I’ve been using irssi a lot lately to mitigate the sheer volume of networks and channels I dick around in on IRC at any given moment, and using TheLounge is great and all, but I’m feeding node.js about 3GB just to keep it running. I’ve noticed that irssi barely breaches 130MB of RAM when left to idle. When you combine irssi with the really neat tricks like 100 windows in irssi, you can have an extremely RAM-efficient setup that’s capable of quick navigation and split-window juggling.

Life in a terminal can be hard. There are times when a GUI really is useful. “My kingdom for an Alt+Tab!” IRC can be one of those things. The best coping mechanism I’ve found is to google the hell out of any given problem I have until it’s thoroughly solved. Example: Managing a ton of windows in IRC- specifically irssi. There are terminal clients that do this right off the bat, but irssi is old and trusted. Without further ado, “100 Windows in irssi”, blatantly ripped off from this guy.

This is the defacto mass highlight I use to annoy the fuck out of people when on IRC with irssi. It’s good stuff. Modify it to say something incredibly offensive and use it yourself.

use strict;
use Irssi;

sub cmd_hilight {
        my ($data, $server, $win) = @_;
        my $channel = Irssi::active_win()->get_active_name();
        my $foo = "\cBHey,\cB ";
        foreach ($win->nicks())
        {      
                next if ($_->{'nick'} eq $server->{nick});
                $foo .= "\cB\c_$_->{'nick'}\cB\c_ ";
        }
        $server->command("MSG $channel $foo");
}

Irssi::command_bind('mh', 'cmd_hilight');