Where did all the oldtimers go.

JonSidneyB

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Jun 22, 2001
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Greenfield In
When I look out on CPF,

I see a sea of people who have been out here less than a year. It is good to have those people but I only seem to see a few posters that go back further than that. We seem to be missing many active people from the first couple of years of CPF. Where did everyone go? I miss many of the oldtimers.
 

tvodrd

*Flashaholic* ,
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Dec 13, 2002
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Hi Jon,

They croaked, or came to their senses. :green: :D (People move-on for what ever reason.) I wish (I think) I had found the place earlier. (But, then, I might have already moved-on. :D )

Larry
 

CroMAGnet

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We need new blood to keep us fresh. there are a few newcomers who are looking like they want to establish themselves as modders and they need some time and a chance to build some inspirational lights.

People like Ensig? (aka Modamag injected much to the forum and andrewwynn is adding a lot and will hopefully continue to develop his skills, creativity and processes.

Hopefully the wandering elders will come to check in and inject their wealth of experience and knowledge from time to time, if it is their creativity that is exhausted. Hopefully not to fuel some of the drama threads that come and go, now and then, however marginally entertaining they may be. :)

Maybe we should have a hall of fame to commemorate them!
other-speech.gif


.
 
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Roy

Farewell our Curmudgeon Administrator
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There's been a lot of changes since the Spring of '02. It's been a long learning curve. I remember a lot of talk back and forth trying to define what runtime was! Modifing AA MiniMags with Luxeon 1w sanwiches was the state of the art in mods.
 

Darell

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LOCO is more like it.
CromagNet said:
Hopefully the wandering elders will come to check in and inject their wealth of experience and knowledge from time to time.
Ah... see - right there is the problem. Expectations are too high. ;) :wave:

I won't speak for all of the first 1000 or so members, but I can tell you that some of the "new" has worn off of CPF for me. It comes in cycles - I get way into it for a while, and then I have to back off for a while for my own sanity. Back in the earlier days, we all knew all of the active posters and would carry on conversations that would normally be reserved for email. And in those days we could read ALL new posts for the day in about 10 minutes. Miss a weekend, and in 20 minutes, you'd up-to-date. Miss a weekend now, and it takes the whole next week to catch up! So much goes on now that I haven't even the slightest clue about. I'll be talking to a CPF friend who will bring up a thread that has been going on for weeks - that I've never even seen! I do miss the days when I could read EVERY single post from every day. It is great to have new blood, certainly. And we're still one of the best communities on the internet. With our growth has come the inevitable growing pains of course, but we keep plugging away at maintaining what we're all here for.

Funny to be writing like I'm an old-timer. I'm really not. I have a vivid memory of when I was the newbie asking all the questions I still see being asked today. I remember frantically scouring the forums (we had like three back then!) to find out what this mysterious E2 was that everybody was talking about. I remember asking Craig how many batteries I needed to fire up one 5mm LED. I knew NOTHING when I joined. Now I have a few people convinced that I am actually a *source* of information. :D

OK, carry on.
 

geepondy

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Apr 15, 2001
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Massachusetts
Didn't we have a thread once identifying the first ten members? I think one was reserved for administrative purposes and two was David W., I think Craig might have been number three, not sure and I also think Brock might have been in the top ten. It would be nice to dig up that list again.
 

Brock

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Aug 6, 2000
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Green Bay, WI USA
Ahhh the good old day, ya before Darell ;) BD as I like to call it..

Hey what happened to our numbers, what was I #7 or something? I think Craig was under #10 also? Ya I am an Admin and can't find my own number, sheesh, I hang out with Darell to much ;)
 

Carpe Diem

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Nov 9, 2001
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Wisconsin
SO....

Did you ever read the early posts where we made arrangements for Darell to get a medical exam from a veterinarian named "Cow Catcher"? :rolleyes:

Ah...the good old days.

:) :D
 

Chris M.

