the new code still worked. Because so much code changed, however, there may be more subtle errors in the new code. This is especially so in page #mail, which is mostly the same code but now in a separate library instead of built into the cmd-page program. I hope to replace the new lib/mail with a version based on lib/mesgbox, the bulletin board library, for better multi-line message support and Internet email compatibility. Please send me any problems or bugs you see, to natasha@neologasm.org if necessary.

Two particular things that are "broken" are page #forward and ignore messages. Page #forward will not be available until the new version of page #mail mentioned above is available. Also, ignore messages are no longer displayed or settable. When I wrote lib/ignore I made the decision not to support them, because they don't make a lot of sense in multi-program contexts, and now that we're solely using lib/ignore in page, they lack enough utility for me to add them back.

Thanks for your time and support. --Natty

The server locked up this AM and had to be hard-reset. I do not yet know the cause.

-- McGroarty

The server was reset unexpectedly. Any MUCK changes in the last half hour will have been lost.

To battle network lag, we're going to a better connected host. It should be fairly transparent for everyone, but if you do have trouble connecting Saturday, try "vs2.mcgroarty.net" instead of the MUCK address. That's temporary of course, so be sure to change back by the end of the weekend.

McGroarty thumbs up! "Good news! Power supply isn't making whining whistle noises anymore!"
Natty grins. "Yay for lack of whistle."
Natasha says, "Not so much lack of power though I imagine? *nod?*"
McGroarty says, "Well. MUCK apparently not too happy about power supply deciding not to supply the 5v part anymore."
McGroarty at least though, gets to take swapping out power supply off todo list.

WINDWHIP PEAK (Associated Monsters) -- HLM returned to service two hours ago after a service outage to replace the leaky roof above Windwhip Peak. "Amazing, the rust quantity," said long time resident McGroarty, whose landlord performed the service. "[We have a] guaranteed no-leak roof, and a replaced light fixture where water had been coming through." Other residents remarked on the stunning verisimilitude between the new fixture and the Sun, famed fusion furnace and bringer of light and energy to the solar system, long hailed by various cultures as a god (news - web sites). Resident dragon Icewing said, "I'm glad they got the light fixed. We won't miss that 'rain' one iota, no sirree bob."

The MUCK is going to be down a while real soon now while the building wiring is worked on.

Welcome to the first SMS-enabled MUCK! You can now send messages from your phone to HLM players and receive messages from other HLM players on your phone.

If you have a mobile phone with Short Message Service text messaging and phone service that provides an email gateway, type sms #set your address to enable the service. Players whom you ignore, page #ignore, or sms #ignore are not able to message you, nor you them if they you.

To message someone who has set an address, type sms eir name=your message. To message someone from your phone, send an email message to player's name@hereliemonsters.org. (The email from the service must appear to come from the same address you used in sms #set.)

As always, you can type sms #help to see the help. Thanks!

The server went down a moment. Routine use of a wizard-only command seems to have exposed a bug somewhere. I'm looking into it. Thanks for your patience. —Natty

After some troubles and disappointments with our move to colocation, McGroarty decided we will move the MUCK back to his computer (pinkbits) this Saturday. As before, the change should be seamless for most of us, but if not, the new location will be available as "new.hereliemonsters.org" and the new IP will be available on the old location's welcome screen.

The move should go smoothly now that we've done one, but contact us on the MUCK or note in the issue tracker (after the move) anything that's broken. Thanks for bearing with us! —Natty

The MUCK is moving this coming Saturday. The change should be
completely transparent (knock on wood) from the MUCK's point of view.
There will be a pointer on the log-in screen at the old MUCK address to
the new IP, should anybody fail to forward automatically.

Some of the web services may operate inconsistently until the transfer
is complete. These include PeakLinks and the Shout log being slow to
update, and Roundup (the issue tracker) holding initial submissions,
but not comments during the week. Let McGroarty know if you see
anything else unexpected.

We apologize for the down time today.

The short of it is that the steam valve on the radiator next to pinkbits seems to have failed, and it resulted in water flowing onto the floor and shorting out the UPS.

We're back on the air, and the monsters will be investing in some shelving to keep things out of water range.

Yike.

Similar to the Xbox MUCK, we're currently having a field trip to windwhip.net port 9999. Unlike the Xbox MUCK, this is due to downtime at our usual location, and our inability to go even a few extra hours without our precious MUCK.

The only database I had is a copy from 15 April 2003, so if you're not an extreme oldbie like some of us, you may have to recreate your character. This is also a good reminder that nothing you change or build will be saved in the official copy of the HLM database. Note also SSL is not available. --Natasha

I thought I'd mention a few new features from the issue tracker we've added in the past few months:

• The time command has been enhanced with various new readings and measures.
• The "watchfor" program has been cleaned up substantially for Fuzzball 6. As part of this, it now tracks players by database number instead of by name. If you'd like to create a new character who would not show up on your friends' watchfor lists, do that: make a new character. Renaming your current character will now leave you in watchfors.
• Another change to watchfor is its broadcast of away messages. If someone on your list goes away, you will be notified; if the user set a message, you'll see that also. To turn this off, type wf #!away.
• Lastly, if you like the view on some other MUCKs where watchfor shows you how idle people in your list are, you can type wf #idle to have that displayed.
• say and pose have a new "#meow" feature. Type say #meow name to enable it. Unlike with #ignore, you will see when name says or poses something. Like with #ignore, you won't be able to read it: all the text of name's says and poses will be replaced with "meow."
• The sweep program now looks for a room owner's blanket preference to public sweepability of rooms. If you'd like all your rooms to be publically sweepable, type @set me=_prefs/sweep/public?:yes.

As always, if you find a bug or would like to request an enhancement, feel free to add one to the issue tracker on the web, or by typing gripe and entering your request. Thanks! --Natty