From: Rob.Harper@CSC.FI (Rob Harper)
Newsgroups: bionet.users.addresses
Subject: BioBit #23 MOO
Date: 8 Jan 93 21:17:34 GMT
Distribution: bionet


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                                 No 23
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
                        BIO-NAUT NEWSLETTER 8-1-93
                       << EDITED BY ROBERT HARPER >>
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


To play or not to play that is the question.

While in Pisa I listened to a lecture by Peter Deutsch where he waxed
lyrical about the possibilities of using MUD's (multiple user dungeon)
for serious teaching. Now chatting on the net, be it on BITNET RELAY or
on INTERNET IRC, is often scorned as being inconsequential, and not
worth the investment of time taken to learn the commands, since the
exchanges that take place are about as stimulating as talking to
stones.

Never the less if someone from "@parc.xerox.com" does something with a
MUD then perhaps it is time to sit up straight and pay attention to
what is going on.

Besides I have always thought that learning through playing is the
best way to learn... at least when I learn things through play and
experimentation, they tend to become hard-wired into my nervous
system. This is in apposition to the stuff-it-down the throat method
of teaching where I often gag at being force-fed information. 

Learning should be a stimulating experience. Gone are the days when
books were rare, and the Professor who had all the knowledge, passed
it on to his students via lectures. If a Professor only passes on
information that can be found in books then his lectures will be
poorly attended. A good lecturer not only passes on information, but
does it in a manner that inspires others. My Professor Helge
Gyllenberg used to pack the lecture room not only because of the
information content of his talks, but because of their entertainment
value.

Being a Bionaut it is a matter of pride to boldly go where no
biologist has gone before, and having acquited myself with a defence
for playfulness I present a introduction to using a MOO-GOPHER.

Fasten your seat belts... and no smoking. 

Logging into MOO-GOPHER

Anyone on internet can log into MOO-GOPHER by giving the command

telnet theory.cs.mankato.msus.edu

A MUD is a Multi User Dungeon. Many people can log into a MUD and move
around the rooms by giving commands (up down east west etc). In the
MUD there will be other players and you can "talk" to them and perhaps
ask advice.

When I look at the gopher.log on the Finnish EMBnet gopher I can see
that there are roughly 1000 transactions per day and I can see that
people from all round the world are using the site. Wouldn't it be
fine if there was a "gopher room" that people could congregate in and
talk shop about biology. Give advice to each other. In the room would
be a "gopher-guru" who could call up menus from different bio-gophers
and direct other bionauts in the use of the many online resources that
are available for biologists... is this only a dream? Read on.


MOO-Gopher session.

Here is a log of my first MOO session. I will present it just as it
happened and put in my own comments to clarify things that might seem
bewildering. Comments are prefaced with a ####
  
sun4 /mnt/home/csc/harper 2> telnet theory.cs.mankato.msus.edu 1709
Trying 134.29.8.244 ...
Connected to theory.cs.mankato.msus.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.
Bringing you the latest in Jay's harebrained networking schemes,

#### Access is easy no problems. Opening screen gives some on-line
#### help.

Welcome to JaysHouseMOO!

Type `connect <character-name> <password>     to connect to your character
     `connect Guest'                          to connect to a guest character
     `create <character-name> <password>      to create a character
                                                if you don't have one;
                                                human characters only, please
     `@who'                                   just to see who's logged in
                                                right now, or,
     `@quit'                                  to disconnect, either now
                                                or later.

After you've logged in type
     `help'                                   for documentation.

#### Have to get into the system by giving command connect Guest

connect guest.

Please email bug/crash reports to nop@theory.cs.mankato.msus.edu.
Okay,... guest is in use.  Logging you in as `Muffin_Guest'

#### Good lord, logged in as Muffin, who would want a nick-name like
#### that. You then get a description of the "room" that you are in.

Underground
This is a dark, cramped space.  It appears to be very crowded in here; you
 keep bumping into what feels like drainage pipes, alligators, and other
 people (apparently sleeping).  One useful thing that you've discovered in
 your bumbling about is a manhole cover above you.
Don't forget to take a look at the newspaper.  Type 'news' to see it.

#### It is good to read what the messages say. It says to type news
#### so that is what I do.

news

It's the latest issue of the MOO Herald-Examiner, dated Wed Dec 23, 1992.

