Test2002

2003-05-14T21:24:00.000Z

hi again

I haven't used this weblog for quite some time - and indeed had just about forgotten of its existence. Then I noticed that someone had been this way in order to get to dave2002, so I thought I'd look back to see what I'd been doing.

The blogging months have been quite interesting, and I will probably keep going, though not necessarily keep all the blogs going, so some will eventually wither. What I'd like to do is to gather all the entries together - there's no reason really why there shouldn't be a "blog of blogs" - after all, one view is simply of a a large database of hypertext entries. However, compared with wikis, there are some differences. Note that searching a weblog generally does a search on each hypertext page, and depending on the search engine does not necessarily locate the relevant text in the whole structure. Searching a wiki can also give different results depending on the wiki system used, but generally wiki searches locate hypertext nodes within the overall structure, so they can be more useful.

2003-02-03T22:55:00.000Z

after columbia

nasa has announced the inquiry into the sad loss of the columbia, but at the same time russian astronauts are heading on out to the international space station. Let's wish them luck, and hope that they don't have to wait an undue length of time before they are able to return to ground. It's possible that someone may have to make a decision to launch another shuttle even before a assessment is made, if at some future time that would be the best option for these guys to get back home. I have no idea at the present whether there is any other way - the old idea of sitting in a space capsule and coming back that way may have been superseded by the use of shuttle vehicles. Still, it looks as though they should be able to stay up for at least
140 days without too many problems. A couple of methods for re-entry without using the shuttles have been proposed, but I don't think they'll have enough time to wait for the X38 to be developed, though. Some comfort can be obtained from the knowledge that the ard has been tested, and perhaps that could be used for re-entry purposes, though again, I'm not sure what the status of that is today.

All of this is likely to put the development of the iss back a bit, but that's very much to be expected.

Could anything else have been done? It seems unlikely, though perhaps time will tell whether nasa should have had alternative strategies, or whether it even realised the extent of the risks involved for columbia.

In the meantime, william gibson has been writing some wistful thoughts about space exploration.

2003-02-02T08:36:00.000Z

It's February 2nd today, and I'm still trying to figure out how to do the archiving of the Pitas file over at dave2002.

It's not in principle difficult to do, but it seems to be impossible to edit archived material, so slightly reluctant to do this until some problems have been fixed.
A few fairly obvious problems are that:

Some of the entries became out of order recently - I'm checking up why this happened!
The labels for some of the recent entries are somewhat out of alighment - these need to be checked carefully.
There are still ongoing problems with the template, so as many should be fixed as possible. The main problem
concerns the width of the page, but there may be others.
I may have to do something with the calendar routines to allow for future entries - will check as I update the archive etc.
I think my previous view was that archiving would freeze everything, and there wouldn't actually be a problem.

There are actually problems with the template which are nothing to do with me. When I chose a near "virgin" template in the
dtest3 testblog, there were over 50 reported warnings using Tidy in HTML Kit".

Problems!

I hope to have the problems regarding dave2002 sorted today, or at least in another couple of days.

OK - using w.bloggar to post this - w.bloggar is succeeding with the posting, but not the publishing. Something problematic seems to be happening.
What a pain!

2003-01-30T05:51:00.000Z

A new post, after quite a gap. Not sure if it is really worth doing two weblogs, but might try to get this one tarted up a bit more. Came across a trick idea today at andy's gesture page. The only problem is that I couldn't get it to work too well - I tried it in several browsers, including IE, Netscape 7 and Opera, and "flicking" the mouse turned out to be rather difficult. It probably needs some parameters tweaking.

2003-01-07T23:37:00.000Z

Comments: 2003 = 103?
w.bloggar has been playing up - it allows me to generate text, but does not then post and publish it satisfactorily.

Today I have spent doing several things, but one activity was the correction of some problems with the calendar routines for the pitas site. The "today" highlighting did not work for Netscape, Mozilla and Opera - this turned out to be because the date handling routines in the different browsers do not return the same year for today - IE returns 2003, while the others return 103. It also seems that earlier versions (5.0 and perhaps earlier) also returned 103.

I had to modify the code to make it browser specific, and I think it now works for most browsers.

I also took the opportunity to "improve" the calendar appearance, which now has coloured headings.

