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Web-Based Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looks-strangely-familiar dept.

Mike Caprio wrote in to say that there now is a official web-based Hitch Hiker's Guide available. What is strangest to me is the stunning similiarities between it and Everything. Pretty cool.

5 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. ...and now for the unfortunate bits! by jacrawf · · Score: 2
    The Hitchikers Guide series (of which I am now finishing up Mostly Harmless for probably the sixth time if not more than that) is definitely a damn near seminal literary work in my life. Well, it's a load of giggles anyway. :) I'm absolutely ecstatic that something like h2g2.com is taking off! I can finally horn in on the act, as it were. Yay!

    Except...

    Damn the exceptions.

    It would seem that, after browsing about a bit and then actually registering, I need to use MS Blisternet Exploder 4.whatever to actually do anything remotely useful . What a bummer considering I'm not a Windows 9x or NT user (except for at work where I'm not officially supposed to mess around doing personal stuff anyway -- Yeah. Right.) I was so close to contributing to The Guide that I was practically salivating on my keyboard only to find that it's time to grab my towel and clean it off.

    Holy cripes on toast! Does that ever suck.

    But I still have high hopes. Maybe it will be fixed for those of us in the Real World who maybe don't use much MS-anything and who even from time to time use browsers that aren't even graphical. (Yup, the Real World can be a pretty ecletic place. Kinda neat, isn't it?) Well, maybe...

    Sigh.

  2. What about a GNU Encycloedia by Colin+Smith · · Score: 2

    The h2g2 site looks quite nice, but unless they have loads of researchers, it's going to end up like the newsgroups. 100dB noise 0.1dB signal.

    An interesting project would be an open web based mulitmedia encyclopedia, same idea as Encarta, but accurate information instead. Similar concept to h2g2 but significantly more limited set of contributers.

    --
    Deleted
  3. The word from the horse's mouth by yoz · · Score: 5

    Dammit dammit dammit. We really didn't need our pipe /.ed right now.

    Okay, here's the deal. There we were, four of us Digital Village techies, standing in the British Library with Douglas sitting between us and the cameras, and we're quite happily browsing the site no problem.

    7:30pm: The programme starts.

    7:31pm: 3 gazillion British net users click from the BBC site straight through to h2g2.com all at once. PerlEx and IIS go mental. Boom.

    (Fortunately we managed to turn that to our advantage: Douglas got to say that the site was so popular that it couldn't take the strain.)

    Now, several hours later, the site is unusable from the outside. However, it's not NT's fault, as the server's fine; it's the pipe. We're only on a T1. We're frantically moving various images off to mirror sites now, hopefully that should help all you guys actually get in and see the thing.

    We're really proud of it, as it goes, and some other people seem to quite like it too. Everything didn't inspire the site but we did look at it several times while we were designing. (Everything is similar in some ways, but not many - however, I still have a lot of admiration for Everything's features, and we'll be trying to send h2g2 in that direction as time goes on, as well as many other directions too... we've got a lot of big plans, and we're not going to sit still)

    So, yeah, it runs on NT, but there are reasons for that. (even though that may be unthinkable to some /.ers, who obviously have never had to do a professional site on a tight budget and deadline) And a good chunk of the blame for any site instability goes to Perl and PerlEx (which manages to throw away 50MB every time it restarts an interpreter... can someone please show ActiveState how to check for memory leaks?)

    But I would hope that the server system comes second in you guys minds to the fact that it's the Hitchhiker's Guide! The real thing! Online! And you can contribute!

    Come on... hands up everyone who doesn't want to be a Guide Researcher. Thought so.

    So, traffic permitting, we hope everyone can log on, join in and fulfil at least one childhood dream.

    -- Yoz

  4. Wait a sec, that's what the Net is... by Wah · · Score: 2

    I've always thought of the Net as the *real* Hitchiker's Guide. I can't quote from memory (although I should be able to, read it enough:), but wasn't it described as a full compendium of human knowledge containing much useful informtion, but also a great deal that is erroneous, downright wrong, and often dangerous.
    Sounds like the Net to me.
    Douglas Adams is a visionary. Take a good (P5 1ghz) laptop, throw in a cellular connection (iridium 10mb/s), slap a big "Don't Panic" sticker on the front, and you're there.
    When this things comes out let's have a Perfectly Normal Beast BBQ, maybe Elvis could play....

    --
    +&x
  5. Been around by PDG · · Score: 2

    There's been a project guide for about 6 years now which can be found at http://megadodo.com. Anyone can submit articles to it, and it has thousands, some of which are hilarious.



    PDG--"I don't like the Prozac, the Prozac likes me"

    --
    "Where is my mind?"