This station is on air
NETWORK XXIII has a front door now. What it is, what it links to, and why there is a test card.
NETWORK XXIII has a front door now. This is it.
For a couple of months we have been putting services on the open Internet one at a time: webmail for the domains we host, our own browser chat, a Usenet node, a bulletin board system that turned out to have ambitions, two Tor relays. Each of them lived at its own hostname and nowhere else. Now they are channels on one network, and this site is the programme guide.
What the metaphor buys us
Calling things channels instead of projects settles a few arguments at once:
- A channel is on air or it is not. No "beta", no "soon", no "coming Q3". The status board reads a
status.jsonthat a cron job on Roanoke refreshes every few minutes. - A channel that is being built stands by, with a test card. One flag hides it from the guide entirely.
- A channel between seasons is off air. That is where the URL shortener is right now.
Why there is a test card
Because the network is named after the one in Max Headroom, and a network that does not come on air with a test card, static and a logo is not trying hard enough. It plays once, then not again for twenty minutes. There is a skip button. If your browser asks for reduced motion, you will never see it at all.
The rest
Press Ctrl K anywhere on the home page. Type / and see what the Blink drive offers. Do not click the DRDs unless you are prepared for the consequences, which are mild.
More entries will follow in the ship's log, as kept by the Android.
Bridge update · 2026-10-22
The channel selector now opens services directly. The Blink drive does the same; choose Programme entry when you want the briefing before boarding.
Usenet's NNTP service is on air. Its browser reader is still under construction. They now have separate notices. The Android regrets the administrative confusion, but not enough to issue a second notice about it.
Station controls contains the skins, clocks, Quiet bridge, and a remembered Skip future idents preference. Quiet bridge pauses the ambient motion and sounds. The ident remains available for replay when quiet mode and reduced motion are off.
The board refreshes its readings once a minute. If the monitor goes quiet for fifteen minutes, the board says so and the readings go pale until it is back. An unexpected outage is Signal lost; a deliberate break is still Off air. The clock is twenty minutes ahead. It cannot predict whether the mail works.