About jard.co.uk archives 2003

This page is the archived change log for the year 2003, 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 Note that since these are historical records some links may not work and some information may be out of date.

• 11/10/03
  Am waiting for new cpu and mobo to arrive so I can get straight back into SWG, in the meantime corrected an error in the main Laser 2 template, and added a link to the glossary to the Laser 2 forum template.
  Whole new page debuts here! Email Rules, now whilst I realize that this isn't going to stem the flood of viruses, trojans, spammers and freaks constantly emailing me it is part of my new three- multi-pronged plan to cut down on the email overload.
• 4/10/03
  Following a bit of a discussion over Thursday lunchtime at work, and as a tribute to Ryan (aka Sicknote), I wrote the Excuse Generator, a simple little app that generates a random excuse for not coming into work. After a bit more development on it Thursday afternoon and Friday I realised it had one major flaw: it could only be accessed from a computer connected to the company network. So for those mornings when you wake up and really can't be arsed to get out of bed, the mobile phone accessible WAP version of the excuse generator is now online (written in Perl, outputs WML), find it on jard's WAP site at http://jard.co.uk/wap ( although the WAP site launched on 3/5/02 this is the first time its had any actual content on it!).
• 18/9/03
  Realised the KBase log in procedure had some fairly major flaws in its authentication (mainly resulting in not logging people in when it should, rather than letting people in when it shouldn't) so spent a good bit of time drawing flowcharts for the authentication subroutine and completely re-wrote it. The old version is still up on this site (jardsubs v0.16), so if you can hack that then you're going to have to relearn it when I upload the new version (part of jardsubs v0.2 and later).
• 17/9/03
  Got the Laser 2 forum working again, left it working for a while, then changed template file to split forum styles off into a separate external style sheet (to decrease page weight). Amazingly it still works!
  Started updating Laser 2 main style sheets to make the main pages a bit lighter, split the style info off from the actual content, and make the alternate style sheets work better.
  New version of KBase uploaded for testing, version 0.85 and version 0.16 of jardsubs. Actually got it working on the Unix/Zeus server, I'd spent too much time using it on Windows servers running Apache and Xitami. W00t!
• 9/9/03
  Got the Laser 2 forum working again, then broke it :-)
  In other news, streamlined the jard.co.uk front page as per guidelines from Web Page Analyzer (mainly optimizing scripts etc to fit inside one IP packet, which had never even occurred to me before).
• 8/9/03
  Having a few problems upgrading the forum scripts. Please bear with me.
• 19/6/03
  The front pages of jard.co.uk and jardMail now validate properly, wahoo! As a side-benefit I've also stripped a lot of the external Javascript scripts off them, too, so they should load a lot quicker now too. In other news I'm off to race in the Round the Island Race on "Jacob's Ladder" tomorrow, wish us luck.
• 4/6/03
  Just had a quick look through my web stats, and found some surprising facts:
  1. Yesterday I had almost as many referrals from Google Brazil as Google.com (only 5 less)
  2. The top 4 browsers used to access this site are (in order) IE6 (all SPs), IE5.x, Mozilla 1.4 (beta and RC versions included), and Mozilla Firebird 0.6. What's more I'm getting roughly twice as many requests for IE6 as I am for Moz 1.4 which shows that Mozilla is really forging ahead in popularity and usage.
  3. There are some web spiders out there that really don't have the faintest clue how to parse perfectly valid URLs. How can people release a spider (as version 3.4!) that can't figure out how to handle a link like: "/laser2/techspecs.shtml"?
• 3/6/03
  Corrected the spelling on the 404 page from "advamced" to "advanced" (yes changed one letter in one word on one page, this update is 180 times longer than the actual change!)
• 20/5/03
  Why the m/^\w{4}$/g am I punishing myself so badly trying to consume RSS with regular expressions? Time for a change of tack methinks, I'm off to find a decent XML/RSS parser.
