Duramecho's Miscellany Site History

2026/3/24: Removed cgi-bin
My web hosting provider's new "improved" server does support CGI scripting and isn't going to. The existence of the disabled CGI scripts for the contact form and the logs archiving may have been preventing them porting the site so it was going to go dead at the end of this month. So I've removed them.
2026/3/24: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Kalajdžisko' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Also updated 'Çavreşli', 'Neda Voda Nalivala', 'Gîrliceanca' & 'Hora de la cîmpie'.
2026/3/24: Typo correction for my Recursive Regexp Rename program
Some minor typos corrected in the text accompanying the example uses of the bulk file & directory renaming program.
2026/3/24: Typo correction for my 2023 Christmas card
Fixed a missing "not" in my my Christmas card for 2023 description collection.
2025/12/16: Added my 2024 Christmas card
Added my 2024 card to my Christmas Cards collection.
2025/11/1: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes rendering programs
In the programs that convert my Balkan etc. dance notes source code to HTML, added support for sorting the corrected Romanian diacritics and for hypertext links. The programs started in 2002, but luckily I chose Perl and whilst many languages (particularly Javascript frameworks) appear & go out fashion in a few years, Perl 5 not only keeps going but is backwardly compatible. Also typo correction in 'Misirlou' and, very coincidentally, updated the dance called 'The Source'.
2025/11/1: Partially deprecated warnings for HTML processing programs
Added a warning to the index pages of my programs to extract 'ALT' text from an HTML file for easy editing and put it back again and program to a table of contents for a HTML that they won't work with "Web 2.0" etc. web pages, only plain simple HTML fixed ones. Also corrected some minor source code comment typos.
2025/11/1: Small improvements to the chocolate freezer cake recipe
Add another tip for cutting without cracking to the chocolate to my chocolate freezer (refrigerator) cake recipe.
2025/11/1: Small improvements to the Sachertorte recipe
A little more about greaseproof paper and transport to my Sachertorte recipe.
2025/10/30: Fortunately the site down-time might be forgiven by search engines
Coincidentally the main week its hosting server was not working coincided with both Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, the two biggest hosting platforms in existance at present, having major outages! With so many high profile sites, including banks and airport boarding, going down last week hopefully Google won't drop sites like this which its crawler found unavailable.
2025/10/30: Big problems with the new webserver for this site over the past month
It started when my hosting company "upgraded" the site's hosting to a new server. The server-side Perl CGI scripts stopped working. I raised a support issue. It turns out that new server does not support any server side scripting other than the very limited PHP! Personally I considered PHP to just be for very simple stuff and generally just, like Server Side Include, just to call out to scripts in more general languages like Perl, Python, Java & C/C++. They say it is for security on shared hosting but user permissions should block file access between user accounts anyway - and turning off a major almost-fundamental feature of web hosting instead of checking permissions is drastic. They do still allow it on non-shared hosting though but that is overkill (& expensive) for non-business sites. I hope not all hosting companies are going likewise as that cuts off the low entry point for children and other individuals learning web programming. It also took me by surprise as the online specs/help still pointed at those for the old host. Fortunately my only remaining CGI use was the contact form and the logs archiving so I temporarily turned them off. However the hosting company simultaneously took sympathy and moved the site back to the old host. A couple of weeks later I found my site was offline with all pages 404ing! Also the control panels for both old and new servers were giving errors for me. After several more contacts - even by phone - at last the control panel to the old server started working again. All pages gone but I uploaded it again. Phew. However server side scripts are now giving "Execute access is denied" even with 755 permissions. So I've disabled the contact form again.
2025/7/9: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added to my Balkan etc. dance notes those I lead at Youlgrave May: 'Crnogorka', 'Ropoțelul' & 'Don't care to lose'. Also corrected the Romanian diacritics from cedillas to under-commas in 'Șchioapa' & in parts of 'Hora pojorenilor'. Also removed the tip anent using plain text summaries for Palm Pilot as it is very unlikely that a reader will be using one of those these days!
2025/7/9: Repaired server logs archiver
Logs have not been archived since 2024/6/3. After much fiddling, I traced the cause to the server no longer including the current working directory in the PATH for one Perl script calling another. Bugfix was then simple: add './' to the script path in the calling script.
2025/7/9: To do list updated
Been planning on adding more academic papers and marking some computer advice & programs as obsolete. So updated the To Do list.
2025/2/16: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated to my Balkan etc. dance notes those I lead at Youlgrave last August: 'Furla', 'Dağlar Oy Oy' & 'The Source'. Also additions to background information for 'Hora Veche', 'Mari Kız' & 'Misirlou'.
2025/2/16: Typo corrections to rock cake recipe
Minor corrections to my rock cakes recipe.
2025/2/16: Hummus typo corrections
Just some minor corrections in my hummus recipe.
2024/7/29: Another use for silent MP3s
A reader, Peter Chamberlain, reported another use for my CD & MP3s of silence - preventing the 1s start-up delay for alarm beeps bug in Realtek audio drivers in Windows by keeping the driver running.
2024/7/29: Added my 2023 Christmas card
Added my 2023 card & its bonus picture to my Christmas Cards collection. Also corrected the 2023 one where I had uploaded the wrong version (email instead of printing) of the ODG format border file.
2024/5/8: Bubble acoustics thesis in PDF format
At last (only 29 years late!) my PhD thesis on bubble acoustics goes online, in a new section of this site for bubble acoustics. Currently only rendered as PDF but the HTML version is underway (it needs lots more ALT-text.)
2024/5/8: Haptics index page corrections
I found I had accidentally uploaded a part-updated index page to my haptics section with loads of typos when adding the HTML version of my MSci thesis into it. That is embarrassing. Fixed that.
2024/4/5: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated my Balkan etc. dance notes: filled the missing chain of teachers back to source in 'Busuiocul'.
2024/4/5: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated my Balkan etc. dance notes: filled the missing chain of teachers back to source in 'Busuiocul'.
2024/3/14: Haptic displays thesis in PDF now as HTML
I've brought the 2002 HTML rendering of my 2000 MSc thesis on computer haptic displays into sync, proof-read the masses of ALT-text and, at last, made it public.
2024/3/7: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated my Balkan etc. dance notes: added 'Fadike' and, in preparation for leading at an Yves Moreau memorial event, updated 'Signa' & 'Žensko Svatbarsko Horo'.
2024/2/26: Haptic displays thesis in PDF & original Word 2k formats
The first entry in my new academia section of this site is my MSc thesis on computer haptic displays. It was only for part of an MSc but covers as much as some PhD theses. It was from year 2000 but most of it still applies! Currently only in original MS Word 2 .doc format and rendered as PDF but the HTML version is underway (it needs updating to match and checking of ALT text.)
2024/2/26: New top level area of this site: Academia!
I have been intending to put academic papers & theses on this website for a long time. It has been in the site's online to-do list for slightly over 20 years! But it is a lot of effort even for those already with HTML versions as they either need lots of ALT text for many complex illustrations, use an obsolete format for such text or do not exist in (non-paywalled) digital form at all & so will need almost complete re-writing from source & finding then scanning images. However I had a work reason to spend some time on my MSc haptic displays thesis & there was already an HTML version so I'm using that to seed the new academic publications part of this site.
2024/2/10: Added my 1995 Christmas card explanation
After 27 years, I found the deer on my 1995 Christmas Card was an indigenous roe deer not an invasive pest muntjac deer.
2024/2/10: Added tip for plating to haggis recipe
Added a tip for plating to the notes in my quick & easy haggis recipe and some typo corrections.
2024/2/10: Hummus more tips
Rearranged the intro of my hummus recipe to not favour dark or light chickpeas (as I prefer dark but many guests expect light) & to have up-front the alternatives to Marmite.
2023/8/27: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated my Balkan etc. dance notes: added 'Goats in Trees'.
2023/7/2: Added my 2022 Christmas card
Added my 2022 card to my my Christmas Cards collection. Also corrected the 2023 one where I had uploaded the wrong version (email instead of printing) of the ODG format border file.
2023/7/2: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated my Balkan etc. dance notes: more information about 'Margarit'; improved description of the sideways hip movement in Breton 'An Dro', 'Hanter Dro' & 'Trikot'; and typo corrections in 'Malki Mome'.
2023/7/2: Added more imperial units to my approx. physical constants page
Found I'd missed out 'gill' & some abbreviation expansions in the Imperial units section of my approximate physical constants page.
2023/7/2: Additions to the chocolate freezer cake recipe
Added more alternative names & the white version (which I came up with in 2021) to my chocolate freezer (refrigerator) cake recipe.
2023/2/23: Reordered the home page lists
Made the biggest changes to this site's home page in one go since the start. As people sometimes look me up on the web before meeting me, I have rearranged the ordering to more fit my character rather than in the order that pages are most likely to be of use to readers (anyway most utilitarian readers jump straight to the pages from Google). So the artwork section is now above the computer advice & programs sections (which are mostly obsolete now anyway) and the Balkan etc. notes are above the Morris dance ones. I also removed the old book-title style initial-caps formatting from the link text. Internally I tidied up the HTML source formatting.
2022/7/16: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added to my Balkan etc. dance notes 'Čačak' & 'Ay Maral Maral'. Also updated 'Koi e toi', 'Preumblata', 'Silent Kolo' & 'Ketri Ketri' and corrected a minor typo in the index.
2020/10/24: Homity pie recipe improvements
Added more tips to my crispy pastry homity pie recipe.
2022/10/18: Correction to flapjack recipe experiment
In reusing the crunchy vs chewy flapjack recipe experiment's results verses time & temperature labelled photograph for a cookbook contribution at work, I noticed that for years the time units have been mislabelled as seconds instead of minutes. Correction now edited into the photograph.
2020/10/17: Homity pie recipe
Added my crispy pastry homity pie recipe to this site.
2022/7/16: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added to my Balkan etc. dance notes the new dances I lead at the Youlgrave Dance Weekend in May: 'Ciganko', 'Lulagyamo', & 'Trans Balkan Express'. Also updated 'Arcanul Bătrînesc', 'Melitsa', 'Dunkelbunt Feet' & 'Džumbus' and corrected minor typos in 'Čiča Obrenova Kolo', ''Branle de la fosse aux loups' & 'Koi e toi'.
2022/7/16: Added my 2021 Christmas card
Added my 2021 card to my my Christmas Cards collection.
2022/5/12: Added lockdown online dances to my dance links page
In re-enabling that link in my folk dance links list, I realised I had missed of some dance leading friends of mine so added them. Then thought about those of them & other groups I attended online in COVID lockdown so added a whole new section on those. Also misc. improving of wording in places.
2022/5/12: Typo correction in patterned dates finding program page
No change to the program that finds calendar dates with patterns or the dates it finds but corrected an embarrassing typo where I got the date format wrong in the history of why I came up with the program.
2022/3/6: Re-emabled that dance link
The event web page (see previous) was updated a couple of weeks ago so I've re-enabled the link in my folk dance links list.
2022/2/1: Temporarily disabled a dance link
I was told that the old website of a dance event I had taken on helping to organise was still directing to the previous organiser who is not forwarding enquiries. So I temporarily disabled my link from my folk dance links list and gave an email address instead.
2021/10/6: Another use for silent MP3s
A reader, Menno Jonker, reported another use for my CD & MP3s of silence - preventing the loss of the start of automated voicemail messages when recording takes a second or so to start.
2021/10/6: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Branle de la fosse aux loups', 'Vitanovsko Horo', 'Rhiannon's Wheel' & 'Shavlego' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Two of those I learnt from live online dance class festivals during COVID-19 lockdown, one in a socially distanced outdoor limited-numbers filming session and the other in the last dance festival/holiday I went on before lockdown. Also corrected typos in 'Brîulet vîlcean', 'Koko Samoa' and the 'Bulgarian Street Party' collection.
2021/10/6: Added my 2020 Christmas card
Added my 2020 card to my my Christmas Cards collection. Also corrected the camera version for my 2019 card.
2021/3/12: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
In my Balkan etc. dance notes, corrected 'Hora de la cîmpie' steps, corrected a typo in 'Pirava Dae' & made my description of how avoid sideways motion knee/hip fatigue in Breton dances much clearer.
