Boards News - February 2019

Boards.ie: Mark

Hi everyone,

Boards is officially 21 and can now drink in the States!

There was plenty of activity over in the Weather forum recently thanks to the snowy and stormy weather of late. The Daily Forecasts Thread from M.T. Cranium recently passed an incredible 5 million views! It's a fantastic thread that's been updated daily for almost nine years. And as there's little to no added chatter in it, it is still quite a bit away from the 10,000 post limit, so there will be plenty more updates and views to come.

The Weather forum was home to some fantastic content when the snow and ice warning was in effect at the end of January and start of February. Not only were posters pouring over charts and models, but Gaoth Laidir put together a thread detailing parameters required for guaranteed snow in Ireland, and of course there were some amazing photos shared (the first of which can be seen here: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=109301924#post109301924).

Naturally, the Weather forum and dedicated Weather Pictures forum weren't the only forum taking advantage of a snowy backdrop for some photos. There were some incredible pictures shared on the Mountain Biking (https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=109287473#post109287473) and the Photography (https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=109245352#post109245352) forums, for example.



Before the skies were full snow-filled clouds, we witnessed a total lunar eclipse. Well, some of us did. If you were willing to get up in the middle of the morning and had a clear sky above you. PauloMN was one such person and captured this great photo of the blood moon: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=109199356#post109199356

While we may be in February and counting down the days to Easter, the Christmas forum refuses to go quietly into the night. It had its most active year last year, bolstered by the efforts of the Mods to come up with interesting topics of conversation and things like Rudolph Day. And now, they're looking at other content, including a podcast, and a Q&A with community members. Cheerlouth is the first person throwing themselves into the limelight for this Q&A.

The #10yearchallenge meme took off (and disappeared almost as quickly) in January. The Athletics & Running formula decided to get involved. Posters shared their times for a variety of distances from 10 years ago as well as their current times. It's interesting to see how their times progressed over time.

Over in the Travel forum, there was a 10 year challenge of a very different kind. After enquiring what kind of budget you'd need to backpack for 12 months around South America in 2008, paulieeye returned in 2019 to give a ballpark figure for their own question!



If you like a spot of golf, the first Boards Golf Society outing of the year will be held on February 23rd. They'll be off to Portmarnock Hotel & Golf Links, a site that has hosted professional and amateur events, and should provide enough of a challenge for golfers of all levels. There's still time to get involved with the society if you haven't signed up yet.

After the highs of the Super Bowl, the American Football forum has to keep itself occupied until the new season gets underway. While the draft doesn't take place until April, there are some eager posters keeping an eye on players and potential movements here: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057946848.

On the more passive side of sport, fantasy football is a topic that takes over offices and friend groups for a large part of the year. And a couple of Boardsies are absolutely flying it this year. If you need some advice, guidance, or just want to follow the journeys of a couple of players as they move up through the overall ranks, the Fantasy Sports Arena forum is worth a visit.

Another forum worth following and getting involved with at the moment is the Films forum. We're at the business end of awards season and there are some big releases out and coming. The Oscars are the big ones, but other award ceremonies may give an indication as to how things may play out on the night. Very useful if you have any sort of office pool for picking winners.

In my own personal opinion, there have been some fascinating AMAs in recent weeks. The first, with an Urban Explorer, gave us an insight into a completely different world, while the AMA with a Nurse was not only topical, but very informative.



There have been some other development tweaks recently. One thing that we get frequent e-mails about is someone having issues logging into their account. Typically, this is because they are trying to login with their e-mail address rather than their username. As a result, we have made this an option when logging in.

One other fix was implemented because of a recent Help Desk issue where someone asked how to add an image on mobile. I had it in my head that there should be an Attach Files option beneath the text entry box, but it seems it wasn't appearing for some users. We have since looked into this issue and rectified things so it should appear all the time now. If you go to post something on mobile and the Attach Files option isn't visible, please log out, close the tab (and any Boards tabs that you have open), and then open a new tab, login and try again.

That's all for me this month. Hope you enjoy Valentine's Day, whether you're treating someone else or yourself! Thanks for reading!