Interview Rick's Is Site Of Wwwwild Time

© Urpo Lankinen

A WWWWorthy fighter rests   An imp with an iconograph caught up with the Wwwwooly hero in this strange room. The picture is better than our imp usually paints, but we are too busy to check that out. All of our researchers are combing the Oracle's archives for some mention of the odd lamp on the far wall.

  The Minetown Watch have had their hands full through the last hundredturn. A string of false alarms, minor complaints and bloody cleanup jobs have been keeping them away from Homer "Hole-in-the-do'h" Hyantafas' [1] delicatessen. Mr. Hyantafas was heard to comment "I lose a couple of sales w-w-w-when monsters are frightened by that i-incredible presence. But in the end, if there's less s-spam cooking, th-there's more appetite for my w-w-w-wares."

  Touring the main square, I saw a man today, unable to enter the Albert Hall because of the crowd. "I don't mind the magic missiles," he says, "but now that we've counted them, who will fill the holes?"

  I stopped at a local establishment for an in depth interview with the owner of the, uh, refreshment place. Mr. Rick, The Gimp has perhaps more knowledge than even the captain of The Watch. Actually, Rick knows everything the Captain knows, being a mind flayer and knowing the Captain well enough. Most of the sightings of this odd creature have begun within Mr. Rick's establishment.

Rick: "It was Sam that noticed him..."

RR: "Excuse me! Please, you have to wait for me to ask the question."

Rick: "Sorry, bad habit."

RR: "Just imagine that you're talking to Tim. I notice you always verbalize in the right order then!"

Rick: "Tim is one thing, him being a demigod, [2] I see only the thoughts he wants me to see. But you, your thoughts are open as wide as the arms of a nymph when she catches your eye across a non crowded room."

RR: "Yes, well, on to business. Mr. Rick, can you tell us about the creature that has been causing all the commotion? How did you first come to notice it?"

Rick: "It was Sam that first picked him out of the crowd. Sam stopped playing for a moment and said 'Hey Bo-oss? That wolf at the bar? You sure he's a regular werewolf?' I reassured Sam and told him not to play The Song. Let me get you one on the house. You drink ry.."

RR: "No! I can't while I'm..."

Rick: "Yes of course. I see that your throat is dry, I'll just get you a glass of water. On the house, Mr. Rosenezmistelk. You know, I've never known a quadruped who liked the water here so much, and got so much of it for free."

RR: "Oh, yes, thank you. And, uhm, w-when did you notice that this was a different sort from your usual customer?"

Rick: "It was when the evil one entered. All the other drun... er, customers drew back, trying to keep distance between themselves and the thoughts of the interloper. Even the @venturers tried to move to tables farther from the door.

But not this one. Not the WWW... whatever it is. He turned on his stool and looked the unspeakable horror straight in the eye. And then! And then! Well, it was a site to make this old flayer's heart leap!"

RR: "What did the doodkind want here? I didn't think they ate or drank as normal monsters do. Why was it here?"

Rick: "I don't know. My perceptive ability is only useful with animate creatures that have minds. I don't know what this thing was. It was not a creature of The Dungeons nor an honest malevolence from Gehenomm. It seemed most like the creature from the net that infected Octal and almost wiped out Minetown."

RR: "So the two of them fought right there in your ba... uhm, establishment?"

Rick: "No, no. They exchanged a few pleasantries, then the W-w-w... weird one invited the one reminiscent of the droppings of a sick rothe to step out into the square 'for a fresh breath of air,' he said. I gave thanks! As long as that thing shadowed my door, there would be no new traffic into the, uhm, place. Oh yes, this W-W-Wolfish creature is always welcome here!"

RR: "And then they fought?"

Rick: "Well, I don't know about that. I had a barfu... ehm, a roomful of nervous customers and was busy handing out free dri.. uh, refreshments, look are you sure we can't mention what I do here? It'd be great to get a free plug, you know."

RR: "No, my editor won't let me. One more free plug for you and I'm out of a job. So they left and that's it?"

Rick: "There was a cleanup detail in here a few turns later. They were pretty spooked. Kept going on about forbidden weapons. One of them dropped a hint about smelling sulfur around the scene."

RR: "Sulfur! Surely no one would bring those kind of weapons in here? What an evil creature this war3zd00d is!"

Rick: "No, it wasn't that weasel.. The w-w-w-wellfavored one brought a thing like a /WoMM, but mechanical in nature."

RR: "What could this W... W... w... wanderer have been thinking? We frown on w-weapons like that."

Rick: "No, frowning rules are broken with impunity. Those weapons are absolutely forbidden."

RR: "Then surely that's why The Guards were here on clean-up detail. To save Minetown from this W-w-wr-wrecker of rules!"

Rick: "No, they saw the thing he used the weapon on. They said that the ending of that thing justified the machine. The cleanup crew had to wipe up the slime-trail of rabid rat drool that was all that was left of the virulent thing. I saw their minds. They had nothing but gratitude for the one that killed it."

  We are receiving reports from The Dungeons of Doom that a grave new danger threatens The Gnomish Mines.

