ABOUT MALKAVIA BBS...

Malkavia BBS was established as a traditional dialup BBS Scene System on October 31st, 1994. It's humble beginings started it off on a Packard Bell Legend, 486SX25MHZ with 250MB of Hard Drive Space, a 14.4 Modem, 16MB of 72-Pin SIMM Memory running under DOS and Windows 3.11 (eventually also utilizing Desqview & QEMM).

The first BBS Software that Malkavia ever used was Renegade BBS created by Cott Lang. There is however, a much deeper and more rooted history.

[ Before the Begining ]

8th Grade Springfield Trip 1992...

I'm sure you're wondering just what in the blue hell some forced grade school excursion has to do with any sort of online service, but you'd be surprised.

Messiah Lutheran and Grace Lutheran had a "Joint-Field-Trip" but won't worry, we didn't inhale. Much.

On this field trip (I was on the Messiah side of that particular fence) I met Joel "Thumper" Meuller, otherwise known as "Jammer". He didn't live too far and we hung out quite often. Both him and my friend Sebastian had a PC. All I had ever really done was play games on the Commodore 64 (which apparently Geek Squad seems to think Windows 95 will install just fine on that... lamers!) and otherwise my only other computer experiences were Atari 2600 and the original 8 / 16 Bit Nintendo.

My friend Tom (we're no longer friends, long story) had been into all of this stuff since he was 10 (or maybe even younger than that) and ran "Holodeck BBS" which later changed names two more times, first to "Cheerful Symptoms of Insanity" and finally to "An Intelligent Shade of Blue".

So I didn't know what a BBS was, what "online" was and wasn't even familar with computers. But he'd play Demoscene Tracked Music and read me message posts and all sorts of cool stuff. However cool or not, I really didn't understand most of it.

The Begining (Renegade BBS Software): 1994

In March of 1994 I had purchased a legacy (so yeah, it was old even by the standards of the day) Tandy 8088XT with a whopping 40MB Hard Drive, 4MB of RAM maxing out at the lightning fast clock speed of 10MHZ.

Having DIED not too soon after, it was replaced with my first real computer (if you can call a Packard Hell a real computer) which was a Packard Bell Legend, 486SX25 MHZ with 16MB of RAM and a whole 250MB of total disk space. All purchased for only a mere $1,400USD (note my sarcasm).

Once I was able to upgrade from 2400 Baud to a 14.4 Zoom Modem, Malkavia BBS (at the time, StarGate BBS) opened its doors as a dialup Bulletin Board System running under DOS v6.22 and using Renegade BBS Software and the Intermail Front End Mailer (and Gecho FTN Mail Tosser).

The BBS was born on October 31st, 1994. I called a BBS soon after called CHICAGOnline (formerly known as "The Electric Fence") where the Sysop of that BBS, "The Third Rail" aka Tony Copeletta (my appologies to Tony if i've misspelled his last name) was as equally sick of FidoNet (not so fondly refered to as "Fight-O-Net" for the amount of petty bickering and beurocrasy that still persists within that echomail network to this very day) as I was.

So we started a free speech network called StarNet (later to be renamed to something more creative -- Xpresit Net) in the hopes of attracting other Sysops and Users who were as equally fed up with FidoNet as we were.

StarNet was nearly destroyed in its infancy due to one near-fatal oversight. We had a flames area. The ability to harass your peers and subordinants is not freedom of speech, in fact, it prevents freedom of speech.

So us being a bunch of dumb kids, we did what dumb hostile teenage boys do. Tony and I fought because of an incodent with a user on his BBS (she went by the alias of Suepeace -- if i recall correctly, she said something rather ignorant to me and i hauled off in a hail storm of profanity laced rebuttles in the form of petty and juvanile name calling and accusations, etc..) that ended her up really pissed at Tony as a result. So he went off to start FreeNet (which ended up a total failer) and my inexperienced self was left to fend for my own.

