Reading University Caving Club

As you may know, we have an email list, where all members can receive updates regarding the latest trips and other club information. If you have recently joined you will already be receiving e-mails. For years it has been a mystery on how to get onto or off this list. Today we reveal how.

To subscribe to RUCavers, click on this link and enter your email address at the top of the page and hit ‘Subscribe’. You will receive an email to the supplied email address regarding your subscription to the list.

To unsubscribe from RUCavers, get a password reminder, or change your subscription options, click the link, scroll to the bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit ‘Unsubscribe or edit options’ you can then choose what you wish to do. Please note the ‘Cookies’ warning. By clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ button on the next page, a confirmation message will be sent to your subscribed email address. This message will have a link that you should click on to complete the removal process. If in doubt or if unsuccessful please let us know.

It’s long been a mystery, but if you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to the RU Cavers E-mail list instructions are now available at the bottom of the information page. Your request will be subject to a moderator (a Mr Chris Zebedee of Newbury) who is there to prevent spam from reaching us.

Hello, and welcome to rucavers, the online home of the Reading University Caving Club. This page is here to post the latest news and views from the club, and keep you up to date on what’s happening. If you are new, thinking of joining or simply wish to know more about the club and its activities please use the links to the left. These will give you some background to the club, introduce you to the committee, provide information on trips and set out the type of gear used in caving and potholing. Should you have any immediate questions or wish to know how to join us, please let me know. This page is set out in this format because it can be used as an easily updated noticeboard, and feel free to post comments. If you wish to be able to post directly to the site from the internet please let the webmaster know and we’ll provide permissions and instructions. We look forward to seeing you (in the dark).

J, President

look forward to seeing some of you at next weekend’s Hidden Earth conference. As well as being the centre of the caving universe that weekend, the conference also marks the official launch of Speleolabs. We hope to see some of you at our stand, which in terms of quality and impact should knock Inglesport’s into a cocked helmet. The weekend should also see the final delivery on the online speleoshop (this link will be working after next weekend).

Following a top level executive board meeting Speleolabs have graciously agreed to sponsor the rucavers website. Executive Director Mr Andrew Rumming welcomed the decision, stating that ‘we are always proud to support the grassroots or weeds of the caving establishment. Speleolabs look forward to a long and happy partnership with an organisation close to our hearts, and on particularly drunken occasions, knees. We hope you use this site to help create an rucavers online community, so feel free to post and comment as often as possible. Oh, and buy fine speleo-goods from the usual outlets. Yeah…’

OK, fellow caving people – a bit more about how this site works.

This format has a big advantage. Firstly it acts like an ordinary website, e.g to the left you can permanently add links to pages of interest, such as what to wear, trip dates and where we visit and so on. You will need to contact me if these need changing.

Secondly, the clever bit that anyone can post to this site. You can leave comments, but also post directly if they are set up to do so. This involves me sending an an invite to someone wishing become an author (e.g. the committee. Within the e-mail there’s a link to the right page at Typepad, who host the site. They then register and can post directly to this page to their heart’s content. The upshot is that we don’t have to rely on one person updating a website, and the thing should run itself in effect. Most cunning.

You can therefore use it to post any random thoughts really quickly e.g ‘muddy tight thrusking with dribbling cornish duck pasties and ford transit fleecy flimmering madness due to carbide wellies and hilton park services speleopants’. See? Next week I shall be quoting from my new selection of underground rock poetry, ‘Slave to the Cave’.

The idea behind this form of website is an early spin off from other (still top secret) work coming out of the state of the art Speleolabs Research and Development (Online) Facility. On this delicate subject, some of you may have seen an e-mail from J which contained a link to something called the ‘Speleoblog’. Please be assured that anything you may or may not have seen having clicked on this link doesn’t technically exist yet in real marketing terms as it hasn’t been formally launched, so please ignore the wealth of fun things that may or may not be on there. But you may wish to watch that space, should you be interested in the future of apres-caving speleofashion.

Everything from this point downwards is a bit daft and has been placed there for testing purposes. I was going to remove it but will leave it up because it’s a) a good example of how the site works and b) a bit silly. Please feel free to add to the comments.