One outstanding problem concerns the font size in the calendar. I changed the font size in the rest of the template using a font size = "-1" instruction, but I have not been able to change the size of, or the font size of the calendar. This is a mystery, and at present I have no idea why this should be so. I also took the opportunity to restructure the template, and I noticed that there is quite a big upsurge of interest in the site.

2003-01-06T23:14:00.000Z

2003 = 103?
Amazing to discover that different browsers have different javascript routines, which actually behave differently. In Netscape and Mozilla, the getDate() function returns the current year minus 1900 which is 103, while in Internet Explorer the same function returns 2003, which at least seems more logical. The effect on the calendar routines was quite considerable, and as originally written they worked in IE, but not in the other browsers. Now the code has been modified to detect each browser, though some still don't work properly - maybe there's some other value which is also equal to 103 or 2003?

2003-01-05T22:35:00.000Z

calendars
I've spent almost all the day creating and testing calendar routines for use with the dave2002 site on pitas.com. Since pitas is quite a simple weblog site, I decided to use javascript, and embed the routines in the template.

It didn't take too long (about 2 hours) to get something which worked, but it then took another 2 hours to redesign the code so that it worked more correctly, and perhaps a further 2-3 hours of tweaking to overcome some problems. There are still outstanding problems - mostly relating to the size of the fonts in different browsers, and one more elephant trap - the code I tested using HTML Kit highlighted some text using a bluish background, but of course most of the site at dave2002 uses a very similar colour as a background, so it looks as though the highlighting is not working properly. Anyway, mostly it works, and it's probably better to have something working than nothing at all.

Now let's see if that generates any interest from other punters!

2003-01-04T19:34:00.000Z

Calendars
I spent quite a bit of time today looking at other peoples' calendars - the graphical interfaces which they put up on their blogs to make navigation easier.
I'm still trying to figure a neat way to do these dynamically, though doing things the "hard way" would actually not be too difficult, but would be error prone.

Am also trying to figure out what exactly RSS is? As is more usual, the more interesting stuff is at dave2002.

2003-01-03T11:40:00.000Z

tools and problems
There is now a problem with the template at dave2002. It seems likely to me that this is almost inevitable after a few weeks active text creation.
I was somewhat appalled at the number of errors I'd made in the HTML - though now the number has reduced somewhat.

I fixed some of the problems using HTML Kit, and the included Tidy tool - but many still remain.

It is slightly more complex because some of the HTML gets generated - but I expect I'll get it sorted soon enough.

Serious prospective bloggers might want to look at pmachine, which seems to be the latest
thing.

I also discovered a site by a brazilian girl who seems to be very keen on graphics.
The graphics seem to come from, among others, grace and faith - the first wants money for the cuddly little graphics, while both want credit. Some people seem to want to make their websites look cute - my daughter would love it!

2003-01-02T10:47:00.000Z

comment on postings
It looks as though w.bloggar often times out when posting, but unfortunately the post has actually taken place. This can lead to multiple entries, and the only way I've found to fix this is to go to the web based blogger site, delete the extra entries, then to make a new posting!

Shame!

2003-01-02T10:44:00.000Z

Another page from Google
There were some good pages from google recently, and now they have published their year end zeitgeist.The google options pages have more stuff.

I wonder if other search engines have similar features?

2003-01-02T08:29:00.000Z

task

I really should get round to sorting out that Javascript problem - generating a page to print all the links from a web page.

Any time soon ....

2003-01-01T18:36:00.000Z

On message boards

OK - so now I've set up another message board on bravenet - but I have to say that this does not have the sophistication of the boards over at ezboard. There it is possible to set up several discussion areas within the community/forum, and to move messages between different discussion areas.

Still, it is early days, and I think that even though bravenet seems simpler, it won't be a major disadvantage at this time, and at least it's free!

2003-01-01T18:25:00.000Z

Comment on content

I'm leaving in the last few entries for a little while, as a record of what happened. There were problems with editing the template for blogger, though most are now fixed - some still remain.

The previous "interesting" post was headed "Happy New Year"

2003-01-01T18:23:00.000Z

testing again

2003-01-01T18:04:00.000Z

test again

2003-01-01T18:01:00.000Z

Further comment

The problems have not completely gone away - now every entry seems to be duplicated.