2021/1/1: More uses for silent MP3s
Reports from two more readers about uses for my CD & MP3s of silence. One anent for keeping Bluetooth speakers from timing outtheatre sound effects managing, the other to avoid an old iPod overheating bug.
2021/1/1: Clarified advice for doing two sided printing with a one sided printer
Over a decade after I wrote it, a reader told me that 'face down' in the how to do two sided printing with a one-sided printer article as ambiguous. I agree & have changed it to 'printed-side down'. I have also since found that my home laser printer turns paper differently depending on whether it is from the paper tray or bypass feed so I added a note about that too.
2021/1/1: Updated search and replace in multiple files program
Corrected an example use of to my command line program to do search and replace in multiple files with regular expressions & recursion where I had forgotten to escape a character for Bash use.
2021/1/1: Added to & updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Bedouin Flame' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. I had lead it before at Youlgrave but forgot to upload it. Also updated 'Çavreşli' (having found that my previous spelling, 'Çavreşlí', was a rare one), 'Sepastia bar' (after an Armenian dance expert contacted me with corrections for the rarely-seen male styling) & 'Neda Voda Nalivala'.
2020/8/23: Hummus more tips
Added to my hummus recipe the option of using a garlic press and a blender safety warning.
2020/8/23: Added software update & MP3 settings explanations to how to convert audio tape recordings to CDs
The software I used in my workflow for converting tape recordings to CDs (& MP3s) is rather obsolete but the workflow is still the same so I added notes about the current software. I also explained about MP3 bandwidth & joint stereo.
2020/8/23: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Added to my Balkan etc. dance notes 'Sirdes'. Also corrected the file name of 'Koi e toi' and updated 'Gnjilane', 'Heyamo', 'Mairam Govand', 'Mesho gorani', 'Neda Voda Nalivala' & 'Óine Dóine'.
2020/8/23: Added black pudding idea to the haggis recipe
Added a reader suggestion to the notes in my quick & easy haggis recipe: that black pudding & mince could be used to substitute for hearts.
2020/8/23: Corrected a typo in the Rainbow Labyrinths program page
Just a very minor typo in the Rainbow Labyrinths program instructions.
2020/4/13: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Added to my Balkan etc. dance notes 'Neda Voda Nalivala' & 'Koi e toi'. These are the last two of the dances I have lead at Youlgrave over the years at last written up. The other reason for including 'Neda Voda Nalivala' now is that with the COVID-19 lockdowns & dancing over video links from small rooms, it fits well being the 'Balcony Dance'.
2020/4/13: Corrected my 2018 Christmas card download link
I had forgotten to hex encode a comma.
2020/2/2: Added my 2018 & 2019 Christmas cards
Added my 2019 card to my my Christmas Cards collection. Belatedly (I was very busy early last year) added my 2018 card too. Also remade the index page thumbnails (I'd made them too small so they were blurry) for 2013 to 2017 inclusive and corrected the 2017 alt-text.
2019/12/4: Hummus typo correction
When I last updated my hummus recipe, I improved the description of using canned chickpeas but accidentally left the old one in too. Deleted it.
2019/9/8: Hummus alternative chickpea ingredients
Over a decade since I last updated my hummus recipe, I've added anent the differences of using light vs. dark chickpeas.
2019/9/8: Warning of another CD burning problem for silent MP3s
A reader found my CD & MP3s of silence would not burn in K3b. I confirmed it and put in a warning.
2019/9/8: More uses for silent MP3s
Reports from two more readers about uses for my CD & MP3s of silence. One anent for theatre sound effects managing, the other than the use in modding old car CD players with aux-in has become widespread.
2019/9/8: Updated dance links
A friend's dance group website had to change URL so I updated my folk dance links list.
2019/9/8: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Added to my Balkan etc. dance notes 'Kalamatianos', 'Karagouna', 'Lalica' & 'Zimushka' which I lead at the recent Youlgrave dance weekend. Also added the common dances 'Tsakonikos' (which I was going to lead as it has not been done there for a decade but coincidentally someone else did so just before me) and 'Misirlou' in order to publish a quick summary of unusual history after another dance teacher claims it as being originally purely from Greece (it was from 1940s Pittsburgh). Updated 'Drumul Dracului'.
2019/6/27: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Vajta n'Elbasan' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Also a minor typo correction to 'Cherkessia Kfula'.
2019/6/27: Additions to rock cake recipe
Added to my rock cakes recipe about glacé cherries & a larger (traditional) size.
2019/6/27: Added more dance links
Added several more links I had bookmarked over the years to my folk dance links list. Some cleaning up too.
2019/3/16: Comprehensive update of the dance site links page
A reader pointed out that some of the links in my folk dance links list were dead as the sites they linked to had died or moved. I edited those & found that most of the links were dead! Tracking down moved/replacement site took quite a while & was tedious but all done now.
2019/3/16: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Mari Kiz' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Also updated 'Margarit'.
2019/3/16: Typo correction in FAQ
A reader informed me of a minor typo in the FAQ. Fixed it.
2018/10/28: Now saving web server logs again
It was broken when my faithful web hosting company was taken over. The new one stores logs only for 1 day, not 6 months, so I wrote a little script to archive them elsewhere. Also no cronjob support so I hooked running of that script into the contact message script spam blocker. At last a benevolent use for those annoying spam bots that hit my site :-) .
2018/10/23: Improved thumbnail image of my 2017 Christmas card
It included a nearly silhouette & so needed lower JPEG compression than most to look good.
2018/8/5: Added my 2017 Christmas card
Added my 2017 card to my my Christmas Cards collection.
2018/8/5: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Busuiocul', which I have been doing for years but forgot to publish, to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Also added the basic Breton dances 'An Dro', 'Hanter Dro' & 'Trikot' which I had thought not worth adding as so trivial to follow - after being told by Breton friends that even some non-Breton French find those dances difficult! Also updated 'Kost ar c'hoad', 'Tamzara (slow)', 'Kate Kate', & the page generating script.
2018/8/5: Yet another use for silent MP3s
Another reader told me of a new use for my CD & MP3s of silence so I added that.
2018/8/5: Corrections to previous Christmas cards
When converting the old Corel Draw border artwork of my Christmas Cards to a newer file format for future maintainability, I found some faults. The border had typos for 1998 to 2002 and 2001 had the wrong aspect ratio hi-res photo scan. I fixed those.
2018/8/5: Corrected a couple of page title tags & removed a link to a friend's site
In in testing the site was readable by Google on the new server, Google's testing system pointed out that the contact page had an uninformative title and one of the Rainbow Labyrinths pages has the wrong title. Fixed those. In doing so I spotted my Rainbow Labyrinths program page still linked out to the website of Annie Toy who inspired me to create them. She died in 2012 & her website has expired so I sadly removed the link.
2018/8/5: Removed 'M$' abbreviation
In many old articles I had used the then common abbreviation 'M$' for 'Microsoft'. Back in those days Microsoft was such an abusive monopoly & responsible for so many problems which frustrated computer users & held up the progress of computers that is was a very hated company. Although it is still an abusive monopoly in some areas (the operating system for most business personal computer use, the disgustingly expensive world de facto standard word processor etc.), the web & smartphone era broke its strangle-hold. It is now just one of many abusive computer monopolies in different areas such as Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Apple, Oracle & Adobe. Hence many in the new generation don't recognise the 'M$' derogatory abbreviation so my articles looked odd to read so I've simply replaced it with 'Microsoft' or, where used a lot in one page, 'MS'.
2018/5/13: Repaired broken download of programs
None of the artwork Perl programs were downloadable (other than those in zip files). Yet another screw-up of my site by the company which took over the old reliable web hosting company I used for 17 years! It appears that they have applied ScriptAlias for '*.pl' files by default in all directories, not just cgi-bin & even when the files are not given execute permissions. I've worked around it now with .htaccess files explicitly reverting ScriptAlias for each of those cases. If only my new host had not bought out my old one or at least kept the same servers. This now the 4th serious breaking of my site by them (2 I've fixed, 1 they fixed & the other, logging, is still broken).
2018/5/12: Repaired broken download of art pages
None of the artwork pages were downloadable. Probably error has been there nearly 2 weeks. It was caused by a bad security design in my new web host (which took over the one I had had happily for 17 years (Virtual Names a.k.a. UK Servers) and moved the pages to its server). They expected one to use the site master admin account for FTP upload which puts the password which could be used to take over the domain over an unencrypted link. I used a secondary login instead, as was normal for my previous host. The server's default permissions for that were wrong resulting in many of my pages returning errors. Took a couple of wasted hours to work that out and fix it but I did not notice that the art pages, despite having the same permissions according to the site management console were not work work. Deleted and reuploaded them today which seems to have fixed it but in the meantime my rainbow labyrinths have completely disappeared from Google image search results where they have made up most of the top hits for a decade! Grrr.
2018/4/29: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes - now 100 such dances!
Added 'Hora pojorenilor', 'Sepastia bar' & 'Valle Labe' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Two of those I first lead a couple years ago but had not written up at the time. Also updated 'Boaliisko', 'Dzumbus', 'Hora Veche', 'Kate-Kate'& 'Miziisko'.
2018/4/29: Updated FAQ & to-dos
Slightly updated the FAQ due to change in site hosting company, because the significance of some questions has slightly changed with cultural changes & because I will probably never get around to manually translating this site into another language. Updated likewise for cultural changes the page of possible future ideas to add to this site, removed the idea adding my few fiction writings, added the idea of adding more artworks and made adding my academic publications top priority.
2018/4/29: Haggis minor change
Halved the amount of pepper in my quick & easy haggis recipe as most who had tasted it preferred it less hot than I did. Actually I had made this change years ago ad hoc when cooking but kept forgetting to update the typed recipe.
2018/2/22: Added start date to the home page
It turns out some of my younger friends are amazed about me having had a web site since they were young children! Hence for boasting & amusement I've added an "established" date next to the last updated date. Also fixed the CSS centring of that line.
2018/2/22: Added another counter spambot measure to contact page & script
After almost no spam for ten years(!), I started getting about 2 a day as some damn spambot is automatically ticking the simple checkbox which needs to be checked for messages to be sent. It doubt any spammer bothered to add that specifically to get this one small minor site so I guess I was unlucky when it made to attack some other sites & accidentally got past mine too. Changed it to the slightly more onerous for the visitor of typing in a short random string in clear text. Still visually impaired accessible but also still spammer automatable.
2017/6/9: Added to Balkan etc. dance notes - now 100 such dances!
Added 'Malki Mome' & 'Margarit' to my Balkan etc. dance notes. That brings the number of dances there to 100. I'm amazed it reached so many considering how infrequently I lead dances. It is fitting that Margarit is the 100th as Margarit was the most difficult to write up dance I have written up. It has many parts & is mostly hand motions with lots of detailed styling. It took 5 years from when I started writing it up to finishing it with it being an annoying to-do in the meantime.
2017/6/9: Updated the home page style explanation
A colleague reminded me that my explanation of the simple styling of this website was well out of date. I wrote it 2001 before MySpace let alone Facebook, Twitter & YouTube. Updated it.
2017/4/17: Updated & added to Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated 'Syrtós Kitrínou' (alternative styles), 'Tsamikos Kharditsa (A Camel in Nunavut)' (history) & 'Hora Veche' (more history) in my Balkan etc. dance notes. Also added 'Biserka Bojerka'.
2017/4/17: Updated the Cotswold Morris PDF titles
Used CutePDF on Windows 2k to convert the Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes & Cotswold Morris Dancing cheat sheet to PDF. It was not until I tried opening them in Opera web browser that I found CutePDF (which works very well generally) was sticking clutter (the name of the application exported from) in the PDF title. As the current versions of my Morris notes are quite likely my final ones, I pedantically cleaned up those titles using pdftk. (It is just a coincidence that these likely final ones both have round version numbers of 90 & 50 respectively).
2017/4/17: Corrected preformatted text layout in Morris detailed notes PDF
When fixing the HTML version of my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes, I noticed the PDF version was also wrongly layed out (albeit only cosmetically not changing the meaning like in the HTML version). It was a slight mistake in my MS Word template. Fixed that.