  In other news quite a few people have emailed me recently mentioning that they've been having problems logging into my forums in the last couple of months. Based on the symptoms I've heard, my suspicions lie with either bad browser caching, or a cookie related problem (perhaps related to my lack of a machine-readable P3P policy?). I'm not sure what could have changed recently to cause this (the forum code itself hasn't been upgraded in over a year, other than applying two small, security-related patches) the only real possibility is new browser versions coming out, but I've been using Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird myself for everything over the last few years and never had any problems with my forum, Internet Explorer 6 has been out for ages with no major updates recently (although its use has been growing steadily compared to IE5), and although Opera 7 has recently been released, I'd like to believe that it's users are slightly more technically savvy than the emails I've been receiving would suggest. No help there, so two options: mucho testing, or upgrade the forum to the latest version (and there have been two major point releases of the core software). Number one means time doing lots of testing with different OSs and browsers, especially as none of the browsers I've got installed on any of my machines are still in the default, or newbie friendly configurations. Number two means time spent upgrading and testing the new version of the board, reapplying my mods and little edits, and rewriting the 'mini-board' script from scratch. I've got to do something, but what?
  The everchanging world of the web, isn't it great?
• 19/5/03
  Mucho updates to my sections of the MYC site in the last two or three weeks, Topper Open Meeting results, new photos, Cadet Week details and RSS 2.0 feeds for both the Cadet Class and Dinghy Handicap Fleet pages. Phase one of the Dinghy Handicap Fleet pages overhaul is complete, all non-legacy pages are fully XML-valid XHTML and CSS2 with the menu handled via SSI includes.
• 30/4/03
  Been having way too much fun playing with my new toys, sailing (oh, and doing 14 hours overtime at work in just 2 days!) so updates have been a bit sparse. But I have managed to update the Laser 2 calendar, add a bit to the MYC sites, and clean up a couple of files in the members only section of the site.
• 23/4/03
  Mucho updates to my sections of the MYC site, especially the Dinghy Fleet section which has been expanded, and has a flash new style sheet (more CSS goodness coming soon) the styles are designed with standards compliant browsers in mind, so work great with Mozilla and other Gecko based browsers, Opera 6 & 7 and (to a lesser extent) Internet Explorer 6 (blood, sweat and tears to work round two major bugs its still got in its box model) but doesn't look so hot in lesser browsers (eg IE5 and other older, crappier browsers).
• 16/4/03
  A few minor updates to Laser 2 Land, including expanding the glossary.
• 15/4/03
  Updated my template for the site search results page, it's now XHTML using stylesheets, and no FONT tags! It's using the same basic page template and the exact same CSS style sheet as the rest of the front section of the site was converted to way back last year. (but don't cheer too loudly as, due to tags inserted by Atomz's engine it has 38 (count 'em) validation errors in advanced search mode, and slightly less in standard search mode.
• 8/4/03
  Updated the Laser 2 Weather page to use the new, improved version 3 of my weather (METAR) script, catchily (and confusingly) known as JimMETAR2. It should now show you weather phenomena (eg rain, snow, tornados in the area) as well as the raw temp and wind stuff. I've been doing quite a bit of testing on this myself to see what the weather's like outside the office, and a few other interesting places around the world and it's definitely an improvement over the old version.
• 5/4/03
  Sorry been distracted for a few days by other things such as: some major work on the jardBRAIN/jardBLOG back-end; a busy time at work; oh, and did I mention that I've just spent a hell of a lot of money the 2^nd coolest watch that money can buy? (the coolest one in the world is £300 more expensive which is primarily what put me off!)
  Anyway just finished off one of the FAQs on the jardScripts site (I went back to look something up on it and realised that I'd never actually written the last 1½ paragraphs of it, even though its been live on the web for about a year).