The problem with the template still needs fixing!

2003-01-01T17:46:00.000Z

fixed?
Looks like the template has been fixed after all!

Template archiving seems to be a weakness of blogger.com.

Hope that things stay sorted for a little while.

2003-01-01T17:44:00.000Z

Something has gone wrong with the template - now get one of those As with a circle over the top - quite wrong.

Don't know how this has happened - perhaps an interaction between w.bloggar and blogger.com.

Tried to fix, but not so easy - hopefully will get this sorted before the next archive period....

2003-01-01T17:42:00.000Z

test3

2003-01-01T17:36:00.000Z

test2

2003-01-01T17:34:00.000Z

test1

2003-01-01T17:28:00.000Z

Happy New Year
Most of the recent work on weblogs has been over at dave2002 on pitas.com.

I have been looking at feedback mechanisms, and have set up a new messsage board which can be used for feedback about these weblogs. Details should appear on the left hand side panels.

I used bravenet for the message board, though it is less sophisticated than the boards at ezBoard, but it should be free for some while. I don't know if it will cause major problems with advertising - if so, please post to the board, and I'll check it out.You may realise that generally I dislike advertising, but sometimes it is a necessary evil - particularly if trying to set up services at low cost - i.e free! If things go wild, and you find that popups infest your PC, then this might indicate that it's time for a change of message board - so please keep me informed.

I have also been looking at other methods for tracking weblogs - e.g pingback, trackback and also the linkback services. Link back seems to have died - at least temporarily - but clearly there are mechanisms for tracking which are associated with some blog software - such as Moveable Type.

I tried to get pitas.com to deliver me the last 500 postings, but there is a fixed limit of 50.

I can't get the template edit to work using w.bloggar - which is a pity. If anyone knows how to do this, please let me know.

Also, I am still developing the pitas site, but editing on that site is even more primitive. If anyone knows any tools which work with pitas, please let me know.

Only a few more days of chocolate log and mince pie eating to go.

Happy New Year!

2002-12-31T09:44:00.000Z

Quotations and resolutions
Like several others I'm not going to say much about New Year resolutions.

Here are some good quotes to keep you amused before any New Year parties.

Happy New Year!

2002-12-30T10:30:00.000Z

Editing the template

I made a series of edits (test, test1 ... test9 - about 10- 10.30 am local time) while I tried to correct problems with the template. These edits should now be deleted.

It turned out to be too painful to use the web based editing tool, and errors were difficult to fix. It would be ideal to use the edit tool in w.bloggar, but I have had problems posting from that.

In the end I discovered that I could cut the text from the web based editor, paste it into w.bloggar for editing, then copy and past it back into the web based editor - this works!

I think I've also discovered the cause of problems with font sizing. The problems only ever arise immediately at the start of an entry - but only in entries which have a titled heading. These are formatted using h1,h2,h3 etc. The solution is to force a paragraph markup immediately after the heading markup. Tedious!

Actually the last comment may have been premature - paragraph markup fixes the font problem, but gives too big a space - I'll try using br instead!

Even that didn't work - perhaps it's just easiest to use bold font for headings, and not use the h1,h2 ... headers within blogger.

Further, although using paragraph markup works in blogger, it leaves too large a gap in most places - there seems to be some form of interaction between interpolated markup and explicit mark up - probably best to avoid using explicit markup in most situations.

2002-12-30T09:56:00.000Z

Forcing publish again - to fix minor problem! I will have to work out how to do this "properly" to avoid having to make so many unnecessary posts. It seems a pity that there isn't a workable tool which does this - with preview.

2002-12-30T09:53:00.000Z

Changed the template again - so need to have this post to force publishing. I can't get the editing to work using w.bloggar, so have to do it using web tools.

2002-12-29T11:04:00.000Z

force a new post

I may have fixed the template, but need to force a new post to get the fix!

2002-12-29T10:54:00.000Z

that alignment problem .... and others

I looked at the HTML code for the web page, and there is no obvious (to me) problem with the code. The entries get formatted incorrectly when new postings are made.
This will need fixing as soon as I can find out how.

