Andrew Roughan has announced the return of a2central.com’s weekly Downunder Chat:

After a hiatus… it is time for a come back.

Calling all Apple II enthusiasts who are awake between 9pm and 11pm Australian Eastern Summer Time on Friday nights to visit the #a2c.chat channel on the A2Central IRC server.
That’s probably likely to be Aussies, Kiwis, people in Asia who aren’t working late, people in Europe who don’t have a day job, and insomniacs from the USA… but everyone is welcome.

I would like to discuss another gathering of like-minded individuals. Prior discussions on this seemed to indicate that the Sydney area was a central point. Validation of this from those who would attend is important before taking the next step to confirm a venue.

Other discussion topics will include where participants are located, local introductions, interests, projects, etc.

There is an informal Australian Apple II enthusiast email list that I maintain, so if you can’t make the chat but would like to be included in this then let me know.

The chat will be hosted on irc.a2central.com, channel #a2c.chat – use your favorite IRC client.

Connection on the bare metal is possible with an Apple IIgs using the Samurai IRC CDA
http://www.ninjaforce.com/html/products.html

If you’d like a web interface to avoid the trouble of installing an IRC client, try this:
https://chat.mibbit.com
or
http://www.reactivemicro.com/chatroom.php

Every Friday 9pm-11pm AEST
Server: irc.a2central.com
Channel: #a2c.chat

If necessary, check how the time in your location corresponds with Sydney on this site:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
We are ahead of most of the world.

I won’t be able to make every week, so the facilitation will be done by regular chat attendee Jonnyboy – Jon Co.

Hope to see you there!

We’re obviously a few days behind on the news here at A2Central… Ok, a week… or two.  Anyway, life sometimes happens and it’s sure been happening around here lately, but we wanted to let you know that things are returning to what passes for normal around these parts, and more regular updates should resume shortly.  Thanks for your patience, everyone!

At some point over the weekend, the Google Currents edition of A2Central disappeared.  No warning, no follow-up explanation from Google – just gone.  I republished the edition this morning, but you’ll need to delete the old version in your Currents client (if it’s still there) and re-subscribe by visiting this new link in your device’s browser:

http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAow0_Ja/a2centralcom

As part of the expanded services of the upgraded a2central.com, breaking news stories are now available via a variety of means:

• Our RSS feed provides headlines and content using any RSS reader, whether from another Web site, your Web browser, or a standalone RSS client.
• You can follow our updates on the microblogging service Twitter, with headlines and links back to the original story.
• An email subscription delivers the news right to your inbox, no more than once a day.
• And, of course, you can continue coming right to a2central.com and reading the news directly.

All the above are provided completely free to the Apple II Community and are ad-free. To partake of any of these options, visit our subscription page.