However with the help of some other really nice Sysops who took the time to teach me more about echomail, we prevailed and became a rather large and international message net. Nowhere near the biggest around, but we definately got alot of activity in the forums.

Some years down the road bygons were left as such and Tony said he was proud to see that i had the resolve to keep going with what him and I both started.

The origins of the name "Xpresit" come from The Riddle Box BBS. The Sysop, Frizzle Fry, had a girlfriend by the alias of Dragonlady. She had suggested it as a replacement because the Network was about "expressing yourself" as per your rights to Freedom of Speech and such.

From MS-DOS to Windows 95 (Telegard BBS Software): 1996 - 1997

Under an Operating System with some true multitasking ability, Makavia made the leap from MS-DOS over to Windows 95, just as many others did back then. In 1997 I got my first "Real Internet Access" by way of one of the first "Internet BBSes" called "The Engine Shop BBS". More can be read about them on the Xpresit Network Website. While the Main Stream was paying out the nose for Internet Access, most of the BBS Scene was able to get it for free, as access to "Cyberspace" used to always be free.

As support for Renegade dwindled, I moved over to Telegard written by Tim Strike which seemed to be much more advanced as the Author had improved upon it from it's previous versions.

Having had a lot of fun at the 1996 TSO Gathering (again, more information about that on the Xpresit Website) this isnpired me to start having Xpresit Gatherings in 1997, largely made up of Makavia Users for the obvious reasons.

The Jump to Broadband: 1998-1999

At first Malkavia BBS retained it's dialup line as well as Broadband giving it one "Call-in Node" and four "Telnet Nodes" by way of a software called Netmodem. As more and more people switched to cheap dialup access during the "Dot Com Boom" as well as migrating over to Broadband, the calls to the Dialup Line of Malkavia reached less than 1 a day where as the incomming connections over TCP / IP exponentially increased. Inevitably, I killed off the Dialup Line. The old number (please don't call it) was 773-205-0915 (Originally 312-205-0915 before the breakup of all the Area Codes Nation Wide).

Mystic and WebJammer: 2000-2002

Although the Telegard Website still remains up to this day, Tim Strike has long since "dissapeared" and has not been seen since (that I know of, anyways). Once this happened, I decided to Switch to Mystic BBS written by James Coyle aka G00r00. Mystic BBS has a rather strange history. Massive potential as one of the first "true" TCP / IP BBSes (Windows and Linux native as opposed to DOS based, with integrated telnet daemon). Let the record show however, that Cnet BBS for the Amiga was *THE* first one and had all of the stuff we have NOW decades ahead of the game. After them of course came softwares such as Major BBS (Galactcom), Wildcat BBS (Winserver) and Synchronet BBS -- as well as many others.

Quetwo, the Sysop of "Children of Technology BBS" who also happens to be the Darktech / DtDNS Co-Admin as well as the Author of such softwares as "BBSip" helped me with a bit of a vision of mine. Before the dawn of Web Interfaces for BBSes, I had an idea for a Platform that could read / write JAM-Formatted message areas (more information on this also, yet again, on the Xpresit Website). QueTwo decided to help me develop it and it became known as "WebJammer" seeing as it was a "Web" Interface that accessed "Jam" message area files.

Written in Cold Fusion, it utilized a "MySQL Message Tosser" that Quetwo had rigged together. It had a few drawbacks but for it's time, it was pretty slick. Unfortunately, it never even made it to it's first release due to real life schedule issues and the fact that no one was being paid to code WebJammer. It was also originally planned that WebJammer would be able to communicate with other WebJammer BBSes to exchange FTN-Style Syndicated Echomail directly by way of MySQL. It would have been the world's first "MySQL Front End Mailer".

One of these days I'll try to locate the original files and make them available for download for anyone that might wish to screw with them. I know I have them someplace however I'll also see if Quetwo might have a better version of them on some archive someplace.