There are also continuing problems with synchronisation - it looks as though sometimes posting doesn't work, and sometimes when using "post and publish", only the post works, not the publish. This can lead to multiple entries - there is no obvious solution, other than to monitor the resulting web page, and try to fix it if problems arise.

Another problem is that creating entries with different tools can give rise to lines which break at incorrect points. Using w.bloggar and putting in explicit line feeds results in additional break commands, and this formats entries incorrectly. Try to avoid this problem.

2002-12-29T10:51:00.000Z

that alignment problem

2002-12-29T10:47:00.000Z

Another comment on blogging

The warnings about the dangers of blogging - a few posts below - do not only extend to using work facilities or writing in work time. Note that stating any opinion about organisation(s) or company(ies) you work for can be problematic - if you use the wrong words. This can lead to disciplinary action, or even dismissal. This can happen even if you use your own web space, and your own computer to make your postings.

Similar situations apply to email, but companies may take blogging more seriously, since weblogs are often completely public.

Also, note that because of the nature of blogging software, there are date and time stamps on each article - obvious!

So, if you take a sickie, and write about your "day at the races" on your blog, or post up photos of your "short continental holiday", your employer might find out, and may be able to work out what you were really doing - not clever.

I wonder how many people will get caught out by this in the New Year!

2002-12-29T10:02:00.000Z

Eureka!

Now you should only see 1 post - you may wonder what the fuss was about.

Submitting a new post seems to bring the posts and the published web page back into synchronisation.

2002-12-29T10:01:00.000Z

Trying a fix

OK - so anyone who's reading right now, which probably just means me, will realise that there are now 4 identical posts on the web site.
I have tried to delete three of them, and as posts they no longer exist, but they're still on the web page.

Synchronisation between "posting" and "publication" is clearly sometimes a problem.

I'm going to try making a new post (this one), to see if this brings things back into synch - and lose 3 out of the 4 published postings.

Here goes!

2002-12-29T09:43:00.000Z

Short notes
A brief trawl revealed that some others had not given up during the Christmas break. SEB - work out the initials - came up with an article about why it is perhaps dangerous to blog in work time or using work facilities - from the Washington Post.

A link from SEB also led to a cartoon about snowball fights, which is interesting to me because I was wondering how to refer to part of someones blog - what the label structure is etc., so now I can maybe work this out..

2002-12-29T09:24:00.000Z

On incorporating widgets and other things

Tried to include tag messages in one of these blogs, but the blog system would not let me change the template. Not sure if I want to have tag messaging anyway, but thought I'd try it to see what would happen - so far no luck.

Other projects include learning how to really do objects in Javascript - most books skim this so lightly, if at all, so that it's almost impossible to get anything reasonable working. Even the ones which have examples are just about incomprehensible.

I widened the screen panels at dave2002 today - that's a slight improvement, and if anyone's reading it they should find it displays OK in most browsers.

Must go - I'm sure there must be other more useful things to do right now....

2002-12-28T14:46:00.000Z

Using blogBuddy

blogBuddy is a very slim tool, which can be used to edit blogs installed on the blogger.com website.

It does not seem quite as sophisticated as the w.bloggar tool, and may not support so many different blog sites, but nevertheless it seems quite usable. w.bloggar also has a preview mode, which is quite useful - this seems to be missing in blogBuddy, though there is a spell checker, and it is possible to control the fonts used reasonably precisely.

One other thing to try is to to see whether a tool such as HTML KIT can be used to do exactly the same thing - but I'm not sure if this will be possible.

I'm still musing about what is the difference between "post" and "post and publish" - maybe one allows later editing, before publishing, though there's not a lot to choose between them, as it seems to be possible to edit in either case.

There is also a similar tool BlogApp for Macs, which is now available for Mac OS/X.

One last muse ... when posting to blogger.com blogs, the format of previous postings gets messed up - with text moving over to the right hand edge.
Not sure why this happens - will have to look at the files to see if I can discern the reason, and get a fix.

2002-12-28T13:58:00.000Z

Some more about tools

Preston Gralla from ZDNet recommended some HTML editors a few months back, and the email from ZDNet has been cluttering up my inbox. One of them 1st Page 2000 seems not to be available any more, but Arachnophilia still shows a presence (the latest is v5) - though whether it is better than the also recommended HTML Kit I do not know.