PROGRAMMER POLICY

 On JaysHouseMOO, we are building with the assumption that builders and
 programmers can be trusted almost absolutely; there are a lot of wins that
 come from this.  Unfortunately, this is quite different than the policies on
 LambdaMOO and some other MOOs, and there is a bit of a culture shock for
 people who log in here and expect to be made programmers on sight.  Please
 don't take offense if we don't immediately make you a builder; stick around
 and come up with good ideas, and we probably will.

 If you're just interested in looking at code, you can `@chparent me to #58'
 regardless of whether you're a programmer or not.  @list and @d (@d $network:
 seems to be popular) will work for you; other things, like evals and writing
 code, will not, and may bomb with odd errors.

 If you're interested in learning to program MOO-code, we recommend LambdaMOO;
 it's a pretty friendly environment for new programmers.

PROJECT BOARD CREATED, NEW POLICY ABOUT PROJECTS

 Erik ported waffle's handy project board over here.  Now if you want
 something to do, check out the project board, which will live on the Patio.
 For something to be "officially being done", you HAVE to put it on the
 project board.  If you don't, your work may get RECYCLED WITH GUNS.

(You finish reading.)
You hear a quiet popping sound; Guest has disconnected.
Guest has connected.
Guest pushes the manhole cover aside and climbs out.

#### It looks like if you want to build rooms in MOO then there is the
#### possibility to do so. Looks like folks are on a first name basis
#### around here. Time to find out who is online by giving @who command.

@who

Player name           Connected    Idle time    Location
-----------           ---------    ---------    --------
Muffin_Guest (#748)   4 minutes    0 seconds    Underground
Larry (#76)           an hour      3 seconds    Gopher Room
Guest (#202)          3 minutes    9 seconds    Gopher Room
Jay (#2)              50 minutes   33 seconds   Gopher Room

Total: 4 players, all of whom have been active recently.

#### What am I supposed to do??? I am in the underground and three
#### other people are in the Gopher Room. How do I get there?
#### Lets try help.

help

Help is available on the following general topics:

introduction -- what's going on here and some basic commands
index -- index into the help system

players -- setting characteristics of yourself
movement -- moving yourself between rooms
communication -- communicating with other players
manipulation -- moving or using other objects
miscellaneous -- commands that don't fit anywhere else

building -- extending the MOO
programming -- writing code in the MOO programming language
editors -- editing text and code in the MOO

@pagelength -- what to do if lines scroll off your screen too fast
@linelength -- what to do if lines are truncated
tinymud -- a list of equivalences between MOO and TinyMUD concepts/commands

Type 'help <topic>' for information on a particular topic.

#### Well since this is a MUD I am supposed to be able to communicate
#### with other people who are here so lets get help with
#### communications

help communication

There are several commands available to allow you to communicate with your
 fellow MOOers.  Help is available on the following communication-related
 topics:

say      -- talking to the other connected players in the room
whisper  -- talking privately to someone in the same room
page     -- yelling to someone anywhere in the MOO
emote    -- non-verbal communication with others in the same room
gagging  -- screening out noise generated by certain other players
news     -- reading the wizards' most recent set of general announcements
@gripe   -- sending complaints to the wizards
@typo @bug @idea @suggest
         -- sending complaints/ideas to the owner of the current room
whereis  -- locating other players
@who     -- finding out who is currently logged in

mail     -- the MOO email system
security -- the facilities for detecting forged messages and eavesdropping.

#### I remember reading in the original note to give the command
#### "go up east enter down" to get to the gopher room so lets try that.

go up east enter down

Broken sewer pipe
The interior of a broken sewer pipe at the side of the road. This is where
 Larry lives. The space is littered with the wrappings from fast-food meals,
 and old useful items plucked from the remnants collected from highway litter.
 Oddly, you spot a gopher hole in the ground.

Gopher Room [gopher.stanford.edu] <jump>
General Gopher Room
1. About This Gopher (menu)
2. Networking & Communication Systems (menu)
3. News (menu)
4. Other Gopher and Information Servers (menu)
5. Other Gophers at Stanford (menu)
6. Other Services (menu)
7. Univ. of Minnesota (Gopher's Home) (menu)
8. Weather (menu)
9. Webster's Dictionary (menu)
10. Whois (menu)

#### So I am now in the gopher room. The gopher menu looks familiar
#### Will anyone speak to me... after all who would want to speak to
#### anyone with a name like Muffin. Remember the BBC Children's
#### programme "Muffin the Mule" Dear old Muffin playing the fool.

