I've been IRCing at work quite a bit lately, which has been pretty great. Every now and then I find it exciting to return back to old tech and start using it again--it's usually simple and complicated all at the same time, but for some reason I find that stimulating.
In any case... I used Colloquy for a while, which is a great modern IRC client, but after dealing with some annoying bugs, downloading the source, rebuilding, and not getting any love, I decided to search for something new. And I found irssi. irssi is totally old school, but totally new school. I love it. There are a ton of getting started guides out there, but it was nice to find a Mac-specific one: A Guide to Efficiently Using Irssi and Screen | quadpoint.org; definitely worth checking out.
My irssi'ing got even better when combining with Blacktree's (makers of Quicksilver) visor. Visor is just a simple HUD-type SIMBL plugin for Terminal.app that allows for key-combo hiding/unhiding. This is great for moving my IRC client (Terminal.app + irssi) on/off screen quickly, keeping my desktop clean so I can focus on my work.
Just thought I'd share with y'all...
