One bad thing about me is I have several avenues of communication open to me.  From e-mail, IRC, IM to even Twitter.  My favorite though would have to be IRC, but there is one little snag.  I haven't found a "good" IRC client which as the UX (user experience) I am after.  There are a lot of GUI ones available, but the UI is wonky to work with and in windows that is pretty much it.  In *nix you have the opposite most IRC clients are command line based.  However, I will say the command line based ones give me a better UX than most GUI ones.  So until I find a good GUI one that I like I am stuck with what is available for windows.  Since, the command line based IRC clients are closest I was ecstatic the other day to find out that IRSSI is available now for windows.  So in honor of my great happiness of finding it I want to dedicate a post to setting it up and using it.

Step 1: Get IRSSI

First, we need to download IRSSI. Be sure to get the windows version of the binaries.

Step 2: Install IRSSI

Installation is pretty easy just download it and run the self-extracting executable.  I usually put it in a programs folder in my My Documents.

Step 3: Run IRSSI

Once you have it extracted proceed to the folder you extracted it to and run the irssi.bat file.

Step 4: Configure and Join IRC Server and channel

Pretty much all you have left to do is set your default username by typing

/set nick nickname

Then to join a server and then a channel

/server irc.freenode.net
/join #alt.net

When you have that done it should look like:

Now you should be able to chat with people.  For more configuration stuff visit IRSSI documentation page.  Specifically, the Startup HowTo.

Hope to see you in IRC.