;- ). And the whole wide world will ;- ) with you.

I don't much care for the Smileys of the World Wide Web, hardly ever use them. I get the feeling that they're a bit like scare quotes, a device to guard your butt. Mr S was born on 19 September 1982, sired (it seems) by a certain Scott E. Fahlman, on a bulletin board at the Carnegie Mellon University. So he is around 24 or so as of now, His family is known as 'Emoticons'. Their job is to convey the emotions of an e-mail writer or a bulletin board poster. There's an amusing article, Found: The first ever "smiley". by at http://hardware.silicon.com/storage/0,39024649,11035542,00.htm. And if you are in a nostalgic mood, you'll find a list of links to other articles about digital topics and paraphernalia of the yore. (By the way, in case you didn't notice, I didn't use the original Smiley in the headline. It's a winking Smiley.)