2017/4/17: Corrected preformatted text layout in Morris detailed notes HTML
When editing my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes yesterday, I noticed that the preformatted text blocks were wrongly formatted. It turned out that there were loads of carriage return characters littered about the HTML generated from my Perl script. When I had moved from MS Windows (which uses the same linebreak format to that of MS Word) to Linux (which uses a shorter one), I had forgotten to explicitly put in the part my script which removed linebreaks to continue looking for the Windows one. Fixed it. The miss-formatted text-diagrams have probably been on the site unnoticed by me since 2013; sorry.
2017/4/17: Corrected link encoding
Some of links to the original photographs in my Christmas Cards collection contained commas which should have been encoded as '%2C' but weren't. I had not noticed all of the WYSIWYG page HTML editors I have used for those pages compensated automatically (or indeed created those unencoded links in the first place). The web server also compensated so the links worked live too but I can't guarantee that future web servers will so I fixed the links.
2017/4/10: Released the Cotswold Morris notes under CC BY-SA
For years I had been intending to add CC BY-SA to the old GPL I had released my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes & Cotswold Morris Dancing cheat sheet under as many users would not be able to deal with source code. In doing so found that my printer version of the detailed one accidentally had no licence information at all nor my surname; fixed that too. Had to use my old Windows 2000 computer for the Word 2k to PDA conversion & my old Palm Vx PDA for the PDB bookmarking!
2017/4/3: Added my 2015 & 2016 Christmas cards
Added my 2016 card to my my Christmas Cards collection. Belatedly added the 2015 one too. Also fixed a typo on the 1999 card back.
2017/4/3: Updated licences
At last got around to updating my GPL version in my licensing page from version 2 to version 3 (well, 2 & all subsequent). It was minor but legally important as version 2 would have technically prevented users doing some things with my material, such as including it in modern version 3 projects! Also added more explanation.
2017/4/3: Sorted out Christmas card imges metadata
The conventions for tagging photographs & other images with names, titles, descriptions etc. in metadata are a confusing muddle. There are the old IPTC headers which were for commercial press image credits etc. then EXIF which were storing digital camera photograph settings then application & operating system specific ones then XMP attempt at an IPTC generalisation (with IPTC Core as a subset) then whatever out of all those alternatives various online systems choose to display as titles & captions. In addition I had used a variety of different software to edit them (Paint Shop Pro & Image Walker on Windows 2000, GIMP & Gwenview on Ubuntu 12.04 & 14.04). After much reading of contradictory articles on the WWW, it appears to me that the most stable tag for text to use as a title is IPTC Headline (confusingly IPTC Title is more for unique Id use) & most stable for more detailled text is IPTC Caption. Also camera images contain possibly private information like camera serial number & exact time. Using the programs exiv2 (which has a nice feature whereby tags can be temporarily exported to a simple XML text file for editing) & exiftool (much more complex), I've updated all the photographs & sketches in my Christmas Cards collection with consistent title & description metadata.
2017/4/3: Corrected another Greek character in approx. physical constants page
Found I'd missed out yet another Greek character from the approximate physical constants page when, 6 years ago, I converted this site to UTF-8. I've put that one back in too and fixed another typo on that page.
2016/10/8: Recipe corrections
Corrected the calorie estimate in my novelty wines recipies. I'd based the original on very sweet wines rather than fully brewed dry wines. Also corrected a typo in parts of my quick & easy haggis recipe where I'd had writen 'cumin' instead of 'coriander' seed (they are often used together in UK Indian recipes but only coriander goes in the haggis.
2016/8/24: Added to and updated Balkan etc. dance notes
After nearly a year's break, added to the Balkan etc. dance notes with 'Hakinor Hane'eman' which I lead at Youlgrave in May . Also updated 'Syrtos Hasapikos', 'Cherkessia Kfula', 'Mesjog gur' & 'Krajdunavsko'. The latter of which was the dance which my writing up in detail of started the whole Balkan etc. dance notes section of this website (& still corrections were needed!).
2016/7/21: Added note on line break format to Wordsearch solver
A reader used my old wordsearch solver thanked me for it but pointed out that it was confusing at first due to dictionaries from other sites having different line break formats to what the program expected on the user's particular operating system. Although it is a problem with different OS standards, not my program, I've added a warning about that.
2016/7/21: Various typo & character encoding mistake corrections
Small corrections in the C Pointers article, the explanation of why there is the "minus one" in some formulae for standard deviations (actually corrected 2 years ago but I missed the new version in an incremental site upload!) & the computer programs index page.
2016/7/21: Small improvements to chocolate freezer cake & Sachertorte recipes
Added another practical tips to my chocolate freezer (refrigerator) cake recipe & corrected an error in the ingredients (still had 'greaseproof' instead of 'baking' paper) in my Sachertorte recipe.
2016/7/21: Typo correction in C++ const explanation
A reader with no contact information told me of another minor typo in my C++ const explanation. Corrected it.
2015/9/23: Added more Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Čiča Obrenova Kolo', 'Jeni Jol / Rumelaj' & 'Klezmer' which I have lead in the past year on behalf of others (who were injured, singing or needing a second line lead) to the Balkan etc. dance notes. Also added 'Tsadik Katamar' which I learnt at the same time as 'Klezmer'. Coincidentally I wrote my first versions of my notes for all 4 of those dances back in 2002! Also updated 'Mesho gorani'.
2015/9/23: Added my 2013 & 2014 Christmas cards
Belatedly added them to my Christmas Cards collection. The delay was, like many other things I have delayed in the past 1.5 years, due to family issues consuming my time & attention.
2015/9/1: Added more Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 'Nazeli bar', 'Melitsa', 'Sîrba de la Tulcea', 'Mesho gorani' & 'Tetshot Rechka' which I lead at Youlgrave this year to the Balkan etc. dance notes. Also updated 'Signa'.
2015/3/1: Updated an obsolete program
2015/3/1: Updated some dance site links
Updated the Youlgrave Dance Weekends link in my folk dance links list & added another site maintained by the same person (a friend). In doing so I notice that the top link was still to the now defunct Zetten Balkan Festival so I replaced that with one to its successor, the Zevenhuizen Zomerfestival. Also sadly removed the Ipswich Dancer link as the site expired (although the dance group it advertised is still going) after the maintainer (another friend of mine) died.
2015/3/1: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated 'Nevestinsko', 'Vrličko Kolo', 'Vallja e Përmetit', 'Tamzara (slow)' & 'Žensko Svatbarsko Horo'. Three of these include file name changes which will give some 404 errors from bookmarks & search engines as I have not bothered configuring permanent redirects.
2015/3/1: Updated an obsolete program
It is still obsolete. I just corrected a Windows to Linux conversion mistake.
2014/10/4: Longer silent MP3s & more uses for the Silent CD
Some readers have been wanting longer MP3s of silence without converting from the WAV tracks of my CD of silence. It turns out that MP3s of those longer tracks were mostly just full of duplicate block headers so they zip compressed well so I've added them. Also added some more uses of my silences that readers have told me of.
2014/10/4: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated 'Syrtós Kítrinou' with proofreading corrections from Jutta Malzbender. Added 'Joc din Slatina' & 'Syrtos Hasapikos' which I lead at Youlgrave this year to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection. Also updated 'Syrtós Kítrinou', 'Arap', 'Opa Çupa', 'Ovčarkina' & 'Gaida avasi'.
2014/9/9: 2012 Christmas card typo correction
It was titled "... 2011". Now corrected.
2014/5/17: Updated punting links
Updated the links on my punting instructions page after Scudamore's, the main commercial punt hire company in Cambridge contacted me. They had restructured their site & it turns out that my ancient (by modern WWW standards) punting instructions are still a high hit in search engines!
2014/3/18: Added my haggis recipe
I've been making tasty haggis for parties (particularly Scottish dance ones) for a few years since working out how to make it without all the faff of using a sheep's stomach (which is not eaten anyway) and hours of boiling. Friends have asked me for my recipe and at last I have written up my quick & easy haggis recipe.
2014/3/18: Typo corrections to the standard deviation explanation
Corrected the encoding of Greek letters & made grammar corrections (& split some long phases) in my explanation of why there is the "minus one" in some formulae for standard deviations after a reader thanked my for that old article causing me to reread it.
2013/11/16: Added my 2012 Christmas card
Almost a year after I created it, I've added my 2012 my Christmas Cards collection. The delay was partly because photograph, which was not originally intended to be published let alone as a Christmas card, was also part of an artwork series intended for a few friends which was not completed & distributed until September 2013.
2013/11/16: More Balkan etc. dance note updates
Largely caught up with writing up the new dances I've lead this year (mostly a deceased friend's favourites I learnt her memorial dance session at Youlgrave & those I learnt on a dance trip to Bulgaria) so added 9 new dances to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection: 'Hora Veche', 'Tsamikos Kharditsa', 'Runaway Train', 'Birthday Girl', 'Heyamo', 'Gaida avasi', 'Boaliisko', 'Kate-Kate' and 'Todorovo horo & Enjovo horo medley'. Also 'Ege Karşılaması', 'Hex' & 'Hora de la cîmpie'.
2013/8/18: Added a better cover for the silent CD
When burning copies of my silent CD recently, I made a better CD cover for it so I replaced the plain track list previously on this site with that. I also added CC-by-sa freeware licence to it (previously it was only GPL which pre-dated me adding the track list / cover for download & accidentally meant that users should technically have distributed that computer file when giving printouts; that was not what I intended to force them to do).
2013/8/18: Added more tips Irish tea cake & chocolate freezer cake recipes
Added notes about more sugar & tea options & a vegan version to the Irish tea cake recipe & more detail of how to avoid sloppiness in the alcoholic version of my chocolate freezer (refrigerator) cake recipe.
2013/8/18: Added warnings about file overwriting to my bulk regexp renamer of files
After accidentally deleting a lot of a photographs (it was okay, I retrieved them from backups) when renumbering them wrongly caused them to all overwrite each-other, I added a warning about that (& a way around it) to the instructions for my bulk file & directory renamer.
2013/8/18: Various typo & character encoding mistake corrections
Small corrections in the C Pointers article, the Rainbow Labyrinths classical page, the list of approximate physical constants and the dance notes to Ege Karşılaması (my most asked for dance & I'd spelt the name wrong!).
2013/8/18: Added link to Roma dance notation
An anonymous reader sent me a link to downloadable instructions for Roma dance notation. Previously I'd only come across paper copies. Furthermore it is should be definitive as it on the website of the person who created the notation back in 1969. I added the links to it to my folk dance links list.
2013/8/18: More Balkan etc. dance note updates
Most of my recent new dances I have not yet fully written up for reference so only added 'Ketri Ketri' to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection. Updated 'Valle E Permetit', 'Damul', 'Preumblata' & 'Hora de la cîmpie' though.
2013/3/26: Corrected a typo in the C pointers explanation
A reader, Richmond Kerville Magallon, spotted a syntax error typo (one dot but a significant one :-) ) in my C Pointers article by actually making programs from my example code (which I wrote straight into the article not copied from a syntax checked program). Fixed it.
2013/2/3: Updated Cotswold Morris Dance cheat sheet
I had intended to take a break from updating this site and get on with my other personal computer catching up. However it turned out that early on that list was updating my local Cotswold Morris Dancing cheat sheet & Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes. There are exports of those on this site I thought I'd "just quickly" upload the updates. Turns out that, ironically, finding a replacement for the converter to my (now rare) Palm PDA format was easy (on Windows 'docinout' portable app; on Linux 'txt2pdbdoc' in default repository) but a replacement for my Windows Word 2k + CutePDF Writer PDF virtual printer for simply converting Word RTF to PDF with subsetted embedded fonts (the normal setting I thought) and multiple pages per sheet (normal again) took a long time to work out (ended up with a bodge using OpenOffice Writer, ps2pdf, Evince & a PDF virtual printer; both OpenOffice Writer's & Okular's direct PDF export features were faulty). Hopefully back to catching up with non-web computer tasks again now.
