History of the Couch and more

[Skylace]

We've had some questions from more then one member lately about the background of the couch. How it came to be and why a lot of us "old timers" are here. And to give you a bit of information on the admins you deal with.

We thought it would be a good idea to answer some of the questions here and to give a background for both new and old members.

Today won't be too in-depth but myself and other admin will be sure to update as time goes by.

If you have any other questions please PM one of us and we will be happy to address those questions. Depending on the question it may be just a private PM or even posted here.

Now, to a bit about me....

I am currently a resident in New Mexico, USA. However, I have lived in many places across the States and all over the world. Being an army brat afforded me many exciting adventures that I may not have otherwise enjoyed.

Back when the internet was new or should I say people were starting to notice it more (in about 1997) and use it at college, I came across a website that was dedicated to my favorite comic book character Skywise. It was run by a fascinating, young, Englishman. I contributed to the sight and became fast friends with the site creator. And to make a very long story short, we have now been married for nearly eight years.

During the first part of our relationship I lived for a brief time in London. I had just finished my teaching degree and found work as a supply teacher in South London (a baptism by fire to the teaching world) and eventually a teacher's aide in Chessington. While I was there I started to watch Eastenders as my husband knew I was missing my favorite soap from the States.

When I moved back to the US I had no more EE. Then I found BBCA! They had it! But the bastards took it away. And that's how I found the couch.

It took me a while to figure out forums but once I did, I think I did rather well. I've been posting on the couch since then and enjoying it greatly.

I became admin when we had some "restructuring" take place with the original site. Face and Irish have done a lot more of the technical stuff then I have but I do help here and there by keeping things tidy and coming up with ideas and such.

Outside of the couch I am very active in my local theatre. A true passion of mine. I work for two of the local elementary schools as a school counselor. I enjoy swimming and reading.

My husband and I have no children currently, but we have two lovely dogs, Tricksy and Mocha who we love dearly.

That's about it for now. More on the actual history and what the couch is about soon to follow.

[faceless]

ok, here I go too - here's my first site from about 2000-01 - most of it is still intact thanks to Archive.org

http://web.archive.org/web/20010515121555/homepage.ntlworld.com/faceless/

I'll add more to the story later. It's a tale of pain and trouble and geekery that will touch your soul and probably leave a stain.

[Aja]

[eefanincan]

Well, since Sky has started things along, here's my little bit......


I am living in Ontario, Canada. I've lived here all my life, except for the one year I lived in Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. It was an interesting year that allowed me to start my nursing career by working full time in pediatrics, which I love.

I've worked many different places since then and applied my nursing skills in many different ways. Most of my career has been working in pediatrics, but I've also spent large chunks of time in geriatrics and education as well as the community. I have a hard time saying which is my favourite, but probably pediatrics and teaching have been the top two. Currently I work for the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) which is a community health agency and has been around for 110 years --- I'm a resource/intake RN in the office rather than working out in the community doing the hands on care. Recently I've started doing the odd assignment as a Mystery Shopper.... something totally different than nursing!

In 1996 I met my husband on a blind date that was set up by a mutual friend of ours.....we were married in 1998 and will celebrate our 9th anniversary this August. No children right now, but we do have one small dog, Beaker, who thinks he's our child.... and let's face it, we spoil him like he is

When I'm not working or looking after our house, I like to read and do scrapbooking or get together with my friends. Before I started working so many weekends and evenings, I was active in Big Sisters and had two little sisters during my time with them. When I retire, I'm looking forward to writing a children's book (hopefully sooner than that!) and working with some sort of literacy project.

I first came to the couch about 2-3 years ago. I had heard about these things called "torrent files" and was wondering if I could get Eastenders files somewhere (we're 22 months behind here on BBC Canada!). Well, I found the couch, the files and the forums. I knew absolutely nothing about forums, torrents, avatars, etc. and I blundered about but eventually found my way with the help of the members there. I came for the downloads and found so much more..... love the community spirit and the conversations and getting to know everyone

Edit: Forgot to mention that I was a part of the old site that Faceless mentions below then followed him to this site and have never looked back! The couch is a great place to be!

