Welcome and introductions

First topic message reminder :

Around the autumn of 2007 I came across the MSN message boards and found one entitled "UK Politics" which I joined and enjoyed for over three and a half years, then around April 2011 MSN decided in their wisdom to close down that particular message board.

Over time the MSN message board posters had become like friends, and though I had never met any of them, they became as familiar as the regulars I have a pint with in the local village pub, one or two were fairly nasty and quite vile, most were very pleasant people.

Fortunately, one of the redundant MSN bloggers (Ivan) decided to start his own political blogging site, and many of the old MSN posters followed him to his newly created site, and after a competition to find a name, it was agreed to call it "Cutting Edge".

I have to point out that Ivan ran things in a very fair and democratic way, the members decided the rules, they chose the name and logo, several of us were appointed as moderators and common sense prevailed.

Unfortunately the host of our board was "ProBoards" whom I would definately NOT recommend to anyone, they pulled the plug and closed Cutting Edge down saying that we had broken the rules.
To this day we still do not know what rule(s) were broken, and by whom, we wrote very polite emails to ProBoards asking for an explanation, but we got no answer other than "you broke the rules".

And so here we are WELCOME

Where's Jeff?

Jeff who?

Thank you Boatlady. Hope you are well.

AW - nice to meet you - your name is my initials!!

Hi boatlady. Thank you. They are my initials too.

It's very good of you to make us feel welcome. I'm looking forward to entering debates.

boatlady wrote:Norm DePlume and Bellatori - great to meet you both

Thank you. I like your picture. I spent my 60th on the Norfolk broads in October 2011. 25C every day. Best holiday since my honeymoon 37 years ago also on the broads. Nice place to live... Almost as good as Newcastle

I love the Broads - was brought up near Newcastle, but this is definitely my home.
When the weather's good, there's nothing to match a boat on the Broads

Hi Snowyflake - I'm good - nice to see you back - we've missed you xx

Hello everyone. I'm another refugee from the Amazon religion forum. I just got fed up with it there.

I'm looking forward to seeing everything that goes on here.

Hi Sam,

Nice to see you.

Hi thank-you for letting me on your site folks,this is my first post so I am unsure what to say really except that my interests are religion and I am an atheist. I have many friends on site who feel the same way and I love a good friendly debate about the topic, and am looking forward to it here. hello everybody hope you are all well,yes I to am a refugee from the amazon religion site,got a bit to boring over there.

Hi stu,

Glad you finally made it.

Best wishes

Tony

Hi sam and aw lets hope this sites friendlier

Yes Tony one of the letters on my password looked like a number to me so Imessed it up each time until Ivan sorted it for me bless him

Hi Stu.

Hi AW.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to look through the discussions later.

Hi all. Tony, I see we both faced the traditional puzzle of what name to pick. I had the same problem on the Playstation Network. I'm still wondering whether using my real name is a good idea (and how people feel about animated avatars).

stu. Glad to see you managed to log in eventually! I hope you'll find this site friendly, but please read the contents of these boards and familiarise yourself with the rules:-
 
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In order to keep the forum user-friendly, we sometimes move threads or messages to more appropriate places, and threads may be merged if they are on the same or very similar topics. Please don't take offence if that happens to something you've posted!
 
I hope you will enjoy the forum and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to you and your friends.

William R wrote:(and how people feel about animated avatars).

Don't know about anyone else, but I feel hypnotised.

William R wrote:Hi all. Tony, I see we both faced the traditional puzzle of what name to pick. I had the same problem on the Playstation Network. I'm still wondering whether using my real name is a good idea (and how people feel about animated avatars).

Like the avatar.

Just got lazy with the name to be honest.

It's about context. I remember many years ago a friend telling me how he'd signed up for one of the new internet chat rooms, and had just used his own name to get online quickly. "Welcome" said the banner, "In the room are Hal2001, Doomslayer42, TheMegatoad and mnurse."

For the PS3, I wanted Captain Parking Space or FluffyTheKitten but they were too long.

Just used [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to see what Sam's avatar was - aha, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  

I also found Boatlady's boat and Ivan's Twitter account (sorry, couldn't help it).

William R wrote:Just used [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to see what Sam's avatar was - aha, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Gee, thanks Will. Blow my cover why don't ya!

Hi, can i join the rest of the refugees from amazonland please? I'm now kazza unfortunately, as ka and kaz were already taken. Really should have stayed as k Hoyles, but thought it might be fun and now can't find a way to change back. Emoticon heaven!  

Kazza wrote:I'm now kazza unfortunately, as ka and kaz were already taken. Really should have stayed as k Hoyles, but thought it might be fun and now can't find a way to change back.

Go with the new name and be Kazza!

I can tell this one's going to be useful:

 

Kazza. Welcome to Cutting Edge! If you want your username changed to K Hoyles, one of the three of us in admin can do it for you, but please decide soon - before you get involved in discussions and people start replying to you as 'Kazza'. (Any change affects all of your messages, not just ones posted after the change of name.) Thanks.

Kazza wrote:I'm now kazza unfortunately

Hi Kazza

William R wrote: how people feel about animated avatars.

Hi William,

I find them distracting. Having said that yours is tolerable but some can be deeply annoying. Each to his or her own, but I would not choose one.

I'd be grateful if all of our new members would open their automated welcome message. If you don't open it, it sits in my outbox for ever!
 
 
We sent a newsletter to all members on 29 September. I will arrange for everyone who has joined Cutting Edge since then to receive a copy of it by email in the next day or so.

Kazza it is then. At least its easy to type!

Thank you Ivan, glad to be here. I'll get used to kazza, I'm sure.

Hello AW.

Loving the shoes, K.

William R wrote:Loving the shoes, K.

Thanks William, I'm fond of them.

Lovely to see all the new avatars (nearly said faces)
I'm really looking forward to getting to know you all.

Thanks for the welcome, Boatlady. There's a lot to see around here. Looks fun.

moonbeam wrote:This is my favorite pair of shoes.

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Good hunting shoes  

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These are mine.

I wonder if Blasphemer/Clive will join us. Does anyone know?