2013/1/31: Corrections & additional tips in a few recipes
Added advice on freezing to my Sachertorte recipe. Optimised the ordering of operations better in my melting moments recipe. Corrected the lasagna recipe in my party buffet recipes for 40 or more people (I'd missed the cheese off the ingredients list and someone noticed). The website is now up to date after the 9 month editing break but I'll get on with some other computer tasks before commencing adding anything new to the site.
2013/1/30: Another example for bulk regexp renaming of files
Added the example of moving files into folders based on the initial letter of the filename to the instructions for my bulk file & directory renamer.
2013/1/30: Updated search and replace in multiple files program
A very small update to my command line program to do search and replace in multiple files with regular expressions & recursion: just got the header-like first line (which is ignored in almost all cases other than when running it as if a shell script) wrong. Only noticed when transferring my program scripts to Linux for my own use.
2013/1/29: Uploaded many more patterned dates found by patterns in dates finding program
The latest year I originally uploaded results for was 2011 which was several years in the future at that time. Ironic as hype about date patterns made big news in 2012 but my site was not there to show them just how common such patterns are, especially in years with low digits like that. Since then web storage & download speeds have gone up nearly 2 orders of magnitude so now I've uploaded calendar dates with patterns for every year in the 20th & 21st centuries (which should be enough to cover most reader's birth dates & current plans for a little while more) as separate files and every year in the 2nd & 3rd millennium as compressed archive.
2013/01/28: Added more uses for silent CD tracks
A reader sent me two more uses for my silent audio tracks so I've added them to the list. That makes 10 uses so far, 2/3 contributed by others and many practical, for what I originally made as just a novelty item! I'm pleased it has been so useful.
2013/01/28: Starting on updating the natively written HTML pages
Found a Linux WYSIWYG(ish) HTML editor to replace the old version of Kompozer I used on Windows. It is the latest version of Kompozer for Linux which has everything the previous one had with some irritations fixed and some useful extras added. It took a while to get the spellchecker working though: the version in the Ubuntu LTS 10.10 repositories was a slightly out of date one with broken spellchecker and finding where it stored its user-dictionary (to import my previous one) needed some investigation. However it is now in place so those pages I edit directly as hand-written HTML can now be edited again without the inconvenience of editing HTML tables etc. as source code. Also tried setting up my email client with multiple accounts for downloading the emails sent to this site's public address but failed (not surprising as the client is an obsolete one originally written for Mac, ported to Windows & now being used by me under an emulator on Linux!). However, using less elegant method I downloaded the thousands of emails from the past 6 months or so and found them all to be just spam (sensible email from readers mostly comes in via the contact form instead).
2013/01/27: Updated main stylesheet
I've realised that all the font options I'd specified as site defaults (mostly non-antialiasing ones) happened to commercial Apple & Microsoft ones (albeit used ubiquitously on all platforms) so I've now added some suitable common freeware ones too.
2013/01/27: Some character encoding corrections
I've ported my website checking scripts to Linux (not a big job as they were Perl scripts using the old cross-platform tools HTML Tidy & Linklint which turn out not to be just still maintained but in default Ubuntu repositories) and improving them. They revealed various character encoding errors in previously published material. Fixed those.
2013/01/26: New & corrected Balkan etc. dance notes
In resuming editing updating this site, I'm starting with my Balkan etc. dance notes collection. This is both because it is easy (I've already ported my HTML rendering program scripts to Linux & rendered HTML won't need syntax checking) and because I told people at Youlgrave dance event in June last year that I would upload notes for my new dances imminently. New dances are 'Ali Bey', 'Kost ar c'hoad' & 'Dunkelbunt Feet'. Updates & corrections are in 'A, ya po lugu', 'Hava Nagila', 'Hovs Bashi', 'March of the Mods', 'Mayim Mayim' & 'Şchioapa'.
2013/01/26: Nine months since previous update!
Sorry it has been so long. There are more dances to add, more tips to add to recipes and many corrections to make let alone starting on new material. The reason for the hiatus is twofold. Firstly my home computer was nearly a decade old and so became obsolete for some tasks such as video (I only made from low spec parts originally) & vulnerable with lack of OS (Windows 2000 updates) so it needed replacement. So much was tied to old OS (much of my familiar software was even older than Win2k!) or hardware (replacing CPU would need replacing motherboard, memory, graphics card, HDD etc. too) that even switching to an off-the shelf Windows 7 laptop would need so many applications replaced & workflows changed that I might as well upgrade everything to something better to keep for the next decade. Hence a switch to Linux (currently Ubuntu LTS). Then the second reason came into play: I was fortunate enough to get a new job much more interesting, useful & in nicer culture than my previous. The one drawback was that it was wholly computery and involved learning & setting up a lot of new-to-me software on the job so I did not want to do likewise at home too. Hence I both got into a computer writing backlog and stuck with many of my old applications, including those I used to edit this website, not replaced or (for DIY ones) reconfigured.
2012/04/22: Correction to Balkan etc. dance notes
Corrected typos a friend spotted in 'A, ya po lugu' in my Balkan etc. dance notes collection. Also updated the source code & program scripts from DOS to Linux text file format & paths.
2012/4/4: Corrected CD image for the Silent CD
After a reader had problems burning the ready-made CD image of my CD of silence, I worked out that the '.iso' image format produced by Nero was not standard. Audio CDs have some meta-data outside the ISO file system and so the reliable method is to image it as 3 files: the main '.img' file system image, an optional '.cdt' file of track names and a '.cue' file to tie them together. I replaced the image with that format after testing it in several burning programs across Windows & Linux.
2012/4/4: Added another use for the Silent CD
A reader reported that my silent audio tracks were useful for silencing an iPhone which required music playing in order to send satnav audio output to a car hands-free system.
2012/4/4: Added 'infront' to the FAQ
Added an explanation of why I often miss out the space in 'in front' to the FAQ as some readers have pointed out as a typo. I do it intentionally in the dance notes for clarity.
2012/4/4: Typo corrections in C++ const explanation
Readers found three more minor typos in my C++ const explanation (one, a "the the", was reported by two readers independently). Corrected the typos.
2011/12/31: Renamed 'Art' section to 'Artwork'
My 'art' section is appropriately called artwork so I renamed it. Also moved it higher up the home page than the photography advice section as it is now bigger & more popular than that.
2011/12/31: Removed obsolete programs from home page
Some of my computer programs are obsolete for various reasons. I've left them on this site lest anyone is still using them but removed the links to them from the home page and moved the links on the computer programs page to a separate table of obsolete programs.
2011/12/31: Typo corrections in C++ const explanation
Another reader found a typo in my C++ const explanation. Corrected it.
2011/12/31: Corrected greaseproof paper to baking paper
After finding the problem in the Irish tea cake recipe, I've gone through the other recipes and fixed references to 'greaseproof' rather than 'baking' paper too.
2011/12/31: Added more tips Irish tea cake recipe
Added notes about using teas other than normal black not being as good to the Irish tea cake recipe, that baking paper is better than greaseproof paper (only after my local supermarket changed its greaseproof paper formulation did I find out decades late that they are not synonymous & that classic greaseproof is intended to be non-stick!) and that silicone rubber liners increase the cooking time too much.
2011/12/31: Added full size images for all my Christmas cards
When I first created the collection of my Christmas Cards on this site in 2008, I did not include full-size copies of the photographs because I feared the 'bandwidth' of my server being exceeded. Since then the allocation has gone up greatly so I have retrospectively added them. This has tripled the size of my site (from 9 MiB to 27 MiB)! (I also did some hidden tidying-up: where the card borders are same between years, the images now link to the same place rather than duplicates.)
2011/12/31: Added 2011 Christmas card to collection
Added last year's Christmas card to my gallery of Christmas Cards.
2011/11/27: Added more tips to flapjack recipe
A reader (Emily Howarth) suggested that it would be helpful to other readers if I put the temperature for the crunchy flapjack recipe in explicitly (in addition to as a temperature increase) to make it quicker to reader. I've now done so. Also added another reader-suggestion for how to get golden syrup in the USA.
2011/11/27: Corrected Greek characters in Approx. Physical Constants page
The Greek characters for 'micro' etc. had got lost in converting this site to UTF-8. I've put them back in.
2011/11/27: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the dances I lead at a Hallowe'en party to my Balkan etc. dance notes collection: 'Dimna Juda', 'Cherkessia Kfula', 'Hex' and 'Trei păzeste batrinesc'. Also updated 'Nevestinsko', 'Manastirijanka', 'Preumblata', 'Syrtós Kítrinou' & 'Kareve Yom'.
2011/11/27: Tidied spelling & subregion naming in the Balkan etc. dance notes
Changed the spelling I used for the 'Cherkessia' step throughout to the English spelling I've found most commonly on the WWW (there are many Latin transcriptions in use in the UK including ones via German and Dutch) and homogenised my way of giving subregion details in my Balkan etc. dance notes collection.
2011/9/6: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the dances I taught at the August 2011 Youlgrave dance weekend and as a stand-in for one one of my local groups to my Balkan etc. dance notes collection: 'Brîulet vîlcean', 'Esashi Jinku', 'Nevestinsko', 'Ovčarkina', and a slow 'Tamzara'. Also renamed the collection of casual Bulgarian street festival dances from 'Bulgarian Party' to 'Bulgarian Street Party' to make it clearer.
2011/6/20: Added larger pictures to photography tips articles
The small thumbnails used to show the results of experiments with maintaining colour consistency in flatbed scanning photographic prints & reprinting photographs did not link to bigger pictures both because it was unnecessary & because the site did not have capacity when those pages were originally written. Capacity has since increased so I've linked the thumbnails to the larger (still small but bigger than the thumbnails) old working copies I had archived away.
2011/6/20: Grammar corrections & additional information in C++ const explanation
A reader pointed out that my C++ const explanation article had numerous grammatical mistakes and complications. Indeed it was so (mainly from having tweaked bits of the article numerous times without overall proofreading) and I wonder how it is has become so popular (top hit for 'C++ const' in Google for several years now) when it was that messy. I've now corrected the mistakes and made some of the compact but confusing grammatical structures simpler. I also added in a note about the new 'const_cast' feature which another reader pointed out to me.
2011/6/15: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the dances I taught at the May 2011 Youlgrave dance weekend and as a stand-in for one one of my local groups to my Balkan etc. dance notes collection: 'Malo Vlaško Kolo', 'Alunelul Batut', 'Hey Par', 'Hora de pe almăj', 'Lenochek', 'Lourke' and 'I don't care to lose'. Also updated 'Teen', 'Gaïda Gynekíos Makedonikos', 'Raca', 'Na Pûrt' & 'Džumbus'.
2011/6/15: Additional advice in a few recipes
Added one extra bit of advice to each of 3 my recipes: Sachertorte recipe (warning about not over-cooking the chocolate glaze), novelty wines (a tip from a reader about how to print damp-proof labels on an inkjet printer) and flapjack recipe (yet more on the USA golden syrup alternatives saga).
2011/1/7: Updates to Balkan etc. dance notes
Updated in my Balkan etc. dance notes collection 'Oj devojko dušo moja' & 'Tankosava' (the latter after direct unsolicited comments from the choreographer!).
2011/1/3: Added 2010 Christmas card to collection
Added last year's Christmas card to my gallery of Christmas Cards. For the first time (now that storage has increased greatly) I've put the full size photograph of a Christmas card on this site for downloading - that one download has increased the size of this site by 10%! I also corrected IPTC headers in some earlier images.
2010/1/22: Added C string explanation to C pointers explanation
A reader found my C strings example confusing (not being used to having to allow space for the terminal null byte) so added an explanation of how C strings work to my C Pointers article.
2010/11/14: Added more tips to 2 recipes
Added more tips, an explanation of 'mixed spice' for non-UK readers & a moist variation to the Irish tea cake recipe and yet another reader comment to the saga of non-UK alternatives for golden syrup to the flapjack recipe.
2010/10/31: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added another dance, 'Manastirijanka' to my Balkan etc. dance notes collection. Also updated the notes to 'Arcanul Bătrînesc' & 'Oj devojko dušo moja'.
2010/10/31: Another example for bulk regexp renaming of files
In response to a reader's question, added the example of changing the case of filenames to the instructions for my bulk file & directory renamer.