[faceless]

Ok, here we go with a brief rundown of how this site came about.

I've been capping TV stuff since about 2000 - back then it was just wee clips of comedy shows for the site that I linked in the earlier post but a couple of years later I started using Soulseek P2P sharing software that was (and still is) very similar to how Napster worked. I saw there that there were some people with loads of comedy encoded and I started downloading. Being someone who always wants to chip in my efforts if I can, I started recording some of the old TV shows I had on VHS as wmvs.

I did these all at around 80mb at that time because it meant that more people could get the files than if they were the usual 2-300mb mpgs. I got a fair amount of slagging for that from snobs and arses, but I didn't care - I got stuff spread quicker this way and that was the general idea. I'd been a "cracker" in the 80s on the C64 and Atari ST and had learned back then that it's pretty cool feeling to know that something you've done has helped people who'd not usually be able to get it without paying a premium, so it was a fairly natural progression to doing the TV shows. The "cracking" and "capping" processes felt similar in that the idea was to make something out of something else, while keeping it the same... hope that makes sense.

In around 2003 someone told me about a smalltime BNBT tracker called "uknova" and I signed up to share - not realising that some of the smalltime snobs and arses who had been so critical earlier were part of the deal... anyway, I was (as far as I remember anyway) the first to upload any comedy and asked them to create a comedy section in order to get things working better. I always thought it was a cheesy name for a site as they'd just ripped off the suprnova name, but realised there was a good market with all the soap fans who were downloading to introduce comedy as well, so just got on with it. I did a lot and there's still stuff floating about that I did on there to this day.

I'd become a bit of a forum junkie by this point and started to have some fun on the forum there, which resulted in me being banned from the site for daring to have a thought of my own (and calling some people cunts might not have helped... haha). In the meantime I'd also made some pals through that site who realised I wasn't just being objectionable for the sake of it and after a bit of discussion I started up a free forum called "The Couch" with Aja, Ally and a guy who was from there also providing a BNBT tracker for the shows I could cap (at that point it was Eastenders, Corrie, The Bill and various comedies).

Because I'd learned a good bit about the capping procedure I was able to provide torrents of the shows I did within 3 minutes of broadcast and this was (and still is!) unheard of anywhere else. Ok, so I wasn't doing double-pass encodes, but that wasn't necessary for soaps etc and the site picked up quite quickly with a good lot of members within a month or so.

The next step was to get a complete site instead of the various parts being spread around free and home sites, so the guy who ran the tracker then registered couchtracker.com and set it up for general use. I did all the design and content, leaving him to deal with the server side because I trusted him. Things worked pretty well like that for about a year, then I started to realise that he'd begun to get a bit of a swagger about him in regards to having "made" the site.

By that point I'd learned enough about the workings of the site to know that all the stuff he'd done hadn't actually been that complicated, even though I thought it had been, and asked him for complete access to the control-panel etc. He deflected my questions for a while then I just said it straight that I wanted the info and he simply went and banned me. I phoned him up to ask what was going on and he didn't answer, so I asked my brother (bat) to pm him on the site to ask what was going on - he was then banned also.

I'm sure you're thinking there might have been more to this, but there wasn't really - it was all about this guy thinking he ran the show. At this point he posted that I'd left the site, not telling anyone that he'd banned me (including the other admin at the time). Irishmafia then wrote to him also, and she was banned too. So at that point I emailed everyone who'd been on the original "The Couch" forum and told them to hang on while I made a new site.

Within a week I'd (with bat's help) come up with Couchtripper as a new name (I wanted something that sounded similar phonetically) and within 6 days of that I'd recreated pretty much the entire site that the other guy had made out to be such a wonder of science. At this point I knew that I'd never look back to the days when I relied on other people's efforts (and whims) and it was a brilliant feeling. The site was paid for and that was how it started basically.

There's more that I'll add in future, cos now I've got going it's reminded me of so many other details!