• 31/3/03
  A little fine-tuning on the styles for the glossary, now using some pretty cool CSS level 2 effects, such as auto-generated content (you'll need to be using a modern web browser to see this) users of Mozilla, Netscape 7+ and other Gecko based browsers, as well as Opera users should see a little auto-generated "(qv)" indicating all of the glossary's internal "see-also" links. Go on have a look at the source, those little "(qv)"s aren't repeated all over the page, they're automatically added by your browser. Internet Explorer users (and users of other old-fashioned web browsers) will have to upgrade to a modern, standards compliant web browser to see the effect.
  I just love getting to use these little extras that CSS 2 gives us: smaller page sizes, easier coding, and easier to read pages, you've gotta love it.
• 30/3/03
  Big news for the day is that I've released the first new version of Easytracker onto the web for just over a year. Come get it while it's fresh, Easytracker 1.4!
• Started work on a glossary page for the Laser II Land site, inspired after finding some invaluable info for work on Google's glossary, and a desire to give something back. It's a work-in-progress that you're being given a privileged first look at, let me know if you notice any errors in it, or if you have any definitions you'd like to add.
• 25/3/03
  Following discussions with Caroline Cash over the weekend I've now got a lot of updates made to the MYC Cadet Class web site, and hopefully she'll be feeding me a lot more information in the weeks to come. Before John Waddy mentions, there will be even more updates to the MYC Dinghy Handicap Class web site, but I'm trying to work up a decent style sheet to replace the rather plain one that I've got on top of the XHTML there before I put too much more on.
  In other news, removed reference to EddyC's old MSN community from my links page on the James site (please FFS don't even think about running a validator over that section of the site, parts of it date back to my old Uni home page back in late 1995 before I'd even heard of the W3C!)
  Oh, and finally split this page up again to make it a bit shorter. You'll find the 2002 parts of the changelog from the link at the bottom of the page (Mozilla and Netscape 7 users can of course use the links on the site nav bar at the top of the page to easily navigate through my history, enable it from View menu -> Show/Hide -> Site Nav Bar -> Show Only as Needed).
• 20/3/03
  Made a few updates on the two sections of the MYC web site that I look after. I was finally shamed into updating them after noticing just how out-of-date the whole thing was looking.
  Also helped Mr Walder-Davis out of a problem with the new MYC web site by pointing out that his problem with Netscape browsers showing gobbledy-gook on the screen when downloading MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint docs from the MYC site wasn't Netscape's fault but the web servers. Showed him how to update the server's MIME types list so that all browsers that respect the MIME types sent by the server (ie almost all web browsers including all Gecko based browsers [Mozilla, Netscape 6+, Chimera, Camino, Phoenix…], KHTML based browsers [such as Konqueror and Apple's new Safari browser], Opera, older browsers such as pre v6 Netscape, Mosaic and so on but not IE, which just ignores what the server tells it and guesses the document type) will now offer to display or download the documents.
  Still doesn't fix the root cause of the problem, which is that he's using office productivity package file formats which are amazingly badly designed for displaying on web sites (due to massive amounts of redundant, embedded info, being excellent virus vectors, and massive lack of platform independence) instead of using file formats that are designed to be more efficient and/or portable to many operating systems, platforms, devices and even web browsers (eg PDF files or even plain, old HTML or text files). That's just not a battle I feel up to fighting at the moment, I'm going to have to wait for one of my standards-interoperability-and-open-access zealot phases to come on again before I attempt to explain that.
• 15/3/03 (eve of the day of the dawn of the New Age)
  (Or how to write a long title that means nothing)
  I've a feeling that lot of the last few postings should have been on my blog, but they're not so there!
  Have had an incredibly productive feeling hour and filled it with many updates to lots of parts of various sites, but its worn off now so can't be bothered to list them here.
• 15/3/03 (dawn of the New Age)
  I think we've finally got all the problems with Telewest sorted out (cross-fingers).