2010/10/31: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the new dances I lead at the August 2010 Youlgrave event, 'Ovivi erk', 'Pirava Dae', 'Opa Çupa' & 'Mayim Mayim' plus 'Óine Dóine', which I'd lead earlier but wrote up belatedly, to my Balkan etc. dance notes collection. (It is pure coincidence that 60% of them begin with 'O' & the others are close to 'O' in the alphabet.) Also updated the notes to 'Krajdunavsko', 'Signa' & 'Arap'.
2010/6/10: Rearranged ordering of computer information articles in contents pages
Moved my Powerpoint articles down because they are almost obsolete as Powerpoint has been through several editions since I wrote them (although the fundamentals are the same) and moved up my programming articles after being told my C Pointers one is high in Google for that subject and finding my C++ const article is not only back to being top in Google for 'C++' with 'const' but for 'const' alone!
2010/1/22: Corrections to the strings sections of my C pointers explanation
A diligent reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) of my Why C has Pointers reported two typos (one of which unfortunately gave comprehensible but wrong result) and that some of my example code would not compile. We traced it to being compiler specific (I'd based it on programming on the Cambridge University mainframe, Phoenix, two decades ago: that allowed self-modifying executables which current systems typically intercept as 'illegal operation'/'segmentation fault' errors as being security risks) so I substantially rewrote & expanded that section based on code that compiles in GCC & runs in Cygwin without errors.
2010/6/10: Advised on negative, in preference to print, scanning of photographs
The author of the Scanimage site contacted me pointing out that my article anent scanning photographic prints using a flatbed scanner did not mention one of the advantages of scanning negative film, the higher dynamic range possible. Added that in.
2010/6/10: Added CD-RW warning to article on how to convert audio tape recordings to CDs
Although I had specified CD-R in my article explaining how to convert tape recordings to CDs (& MP3s), I had not explicitly stated the compatibility problem in using CD-RW thinking everyone knew that. After finding that was not so when a friend came to an event with a CD-RW that would not play in the player available, I've added a warning & explanation.
2010/6/10: Shorter shell script for empty directory deleting
A reader (Keshav Attrey) pointed out a new feature of the GNU 'find' command means the my Linux command line script can be shortened so I've added a shortened script to accompany my program to delete empty directories. The main program (which is in cross-platform Perl) is unaffected.
2010/6/10: More Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the new dances I lead at the May 2010 Youlgrave event, 'Krajdunavsko', 'Oj devojko dušo moja', 'Valle e dardhes', 'March of the Mods' & 'Hava Nagila' to my Balkan etc. dance notes collection. At last, by including 'Krajdunavsko', I've finished off the notes to particular dance which first started me on typing up Balkan dances and so lead to this online collection. Also updated the notes to 'Na Pûrt' & 'Çavreşli'.
2010/6/10: Typo correction in Flapjack experiments
Eight years after writing up the experiment which lead to my popular flapjack recipe, I spotted a 1 letter typo. Corrected it.
2010/1/22: Party buffet menu
Added an recipe to my recipe collection page. Instead of a detailed recipe for one dish, it is menu and recipes for a whole buffet for 40 or more people which I wrote up for friends who attended a party which I did the catering for.
2010/1/22: Added 2009 Christmas card to collection
Added last year's Christmas card to my gallery of Christmas Cards. Also corrected an ALT-text mistake on the index page.
2010/1/22: Added C string explanation to C pointers explanation
After a reader of my Why C has Pointers article asked why my string example appeared to be a byte too long, I added a brief explanation of the C string null byte termination to the article.
2010/1/22: Minor correction in Balkan etc. dance notes
Fixed a typo in the 'Raca' notes in the Balkan etc. dance notes collection.
2009/11/28: Minor formatting correction & file name simplification for Rainbow Labyrinths
In the Classical Labyrinths index page, had forgotten to make the animations picture link borderless. Fixed that. Replaced '&' in some image filenames with 'And' as, even though properly encoded in the HTML links, some browsers got confused by them. Did not bother declaring the pages as new versions for these minor tweaks.
2009/11/28: Added to & updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Added notes for the dances I lead at the August 2009 Youlgrave event (other than a self-choreographed joke one) - Vrličko Kolo, Şchioapa, Nyfiatikos (from Kozani), Na Pûrt & Silent Kolo - to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection. Also added another simplified version to the Ege Karşılaması notes.
2009/11/28: Correction & additions to rock cake recipe
Corrected a typo in my rock cakes recipe. Also added instructions for a version I made as a Hallowe'en novelty & added optional mixed spice to the recipe after a reader, Jetty Lake, pointed out rock cakes work well with mixed spice which lead me to ask the source, my mother, and find that her recipe indeed originally had it but she had removed it for family preference.
2009/8/16: Another example for bulk regexp renaming of files
In response to a reader's thanks & requirements, I tried using Perl's facility to run an expression, instead of just assembling a string, in search-&-replace with my bulk file & directory renamer program to solve their problem and found it worked fine. Added it as example to the instructions.
2009/8/16: Made links to contact page not look like email addresses
In the footers to many of the pages, the link to the contact page had as its text an email address. This was originally so that readers getting print-outs of pages who had access to email but not the WWW could contact me. Those are now probably rare as almost all PCs etc. on the Internet have web browsers. A disadvantage was that readers would only find the better contact method, the form, from those clicking on what looked like an email address rather than copy-&-pasting it into their email client. Therefore I've now changed the link text on those pages to my name.
2009/8/16: Typo correction in Sachertorte pages
Corrected a minor typo from 9 years ago in the basis recipe page of my Sachertorte recipe.
2009/8/16: Decreased font size
Reduced the font size from 11 pt to 10.25 pt to reduce scrolling. I reduced it in 2004 from 12 pt to 11 pt because typical computer monitors became clearer than they were when I first created this site and because popular web browsers allowed text magnification. Now that virtually all monitors are clear LCDs, I've reduced it again. As the formatting on this site is stylesheet based and heading etc. sizes are specified as relative, it only needed one number in one CSS file to be changed to change sizes throughout the site.
2009/8/16: Unhid referring page on contact form
The contact form sends, besides the information the reader manually provides, the referring page. That was an automatically populated field which was hidden for tidiness. Some readers might like to remove or change that data so I've now made it visible & editable.
2009/8/16: Homogenised site link case
In some links to this website home page in some of the page footers, I had spelt "http://Duramecho.com" with the capital 'D' derived from 'Duramecho' originally being my pseudonym. In others I had "http://duramecho.com" in the common way of WWW URLs. Both work as domain names are case insensitive but it was untidy so I've standardised them all to lower case. It was an easy job despite there being 315 HTML pages currently on this site because I used my search and replace in multiple files program.
2009/8/14: Added more reader-inspired information to 4 recipes
I can't leave the recipes be: more comments, suggestions & questions keep coming in from readers! Added material from one reader each to the Irish tea cake recipe & melting moments recipe and three readers each to the rock cakes recipe & the flapjack recipe. Also added comments about 'margarine' definition & the unsuitability of lard to the flapjack one.
2009/8/14: More dance site links
Added links to a new website for one of the dance holidays I regularly go on to a national dance council based near where I live to my folk dance links list.
2009/8/14: Updated Balkan etc. dance notes
Added more anent the background to the music of Syrtós Kítrinou to Balkan etc. dance notes collection.
2009/6/21: Debugged program for finding dates with patterns
Noticed a bug in my my program for finding calendar dates with patterns. It accidentally treated the symmetry of the digits '2' & '5' as a rotation instead of a mirroring. Corrected it and recreated the example results.
2009/6/7: Typo corrections in instructions for bulk regexp renaming of files
Whilst writing the instructions for the new search and replace in multiple files program based on my existing instructions for my bulk file & directory rename program, I noticed typos in the latter. Now corrected.
2009/6/7: Program to do Search and Replace in Multiple Files
Added my command line program to do search and replace in multiple files with regular expressions & recursion to this website.
2009/5/30: CD image & inlay for the Silent CD
Added a ready-made CD "ISO" image of my CD of silence to existing individual tracks downloads. It compressed even better than the WAVs, over quarter of a million to one ratio! Also added the CD case table of contents inlay in RFT & PDF formats.
2009/5/27: Added more dances to the Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the dances I lead at the May 2009 Youlgrave event that are not already there - 'Michanicos', 'Muiere, Muiere', 'Svekrvino oro', 'Raca' & 'Koko Samoa' - to my Balkan etc. dance notes.
2009/4/16: Added 2008 Christmas card to collection
Added last year's Christmas card to my gallery of Christmas Cards.
2009/4/14: Added to the FAQ
Updated the FAQ, with some examples of people whom I am not after finding an unsavoury character with the same name as me.
2009/4/14: Hummus title typo correction
Accidentally forgot to change the title when using another web page as a template for my hummus recipe. Fixed it.
2009/4/14: More advice for doing two sided printing with a one sided printer
I received a suggestion for a supposedly better way of doing it that actually had a flaw. The sender did not provide a return address but I thought it likely that some others might make the same mistake so I added a warning anent it to the how to do two sided printing with a one-sided printer article.
2009/4/14: Added file moving abilities to the bulk regexp file renamer
A reader used my Recursive Regexp Rename program for moving files (a use I had not thought of when making it but which it worked for), suggested adding the option of having destination directories automatically created when required and even gave example source code (wow!). That was over a year ago but I have at last got around to incorporating the new feature into the program, making some robustness improvements and documenting it.
2009/4/14: Added more detail to privacy policy
Added detail about what information is logged by the email contact script to the Privacy Policy.
2009/4/14: Added more dances to the Balkan etc. dance notes
Added 3 more dances which I have recently lead, Voronezhkye khorovodniye chastushky, Džumbus & Leros, to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection.
2008/12/31: Added another dance to the Balkan etc. dance notes
Added Drumul Dracului, which I was asked to lead in a Hallowe'en party, to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection.
2008/12/31: Updates to the existing Balkan etc. dance notes
Added an alternative version of Damul, homogenised the spelling of the 'Cherkersia' step which I had transcribed into English differently in three different dances & corrected a minor typo in the page formatting program of the Balkan etc. dance notes collection.
2008/12/31: Minor typo correction in the index page of my Cotswold Morris cheat sheet
Just a minor typo fix in some background information in the index page of my Cotswold Morris Dancing cheat sheet, not the dance notes themselves.
2008/12/31: Corrections, more formats & another use for the Silent CD
A reader had difficulties with my CD of silence. One problem was that my compression was accidentally .zip.gz not the .tar.gz.tar.gz I had labelled the file as. Fixed that to proper .tar.gz.gz compression and added a .zip.zip PKzip alternative lest there are M$ Windows users without the ability to uncompress Gzip files. The other problem was that their M$ Windows Media Player did not like playing silent WAV files so I've added MP3 versions of shortest tracks (MP3s being much larger than Gzipped WAV files for silence). I also came up with another use of silent tracks so added that to the list.
2008/12/31: Updated the Cotswold Morris detailed notes
When standing in for an injured dancer in a carol service, I noticed some more typos & ambiguities in my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes. Corrected those and added the dance we did in the carol service.
2008/10/19: Added a .htaccess file for this site
To avoid errors from the old URL of that two sided printing page being reached from unupdated search engines and links from other sites, I've added to this site a .htaccess file to this site with a 301 redirect to the new location. As it now has a top level .htaccess file, I've also put it a redirect for visitors who use the host name of this site with a 'www.' prefix (which works but leads to duplicating of pages in search engines as they follow the links and index this same site via both host names). Their browsers will be automatically redirected to the same page on this site's canonical host name (without the optional 'www.').
2008/10/19: More tips for doing two sided printing with a one sided printer
Surprisingly, I am still getting questions from the old article anent how to do two sided printing with a one-sided printer despite 'manual duplex' (which is essentially what I described) being built into many modern printer drivers. The main addition is a set of work-arounds for software that does not allow odd/even page separation. Included ready-to-use lists of even & odd numbers. Now the article is more than one file, I've moved it into its own subdirectory.
