This page is obsolete - see http://www.idallen.com/ 

Updated: 2021-11-03 21:34 EDT

I keep this mostly for the nostalgia of remembering what the FreeNet was like 1992-2002. Many of the links are broken or wrong. All the important stuff on this page has been or will be moved to http://www.idallen.com/ eventually.

Ian! D. Allen CanadaFlag idallen@freenet.carleton.ca

Last updated: 2003-06-16 21:50

Hello, I'm Ian Allen, Ian D. Allen, and often Ian! Allen or Ian! D. Allen too.  (all those combinations are for the search engines.)  I was born in Ottawa [Canada] and have lived in Deep River [Ontario], Pointe Claire [Quebec], St.Lucia [West Indies], Toronto [Ontario], Hillsburgh (Everdale Place) [Ontario], and Waterloo [Ontario].

This [was] my one true personal home page https://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa610/ and my global e-mail address [was] idallen@freenet.carleton.ca on the National Capital FreeNet (NCF) here in Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. [Use idallen@idallen.ca now.]

I log in using NCF userids "aa610" and "xx610", but you can use "idallen" for email.  I'm also idallen at various other email services around the planet; but, I forward all that mail to the FreeNet (where possible).

I'm a Professor of Computer Studies at Algonquin College in Ottawa and I have an Academic Home Page there; but, I forward mail from there (alleni@algonquincollege.com) to here.

Here's an index of things I've posted to Usenet News Groups over the past many months:
        Deja.com search: ~a idallen@freenet.carleton.ca

Disclaimer

Opinions on this page are my own; I do not represent anyone or anything else on these pages.

Index to this page

Photo Gallery

Pictures of me:

Pictures of other people:

My wife Jan Teevan (Jan Teevan) has a sister Kim Teevan with a nice family. Then again, our family is nice too and we live in a nice house with a trampoline in the back yard. Using a hand scanner with retouching software I built a stylish Christmas Family Portrait with Santa Clause. You can also see one of his Elves...

Sometimes I let you into one of my home machines and you might find some pictures there, or even a Web Camera.

Many other pictures are on my home machine.

People I Know

Places I Know

These are places and organizations with which I've had some connection over the years, in somewhat reverse chronological order.

My Other Home Pages

NCF Usage Statistics

The Statistics Page is at a new location: NCF Statistics Page

Articles on Online Community

Is Ian! Online?

That's not easy to answer.

I have a direct connection to the Internet and my computers stay online and connected all day. So, even when I appear to be logged in to NCF or visible using ICQ, I may not actually be sitting in front of any of my computers.  I have an ICQ number: 8313669; but, again, my ICQ status tells you little about whether or not I'm actually using any of my computers.

To see if I'm signed on to NCF and visible (I may or may not actually be active), you can finger me under my Systems Admin account finger xx610@freenet4.carleton.ca, or (less often) my regular account finger aa610@freenet4.carleton.ca

If you want to see a list of everyone currently online here at NCF, try The NCF Online User list. I should probably set up a form that lets you query the user database of names and userids. You can use Internet "finger" to do it, if you try something like "finger text@freenet4.carleton.ca", where "text" is the string to look for. Be warned, though -- we have over 100,000 userids in that database and nonspecific queries may return a lot of data.

On exclamation marks (or not)

From: Lee J. Dickey
Subject: joy
Date: Monday, 29 April 1991 17:08:52 EDT

The exclamation mark comes from a time when manuscripts were just that, scripts done by hand, and some scribe, reading and copying, might come across a passage that he enjoyed and wishing to convey his happiness to subsequent readers, would write in the latin word for "joy". The latin word is "Io", clearly a cognate of "Joy", as will be recognized by anyone named Ian, who knows that his name is a variant of "Jan". Now, after a while, this Io or Joy, came into common usage, and was widely known, sometimes it was desired to squeeze it into a smaller space, and so the letter I would be written above the letter "o", and hence the origin of the exclamation mark.

The way your write your name made me think of that.

- Lee

From: Justin Bur
Subject: exclamation marks
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 17:22:13 -0500

Having been directed to your site, more particularly your old NCF pages, I came across the section on your NCF home page "On exclamation marks". Alas, essentially nothing stated there is reliable.

I stop there, as this highly interesting thread of research could go on longer than I wish to explore it!
till soon
Justin

Other things

On Unix and Programming


Updated: 2021-11-03 21:34 EDT

This page is obsolete - see http://www.idallen.com/