Larry and Jay are here.
Jay hehs
Jay waves

#### Some sort of communication here.

Larry says, "Hi Muffin"
Larry [to Muffin_Guest]: use " to talk, as in: "hello
You say, "hello"
Larry claps
You say, "greetings from Helsinki Finland"
Larry [to Muffin_Guest]: use : to emote, as in:  :waves

#### So here are a couple of basic command straight away. The use of
#### " to talk as in "hello and : as in :waves to show some emotion.

You say, "First time in a MOO or  MUD or whatever."
Larry says, "Home of many fine network services. :-)"
Larry says, "greetings from Los Altos, California, USA"
Jay says, "Greetings from Mankato, Minnesota, USA."
Jay feels the need to complete things.
Larry says, "confused?"
You say, "I am a biologist... but that does not mean I am always confused"
Jay says, "tell em how to run gopher, that's what e's here for."
Larry laughs

#### To interpertate the dialog above there has been seven uses of the
#### say command " and a couple of uses of the emote command :
#### Guess I should establish my credentials. Bamboozle these
#### Dudes with a few nucleic acid sequences.

You say, "I just posted a messaged about this place to bionet.software"
Larry grins
Jay hehs
You say, "So I expect you will have many biologist dropping in here"
Jay says, "we're gonna be CRAWLING with guests soon."
Larry says, "They'll be out in droves, maybe we should make more guests"
Jay nods
You say, "Well as you know there are very many Bio-Gophers out there."
Larry says, "Actually, no, I didn't"
Larry goes back up a level.
Jay didn't, but believes it.

#### They are being polite. They can not be serious that they are not
#### aware that biologists rule gopher-space. What a limited view of the
#### universe.

Larry resets Gopher Room.
Larry jumps to nic.funet.fi socket 70
Larry taps his foot impatiently

#### HMMM... what is going on here... looks like the gopher room is going
#### into overdrive... traveling at warp factor seventy to NIC. Stay
#### cool. Establish yourself... tell them about Don Gilbert's gopher
#### hole... the mother ship of the bio-fleet. 

You say, "I should say that biology is leading the field"
You say, "when it comes to gopher applications in the sciences."
Jay nods
You say, "gopher to ftp.bio.indiana.edu and take a look"
Larry jumps to ftp.bio.indiana.edu socket 70
Larry picks 10. Other-Bio-Gophers-Etc (menu).

#### How do they do that??? Are there lots of gopher holes in this
#### room that I just can't see. Act intelligent and ask a good question.

You say, "so can any gopher hole have an associated MOO"
Larry thinks

#### AAAAHHH got him... he has to think. That was rather intelligent of me.

Larry says, "no, the MOO can have lots of gopher holes"
You say, "aaahhh...gasp"
Jay says, "In fact, there are a couple connected to this room."
Larry says, "This is just a 'room'"
Larry says, "you can make a private one if you want to look up things in
             private"
Larry says, "I hadn't really thought of all the applications, I just thought
             people could use online information in conversations"
Jay says, "Or keep your favorite stuff on your virtual desk."
Larry goes back up a level.

#### I should not have sounded so surprised... but now I am beginning
#### to get the picture. If I had a MOO on NIC with a gopher room then
#### folks could log into the MOO and go to the gopher room where a
#### guru would be waiting to guide them through gopher-space. Lets
#### ask for some advice.

You say, "so could you give me some advice"
Larry says, "Sure, advice is free"
You say, "can I log this session"
Larry says, "why not?"
You say, "anyway tell me about the gopher room"
Larry isn't sure what to tell
Larry jumps to nic.funet.fi socket 70
Ron stares off into the middle distance.
Ron hehs.