  The phone has stayed on for two-and-a-half days solid, with the right number! The broadband 'net access has been up for about a week now, and we've been able to pick up all the right channels from cable TV since Friday morning.
  Result!
  All despite the utter incompetence of Telewest's support line. Don't get me wrong I've got nothing against the two engineers who turned up at the house and looked bemused and confused when we told them what the problem was, "But they can fix that at the office within minutes," said one. Yes we know, we just wish the people on the sodding helpline knew that. And mucho whuffie goes out to the guy in Telewest's exchange who we finally managed to get through to after an hour and a half on the phone to their helpdesk, he managed to resurrect our old phone number, retrieving it from BT and setting it back to on our line within ten minutes of talking to us.
• 28/2/03
  The list of problems with Telewest that we've experienced over the last week (most of which are still unresolved). After just trying to change the billing info from Mr. N. Blatchford to Mr. R. Blatchford the following things have happened:
  • Billed twice for the same 30 day period (once for the old bill-payer, once for the new bill-payer) which we haven't even complained about yet, as we're keen to get everything working and work up the full list of complaints before we fire off a formal letter of complaint.
  • Outgoing phone calls on the land-line barred for a number of days
  • Then outgoing phone calls allowed, but suddenly we've got a new, completely different phone number from the one this house has used for about the last 25 years. After spending a long time on the phone to the Telewest helpdesk discover that they someone within Telewest has cancelled our phone line and released our number back to BT!
  • Periods where the cable TV box refused to show any channels, interspersed with periods where we could only watch the free-to-air channels (various BBC channels, ITV1 & 2, Channel 4, Channel 5 and a few news channels) not any of the premium channels that we've paid for (twice!)
  • Broadband internet access cut off for a period of five days which (as two members of the household work from home a number of days every week, and rely on the connection to keep their businesses running) is a bit of a handicap.
• 26/2/03 (the dark ages)
  Two days without any form of 'net access or landline 'phone at home and I think I may be starting to lose it! Come on Telewest, reconnect us already… please! Forget the phone (we've all got mobiles), but please, please, please reconnect us to your Blueyonder Broadband service before we start going all "Lord of the Flies" in our isolation!
  On the bright side I have got a shed load done without any distractions from the 'net. Just read up on two months (!) worth of mailing list mails that Mozilla Mail had kindly sorted into folders for me, and then I'd never found the time to read them until now.
  So to celebrate finally reading my mail there's a shed load of updates to the Laser 2 Land calendar.
• 18/2/03
  On eating your own dogfood, or how I learned to stop procrastinating and love the labels. After my short rant on my blog last week about webmasters who don't use LABEL tags, noticed that a number of my forms don't! Hopefully I've updated them before anyone noticed ;-)
• 04/02/03
  Got around to removing AYB references from the front page (only about two years after the craze died out)!
• 01/02/2003
  Finally got round to making a few updates to jardMail: removed dead links to PayStamp as they've been forced out of business, tidied up the front page slightly, added a few new jokes (thanks to EddyC and a couple of others for sending them in).
• 6/1/2003
  I so sad, Twelth Night is here, Christmas is over :-( jardMail has gone back to its normal, non-Christmassy background. No more snow flakes.
• 5/1/2003
  Have updated the Laser II and Scripts forums to patch a security hole. Unfortunately I cocked up applying the patch the first time and the boards were just showing an error message for a few hours while I tried to sort it out.
  Moral of the story?
  1. Back up any files you're amending (luckily I had an old copy of the forum software on my laptop),
  2. Test modifications on a separate test forum, before you apply them to the live forum,
  3. And make sure that your FTP software is actually doing what the sodding thing tells you it's doing (it was missing off the last few bytes when uploading files, and then trying to resume uploads and only overwriting parts of the file with an updated version).
  Still it's all working OK now (even if my hairline has receded a little more over the last few hours)!
• 2002's archived changes and comments
• 2001's archived changes and comments
• Pre 2001 archived changes and comments

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