Note - it's possible that the link to Preston's site - given above - may not work. I don't know what ZDNet do to allow/disallow access to their pages, but it was working a few minutes ago! The date of the original article was 17th July, 2002, so that might allow you to track it down.

There is another recommendation for Arachnophilia 4
at webmasterfree.

Other recommended ones seem to be: Stone's Webwriter, Amaya which is a WYSIWYG editor. There were also some comments about the later Arachnophilia version 5.x (Java based) being arguably better/worse than version 4.x on the feedback pages.

2002-12-28T13:30:00.000Z

After the break

Proof that life can go on without Internet access - just. Looks like most of the bloggers have shut up for a couple of days, though some stalwarts have carried on.

There was an interesting discussion with Christopher Reeve, though the highlighted link is not it. The BBC Radio 4 site (for example listen again) is so well organised it's almost impossible to find anything which was on yesterday - if I have time I'll try to find it later.

However, the R4 site does currently have a number of short audio clips about the origins of popular Christmas carols, so definitely worth a look and a listen if you want to fill in a few minutes.

The news about the cloned baby may turn out to be a hoax - or not. It's certainly something to think about. The idea of the Raelians that we are all decended from cloned aliens is certainly an odd one, and almost certainly wrong!

Regarding the use of software, I've now discovered how to use the w.bloggar software to edit previous posts - seems to work OK.

2002-12-23T00:18:00.000Z

2 days to go ... and still here....

A bit of cheating - it's after midnight, so managed to get an entry - though not sure if the clock on the computer will work properly - let's see!

2002-12-22T22:33:00.000Z

Signing off ...

Looks like I'm going to have to sign off for the holidays... c'est la vie.

Back at the end of the week. In the meantime, I've added some more stuff on dave2002 at pitas.com.

It looks like it's going to be a few more days before this blog looks as neat as that one - it needs to catch up!

Happy Christmas!

2002-12-22T08:00:00.000Z

Christmas - 3 days to go

MSN was offering sex today - well at least telling how
to to do it. Might not work if you don't have the right cookies, so you might still pick it up at msn - dejting.

Problem is that you might need a Swedish dictionary in order to understand.

I discovered more blog resources, including Christina's blogging tips,
a mailing list program - bloglet, a list of blogs which change, and two articles by L A Clyde - weblog article and a useful page from Iceland.

Oh - I didn't realise it's possible for your blog to have an ISSN number - did you?

I wondered if blogging woud eat my brain, or make me go blind, so I looked at some psychology pages -rather boring really, but followed quite an interesting story about someone who may or may not be real - who knows!

If you just want to find out odd things then fark's your place.

I looked at stupid evil bastard's page to see how bad he is ...

then over to another weblog page, and finally found this page about adding reader comments.

That's it for today!

2002-12-21T09:02:00.000Z

Short entry

Some bloggers are also into Wikis, apparently - as in this one - Twiki - don't know if it's any good, but perhaps worth a look.

I discovered a feedback tool at blogback and maybe there are more - will investigate later.

Activity will dampen down a bit now, as even this almost anonymous writer will have to buy Christmas presents, and may not have so much time to log on for a few days.

Maybe!

2002-12-20T23:37:00.000Z

Further info....

OK - so now I know a bit more. It seems, according to those who know, that the pitas.com is a basic site, even though it has fancy coloured templates. I'm guessing that it doesn't yet have tools like w.bloggar (see last post), which make it quite easy for users to create text off-line, and then upload.

The article at blogware gives a very comprehensive overview of different tools which work with different blogging services. Excellent!

I also found blogbib and blogging your life away. Then I found a useful e-zine and finally blogs: get your words out.

All a bit sad, isn't it - but not if you are a blogger!

2002-12-20T23:13:00.000Z

A breakthrough

Now I have discovered that I can edit the pages for several weblogs (including blogger) using downloadable tools.

Currently I'm testing out w.bloggar, which has been used to make this posting.

The tool has an interface which is similar to HTML Kit or Coffee Cup Editor, but knows enough about the blogger software it links to so that it can support publishing direct to the blog. I also seems to do sensible enough things with spaces, so that I don't have to do the more tedious HTML - definitely an improvement.