2008/10/18: Updated program for recovering lost emails from Google Desktop Search's cache
The program for recovering lost emails Google Desktop Search's cache has been updated to work with the latest version (5.7) of GDS. The update was made, and kindly sent to me, by a visitor to this site who wishes to remain anonymous. I have put their update in with my article (along with the old program in case anyone is still using GDS version 2) for other visitors who want it but who don't do programming.
2008/10/18: Added more Balkan etc. dance notes
Added the dances I lead at the October 2008 Balkanplus evening that are not already there - Hora de la cîmpie, Arcanul Bătrînesc, Gnjilane & Signa - to the Balkan etc. dance notes collection. Also added a little more about the timing oddities to the notes for Syrtós Kítrinou.
2008/10/18: Corrected convert audio tape recordings to CDs article
Just a minor typo of one missing word but possibly misleading. Fixed now.
2008/10/8: Added historical perspective note to OOP article
A reader commented that my "What is Object Oriented Programming" article appeared almost insulting to OOP. Things have changed since I wrote the article. Then many programmers were unused to OOP and OOP was being promoted with evangelical hype that put off or confused many people. My article was written for them. Now many programmers come from university with Java as their first language (personally I think machine code should be the first language for academic training) and so think in OOP! Added a historical note/disclaimer to explain that.
2008/10/3: Updated the minor deprecated HTML in remaining generated pages
Updated the programs that generate my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes & animated rainbow labyrinth artwork pages to create HTML 4.01 Strict pages. The former program was easy to modify but the latter was a bit awkward as it the pages were HTML generated by a Javascript program which was in turn generated by a Perl program! Furthermore its weird use/abuse of HTML had many deprecated features (old DOCTYPE, no charset specified, SCRIPT element attribute of LANGUAGE='javascript' not TYPE='text/javascript', BODY BGCOLOR attribute, raw text BODY element, Javascript write() writing HTML closing tags without SGML escaping the '\', no TITLE element, TABLE ALIGN attribute, TD WIDTH & HEIGHT attributes). Hopefully the whole site is now up to date in HTML and the next changes to this site can be new material useful to readers rather than repairing the foundations most don't see.
2008/10/2: More background information added to the Balkan etc. dance notes index page
Added in a brief explanation of why I wrote the notes, why they likely to be imperfect, what else the formatting program can do etc. to the Balkan etc. dance notes index page.
2008/10/2: Update to Balkan etc. dance
In the Imate Li Vino notes I had made a reference to a Western dance to help the explanation. It turned out that I was wrong about the Western dance, oops, so removed that comment. The notes about Imate Li Vino itself are unchanged.
2008/9/24: Changed junk non-breaking spaces back to normal spaces
KompoZer has an irritating shortcut for inserting an HTML " " (non-breaking space): 2 consecutive spaces become "  ". Hence to type a "&nbsp" (e.g. between number & units) requires typing space, space, next letter, left, left, backspace, right & right! Also the temporary double space when deleting a word using 'del' causes it to leave a " " instead of space behind. Only just realised that. Tediously found & removed lots of spurious " " from pages edited in KompoZer.
2008/9/24: Updated yet more minor deprecated HTML
Surprisingly INPUT elements directly in FORM elements (or in tables in them) are no longer allowed. For some reason only block-level elements are allowed in a FORM. Lining the FORM element with a (basically useless) null DIV element satisfied the validator. Likewise I fixed inline text elements no longer being allowed in BLOCKQUOTE elements. Also replaced all the ALIGN="CENTER" attribute that has been deprecated from the TABLE tag with a CSS class. All manually generated pages should be HTML 4.01 Strict compliant now to W3C Validator level.
2008/9/24: Removed journal volume number underlining in citation
Found that the U tag for underlining has been deprecated. Could have replaced it with CSS but only used it for volume/issue numbers in academic format citations (of which there is currently only one!) as that was the format I used at university & HTML guides recommend not using underline as it looks like a link. Checked with friends still in academia & found that that was not a common standard anyway so removed the volume underlining (& author bolding).
2008/9/21: Updated more minor deprecated HTML
The BORDER=0 attribute in IMG tags that used to be used to prevent unwanted link borders appearing on images that were links (all my image links have text link alternatives next to them) has been deprecated. I bulk removed it from my artwork collections as the default value of an image border is now 0 anyway only to find that Internet Explorer & Firefox (unlike Opera) have not been updated with that and put a border on default-borderless image links! Drat. Had to go through them again and link them to a CSS class declaration specifying no border. Also replaced the deprecated ALIGN="CENTER" attribute that has been deprecated from the P tag with CSS classes. Annoyingly I had used it as a replacement for the deprecated CENTRE tag only to now find it too has been scrapped.
2008/9/21: Converted the whole site to UTF-8
It turns out that the default of browsers assuming HTML was ASCII unless otherwise specified has been deprecated (which does not seem sensible to me). Hence I've put (previously superfluous) explicit 'charset' declarations in all the remaining pages ASCII encoded HTML pages. I declared them all as UTF-8 for future-proofing (UTF-8 is a superset of ASCII). In doing so I tested every page and found some page that had non-ASCII characters that I had forgotten about (particularly the degree symbol and hence most of my recipes were affected). Those were all in windows-1252 characters and have now been converted to UTF-8 too.
2008/9/21: More alternatives to golden syrup added to the flapjack recipe
I've now had so many suggestions for (& questions anent) alternatives to golden syrup for people making flapjack in countries (particularly the USA) where it is not a common ingredient that I have expanded what started as a comment then became a paragraph into a section of its own in my flapjack recipe.
2008/9/21: Added more detail to chocolate freezer cake recipe
Added more tips to my chocolate freezer (refrigerator) cake recipe including advice against using a blender to mash the biscuits. Also added more detail about the alternative names after finding that under one of its alternative names, 'Polish Cake', it was 2nd from top hit in Google (& top from seven million for 'cake polishing'!), making me feel guilty as there are probably many cakes really from Poland that should come higher than mine, whereas under its logical name, 'chocolate refrigerator cake', it was not a high hit.
2008/9/21: Corrected minor image error in 2006 Christmas card
In cropping the border image of the 2006 card in my Christmas cards gallery to go around the central photograph image I had accidentally got it one pixel out causing a slight mismatch of lines in the artwork. Corrected that.
2008/9/20: Added more Balkan etc. dances
Added the dances I lead at the August 2008 Youlgrave event that are not already there - Damul, For Jill, Gîrliceanca, Koshuu Bon Odori, Mairam Govand & Syrtós Kítrinou - to my Balkan etc. dance notes.
2008/9/20: Updated minor deprecated HTML
After sending one of my pages to a W3C validator (by mistake, updating a web browser changed its keyboard shortcuts!), I found that the CLEAR attribute of the <BR> tag in HTML had been deprecated from HTML 4.01 Strict, so replaced those with CSS on this site (involved updating my Balkan etc. dance notes formatting program). On testing after doing that I found that I had got the case wrong in the DOCTYPE of all the manually edited pages so fixed those too (at least that was quick job using a search & replace in multiple files program).
2008/9/11: Typo corrections in squared Jericho Rainbow Labyrinth explanation
Corrected more typos in Classical Labyrinths page.
2008/9/11: Updates in Balkan etc. dance notes
A friend who is an authority in Balkan dances (& former chair of the UK's Society of International Folk Dancing) corrected my history correction in the Armenian dance Teen by providing an even earlier archival record showing that it has changed at twice (going full circle) so I've added that to my increasing complicated (for a simple dance!) notes. Also corrected a missing Romanian accent in the Preumblata notes.
2008/7/16: Typo corrections in Balkan etc. dance notes
Noticed that I had accidentally dated the all notes I had written up after teaching at the Youlgrave August 2007 event as 2008. Corrected them and another typo that I found in the steps for Teen.
2008/7/16: More variations for flapjack & rock cakes recipes
Added instructions for lemon curd, apple & coconut versions of my rock cake recipe and an apricot jam version of my flapjack recipe. All of those were suggestions from readers of this site which I have since tested. Also added notes anent the results of an experiment into using a normal electric mixer instead of rubbing-in by hand to the rock cake recipe and anent the alternative names for 'chopped', 'porridge' & 'rolled' oats to the flapjack recipe.
2008/7/16: Omission from food recipe ingredients lists corrected
When duplicating the ingredient amount specifications, I found that some of the flavourings that were in my melting moments & hummus recipes were missing from the ingredients lists at the start of those recipes. Put them in.
2008/7/16: More helpful details added to food recipes
I find it annoying having to look back to the ingredients list at the start of a conventional recipe and find up each ingredient's line again when reaching the point in a recipe when one is about to use the ingredient and so needs to know how much to use. So I duplicated the amounts into the body of each of the recipes where relevant. I also added Gas Mark versions of the cooking temperatures that were previously only in degrees Celsius to save gas oven users (including myself!) having to look up conversions each time and specified egg sizes where important.
2008/6/19: Typo corrections in & clarification added to Cotswold Morris cheat sheet
Similarly to my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes, I found typos in Cotswold Morris Dancing cheat sheet. These were more serious as the lack of redundant information in a compact summary meant that a reader could not always work around the typos. Three dances out of 70 were thus messed up (two with steps missing from the chorus, one with the wrong hand specified for a stick).Corrected those typos. Also added a few useful extras, like the default direction of a Hey.
2008/6/14: Typo corrections in & clarification added to Cotswold Morris detailed notes
When using my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes myself when returning to Morris dancing briefly after a break, I found some typos and corrected them. I also found that I had omitted some useful details of directions, in particular the default direction of a Hey, so I added put them in.
2008/6/14: Added more links to folk dance sheet music sites
Added a few more to my folk dance links list, no longer restricting it to ones in abc format (although that is virtually the de facto standard for folk dance music, particularly English, there are some other format, including simple scanning handwritten scores). Also some other updates including changing the link for my favourite Balkan dance event, Zetten, for the second time this year as at last Silviu Ciuciumiş's Diona Foundation has its own website.
2008/6/14: Typo correction on home page
Corrected a minor & insignificant typo.
2008/6/12: Added more Balkan etc. dances
Added the dances I lead at the May 2008 Youlgrave event that are not already there - Pentozalis (from Kos), Miziisko, Zorba 2001, Tankosava, Hovs Bashi & Imate Li Vino - to my Balkan etc. dance notes.
2008/6/12: Improved Balkan etc. dance file names
Changed the file name format of my Balkan etc. dance notes to include spaces (converted to underscores for WWW use) so as to make them more human readable for people who save the files locally. I assume most people who have bookmarked the collection have bookmarked the index page not the individual dances so I have not bothered with redirects from the old names. Also fixed a deficiency of my formatting programs, in that they did not cope with parentheses dance names because those were reserved for regions.
2008/5/9: Added hummus recipe
After three years of no new recipes, I have added another of my popular party recipes, hummus made in bulk, to the food section.
2008/4/27: More instructions for bulk regexp renaming of files
After questions from readers, I added some examples for common tasks to the instructions for my Recursive Regexp Rename program. The examples are simple search & replace for words, changing filename extensions, changing between different ways of representing spaces in filenames and how to escape special characters in the parameters from the command shell.
2008/4/26: HTML corrections to Balkan etc. folk dance pages
My correction to a program used to generate the HTML Balkan etc. dance note pages from AIDM source text to encode the HTML special characters into HTML-safe notation accidentally converted wanted manual linebreaks ('<BR>') too, corrupting them. Fixed that.
2008/4/26: Corrected CSS mistakes
Accidentally found that the Opera web browser's optional error window can be used to syntax check CSS and found mistakes on this site. The main stylesheet had a misspelling of 'weight' in 'font-weight'. The stylesheet of Balkan etc. dance notes used 'align: left;' for aligning a table as in the deprecated HTML 4.0 attribute instead of the less concise but more versatile CSS equivalent 'margin-left: 0; margin-right: auto;'.Corrected them. Also corrected them for stand-alone versions in the program that formatted those dance notes.
2008/4/26: Corrected a 'transliterate' vs. 'transcribe' mistake
I found out that I have been using the words 'transliterate' (to make a reversible mapping of one alphabet into another) vs. 'transcribe' (to make a phonetic mapping of words into another alphabet or language) the with the definitions switched for 2 decades! This affected many of my Balkan etc. dance notes. Now corrected.