Synchronet and SSN: 2003-2004

After over 5 years of promises for a new Mystic Release, myself and a lot of others switched to other softwares. My choice was Synchronet. Only an elite few of G00r00's friends got any actual Mystic BBS Updates of any sort, the original website, mysticbbs.com went down and became usurped by spammers and now they're returned under a new website -- mysticbbs.org -- which I have no doubts will be just ad productive as the previous incarnation, if you get my meaning.

In the late 1990's I disliked Synchronet, however come 2003, there were many substancial improvements which encouraged me to give it a try and ultimlately lead to my swtiching to it.

In the words of the Synchronet Author, Rob Swindell:

"Synchronet Bulletin Board System Software is a free software package that can turn your personal computer into your own custom online service supporting multiple simultaneous users with hierarchical message and file areas, multi-user chat, and the ever-popular BBS door games. Synchronet development began as a personal hobby in 1990 for single-tasking MS-DOS compatible computers and Hayes compatible modems. The program was sold commercially from 1992-1996 after which time it was released (with source code) for both the 16-bit DOS and 32-bit OS/2 platforms to the public domain and development by the author was ceased. In November of 1999, the author found a renewed interest in further developing Synchronet, specifically for the Internet community, embracing and integrating standard Internet protocols such as Telnet, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IRC, NNTP, and HTTP. Synchronet has since been substantially redesigned as an Internet-only BBS package for Win32 and Unix-x86 platforms and is an Open Source project under continuous development. Synchronet Version 3.1x for Win32 and Unix (Intel-x86 architecture) is available for download now and can be previewed on Vertrauen (Home of Synchronet BBS Software)."

In my own words, it does a hell of a lot more than this and is very well supported by both the author as well as various third parties. At this point running Windows XP, I used the Windows version of the software. In 2003 with the help of Sniper (Sysop of Killed In Action BBS) I setup the "Synchronet Support Network" geared towards third party support, modding, customization and addons (as also linked on the main page of the Mallkavia BBS Website).

After a Net Split, Time Warrior resumes SSN where as Sniper (last we know of, anyways) runs USSN. This group of people is here to help defeat what is refered to as "The Stock Syndrome" and encourage people to customize their setups as opposed to leaving them at defaults.

Synchronet Web Interface, BBS Crawler & Legal Music Search: 2005

As a newborn ugly green monster, the first version of the Synchronet Web Interface came into being on January 1, 2005. The day before however (as listed on www.synchro.net) Rob Swindell, the Synchronet Author, got a very interesting email from a complete fool. One really cool thing about Rob is that if you make a big enough asshole of yourself in regards to bitching about the untimelyness of non-paid development, he will publish you in a main page announcement:

December 31, 2004

Happy Birthday to me... (I'm 35 today).

Well, I got the v3.12a-Win32 release out in time for the new year! It was a lot of work, and while I was working my ass off to get this release out by today, I can't say I appreciated receiving annoying e-mails like this one:

"Hey Rob, I know you got a family and all, but just to bring this to your attention.. You said that you would release the next version of Syncrhonet this December.. Well dude you got until Friday before that time runs out ya know? Maybe because of the holiday and all that you should edit that and change it for a later date? Just a suggestion, is all it is since December is almost over with by Friday."

And there were others. Even after I said, right here, last month "Sorry I can't guess the exact date any better than that (please don't ask)". This is a perfect example of why I don't like to give release dates.

Anyway, enough bitching. The cool new features can be found in v311_new.html and v312_new.html and it can be downloaded here. I've got some celebrating to do...

Happy New Year!

Too bad the fool in question also had absolutely ZERO clue that seeing as Synchronet is Community Developed (just as most things open source tend to be) that it is actually Deuce and Runemaster that created the Web Server and Web Interface for Synchronet. So this is also a perfect example of how you should ask questions and research the facts, because assumption is the mother of all fuckups, and he (or she) who fucks up, gets fucked. :-)

Me personally -- If I was Rob, I'd sarcastically "thank them for their offer of a monetary donation seeing as they apparently realize no one gets paid to develop Synchronet".