  Formerly, the peaceful miners needed only take special care when the occasional @ wandered off course from it's search for the mythical Amulet of Yendor. Recently, h, o and other apparently peaceful citizens have begun taking up such professions as "rogue", "knight" and "caveperson". You can no longer tell by looking who may be subject to the inexplicable urge to kill you!

  We have sent one of our best and bravest reporters out to The Dungeons to find out what is going on.

  Rest assured that The Minetown Digger will keep you informed as to what measures should be taken to protect yourself and your children, eggs, larvae etc.

  Early reports from the upper dungeons indicate that the RNG may have broken it's coded restrictions and now can control the alignment and ancestry of @venturers.

  In a development believed to be related, the human wizards entering The Dungeons of Doom no longer arrive with an athame, but come instead carrying a big stick. Perhaps now they will walk quietly.

  For more information, stare intently into your crystal ball, right here.

• After months of asking, yesterday I finally got an answer from my ISP about the forms-processing CGI they provide. Unfortunately, the answer they provides is wrong. The people at infinit.net seem to be unable to answer even the simplest of questions. How they manage to run an ISP is beyond my understanding.

• Credit where credit is due. This site is edited using the fabulous gvim, the X11 version of the VIM text editor. It's almost as portable as NetHack, even if you have to use MS-Windows or Macintosh, you should click the icon at the bottom of this page and read about a great text editor.

• I've stopped marking an update every time a link is added. After writing some neat C++ code and using an online form, I can now add a link faster than I can type in an update about it!

• Oops! Our lawyers (Bellicose, Eyesore & Belch) advise us that forgetting to put the copyright notice on the w-w-w-work of one artist could be seriously detrimental to our group health plan.

• For the terminally curious only... a simple script running on a Linux system has produced a daily log. It starts shortly before T2B (Turn 2 Billion). Unfortunately, the fine folk at FxWeb have had some problems over the last week, but heck, hit counts are notoriously inaccurate anyway!

• A problem with 16-color crystal balls came to our attention while we were busy helping The Chamber of Commerce upgrade their slab to a full section. Some changes to the quality of stone we use solves most of the problem, although many of the headline banners remain unreadable.

  The Minetown Digger will continue to refine our image... as the turns go by.

• The Minetown Chamber of Commerce is in the process of creating a new Business Directory section in The Minetown Digger.

  The new directory organizes businesses onto eleven categories, displaying just one category at a time. A description is now provided with each link.

  Our readers may now notify The Chamber of Commerce of businesses which should be included in The Directory.

• I logged on today to find all the page counters have been reset. Thank you, Infinit.net, NOT!

• New front page story. Weyfour WWWWolf has updated the RGRNCA page. We fished Rudy Rosenezmistelk out of the gutter where he was sleeping off an interview with Rick about the WWWWooly one's first appearance in the tavern. It is worth noting that Rick charges other customers for their drinks. It is worth noting that Rudy R. had better see if that northern elf will hire him back again.

• Some time this afternoon, the official head counter counted the 1000^th head peering through a crystal ball at our marble slabs. The Minetown Digger thanks you grand people for reading our humble publication.

  One thousand? Well, of course, we don't know if Cerberus reads the news through a crystal ball, or waits for a personal copy to be delivered on limestone. Only the subscription department knows how accurate the count might be.

• Looking for new content? Please be patient. Our staff is tied up with three time-consuming projects.

  1. New forms for:
     • Letters to The Editor.
     • Application to the Chamber of Commerce.
     • Classified ads.
     
     
  2. Serving on the chain gang. That is, as they went out the door they mumbled something about "hacking the interstate."
      
  3. Looking for new jobs if they don't meet their story deadlines! <fx: sticks head out office door> <shout> Are you listening, you lazy spawn of Gehennom? </shout>
  
  

• Updated Dying Wish to HTML 4. Only one left unchecked!

• The Minetown Digger is hiring! See our ad in the classifieds.

  Asmodious runs our payroll department. So far, it's cost me 7000 zorkmids to work here.

• Found a broken link in The Chamber of Commerce. Already!

• Oops! added a link from the front page story to download NH 3.3.0

• Wow, is my spelling bad. You probably won't see what a great spell er I am today, because my ISP is down big time! I'll sneak this file onto the server through the back door.

• While I'm out of service, I'll get a start on breaking up the links to make multiple pages. Tests have shown that the mist can swirl around your crystal ball for 300 turns or more waiting for that slab to show up!

• News of NH 3.3.0! Just in time.

• Another page (Never Give Up) updated to HTML 4.0.   Another link 'A Brief History of Rogue added.  

•   Many thanks to The Roguelike News Page for the link that brought most of you here.

    From Nov 1 to Dec 8 there were about 250 hits. On Dec 9 and Dec 10, just two days, there were about 300 hits! As far as I know, all that changed was a link on Roguelike News.

  Or maybe you're all just showing appreciation for the work Pierre E. White does updating the slabs to HTML 4.0. <grin>

• Another page updated to HTML 4.0. Just to keep my hand in.

• Another link.

• Two more links.