irc

Screen and irssi

Posted Mon, 16/06/2008 - 11:27am by garan

I'm using Screen a lot these days. It's something that I used to use at Aber all those years ago to create virtual tty's when we only had a single screen to use. These days I use it to "background" my sessions so that things can run in the background and I can easily re-connect to my session at a later date.

I've recently switched from using the bitchx irc client to using irssi. I've found a great resource for using screen and irssi together. The hilight window is really good when you've got many connections open.

Here's the guide: A Guide to Efficiently Using Irssi and Screen

Bitlbee

Posted Mon, 16/06/2008 - 9:51am by garan

Several places I've worked have, for various reasons, blocked access to Microsoft Messenger and other chat protocols. For various reasons of my own I want to use Messenger and therefore have various methods for accessing the service.

My latest way of doing things is to run a Bitlbee daemon that presents various chat protocols, including Messenger, as irc channels. This means that I can connect using a terminal irc client, accessible via ssh.

Bitlbee has a limitation that it doesn't currently support file transfers for the Messenger protocol (it does support file transfers via DCC for several other protocols) and obviously smileys, winks and nudges don't work.

Overall it means that I can communicate with people and that's the key.

Oh and I nearly forgot - Mark there's an Amiga port so there's another use for that old kit!