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Jan 17, 2001
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South Wales, UK
I`m still here, skim through daily but have largely lost interest. Darell picked up on a lot of it, it`s so big and so busy that for the most part I havn`t got a clue what anyone is going on about, and I never did follow the home-made/modified side of things which has become such an integral part of everything here now.

That and the fact that five years ago, all these LED and Xenon incandescent lights were new and exciting, the likes of which I had never seen before. Turquoise LED? Wow! Luxeon LED? Incredible!! SureFire M6? Woohooo!!! Now, been there/done that as the saying goes. OK so the original plastic krypton bulb torches I had in the years before finding this place are consigned to history, and I still carry a SF M4/Pellincan M6 LED everywhere, it has lost much of its excitement and appeal to me, and while some things grab my attention now, I could care less about most of it.

Maybe I blame the MaxaBeam. Got one of those this year after over fifteen years of lusting after "the ultimate torch" that I first saw on the X Files and then in countless movies. Now I have one of those, I don`t really feel the need for anything else. That and the fact that I finally came to terms with what this was all costing, and realised house prices in this country aren`t going down, so I better stop blowing all my spare cash on torches and start saving, else I`ll never have a place of my own......

:eek:oo:
 

Mark2

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Apr 10, 2003
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Europe
I think there are several factors, one is that the same questions come up again and again. I think this is normal, even so people *could* in many cases find the answers by searching through what already is on CPF instead of just posting the same question once more. Another factor is the number of members. When there are so many members, it is not possible to know each other very well, it's less personal, and of course there are many members who are not really flashlight enthusiasts but simply business people. On Photonforums, we have only 47 members at the time being, but the atmosphere is very friendly and personal, it's much easier to become friends. I was not here when CPF had just 47 members, but I imagine it must have been a bit like that. I think when a board grows to the size of CPF and money becomes a serious issue, it's inevitable that things change, but the huge size is also what makes it such a great source of information.
 

Luff

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Jan 20, 2001
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313
Location
Oklahoma City
Brock said:
Ahhh the good old day, ya before Darell ;) BD as I like to call it..

Hey what happened to our numbers, what was I #7 or something? I think Craig was under #10 also? Ya I am an Admin and can't find my own number, sheesh, I hang out with Darell to much ;)

Brock - put your cursor over your username and right click ... don't move your cursor. Your member number appears in the browser's status bar ... you're still #7.

Brock's website brought me to CPF and I still visit a couple times a day. Back then, even before he joined CPF, OddOne's driver circuit for 5mm leds was state-of-the art, aisde from DD. CPF's still the only place worth visiting on a regular basis to keep up with the bleeding edge of flashlight technology.

Most remarkable to me is that the board's 'personality' remains 'wholesome' ... despite flashpoints like David W.'s long-forgotten, eyebrow-raising blow-up that led to Sasha's involvement ... or the more recent LionCub brouhaha. The fundamental personality instilled by the 'founding fathers' remains intact. It's why some few of us keep coming back ... aside from our incurable infatuation with photons ... and why so many people continue to join the ranks.

One feels welcome here.
 

fasteddie

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Joined
Jun 13, 2002
Messages
637
Location
Austin, TX
I joined up when ARC began and left when they went under. There wasn't much of interest for me, so I kept using my surefires and LSs. Went back to my other interests, mostly custom knives. Recently I saw that ARC was back in business and then, on USN, I saw the Jets22 CR2 light with tritium in the tail and got sucked right back in. In the short time back, I've acquired 2 Jets22s, 2 KITs, 1 KI LE, 2 U2s, HDS U60, HDS U85, and 2 PDs. I'd say I'm back. I'm blown away by how the "average" 1 cell light is so much better than what we raved about a few years ago. I go back so far, I think I sold oldgrandpajack his first flashlight.
 
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cy

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Dec 20, 2003
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Location
USA
not really an old timer, but starting to feel burn-out...
 

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