#homepage!

One day, we decided it was time to leave #family. Too many people were mistaking us for Mafiosi or Bible Belters :) and Grimlaf's bots had taken a dislike to Robinhood.
Many IRCers fall into the trap of starting #newfamily or #family2, thus losing contact with the rest of humanity. But we wanted a channel for everyone, from the newbies to the IRC gurus. TheBeck wanted to call it #channel, which wasn't in use. There was a collective groan :-/ Eventually we discovered our new #home.
#Home has been bubbling along ever since, with a mixture of old and new faces. Be warned: if you visit for more than a few hours, you'll probably be back! IRC is very addictive, but it's also a wonderful way of staying in touch with people all over the world. As you'll see, #home is one of the most international channels on the network.

Note: Many of the pics here are still missing. Please get them to me as soon as you can!
Clicking on the pics (for a full-size pic) doesn't work yet as I don't have enough server space.

Ninjizz

Lace brought Ninjizz into the world. Since her departure, Pooka has generously maintained the bot and allowed us to keep it on #home.

"Ninjizz with the sword that sinjizz" is a bot, a program or script written to respond to occurrences on IRC. But we regard Ninjizz as another of the characters on #home. Artificial intelligence can be ever bit as funny, friendly or aggressive as the human kind, especially when it's on one of those damn Finnish servers!

MaRiLu

Marilu is from Canberra, Australia's capital, and her household only has one phone line, meaning we get Marilu in small doses. But she's the life of the party!

* Marilu dances around! Lalala!
* Marilu has to go!

Arren

Arren is in Finland, and when he's not looking after CAD laboratories, programming demos or relaxing in the sauna with a beer or two, he's making tapes of Finnish music for everyone on #home. 22-Pistepirkko is compulsory :)

He's the owner of #home's second bot, Arkat. Visit Arren's home page for the Arren experience.

Kerry

No, Kerry is not female and yes, he's in Christchurch, New Zealand. He gets asked those questions so often he's developed a macro that shows his personal statistics, latitude and longitude.

Kerry has been IRCing longer than most of us, has a house full of retro-tech, and is quite an artist. In fact, if you're in New Zealand and looking for someone to employ, look no further.

Robinhood (aka Lion_King)

Robin is a Canberran like Marilu, but we know he'd rather be 1000 miles north, with Tatharina in Brisbane. They met on IRC, proving you don't actually have to make eye contact to experience love at first sight.

He's the only Unix guru we know who studies Music and Science at the same time :)

TheBeck

That's the guy who wrote this page. Everything about him can be found through his home page.

TheBeck started as Beckfan, decided Beckham was more individual, switched to BeckX when someone impersonated him, then discovered someone thought he was RosieX, a Sydney feminist journalist :) Well, they got the journalist part right.

Emagica

Emagica is always happy. Sometimes it's hard to attract her attention, because she's discussing spiritual matters on #ascension.

Once upon a time, she was known as Fryette. We wonder why? Maybe you can figure it out from her Sydney household's home page.

Quozl

Quozl and Marty live in Lennox Head, on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. We envy their seven-mile beach view (with whales and dolphins).

Quoz's IRC addiction stems from long ago on #chat, when he was known as Alien. Why? He's from Canada, but says everybody thinks he's a sepo.

Marty says hi too!!!

Trjnhorse

Trjn's another Canadian, but he really IS in Canada at McGill University, studying something that makes him want to mess with X programming.

He's very knowledgeable about IRC and Unix, music and computer games. Those of us in the southern hemisphere don't see enough of him these days as he's not such a night owl!

Eyre

This Eyrehead once told us that she was 14, inviting us all to her 15th birthday party. We think she's really 21, but nobody from #home has ever met her and she likes it that way!

We do know she's a Sydney engineer, loves to be a *BITCH* (her word), and has nicknames for half the people she's met on IRC. While avoiding us, she hangs out on #talk2me.

"Anyway, this moron his nickname was "loof" (backwards for fool), and he was telling my best friend who was logged on that he thought that Eyre was like champagne. I was too bubbly -- like bad champagne! hahahahahahahahahahahaa"

BitKat

BitKat is a Kat from Holland, which means he can get away with saying

* Bitkat jumps into Marilu's lap.

Lately he's taken to dressing in Batman suits and deciding whether to be Bitman or Katman(du). BitKat is also a regular on #friendly.

One of the above gifs is "a picture of me rowing the waters of life and spotting a large vessel on a collision course". Can you guess which one?

Lavendyre (aka Ciel)

Lavendyre is a law student in Malaysia with a sharper mind than anyone, anywhere. Kerry called her "#home's semi-resident Wunderkind". Lavendyre introduced us to Sockdraw, which lets you connect two PCs on the Internet and scribble together (download it here)!

Oddbod

Oddbod hails from Newcastle in England, where she is an IT support person at the University of Northumbria... meaning she can spend as much time on IRC as she likes. Yeah, right.

"When I'm not at work (IRCing) I look after my one year old daughter, but in the evenings I like dressing up in other peoples clothes... yes, that's right, I'm a member of an Operatic Society."

Mina

Arren and Mina exchange baby photos. Of each other. Mina didn't say much for a while, but we now know she speaks better English than most of the native speakers on the channel. And French, and German, and Swedish. And probably Finnish too, considering she lives there.

Kez

Kez wants to know if she's still a newbie. We want to know why her email address says "Gary Svirak". Okay, so it's her husband -- he runs audio.apana.org.au in Sydney, Australia, and wonders when he's going to get his computer back :)

Tatharina

We don't usually see much of Tatharina anymore. She's busy trying to rid the world of computers and convince everyone to blink in unison. Tath's time is also taken up learning Aikido, with which she hopes to pin down Robinhood.

This means we don't have to listen to her quoting pop songs as if they were classical poetry :) but it also means we don't get to enjoy her happy personality :( She's from Brisbane, Australia.

Donnafay

Donnafay first arrived on #home looking for her son-in-law, Kerry, from Calgary. They've still never managed to find each other, but she's made a lot of friends on IRC in the meantime.

"I have 4 grandkids, you know. And welcome any chance to talk about them. :))))) Regards from the old granny on #home (age 60)"

When not on IRC, Donna's busy advising the rest of Canada about how to get connected!

Noesje and Mundy

Let's put 'em together, because we usually only see one or the other. That's if we see them at all! They're up in Lennox Head (Australia), same as Quozl, with their two daughters and @om.

Koval

Not many people know that Koval was actually the founder of #home. Once upon a time he used to sit there and invite people in, because he felt it should be a channel. Koval was right, but he was six months before his time :)

He's a Russian in Latvia. Now that he's a student, he's been given legitimate Internet access at last. But we don't see much of Koval anymore, because he's no longer a pioneer -- there's now a big Latvian/Russian community on IRC. Oh, and he wants me to mention Aldaris Latvian beer, not Russian vodka.