Idea

[coalescent]

It's Andrew's birthday on Monday. I have this vague idea in my head of gifting him with some kind of internet paper-trail - so, a cryptic LJ post sends him to google for a particular usenet post where a previously cryptic signature sends him, I don't know, back to the original truckboard, which sends him to nat's tagboard, which sends him...etc, until he ends up at a big picture of a giant robot wishing him a happy birthday. Or something. Then I thought it might be neat if lots of people on his friends list contributed, rather than it all coming from me.

Unfortunately, it's friday, and his birthday is on monday, and I'm going to be offline over the weekend. Oops. But do any of you think this might be a fun idea? Do any of you have other ideas for links in the chain? I'm thinking ideally it would be lots of sites outside LJ, and preferably ones we can edit ourselves. But at the same time, this is only a vague idea in my head.

So - comments, suggestions, volunteers? Am I out of my tree?

Comments

In Lieu of Cash

[xsabx.livejournal.com]

to buy a gift, I will volunteer to do this, if so desired...

[fba.livejournal.com]

Is a neat idea - but I'm fairly busy this weekend.....

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to participate if someone told me something to link to from my journal, but I don't think I have enough web-savvy to be able to help orchestrate the whole thing.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

I'm away this weekend, but if you're short on locations drop me an email - tinyclanger at bigfoot dot com - and I'll stick whatever you want up at braingirl.co.uk by Sunday night, if possible.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

Well, consider me volunteered if needed. I have an account on an external image hosting site to put a big robot up on, although I'd have to dig the details up, so if that's needed let me know.

As for other links in the chain, again, I have a global EZBoard account, so find an appropriate EZboard and I can put up a message on that. Then, of course, there's the OUSFG wiki, other Wikis maybe, I could put a page up temporarily on caption.org (not directly linked from the Caption main page, without talking nicely to Damian, but from caption.org/~ian/ ), if you're quick and lucky, you might be able to persuade NTK to drop something in, although that seems a little outlandish, it would be v. cool.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I have webhosting, and the ability to make giant robot pictures. Any usenet posts would have to be made quickly in order to ensure they get picked up by google in time for monday morning. you could also possibly stick a link in the topic of an IRC channel, assuming there is SSH access.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I have webhosting, and the ability to make giant robot pictures.

Then I say go go gadget image manipulation skillz! We'll make you the last link in the chain. You could stick a tagboard on the page, if they're still free, and we could all post birthday greetings.

Any usenet posts would have to be made quickly in order to ensure they get picked up by google in time for monday morning.

I was thinking post to usenet first thing monday morning, post happy birthday at lunchtime. Google's pretty quick these days. Although I guess we could get someone to post on sunday evening.

you could also possibly stick a link in the topic of an IRC channel, assuming there is SSH access.

I could, but is Andrew going to be able to get at that from work?

[tizzle-b.livejournal.com]

Google's pretty quick these days

I assure you, it's not.

I was following the events of the Birthday Party for umta about 9-12 hours behind.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

OK. So, the chain as I was informed by Niall goes:

LJ post by Niall --> usenet post by Tom --> nat's tagboard by eve -->
itchyfidget --> the original truckstop (hopefully post by nat) -->
xsabx --> OUSFG wiki page (Niall and other tom) --> Stewart --> Me

My bit is done, as is Stewart's. Hopefully this will remind others to make sure their links in the chain are sorted :)