#### There he has done that again. Jumped into the Finnish gopher
#### on NIC. Ron is bored. He has seen it all before.

Larry picks 2. Finnish Gopher in English (menu).
Larry picks 1. Finnish University and Research Network (FUNET) (menu).
Larry picks 3. FUNews -newsletter (menu).
You say, ""I can see you using NIC but how do you do it"
Larry says, "well, 'look'"

#### More revelation. To see what the current gopher hole is in MOO
#### you have to give the command look... of course I knew that all
#### the time... just wanted to appear super-cool. Where are my sun-glasses.

look

Gopher Room [nic.funet.fi] FUNews -newsletter
General Gopher Room
1. Vuoden 1992 sis{lt|
2.  Hein{kuu 1992 (menu)

Larry says, "everytime someone else moves the gopher pointer, the room
             description changes"
Larry goes back up a level.
Larry says, "so now, look again"

look

Gopher Room [nic.funet.fi] Finnish University and Research Network (FUNET)
General Gopher Room
1. FUNET contact persons
2. FUNET in Finnish (menu)
3. FUNews -newsletter (menu)

#### Now I get the idea you "look" to see the gopher menu and I saw
#### that Larry went up a level. Time to show these dudes I know a
#### thing or two about gopher... I will press u to go UP a level

u

Broken sewer pipe
The interior of a broken sewer pipe at the side of the road. This is where
 Larry lives. The space is littered with the wrappings from fast-food meals,
 and old useful items plucked from the remnants collected from highway litter.
 Oddly, you spot a gopher hole in the ground.
Larry has arrived.

#### oh-oh Rainman oh-oh
#### Not such a smart move "u" is a MOO command and it took me out of
#### the gopher room, and it looks like Larry has followed me. Well if
#### "u" takes me up then "d" must take me down. I will slip back down
#### before I embarrass myself further. Where are my sun-glasses?

d

Gopher Room [nic.funet.fi] Finnish Gopher in English
General Gopher Room
1. Finnish University and Research Network (FUNET) (menu)
2. Academy of ]bo (menu)
3. Centre for Scientific Computing (menu)
4. Finnish Embnet BioBox (menu)

Larry has arrived.
Larry says, "you want 'pop', not 'up"
Larry says, "up moves you out of the gopher room all together :)"
"You say, "well I was using the command I know in gopher to go up"
Larry says, "so, try 'pick 4', for example"
You say, "I guess that "u" is a command reserved for MOO"
Ron hehs.
Larry says, "well, I could have overridden it, but I kind of liked using the
              'direction' commands for moving around in VR space"
You say, "so what do the cursor keys do?"
Larry says, "Nothing"
Ron blinks.
Larry grins
You say, "well in gopher cursor keys move you around in the menu."
Larry says, "heck, really, my cursor keys just mess up my screen"
Jay says, "Well, depending on what your MOO client does with them."
Ron says, "MOO eats a lot of characters."
Larry says, "But that would be unfriendly here"
You say, "and at the moment I am coming in over telnet."
You say, "where can you get a Moo client?"
Larry resets Gopher Room.

#### Now I see that Larry has reset the Gopher room. I had better take
#### a look and see where we are now in Gopher space.

look

Gopher Room [gopher.mankato.msus.edu]  (top)
General Gopher Room
1. About Mankato State University
2. About the Maverick Gopher Server
3. Campus Information (menu)
4. Minnesota State University System (menu)
5. Other Gopher and Information Servers (menu)
6. University of Minnesota (menu)
Jay, Ron, and Larry are here.
Larry jumps to the remembered set of nodes.
Larry picks 11. parcftp MOO anonymous FTP information (menu).
Larry picks 13. contrib (menu).

#### This is intersting Larry has guided me to a gopher hole where
#### there is code for MOO's. This would be a perfect way to give 
#### on-line instructions to new users. I could be in Helsinki
#### and guide someone from Oulu in the north of Finland on how to
#### use bio-gophers.

look

Gopher Room [gopher.uiuc.edu 7997] contrib
General Gopher Room
1. AmigaMOO.lha
2. Builtin-Function-Help.el
3. ChaosMoo.db.Z (binary)
4. DarkSideOfVR.Z (binary)
5. GAELIC.TXT
6. LambdaCoreProgMan.texinfo
7. LambdaCoreUserMan.texinfo
8. MOO-1.6.1-Sun4-Stripped-Dynamic.Z (binary)
9. SchmooHelp-28Aug92.txt
10. TinyMUD-LambdaMOO-equivs
11. Tutorial

#### OK well they have been jumping to different gopher hole, but
#### I would like to be able to do it as well... lets ask them that.
#### Or do you have to be a wizard to do that. Lets go to Reinhards BioBox.