2008/4/16: Typo corrections article anent recovering lost emails from GDS cache
Corrected a couple of minor typos (one obvious 'not' missing and the date wrong in the source code version history) in my article anent recovering lost emails Google Desktop Search's cache.
2008/3/28: Updated Balkan etc. dance note page footers to new site CSS
Made a minor change to the program that converts the AIDM source code to HTML so they now use the same CSS styles as the rest of the site. I think that is the tedious, and unnoticeable to most readers, site HTML tidy-up complete at last.
2008/3/28: Converted site from HTML 4.0 to HTML 4.01 strict
Nearly all the manually generated pages had HTML 4.0 (with HoTMetaL extensions) as their 'DOCTYPE'. Converted all 78 of them to proper HTML 4.01 strict. Fortunately my conservative and standards compliant HTML turned out to be already 4.01 strict compliant so it merely needed a search & replace of the 'DOCTYPE' lines.
2008/3/21: Converted Cotswold Morris instructions pages from windows-1252 to UTF-8
Found that similarly, to the cheat sheet, the Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes pages were actually in windows-1252 instead of the expected ASCII or Latin-1 due to the original text having been edited in M$ Word 2k. Updated the program that generates them to convert them to UTF-8. Every HTML page on the site is now either ASCII or UTF-8 with all the UTF-8 ones correctly marked as such by use of 'charset' attributes.
2008/3/21: Removed windows-1252 from manually generated HTML
Searched the rest of the site for windows-1252 codes either left in raw in pages claiming to be UTF-8 or (by default) ASCII. Only found one case in the manually generated pages, in the page anent scanning photographic prints with a flatbed scanner. Converted that page to UTF-8.
2008/3/21: HTML corrections to Cotswold Morris cheat sheet pages
Edited the template and used the latest M$ Word generated HTML garbage stripper to correct the HTML version of my Cotswold Morris Dancing Cheat Sheet to correct the HTML faults that HTML Tidy found (no 'DOCTYPE', invalid numerical HTML character codes from characters being saved in windows-1252 by Word & converted to numerical representation
by HoTMetaL Pro after the charset line was removed). The whole site pages now pass HTML Tidy validation! At last.
2008/3/21: Updated program to remove garbage from M$ Word generated HTML
Found some more garbage that needed removing when investigating HTML errors that HTML Tidy found in my Cotswold Morris Dance cheat sheet. It turns out that Word saves HTML not in old 7-bit ASCII, a standard extension like Latin-1 or robust comprehensive UTF-8 encoded Unicode but the Windows' default character set ('code page 1252', a.k.a. 'windows-1252'). Updated my program to convert from that to UTF-8. Also made it add an HTML 4.01 Strict 'DOCTYPE'.
2008/3/17: HTML corrections to Cotswold Morris dance detailed instructions pages
Edited the programs used to generate the HTML Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes pages to correct the HTML faults that HTML Tidy found (no 'DOCTYPE', used '<PRE></PRE>' as an inline rather than block-level element, omitted some '<UL></UL>' or '<LI></LI>' in automatically generated nested lists which need both for nesting, used 'NAME' attribute anchors starting with numerals for table of contents that are incompatible with modern 'ID' attribute anchor restrictions). The regenerated pages now pass HTML Tidy validation.
2008/3/7: HTML corrections to Balkan etc. folk dance pages
Edited the programs used to generate the HTML Balkan etc. dance note pages from AIDM source text to correct the HTML faults that HTML Tidy found (forgot to convert the '&' HTML special characters into '&amp;' HTML-safe notation, used '<P></P>' for spacing in some places, some table summaries missing & CSS 'type' attributes missing). The regenerated pages now pass HTML Tidy validation.
2008/3/7: HTML corrections to manually formatted pages
Tested this site with HTML Tidy, wrapping it in a Perl script to recurse folders and detect character encodings. Found lots of errors in the manually generated pages. Every page had 3 duplicated errors: lack of 'type' attribute on CSS links & Javascript sections (because I thought it was not needed if using the default types) and my one remaining presentational HTML item (using '<P></P>' for spacing before the horizontal rule separating the footers (because it was fewer characters than a class attribute for CSS styling). Also a few duplicate tags and unencoded '&' signs scattered about the site and some table summaries and image alt-texts accidentally missing from some of the Rainbow Labyrinth artworks. Fixed them all.
2008/3/7: Added another link for the Zetten Balkan festival
It is my favourite annual Balkan dance event but it does not have a site itself nor does Silviu Ciuciumiş whose DIONA Foundation does the publicity for it but that now has a page on the Eliznik site so I added that link to folk dance links list.
2008/3/4: Spelling corrections
Used the Myspell spellchecker in KompoZer to spellcheck all the manually generated HTML files on the site (boring) and corrected spelling mistakes in about 25 of them. (Also updated my spelling of 'e-mail' to use the modern hyphen rather a logical apostrophe (as 'e' stood for 'electronic').)
2008/3/2: Link corrections
Tested this site with Linklint (since KompoZer does not have an inbuilt link checker) and it found some broken links that HoTMetaL Pro had missed. These were one case mismatch (a risk of using M$ Windows for file management) which fortunately the webserver had been compensating for and 3 pages with link anchors wrong (FAQ, Privacy Policy and How to Stop Ant Infestations Humanely). These have been corrected. Also changed 3 mailto links that were accidentally left in the site to links to the contact page.
2008/3/2: Site history date corrections
Noticed that some dates in this page that should have been 2007/1/15 were written as 2006/11/15 (I use a copy, paste & alter method a lot and forgot to alter in that case). Corrected them.
2008/3/2: Christmas cards
Each year I make my own Christmas Cards. They have become quite popular and I get requests for back-issues from previous years so now I have put the complete collection that I have available on the WWW for anyone to have free. It took quite long time because some of them only previously existed on paper, I wanted them pixel-perfect, most are mixture of line-art & photography which needed chopping into PNG & JPEG sub-images for different optimisation and I had to find and switch to a new HTML editor (but at least it should only need updating once per year!). The cards, being so graphical, have almost doubled the size of this site to almost 6 MiB
2008/3/2: Change of HTML editor
Almost all of this site (other than the dance note pages which were formatted by my custom Perl scripts) was written using HoTMetaL Pro 5. Unfortunately it has got too old (it dates from 1999), in particular it is not compatible with Unicode/UTF-8 and has problems with the more strict filesystem & registry permissions on newer M$ Windows versions. After investigating the available free & cheap cross-platform (future-proofing) replacements I've chosen KompoZer (the latest in the Mozilla Composer - Nvu series) which is currently beta-ish buggy and lacks some of the HoTMetaL features I used but is better in some ways, including UTF-8 support, and looks like it will become popular and improved.
2008/1/21: More warnings and alternatives for empty directory deleting
A reader pointed that deleting empty directories has to be carefully applied as some empty ones might be needed by programs and the OS so I've added a warning anent that to accompany my program to delete empty directories. Another reader pointed out a couple of GUI file managers that now have the feature so I've linked to them. (Yippie! That is all the boring updates & corrections to this site complete for now so hopefully the next change will be something new.)
2008/1/21: Updated flavour list in novelty wine recipes
Corrected the novelty wines recipe page. Despite adding many more flavours in the 5 years since I first wrote the page, I'd forgotten to add them to the list in the introduction. Oops. Done now.
2008/1/21: Major update of folk dance site links list
Checked all the links in my folk dance links list. Over half had expired but I tracked down the current URLs of most of them and updated them, removed the few dead ones & updated descriptions where content had substantially changed. It was very very tedious to do! Also added some new links and tidied the page changing two layers of sublisting to headings and removing the parentheses that unnecessarily surrounded all descriptions.
2007/12/11: Added another counter spambot measure to contact page & script
After almost no spam for six months, started getting about 15 a day as some damn spambot is reading the human readable text of the form and deducing which fields are subject, from address & message. Added a simple checkbox which needs to be checked for messages to be sent.
2007/11/11 Added another Balkan(ish) dance
Added 'Kareve Yom', a Sacred/Circle dance, to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Unlike the previous ones I have not added it because I have taught/lead it but because a friend of mine put a version of my notes for it on the WWW over a year ago linking to this site as the original.
2007/10/30: More novelty wines
Added bay, muscovado, rose petal & kvas wines to my novelty wines recipe page.
2007/10/24: More rock cake options & a Sachertorte improvement
Added some recently found options to my rock cake recipe and a slight recipe easing improvement to my Sachertorte recipe.
2007/10/23: Animated Rainbow Labyrinths
Added 16 animated spectrum coloured labyrinths to my Rainbow Labyrinth art collection. Varying in styling from elegant to mesmeric to gaudy. Took a year from when I added the original static ones because of having to get around to making a format with files small enough for WWW use not the massive animated GIFs & MNGs my system originally produced. They are now 1/1000th of the size as Javascript animated HTML.
2007/10/21 Balkan dance correction
Corrected 'A, ya po lugu' in my Balkan etc. dance notes after getting the definitive region information and it turned out to be Russian not my guess of Ukrainian.
2007/10/18: Updated Rainbow Labyrinth generating program
Updated my spectrum flood fill program & its instructions to the latest version, which can now output HTML/CSS/Javascript animated fills as well as static images.
2007/10/18: Corrected Rainbow Labyrinths stylesheet
When improving this site's main stylesheet I forgot to augment the Rainbow Labyrinths stylesheet and one some of the features I added to make it robust against off-spec CSS implementation in some browsers overwrote what the later stylesheet expected resulting in black on black text so the explanations of the art on those pages has been unreadable for nearly 2 months. Oops. Fixed it.
2007/10/10: Added favicon.ico & robots.txt files
This site had neither as no icon usefully represents the mixture of content of this site and nothing is excluded from WWW 'robots' (programs that autonomously download pages, e.g. search engines) but many browsers & robots try downloading the site icon & robot exclusion settings filling my error logs with spurious 404 errors so I have added favicon.ico & robots.txt files. The icon is merely the first generic image in Microsoft Icon format I created (for an application in 1996) and the robot exclusion file is empty.
2007/10/10: Added favicon.ico & robots.txt files
This site had neither as no icon usefully represents the mixture of content of this site and nothing is excluded from WWW 'robots' (programs that autonomously download pages, e.g. search engines) but many browsers & robots try downloading the site icon & robot exclusion settings filling my error logs with spurious 404 errors so I have added favicon.ico & robots.txt files. The icon is merely the first generic image in Microsoft Icon format I created (for an application in 1996) and the robot exclusion file is empty.
2007/10/6: Added region to index table of Balkan etc. dances
Added to the index table of Balkan etc. dance notes the regions (typically countries) that the dances came from. I had intended to do this from the start and the code to extract regions from dance notes was in my table generating problem but had forgotten to include it in the output.
2007/10/6: Minor correction to Cotswold Morris detailed notes
Just corrected the spelling in my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes, of one of the sides I learnt a dance variation from. I have found that this site has become very popular for Morris with 2 out of the 5 top Google.com hits for 'Cotswold+morris' & 'Cotswold+morris+dance' being this site!
2007/10/6: Minor update to Balkan etc. dances
Minor updates of A ya po lugu & Zhensko Svatbarsko Horo in my Balkan etc. dance notes adding more information anent alternative spellings.
2007/7/5: Linked directly from homepage to subdirectories
The section links on the homepage linked to section contents lists on the homepage which lead to the section subdirectories and pages therein. As the section directories also contain lists of pages therein, this was an unnecessary extra level of link clinking for visitors to go through so changed those section links to go direct.
2007/7/5: Added .htaccess redirect to new Lagabag site
Some sites are still linking to the old Lagabag Morris site which was a subdomain of this site. This causes problems as the server automatically redirects to this server keeping the old URL giving the appearance of a doppelgänger of this site under a different name which will confuse linking visitors & search engines. There is not much hope of getting them all fixed as one of the main Morris Dance lists has not been updated for 3 years. Hence added an automatic redirect to the new Lagabag Morris site.
2007/9/3: Improved sort order of Balkan etc. dances
Improved the program that lists & formats my Balkan etc. dance notes so that it generates the list in close to alphabetical order rather than merely Unicode order (e.g. so that 'C' with cedilla comes next to 'C' not after 'Z'). Of course the ordering of mixed languages is somewhat arbitrary as different languages have subtle differences in their Latin derived alphabets.
