JamesOff
Our first interviewee is JamesOff. Would JamesOff please take his seat in the black chair…
Real name:
James
Date of Birth:
February 1980
Sex:
Male
Approximate location:
Exeter, UK
A question that I know you must get asked a lot, but I shall re-ask it here, how did you get the handle JamesOff?
I was first introduced to IRC in March 1997 by Duds, and I used the nick “JMS” since that’s my initials. However, if you’re called “JMS” and you’re in a load of sci-fi channels (particularly like #babylon5.uk) then you’re liable to be mistaken as the B5 creator, who copied my initials as his own.
I decided I needed a new nick, and at the time Duds and I were writing the Star Trek parody “Enterspace,” and the character in that based on me was called “James Off.” (You can work out why yourself.) I switched to that as my nick and it’s stuck ever since.
How did you discover #exeter?
I’m one of the channel founders 
How long have you been chatting in #exeter?
#exeter was started the first time round by simsea at the end of my 1st year at uni (summer 1999), and it sort of fizzled out, and then started again properly. I’ve been there since then.
How long have you been online and how long have you been on irc?
I first got online early 1997 after I bought a 14.4 modem for my Pentium 100. Dudley and I were the only people from our group at school who were online at the time (to any great extent anyway). We used to communicate my emailing backwards and forwards (this is pre-ICQ). Then one evening I was round Duds’ house and showed me this “cool chat thing.” When I got home that evening, I downloaded mIRC and was hooked. That was March 1997, and I’ve been on IRC ever since (often 24/7).
How would you describe your relationship with MonicaOff and NoTopic?
Troubled. They frequently annoy me by doing exactly what I told them to… damn computers.
I understand that along with Dudley you are the creator of the words Wahey and Notopic. What do these words mean and how did you invent them?
Dudley started using “wahey” (I can’t remember if it was IRL or on IRC first) in response to a double-entendre. On IRC in quite a few channels it’s common practice to set such double-entendres in the topic. Since #ags (my original home channel) was quite wahey-heavy at the time, I came up with 
Do you have any interests in real life? If so what are they and how involved are you with them? Do you find your online life hinders or compliments them?
Real what?
(I’m glad I’m the first interviewee so that response doesn’t seem quite as unoriginal.)
IRL my interests include caffeine, badminton, and I’m starting to
My caffeine interest manifests itself as a coffee/tea addiction (the coffee at work is shit so I drink tea there). I used to be on over 13 cups a day but that was quite bad for me, so I’ve cut down a lot now I play badminton a couple of times a week, with a league-quality club and also with some other #exeter peoples.
My online life is integrated completely into my real life, so there’s no hinderance there (and there isn’t much IRC can do to compliment those interests).
Other interests include reading and watching films, and I like “free communication.” The fact that it’s possible to talk to anyone anywhere anytime (subject to it being convenient for them) is something I like about the online community (including in that email, instant messaging, SMS, etc). I also have a passing interest in machine learning and text-processing, which is one of the main driving forces behind bMotion.
At the time of writing you are currently ranked #1 in the channel statistics. What does this mean to you? Do you feel your position at #1 is threatened in any way by myself, dunos, at #2?
This means I use IRC too much. I don’t feel too threatened by you because the gap is 82,000 words, or 50,000 letters, or 12,000 smileys… although you have been connected to IRC slightly longer than me. Damn you. Also, it would be not-as-sad of me to be at #2.
How do you think other people perceive you in the channel? Do you think your online persona mirrors your real life persona?
I suspect they all want to kill me so they can be #1 in the stats. I like to think that my online persona matches me IRL, because I view IRC as an extension of communicating IRL… I try to be “me” online.
Can you draw a picture of a penguin?
What is the most ‘dodgy’ item you have bought online?
A purple thong. Perhaps you can remember who it was for?
What inspired you to create the random recipe and random sport generators that feature on your website?
A slow day at work The recipe generator has a moderately interesting story behind it. I read one day (possibly off Slashdot) some article about obscure programming languages. It mentioned a site with a load of bizarre “languages” on, so I went to have a look.
These languages were things like “here’s a grid of squares, start in the top left corner and go right. If the target square is red then add one to the accumulator, if it’s green then go down not right, …” and so on. All usable programming languages, and some pretty to look at.
The one that caught my eye, however, was one that used the analogy of cooking as a programming language, so the instruction “put the raisins in the mixing bowl” actually meant “save the accumulator to memory” and stuff like that. The result was a hilarious non-recipe with stupid instructions that told you to remove stuff you’d just “blended.” This was the root of the idea for the recipe generator. (Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate the site with the original recipes on.)
The sport generator is an idea I saw on another site and decided I wanted to write one too.
If you could go on holiday anywhere and any when where would you go and who would you take with you?
Between my first and second years at university I went round some of Canada and the US visiting people. It would be nice to do something like that again (a tour round the States), and I’d take Roz with me
What was the least complimentary thing a teacher wrote about you in a school report?
“Spends too much time on computers” (I got banned from the school network for a week after I had the highest logged-in time. This was stupid, since it made my Computer Science classes very difficult.)
How tall are you exactly?
I’m exactly about 6′ 1″.
Wahey!
If you could sum up your experience of #exeter in one word, what would that word be?
Friendship
I was expecting something more along the lines of “oof” or “~rarr~” but I guess we will have to leave those to watashiki.
Finally, who do you think I should interview for next months ‘chatter’?
Roz!
Thank you JamesOff for offering your often enlightening answers to my questions. Next month I will look forward to interviewing Roz.