About jard.co.uk

About jard.co.uk archives 2002

This page is the archived change log for the year 2002, please see the current change log for all recent changes. Note that since these are historical records some links may not work and some information may be out of date.

30/12/02
2003 Laser II Calendar now online and (largely) up to date.
23/12/02
Updated the jard home page slightly to improve accessibility, and also shaved a few bytes off it at the same time, thus delaying ever so slightly the inevitable (and long overdue) makeover.
15/12/02
Have decided I need to adopt a style guide to make some of my stuff a bit more consistent and thus professional looking. So here it is: jard style guide.
From the Ministry of Stupid Ways to Waste Valuable Time, I've just spent bloody ages running search-and-replaces across the site's source files to update as much as possible to the new style guide.
12/12/02
For a limited time only, jardMail has a snowy, Christmassy type background (the files twice the size it used to be, but what's a few Kb for some seasonal fun?)
Updated the jardScripts front page again. A bit happier with it now, but that list needs sorting out. Retired the DDN Newsgrab script's demo and placed warnings on its page as changes at DDN mean that it does something completely different now.
10/12/02
The new version of the weather script has now been updated to be XHTML compatible. Which means it'll be easier to convert the Laser 2 pages to XHTML when I update their template.
4/12/02
After following a link from elsewhere whilst reading up on some XML namespace/RSS implementation/custom XML embedding type (geeky) stuff, stumbled over this stern reminder on Scott Andrew's blog: "javascript: is deprecated. Don't use it." The embarrassing thing is that I kind of already knew this, nothing I've written in the last twelve months or so uses these pseudo URLs, but I'd never got round to clearing them out of legacy pages. So a few quick searches, edits, and FTPs later I can now say that I'm clean of them (except for one usage, and that's a special case anyway).
24/11/02
Just started to rewrite major portions of the underlying METAR decoding parts of the weather script to serialize it's data so that will be easier to add support for weather phenomena (so that I can tell if it's raining, snowing, foggy, squally or there's even tornados and waterspouts appearing). This rewrite probably won't appear on the site until I've added all of the other, useful weather types to it (this could be hours, or even months depending how I feel ;->).
Also updated the jardScripts front page when I realised just how bad it read!
22/11/02
A couple of the Laser 2 Land Weather page's subroutines rewritten to give a more readable, output, and correctly interpret some edge conditions (such as calm wind). I'm seriously considering tidying up the source and then offering this version for download from jardScripts at some point in the near future.
7/11/02
Couple of cosmetic improvements made to the Laser 2 Land Weather page, to improve the readability of the weather report.
10/10/02
CSS styles on the Laser 2 Land forum fixed to prevent highlighting multiple links on mouseover (David Baron's page really is an essential resource for properly styling links).
Miscellaneous thoughts on what to do with WeAreMedway site (I really should have thought about this a bit before buying the domain): for starters list all known lyrics to "Yogi Bear" and "Medway Rangers", umm, put other stuff on there...
Started converting forms on this, the main jard, site as below.
7/10/02
All forms on the jardMail joke archive site now updated to aid accessibility and ease of use (using little tricks like LABEL tags).
2/10/02
New domain WeAreMedway.co.uk registered. Nothing on there yet, but it'll be developed very soon now!
19/9/02
Link to Vanguard Sailboats added to Laser 2 Land links page.
27/8/02
As part of the conversion the search page has been slimmed down to just jard site searches, and a couple of other useful search boxes from its previous bloated form.
19/8/02
This page, the search page and this site's 404 page now validate to XHTML! They've had all stylistic markup removed and been moved to a new, smaller CSS style sheet that mimics the old style in preparation for the new rebranding! Roll on the revolution! (pun intended)
16/8/02
We're charging along now that I'm getting back into the swing of updating my own sites again! Updated the Laser 2 Land front page to give slightly higher visibility and better discoverability (love the buzz-words!) to some of the site's features, and corrected a couple of things on the links page. Just noticed how nearly (but not quite) the Laser 2 site validates, and my only lasting validations errors are pandering to broken features of the 4.x browsers, so I might correct that in the next few days if I get time.
Suppose I could convert this, and some of the other base site pages to valid XHTML, or at least strict HTML4, if I get some spare time. Oh and update that crappy looking front page too!
14/8/02
Lots of exciting things happening in the background, I've got a couple of articles and some fun goodies to upload to the Laser II site, but I just need to work out whether I want to put these up for public-access or in a "Members Only" section of the site (and if so how I'm going to implement it) but don't worry it'll all still be free; I am not planning to charge for anything on this site in the foreseeable future.
Also the jardBRAIN application (which will form the basis for most of the jardSuite of applications) is so near completion now that you can almost smell the finishing line! It's basically functionally complete most of the rest is now polish.
In addition there have been a few small updates to a few other places, including an attempt at reorganising the Laser 2 Land front page (and starting the preparations to convert it to XHTML).
In other news the jardMail front page has had a few Kb shaved off it, to load faster and the HTML's been tidied up in preparation for converting it to XHTML, the only negative consequence to this is that the display is now slightly degraded in Netscape 4.x, but as it looks fine in Netscape 6.x & 7, Mozilla, Opera 5 & 6 and Internet Explorer 5.x and 6, and degrades fairly gracefully in 2.x and 3.x browsers I have trouble feeling guilty about the four people in the world who haven't yet upgraded to a more capable browser (and this is coming from someone who's been using Netscape since version 1.x on Sun workstations, and kept using Version 4.x for way longer than anyone else he knows, ie until Mozilla became capable enough to use full time).