You say, "OK lets say I want to go to bioftp.unibas.ch"
You say, "how do I do it?"
Larry says, "Just use 'goto'"

#### I give the command

goto bioftp.unibas.ch

Muffin_Guest jumps to bioftp.unibas.ch socket 70
1. About Gopher, and this bioftp site (menu)
2. Biology subject tree in Gopher (menu)
3. DIBUG [Discover Insight Biosym User Group] Mailing list (menu)
4. EMBNet BioInformation Resource Switzerland (menu)
5. Infoservers in European Countries (menu)
6. Molecular Biology Archive List
7. USENET News (menu)
8. and if you have suggestions or problems...
9. bioftp server: READ ME FIRST
10. development site of GOPHER (U Minnesota) (menu)
11. other Gopher and Information Servers (Minnesota directory) (menu)


You say, "I did it ahah"
Larry claps
You say, "now if I want to go to item 4"
Larry says, "say 'pick 4'"

#### Poise that finger over the 4. Show them your stuff Muffin.

pick 4

Muffin_Guest picks 4. EMBNet BioInformation Resource Switzerland (menu).
1. About EMBnet (menu)
2. Database (menu)
3. Hints (menu)
4. Info on this EMBNet Information Resource
5. Other EMBnet Hosts and Sources of Information (menu)
6. Software (menu)

You say, "this is easy"
You say, "I could do it half asleep"
Larry is half asleep

#### Yes I forgot about the time differences. Guess those boys should
#### be in bed. Time for one last question.

You say, "So what about WAIS sources"
You say, "Can you query them from this gopher room?"
Larry says, "sure"
Larry jumps to the remembered set of nodes.
Larry says, "oh, like item 6 here"

#### I look to see where he has gone to.

look

Gopher Room [remembered set]
General Gopher Room
1. The U of I Weather Machine (menu)
2. Lyrics directory (menu)
3. List of books available in ascii (recordings for the blind)
4. NWU info (menu)
5. Netnews gopher gateway (menu)
6. recipes WAIS search (search)
7. Electronic Frontier Foundation archives (menu)
8. waterloo menu (menu)

Larry says, "if you 'pick 6', it will ask you for a query"

#### Here is another new command "pick" to select an item from a gopher 
#### menu. Now I have to think of something offbeat to do a search on.
#### Some gruesome food... tripe, heart, liver. Yes!!!! liver that is
#### horrible enough... Slavic enough... Nordic enough, for Muffin the Mule.

pick 6

Muffin_Guest picks 6. recipes WAIS search (search).
Search for what? Enter search line or @abort:
liver

Muffin_Guest searches for liver.
1. busuioc@ac Re: COLLECTION: Liver recipes
2. reb@amc.co Re: Re: REQUEST: Liver recipes

pick 1
Muffin_Guest picks 1. busuioc@ac Re: COLLECTION: Liver recipes.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CLIP %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Since i've been collecting recipes for about a year, it's about time
i contributed something.

these recipes are romanian, from a cookbook that's been in my family
for 25 yrs.  apologies for the not-so-sophisticated translation.  it
is exact, but it may not sound very american :-)

for the person who requested liver recipes:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% MUCH TEXT DELETED %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

You say, "yuck"
Larry picks 1. busuioc@ac Re: COLLECTION: Liver recipes.
Jay picks 13. leeba@mcil Re: VEG SALADS.

#### Looks like Larry is a liver fan. Have I made a friend?
#### Jay goes to the opposite extreme and opts for a salad. Wise man


You say, "Hot dog"
You say, "I will write up a report on your MOO for Biologists"
Larry grins
Jay says, "Maybe the biologists should have their own MOO. :-)"
You say, "In the famous words of Arnold"
You say, "I'll be back"
Jay hehs
Jay waves
@quit
*** Disconnected ***

This article is dedicated to Jasper Rees, may he always be surprised
by what he finds in his corn-flakes package:-)

(Ed: This aphorism should be the subject of much debate in a couple
     of years time, when its origins are no longer clear to the
     new generation of Bionauts)

All the best -=ROB=-


 ~ Rob Harper                    ~ E-mail:          harper@convex.csc.fi    
 ~ Finnish State Computer Centre ~ Molbio/software: harper@nic.funet.fi
 ~ P.O. Box 40                   ~ Telephone:       +358 0 457 2076
 ~ SF-02101 Espoo Finland        ~ Fax:             +358 0 457 2302