Solsbury Report from Mac Cat, Director of Coffee [date: Jan. 1997]
I had just recently began to toy around with Internet Chat Relay programs, so I decided to try it out by attending the Macworld guest chat that was scheduled before Gabriel's. The guest in question turned out to be "Where in the World Is" Carmen Sandiego.
As I was pondering "Why does Peter have to follow a fictional character in these chats?" I saw the names of at least fifteen other Gabriel fans (such as friends Snowflake and Colin) who were pretending to care about Carmen and testing out their IRC connections also.
I got a DCC (a private message from someone that no one else in the chat room can see) from Crawler, welcoming me to the group. Turned out "Crawler" was fellow 'pager Jeff. We chatted in private about getting Carmen to tell us Where in the World PG was and such, as well as types of questions to ask at the chat.
Finally, some moderators, indicated here by "AWWC", who run these organized chats, logged on:
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AWWCKelere: . WELCOME
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: . to
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: . Apple Computer, Inc.
AWWCKelere: . coverage of the
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: . MacWorld '97
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: . Live from San Francisco
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: . in our MacWorld webcast
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: . Our special guest is
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: Peter Gabriel
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: Being on the cutting edge since Genesis,
AWWCKelere: Peter has always strived to take music and
AWWCKelere: expression to the limit. Please join us as we
AWWCKelere: chat with Peter and the Real World Multimedia
AWWCKelere: team and discuss their latest multimedia CD
AWWCKelere: title "Eve". "'With Eve we wanted to go a
AWWCKelere: little deeper than we did with the Xplora1 CD-ROM.
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: Peter will only be taking questions about
AWWCKelere: the Eve project - thank you :-)
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere: We welcome Peter! Thank you for your time!
AWWCKelere: .
AWWCKelere:
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Gabriel entered the channel. Then he left the channel.
AWWCDale: oops.... peter got punted....
Well, at least now we know technology is not discriminatory. Fortunately, PG hopped right back on and started to give basic into of Eve. (see full transcript for details)
I was wondering how to go about interacting with this chat when a moderator pointed out that to follow proper protocol, one had to send a question to "AWWC Jax" and from there it may or may not get picked for answering. I immediately sent three questions over to Jax. From there, I anxiously followed the chat.
Soon, I read this:
AWWCJaxO: Crawler asks... when will eve be released?
PeterGabriel: It will be released on the 30th January
PeterGabriel: worldwide.
PeterGabriel: It will be available in stores in Europe from that
PeterGabriel: date and from the radio Realworld internet site
PeterGabriel: which is at http://realworld.on.net/eve
PeterGabriel: It will be actually send out to the United States
PeterGabriel: directly from the USA.
PeterGabriel: So no cross Atantic problems, it will be directly
PeterGabriel: fulfilled from the USA.
I was extremely happy for Jeff, but I was insanely jealous also. But getting an actual release date on Eve made up for the jealousy.
I was more determined than ever to get a question posted. I bombared Jax with the same question, which was inspired by the fact that every time in any PG interview where Eve is mentioned, the phrase "exploring relationships" would be used.
After a question concerning Eve vs. Xplora 1 was answered, I saw this:
AWWCJaxO: MacCat asks How is it that Eve explores
AWWCJaxO: relationships? Please explain.
I did a victory dance in my living room, and then pressed my face against the computer monitor and awaited an answer for what seemed like an awkwardly long time. I was wondering if PG got punted again. Finally...
PeterGabriel: Good question! : )
Hearts and stars circled my head and all I could think was, "Wow. Peter smiled at me!" Once I got back from my secret world, I realized that my question was still unanswered.
PeterGabriel: ::thinking:::
Thinking? Shouldn't he be :::typing::::: his answer?, I thought. Moments passed. Then one of the moderators stepped in.
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AWWCCys: . ~~~COMING UP SOON!~~
AWWCCys: . Bob LeVitus - Author
AWWCCys: . "Macintosh OS 7.6 for Dummies"
AWWCCys: .
AWWCCys: He's written 25 books and is here to talk to you!
AWWCCys: Bob is known for his expertise, his humorous style
AWWCCys: and his ability to translate "techie" jargon into usable
AWWCCys: and fun advice for the rest of us.
AWWCCys: .
AWWCCys: Join us at 3:00 pm (Pacific)/6:00 pm (Eastern)
AWWCCys: on Wednesday, January 8, in channel MacWorld on IRC
AWWCCys: and on AOL at keyword: MW EXPO
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I couldn't believe it...They cut away to a commercial right in the middle of a chat!
PeterGabriel ::: conferring with my friends in the room who helped
PeterGabriel with this ::::
Conferring?! Suddenly all of the Real World project delays made sense. I would have grown impatient if I hadn't been laughing too hard at this point. I got some DCCs:
[Crawler] to [MacCat]: you stumped him!!!
[Snowflake] to [MacCat]: You've got em on the ropes Mac! Nice work!:)
[Crawler] to [MacCat]: you deserve another goodie bag for that! i'll tell
him to send you one :-)
Finally PG and his multimedia comrades broke from their football huddle and I got an answer.
PeterGabriel: Besides it being a relationship room in which
PeterGabriel: people explore their way of relating to relationships
PeterGabriel: the overall structure is based on the evolution
PeterGabriel: of a relationship.
I wondered if Gabriel made a bet with his staff that he could use at least three variations of the word "relate" in his answer to me, then high-fived everyone when he pulled that answer off.
I DCC-ed Colin:
To Colin > Do you understand the answer?
[Colin] to [MacCat]: Not altogether
To Colin > Good. I thought it was just me.:)
Now that I've read that answer several times, it sorta does make sense to me, although we'll all have to wait until Eve comes out to get a clearer answer. Anyway, I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the week due to this tiny indirect interaction with PG.
The chat went on, and lo and behold, Jeff got another question up, which was mostly answered by some guy named Ralph, and soon after *I* got another question up, which was completely answered by Mike Coulson, Creative Director of Real World Multimedia. And he answered as if he had been waiting all day for someone to ask him that particular question. Probably shoved PG off the computer terminal to boot! He really did give an insightful look at the artists of Eve for which I am grateful.
The chat soon ended and Crawler, Snowflake and I headed to the #petergabriel IRC chat channel, where we discussed our chat room victories. Neither of us could believe we actually got two questions up, which probably caused the untold wrath of the other fifty or so chat observers who thought Jeff and I bribed the moderators.
At any rate, I was glad extremely glad to participate in the chat, and it has really helped get my imagination going wondering what Eve will be like. Ciao!
:::thinking::::: different, and heading back to the Humor pages as well