4/4/02
Haven't updated this page in ages. Have no idea what I've updated on the public sections of the site (but it's not very much, just minor tweaks).
Just updated the Weather script on the Laser 2 site. Still haven't got round to reading the full NOAA weather spec to work out how to pull out additional weather info from their coded string, but have updated the routines slightly to speed it up, and made a couple of the display routines output prettier (and better) text. Someday I'll read that spec and find out how to tell you if it's raining, snowing, cloudy etc.
14/5/02
It's just occurred to me what a good test this page would make for my jardBlogger app (when I eventually finish writing it) must remind myself to use it for this.
13/5/02
Got a bit distracted lately by converting quite a few of my apps from (strict, transitional and even c**ppy) HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.0 and CSS level2. So the MYC stuff below is really the only pure web updates I've done for a while now.
Just as I finished that got caught by some of the fallout of the Mozilla.org's excellent 1.0 RC2 release: they've fixed it to properly support the :hover dynamic-pseudo-class and fixed the whole anchor system (something that no other browser, including Opera, currently supports properly), consequently making quite a few of my pages look a bit screwy (see Mozilla's Bugzilla bug no. 144139 where after some real nitpicking reading of the W3C specs I get made to look a little silly).
9/5/02
Actually (finally) uploaded some stuff to MYC's Cadet and Dinghy sections. Wahooo!
Gotta say though that the MYC front page does look bloody awful at the moment, no offence to the guy who's looking after that at the moment as he has made a couple of small improvements (like removing the useless Java applets), but the thing is such a mess. Still I know that Steve's planning some big changes there, so I look forward to what comes out of it.
3/5/02
We are currently testing and have just launched a WAP portal! If you've got a WAP capable mobile phone (or other portable device) please go to http://www.jard.co.uk/index.wml to see the progress so far.
Sorry been concentrating on a few of the projects listed on jardScripts, including writing jardBlogger and converting jardBRAIN to XHTML, and a couple of tutorials for there and DDN.
7/4/02
Laser 2 calendar updated with more events.
Laser 2 (and Scripts) forums now have all the previous mods running on them, and a new one to give country flags.
jardMail is now DDN's site of the week!
26/3/02
Updated Laser 2 calendar with various details. New Laser 2 news pages now in testing.
Upgraded both Laser 2 and jardScripts bulletin boards to YaBB 1 Gold SP1.1.
Spelling errors in 404 error message corrected.
15/3/02
Big changes to the jardScripts site, styles updated, pages rewritten and new pages inserted, forum updated, also link added to it from the front page, so I guess it's officially live now.
Links added from Laser 2 links page to Dan's Laser 2 site.
13/3/02
Actually put correct Laser 2 Europeans 2002 dates on the Laser 2 Calendar at last! Also added the recent mail from Marcus Spillane to the Laser 2 email pages.
7/3/02
Laser 2 calendar updated.
1/3/02
Massive updates made to the Scripts site, I might even be ready to take it live soon!
26/2/02
Feels like I've been seriously neglecting this site lately, what with the BlokeAtBack site seeming to consume loads of my online time at the moment, plus a lot of pressure on my time elsewhere this site has fallen through the cracks. Fear not though, I'm going to be concentrating some serious time here over the next few weeks and I'll eventually give the front end the serious overhaul that it really needs. To start with I've started splitting off some of the domains that used to just point to this site (including Blatchford.org) so it ought to get a bit less cluttered here.
For starters I've just updated the Laser 2 Calendar 2002 with loads more events, including the 2002 Europeans, UK Nationals and Irish Nationals details. More coming soon.
Minor change to Scripts site template.
5/2/02
Please someone make me slow down, tell me to do just one thing at a time! I might actually get a chance to finish something off then!
Anyway, site have updates have slowed down a bit mainly due to the following:
1. Have just entered the DDN 10,000 hits competition, so am busy making the site, which will be a completely new direction for me. More details (incl URL) coming very soon.
2. The jard Knowledgebase is nearing function complete stage, might be ready for limited beta testing very soon, just got to iron a couple of minor things.
3. Just started writing jardBlog, more info soon
30/1/02
Added YaBB security patches to the forums.
29/1/02
Finally remembered to change the redirect on the Laser II Calendar page to 2002 (only 29 days late)!
Updated all tracker scripts on this site to v1.3 of the jard EasyTracker. Still working on the KnowledgeBase script, it's got a bit better cosmetically, but only minor operational changes.
25/1/02
Averted a fairly major disaster, both the jardMail and jard servers seem to have lost their style sheet MIME type setting, a quick bit of work with a .htaccess and all is well in the world again (but it did give me a bit of a panic when I couldn't see any styling on any of the pages).
Sorry not many updates lately, been fairly busy at work (Ed you can stop laughing now) and have been working on a few CGI scripts. The News script now works (but needs a bit of tidying up) however I'm holding off on this one until I've worked out the legal ramifications of leaching this content. The KnowledgeBase is nearly finished (oh who am I kidding I've still got to implement searching, deleting and modifying) you can add to it and view current contents, and it looks quite pretty and outputs nice, well formatted, templated, safe content (although doesn't quite validate at the moment, malheureusment).
12/1/02
A few more changes added. Some of the customisations to the Laser Two Land discussion board added back in now. Sailing news page now in testing, may well be deployed on the site soon. Hoo Freezer 2002 added to the calendar.
jard EasyTracker v1.2 now available for download, all copies of EasyTracker across the site updated to v1.2.
3/1/2002
The Laser II Land front page has got it's forum activity/summary back now that I've converted it to work with YaBB 1 Gold SP1. Most parts of the site with dates in have been updated to 2002.
2001's archived changes and comments
Pre 2001 archived changes and comments