WELL, first up Happy Laughter Day that happens on the first Sunday of May every year. I know right, I didn’t even know it existed. This week had been full of activity as I am settling into my new project and making some headways regarding the same. Life couldn’t go any better as I met a very special friend over the weekend. I am excited about Google I/O #io18 this year, starting out on 8 May, it’s going to be epic. There is an extended session being planned in Delhi by GDG Delhi. I really hope it happens. The developer conf for Facebook wrapped up too, very interesting content and new developments that they brought to the table. Coming to the week of mine regarding Google Summer of Code 2018. Check it out.
Something new that I learned – Bouncers on IRC
Are you tired of losing messages on IRC when not online, being busy in a meeting but missing an important discussion with the community? Fear, not bouncers can help you solve all that. A bouncer or BNC (Bounced Network Connection) is a software that stays connected to IRC serve
r so that you can connect/disconnect your IRC client without losing the messages and gives you the ability connect multiple clients. Which I think is pretty darn useful for everyone who uses IRC. Let’s get started.
How to set up this so-called Bouncer?
I wouldn’t like to go around, reinventing the wheel. There are already many blog posts on the same topic. Here’s one that helped me the most, from a friend at DGplug. I actually read about it first on DGplug Summer Training to be exact. Check them out too.
- Setup for HexChat – https://geeksocket.in/blog/connect-irc-bouncer/
for other clients, the setup is almost the similar and works through the same way. Comment if you have any issues. I use a bouncer on my home server and could help you with your doubts.
Now, over to why I don’t use it anymore?
My GSoC organization, Sugar Labs usually communicates through IRC channels #sugar and #sugar-meeting. Now to access the said channels,
I use Hexchat on my main system and IRCcloud on my Android. Here’s why I feel bouncers are not for everyone.
- Even with a complete bouncer set up, you would need a machine to stay on. Think of the bouncer as a hub that would receive all of the messages when you are gone or when you exited the client. But that hub needs to live somewhere, and you guessed it right, it’s a system that would have to stay on for 24 hours. No matter what.
- By a system, I ideally mean, a server. Good Luck, if you don’t have that. No, the sleep function won’t work. And yes, I have also tried Termux on android, if you think about it. Yes, I have discussed the same on elite-BNC’s official channel.
- IRCcloud is a pretty good application for personal use. It gives a week of premium features with a bouncer included and later. Every time you connect, it will record messages up to 2 hours. Which I guess, works without the hassle. You can also, use the premium features for 5$/month.
- My machine stays on for about 8-10 hours every day. Not standby included. Active for 10 hours. To tackle this problem, I included Hexchat as one of the start-up applications in my Xubuntu (very easy to do it) No chance of missing messages now. Refer to my other post for configuring Hexchat to get the most out of it.
Updates About Week #2
- Convened the 2nd meeting for GSoC and Mentors in which we shared what we did this week and what we will do in the following the week. My research lead to many new and interesting questions about the project that Walter Bender answered in the mentor meeting. Logs in the tracker [1]
- Started Collaborating with Rudra who is working on a similar project and Jatin who worked previously on the server, ASLO. Which I have to deploy now.
- Parameters of what, where needs to be fixed have been decided on which I will be developing a script to first find those missing details and later fix them in the activity.info file.
- Started writing the next blog post. All blog updates available here [2]
[1] – Sugar Tracker
[2] – GSoC #2018
Written by Vipul Gupta ( vipulgupta2048 )
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