I was the first in the Synchronet Community to start modding out the Web Interface. After hearing about it's impedning implimentation months prior, as soon as it was released I got cracking on it right away. I was like a little kid on Christmas monring.

Impressed with my efforts, people started sending me requests for copies of my work as well as bombardments of questions about the interface usually reserved for people like Rob. I was happy to see people taking an interest in customizing their setups, which people have done and are continuing to do. My Alpha releases of my work are less than glamorous and I failed more than I succeeded. However that can be said of anything. I'm sure even the first wheel was made of stone.

I had coined the term "Synchweb" seeing as always typing "The Synchronet Web Interface" was a bit excessive. Of course politically correct scroutiny gave birth to a second spelling of the term "Syncweb" which lacks the "h". There was some interesting debate on the proper spelling for a word that doesn't officially exist. This was brought into being because of similarly named applications such as "SyncTerm" and SyncFos" which also lack the "h".

Another Sysop had made me a custom PHP Script towards two ideas that I was trying to get going: BBS Crawler and Legal Music Search. I had tried to impliment these concepts within a custom Syncweb for both sites however development of the interface versus my lack of programming skill had that attempt fail misserably. I've been having far more success with these two sites now that I've chosen to use e107 CMS.

Migration to Linux: 2006-2007

The e107 stuff came about when I switched to Debian Linux in August of 2007. This migration has resulted in taking longer to get things back up to speed -- but at the same time -- has given me much more stability now that I don't run an OS like Windows that breaks if you look at it the wrong way. From 2006 to Mid-2007 Xpresit Net and SSN started their temporary hiatus for this migration. Xpresit is slowly coming back, SSN still on the To-Do List. Having started Syncdev with Runemaster (Co-Author of the Synchronet Web Interface) in 2005 -- SSN and Syncdev will be merging into one project. Syncdev as the project name and SSN simply being the Syndicated Echomail Network for it. It does not make sense to form a seperation between the two.

Beta, the Sysop of Cerberus Development BBS has helped me a lot with learning Linux and I must say it's been quite fun. Seeing as Debian is starting to become underdeveloped where as Ubuntu Linux is really awesome, I've been playing with Ububtu and will likely be switching Malkavia to that at some unknown point in the future. For the moment, I'm honoring the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" policy.

I will be implimenting my artscene ansi and custom telnet / ssh shells for Malkavia eventually. Right now, the servers and operating system itself is taking more priority. One thing I have learned however is that patience does pay off.

As of October 31st, 2007 -- Malkavia BBS and Xpresit Net will both be celebrating their 13th Birthdays.



ABOUT TIME WARRIOR...




Real Name: Dave Kelso
Date of Birth: 03 / 08 / 1978
Location: Chicago, IL USA
First Computers: Atari 2600, Commodore 64 & Tandy 8088 XT
Career: Freelance Computer Technician
Hobbies: Computers (duh), Composing Music, Gardening, Fresh Water Fish, Hiking in the Woods, and stuff.
Sexual Orientation: Vast Fondness for Females
Gender: Male (obviously)
Most Used Quote: "Life is however you choose to perceive it".
Favorite Computer Programs: GIMP, OpenOffice, Audacity, Modplug Tracker, SkaleTracker, XMMS, VirtualDub, Synchronet, Firefox Browser, SyncTerm and the list truly is almost endless.
Favorite Legacy Games: Tyrian, Doom 3: Mr Smiley Head's Suffari (hack), Doom (all), Quake (all), Warcraft (all), Original Worms Game (Worms 2 Sucks), Wolfenstien 3D, Blood 3D, Descent, Rebel Assault and this list is pretty long, too.
Favorite Doorgames: Barney Splat (first one I ever played), BRE and LORD.
Political Views: George W Bush Sucks, most other politicians aren't too much better, either.





This page is still under construction.