March 2002

1st March 2002

I've been messing around with table-of-contents, since I've written a new version of HTML::GenToc which enables one to suppress entries.

I have now added a link to the FAQ from every page, since people don't seem to be finding it or reading it.

2nd March 2002

Fixed a few links, basically.

3rd March 2002

Updated the Canon vs Fanon section of the Sentinel page.

11th March 2002

Added review of "Sight Unseen" by Auntie Hill to the Net-Fic Reviews page.

Added my new Computers page!

12th March 2002

Robert Yaklin kindly pointed out errors in the links (or lack of them) in the Staked Blake page, so I corrected them, and also corrected the errors in the Refractions on the Net page (which were of the same nature).

13th March 2002

Added reviews of "Face in the Mirror" by Kit Mason, "The Dark Path" by Taleya and "Irresistable Force" by R.J. Anderson to the Net-Fic Reviews page.

15th March 2002

Now the side navigation is done with CSS instead of Evil Tables. It now (should) behave like a sort of pseudo-frame (using advanced CSS positioning techniques). I have also put in a Netscape 4 CSS file for this, so that Netscape 4 won't be broken by this change. This has been tested with Netscape 4, mozilla and galeon, and it works nicely, but I don't know about other browsers. (Well, it works with lynx and w3m, but then they ignore CSS altogether...) If it doesn't work for you, please tell me.

17th March 2002

Added reviews of "Nine Men and a Little Lady" by Kielle and "Forces of Light and Darkness" by Java Head to the Net-Fic Reviews page.

18th March 2002

Added reviews of "Sleepy River" and "The Confraternity of the Earth Children" by Blixa "Eyes of a Killer -- Eyes of a Savior" by Jaguar and "Forgiven" by Rimilod to the Net-Fic Reviews page.

23rd March 2002

Massive revision of site -- now all pages use Server Side Includes (SSI) and the header and footer parts are done as separate files. This means that all file extensions are now .shtml where before, most of the HTML files here (apart from the index pages) had .html extensions, so you may have to change your bookmarks. I also rationalized the layout a bit; all footers are the same, for example, and the Cascading Style Sheets are broken into different files for different styles (more may come of this later). Also the "Pretty Logos" page was merged with the "About Site" page.

This was prompted partly because my site (with my clever CSS of the 15th of March) broke badly under Internet Explorer. (Typical Microsoft -- they tout themselves as advanced and yet they can't even deal with standards-compliant advanced CSS. Guess that must be because they didn't write the standard.) Please tell me if you find anything broken.

Posted revised rules of GenFicCrit mailing list.

(later) Well, that was a bit of a washout! Seems that this server doesn't support the if-else SSI constructs, which I was relying on rather heavily! Arrgh! Well, I'm not going to revert back completely, because some of my revisions are okay. I'll just have to change all the conditionals. Rats! Rats! Rats! Rats!

(even later) Well, with the aid of a new CGI script, I've managed to fake some of the conditional stuff. Unfortunately, the nifty check-the-name-of-the-current-file in the navbar stuff was not one of the things I could retrieve. (sigh) A step backwards for the navbar. (sigh) Well it will have to do for now.

24th March 2002

Well, I am still uploading the crash-course replacement website, and seeing as it is after midnight, though it still *feels* like it's the 23rd, it is really the 24th... The fake-if CGI script is noticably slower than the site was when it was full SSI (sigh). Please bear with me; the good news is that the A+ Hosting are looking into upgrading their server into a more current version of Zeus which does understand the #if-#else constructs, so hopefully you won't have to put up with the slowness for too long.

(sigh) It looks as if my efforts have been completely pointless. Now that I have uploaded everything, it seems as if Zeus does not even behave the same way as Apache with even something simple like variables -- one cannot pass variables set with SSI to a CGI script at all, because they aren't put into the environment. It's 2am. Should I give up and go to bed? Naw. I'll see if I can make WML come to the rescue with its own #includes and embedded perl if's.

3am: The WML defense seems to have worked, mostly. We have pages! There are still bugs. The "Validate me!" links are bogus (they point to the included footer file, not the main file) and I'm sure there are other things also. Well, at least the website is back. (sigh)

(later the same day) Added reviews of "Motion of Discovery", "Birthright" and "Secrets" by Rimilod, "Coming Up For Air" by Delilah and "My Soul To Keep" by Donna Gentry to the Net-Fic Reviews page.

28th March 2002

Added reviews of "Four Play" and "Lookin' For Eight" by Fidus Amicus and "Far From Home" by The Prophet to the Net-Fic Reviews page.

30th March 2002

Since the upgrade of Zeus on my web-host is looking like "we don't know exactly when" then I've made a few tweaks to put more things using WML and less using SSI (eg the footer is no longer dynamically included, but it's done at "compile" time). This basically means that everything looks the same, but I've uploaded everything to the site again. But the "Validate me" links ought to work now.