I found this software by a circuitous route. First I found a useful table of blog tools, and this pointed me to a comparison table. Then I looked at an articles about authoring using weblog tools, and another one.

I had a look at radio weblogs, and the newer infoworld, and then weblogtools.

I also found weblogs for Ben Hammersley, and
Andy Oram.

Then I discovered the online version of Essential Blogging,
and chapter two led me to w.bloggar. I probably should also test out blogBuddy, which is discussed in section 2.4.

Anyway, this seems like quite a breakthrough, getting the text directly into the blog - though this doesn't help for the pitas.com site - so I suppose I'll have to look at the comparison charts!

Also, note that this tool (w.bloggar) has a reasonable spell checker. It's not WYSIWYG, but it's a lot better than the web interface.
The Preview mode works fine, though if the links are checked it's necessary to go back to the Editor (which keeps the text intact), and then Preview again.

Let's just put the logo for w.blogger in - to keep them happy for this posting at least!

2002-12-20T16:21:00.000Z

Day 5

Still finding my way around - having made major improvements to the pitas site, which now has return email, and a longish list of web sites and other tools down the LHS. Now I should try to tart this one up a bit too.

Soon - maybe! Well, I have updated the blog details, so this is now public - it probably won't do any harm!

2002-12-19T11:34:00.000Z

Day 4

The day after the BIM Christmas meal/blowout. Still in one piece though, so back to thinking about communications modes etc.

More later. Modded the template file to turn on the email and also to cross link to other blogs and got this working - perhaps - still checking!

2002-12-18T15:25:00.000Z

Day 3

Still finding my way around these blogs - there's maybe a better tool at 1do3.com

I don't have much time today, so more later - or not. Christmas party time dominates!

This one is OK, but really is pretty well HTML only - you have to know HTML in order to get it to work. Even the daily headings need to be formatted. Talk about creating work! Still, I suppose that it allows more powerful systems to be set up - though not so good for casual use. Pity!

Oh - BTW - my other blog is at Dave2002.

Even if these things are a bit of a pain, it's quite interesting seeing how they work, and what the problems are. Probably worth sticking with them for a week or two, before either

giving up, or
starting a new one or two.

Also, I'm guessing that it might be necessary to edit after making template changes in blogger.com - but not sure yet.

2002-12-17T20:31:00.000Z

This is Day 2

I need to check how this works.

Can I have a heading? Should I use HTML or something else?

Usual problem when updating - have to remember to refresh the page - otherwise old version is displayed.

Not really sure - it's quite a pain having to use HTML when using these tools - as on pitas.com. It's absolutely necessary to remember to put the "http" in - I'm not sure what happens if I just put a URL in without using HTML - e.g http://www.ibm.com - will this work? Answer: No!

All rather a pity! I suppose I won't get a blank line either - let's check! At least that worked OK - that's something!

It's not really too easy to use - particularly when compared with Wikipedia etc. It is all rather silly - how can this be the state of the art? I'm guessing that David H's system is significantly better!

2002-12-16T18:35:00.000Z

[12/16/2002 10:34:05 AM | David Martland]
This is the second post - still testing.

[edit]

[12/16/2002 10:21:36 AM | David Martland]
This is the first post - not the Last Post!

I have wondered how these weblogs actually work, and I this is the second attempt I've made to use them creatively - the first being at Pitas.com. I'm just testing to see if they are easy to use, and after 5 minutes on this one I'm still not sure. There are some really good weblogs out already, though most are nothing special. I suspect that the best ones might actually prepare HTML off line, and then insert the resulting text into a weblog, such as this one. Others also work with a simple markup language, but this one doesn't seem to support such a thing.

OK - that's enough for the first post.

2002-12-16T18:34:00.000Z

This is the second post - still testing.

2002-12-16T18:21:00.000Z

This is the first post - not the Last Post!

I have wondered how these weblogs actually work, and I this is the second attempt I've made to use them creatively - the first being at Pitas.com. I'm just testing to see if they are easy to use, and after 5 minutes on this one I'm still not sure. There are some really good weblogs out already, though most are nothing special. I suspect that the best ones might actually prepare HTML off line, and then insert the resulting text into a weblog, such as this one. Others also work with a simple markup language, but this one doesn't seem to support such a thing.

OK - that's enough for the first post.