sean’s place

IRC and Other Things

I gave up Beer Fest on Friday. “Something” came up.

That something has been one of my newer hobbies: energizing the EsperNet IRC Network with some new life. I started off by redesigning the website, but on Friday, something even more special happened: snowdrift.esper.net was linked to the IRC network from a machine (aphelion.dreamfire.net) operating out of my basement.

Networks like EsperNet exemplify the independent nature of geeks on the internet. It’s largely run on volunteered time, on volunteered hardware, and more often than not, on volunteered bandwidth. I find this sort of self-organization (and the eschewing of traditional internet providers) to be refreshing and fully in the spirit of the internet.

While I don’t administer snowdrift.esper.net (Data does), I am a member of its staff (under the nick eri, come say hi) and a volunteer. This brought about some interesting new responsibilities, like chasing bot nets (I set a hundred or so AKILLs on my first day as an oper). It’s all in good fun, but playing lifeguard for a pool of 2400 people can be a little draining.

Hopefully, in a day or so, the new EsperNet site will go live. (update, it’s live now)

As I write this, there are 450 users connected to snowdrift, running from my Comcast Business-class connection.