The following is an e-mail that I posted to the SLUG mailing list:

Subject: [SLUG] Maintaining a constant IRC presence
Date: Sunday 03 September 2006 13:07
From: Sridhar Dhanapalan
To: SLUG list

I am in a situation that I’m sure a lot of SLUG members are in. I am a
prolific user of IRC, using it from one of three machines depending on where
I am. I have three main problems:

  (1) maintaining a single and constant online presence
  (2) maintaining easily accessible chat logs, even when not at the machine
  (3) being notified of messages that suit specific criteria

I currently use Xchat, which means that I am logged in at least two places at
once. Being a fat client, it can beep when I have a message. If I leave it
connected, it keeps logs (I only need the last 1000 lines or so). I can’t do
this with my laptop, though (I need to disconnect when travelling). Also, it
forces me to have a separate login for each machine (and hence each Xchat
session) connected.

Issues (1) and (3) can be addressed by something like irssi-proxy[1], since it
would allow me to use local clients with a single login. I could ssh into a
single system running irssi, which would alleviate both (1) and (2).

I understand that there are plug-ins for irssi that perform a notification
service or run commands on certain cues. If irssi was running locally, I
could do all kinds of things with such a feature. If running remotely,
however, I believe that I am limited to notifications inside the irssi window
itself. This would force me to manually check the window on a frequent basis,
which will either become annoying or be forgotten. I would like to have
audio/visual cues to let me know that my attention is required.

[1] http://www.garion.org/irssi/irssi-proxy.php