2007/9/2: Added more Balkan etc. dances
Added the dances I lead at the August 2007 Youlgrave event that are not already there - Bulgarian party mix, Zhensko Svatbarsko Horo, A ya po lugu, Teen & Vayiven Uziyahu - to my Balkan etc. dance notes.
2007/9/1: Improved Balkan etc. dance note formatting
My Balkan etc. dance notes were formatted for use as stand-alone files for printing & emailing. They worked on the WWW but were not ideal so I've made a program which adapts them for this website. The resulting pages now fit the site CSS style, have the additional CSS style features in external rather than internal stylesheets, have links from summary to full versions & vice versa and from both to the index page, have links to their freeware licences and have contact links.
2007/8/23: Added more Balkan etc. dances
Added the dances I lead at the May 2006 Balkanplus - 'Mesjog Gur', 'Arap', 'Kratko Vlashko Kolo', 'Gaida Gynekios 'Makedonikos' & 'Çavreşli' -to my Balkan etc. dance notes.
2007/8/23: Improved CSS
After finding that some web browsers did not rescale my headings proportionately with changes in the size & some font settings were not propagating into some elements in some browsers, I have made both those two explicit in this site's main stylesheet. Also reduced some duplication so the resulting stylesheet file is actually smaller despite specifying more.
2007/8/21: Added more Balkan etc. dances & changed their layout
Added the dances I lead at the November 2006 Balkanplus that are not already there, Preumblata & Kalagmatchkata, to my Balkan etc. dance notes. Also updated the disclaimers and layout to be more suited to a public website (previously I just emailed my Balkan dance notes to friends even though they were in HTML).
2007/8/19: Added a section for Balkan etc. dances
At last (I have been doing such dancing for longer than Morris dancing & it, not Morris, is my main type of folk dancing) started a section for Balkan, East European, Circle, Israeli & International Folk Dance Notes. As I am still undecided on how to present some aspects, it is still basically just a place-holder with only one dance on it so far. I chose Ege Karşılaması, a Turkish scarf dance, to start it off as I keep being asked to lead that dance in different events by different people & it is definitely the most popular of my teaching repertoire.
2007/8/19: Removed extra linked page description from home page
Some pages linked to from the home page had secondary descriptions in addition to the hyperlink text whereas others did not. For consistency & to declutter, I removed them. Search engines these days will find them via the second level index pages anyway.
2007/7/23: Added Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet source code
Added the source code (well, source text) of my Cotswold Morris Dancing Cheat Sheet and instructions on how to render it as the other formats. Although one could convert the HTML or text versions of it back to source, it is more convenient for readers to have the original plus instructions (& is more GPL compliant).
2007/7/21: Updated Cotswold Morris detailed notes
Updated to the latest version (admittedly even that is over a year old) of my Cotswold Morris Dancing detailed notes. Also removed the Zip compression from the PDF printer version, linked the pages to the local GPL copy, de-anonymised it (it previously had only my forename in the credits) and removed out of date link to Lagabag Morris's website that used to be co-hosted with this site (but now someone else administers that).
2007/7/21: Simplified Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet download
Removed the Zip compression from the PDF printer version of my Cotswold Morris Dancing Cheat Sheet as the main search engines are probably sensible enough now not to return links to PDFs when HTML versions are also provided so I can unhide the PDF.
2007/7/10: Typo corrections
Corrected some typos in the page anent my Recursive Regexp Rename program.
2007/6/22: Corrected Computer Programs index page
In editing index of computer programs last week, I accidentally corrupted all the links. A site visitor kindly pointed that out to me. I've now corrected them.
2007/6/21: Added counter spambot measure to contact page & script
Getting almost daily spam via it now so made it a little more difficult for spambots by changing the standard ('Title', 'Body' etc.) parameter names to obfuscated ones. Makes no difference to legitimate users.
2007/6/14: Separated Perl Advocacy from Computer Programs index page
The bit on the page anent why I wrote the programs in Perl was not really part of the index of computer programs so I've split it off into its own page.
2007/6/11: Added referrer page URL to contact script information
Not the referrer itself (which would normally just be the contact form) but the page that the client came to the form from hidden in the form by simple Javascript. This is not for security (it is easily faked) but because some people contact me without specifying which page they are writing about!
2007/6/11: Removed a duplicate CSS
One less file. No change to site appearance.
2007/5/27: Added more paranoia to my contact CGI script
I have now got a 'bot' spamming me via my contact script. Drat! Only once so far so I have not bothered to add more antispam features but it made me realise that a 'bot' might try using it for spam even though it is custom made and with a fixed hidden 'To' field so added extra, probably unnecessary, security. Also added logging of client IP address and browser name.
2007/4/29: Sachertorte recipe minor improvements
Added a couple more helpful comments to my Sachertorte recipe.
2007/4/15: Dates with patterns
Added my program for finding calendar dates with patterns. As visitors are not likely to download a program for such a silly and obscure thing, I based the page around precalculated dates for 1990-2019 in text and zip files, with the program as an extra, and put it in the miscellaneous rather than computer programs area.
2007/4/15: Removed Organic India link
Removed it because Organic India (a relative's company that manufactured high-end Indian ready-meals from organic ingredients) has gone bust.
2007/4/10: Recursive Regexp Rename
Added my program for bulk file & directory renaming (supporting recursion into subdirectories, regular expressions for the search & replace terms, regular expression file name filter and a dry run mode) to this site. (It is good to add something new at last. The past 10 changes have just been updates, corrections and administrivia albeit time consuming.)
2007/4/9: Minor typo corrections
Corrected insignificant typos that have been noticed in the article anent what is object oriented programming & the wordsearch solver (where I had accidentally dated the page three years older than the program).
2007/4/7: Novelty wine recipes updated
Updated my novelty wine recipes page with typo corrections, some observations on they matured (in 3 years banana wine changed from revolting to nice and ginger beer did the opposite), some measurement unit conversions and some misc tips.
2007/4/6: Added privacy policy statement
Added a Privacy Policy statement saying what data this site collects about visitors (not much: basically the host uses cookies to count unique visitors and I store the server logs minus the IP addresses). Boring.
2007/4/6: Updated article anent recovering lost emails from GDS cache
A disappointed visitor told me that my programs for recovering lost emails Google Desktop Search's cache no longer work. That is not surprising as they worked by screen scraping and GDS has been through 2 major versions since the one I wrote them for. Added notes to that effect but left the page on-line as the principles explained there are still valid and someone might want to use them or update my programs. Also added my email back-up strategy.
2007/4/6: Removed homepage Lagabag link
Rewrote the explanation of why this site is intentionally bland to remove promotional link to the old Lagabag Morris website. I used to maintain that site but now another member of the team maintains it and the URL has been changed.
2007/4/5: Added a link to another PDF creator setup program
Added a link to Cute PDF Writer (lite) to my article anent how to create PDF files for free after I found that it worked very easily.
2007/1/15: Updated FAQ
The section in my FAQ anent why this site is anonymous is out of date now that is not anonymous so I replaced it one giving variant spellings of my name (so that people looking for me from my academic papers etc. can find me), an apology for not having written a biographical summary and a bit about how and why this site used to be anonymous and how and now is not.
2007/1/15: Added Anent section index page
Added an index page to the Anent section of this site. It is not really needed because the pages in that section are just administrative type support pages that are linked to from the places where they are needed but I put it in for tidiness & completeness and to stop search engines getting an automatically created index page for that directory which lists all the contents equally including the files that are better reached via other pages.
2007/1/15: Corrected Contact email page
Fixed a typos I spotted on my contact form that I noticed when updating the contact links.
2007/1/15: Updated all manually edited pages with recent author, contact & license changes
Rather tediously went through all the pages on this site (other than the computer-generated ones which will be updated next time they are regenerated) changing the author name (from my pseudonym, 'Duramecho', to my real name, 'Andrew Hardwick'), the contact link (from the overly spammed direct email link to contact form that hides the real email address) and the license (from a remote to GPL or unlinked CC-by-sa to a link to my licence explanation page that in turn links to remote GPL & CC-by-sa and a local GPL copy). It was a boring housekeeping type task but needed to be done and could not be done by global search & replace as not the pages had the same licence or same author & contact presentation.
2007/1/9: How to convert audio tape recordings to CDs
Added an article explaining how to convert tape recordings to CDs (& MP3s). The article started when a friend asked me by email how to do that as I have done it often in the past. My reply was detailed & I have other friends ask me it in the past so I augmented the article and put it on this website for anyone else to use.
2007/1/9: Corrected the contact email CGI script settings
The error did not affect operation as far as readers were concerned hence this is the first change to my site that make (other than this note about it) absolutely apparent no change to the site on the WWW.
2006/11/15: Contact email CGI script
Added a form to contact me via that sends to a CGI script I wrote which emails me on a private email address. This is so that people can contact me from this site more reliably than using the public email address I put on this site which gets so much automated spam that I probably discard many legitimate emails with the spam. By using a CGI script I can provide an alternative route that does not reveal the private email address to spammers. Remains to be seen if there are spamming programs that bother to submit web page forms at random.
2006/11/7: License text added to site
Where I have used GPL on this site, I had lazily linked to the master copy of the GPL license on the GNU site but it technically requires a copy to be distributed with the material it covers so I should have a copy on this site. I now have put a copy of the GPL text on this site and a page summarising the licenses (GPL & CC-by-sa) used on this site.
2006/11/7: Removed spurious covered by GPL notices
When using information pages as templates for index pages, I accidentally copied the covered by GPL notices to some of the index pages (including the home page) where they are irrelevant. They are not harmful but look silly there so I've now removed them.
2006/9/29: Tautology removed from rock cakes recipe
A friend of mine noticed that the flapjack recipe his wife had found via Google and was using was mine! His wife, who is a good proofreader, then looked through the rest my recipes and spotted a tautology ("dried sultanas") in one. I've now corrected the rock cakes recipe.
2006/9/13: Recovering lost emails from Google Desktop Search's cache
I made some programs to help a friend recover copies of thousands of lost emails from Google Desktop Search's cache after a mailbox/archive failure, I thought it could be so useful to other people that I have bunged it on this website (with lots of explanation: it seems that most GDS users did not even realise it keeps copies of deleted emails; I don't use it myself & my friend found out but accident) as soon as possible.
2006/8/23: Punting disclaimer
Added a disclaimer to my punting instructions. Also some spelling collections & an explanation of Cambridge/Oxford differences.
2006/8/16: Rainbow Labyrinths
Added a collection of my pretty coloured in labyrinths to the site along with explanations and the program I made to do the colouring. This is a big change in several ways from the previous content on this site: it is purely artistic, not practical; it has gratuitous graphics (although it still downgrades gracefully to pure text when needed) it has a different stylesheet (the artworks looked better on black); it is dual licensed with CC-by-sa in addition to GPL (so readers who just want the pictures need not take the program too); and it includes the first non anonymised pages.
2006/8/16: Art section
Created a new section in the site to display some of my artworks. The only content it will have today is my Rainbow Labyrinth collection.
2006/8/16: Renamed 'Photography' to 'Photography Advice'
As I am now going to have an art display section on the site, a title of just 'Photography' might mislead readers into thinking that was a photograph gallery.
2006/8/16: End of anonymity
I have not included my name on the pages of this site (although it is in the source code of the programs and the domain registration record) because, when I started the site, personal web pages were not commonplace so I worried that it would look too arrogant and that potential friends would judge me wrongly based on the very small sample of my opinion I included in the pages so I just used the alias 'Duramecho'. However, thesedays personal web pages are ubiquitous, most have much more embarrassingly naff content than this site has & publishing of personal information that is totally useless to the general public is considered fashionable rather than disgustingly vain. Therefore I'll put my name in the credits of most of the new web pages.
2006/5/22: To do list updated
It has been over a year since I have added fully new material to this site (plenty of additions and corrections to existing articles though). The reason is that I have been creating other things on my home computer. Some of these, particularly my hundreds of art photographs which have now been scanned, indexed & captioned, my film reviews and some computer artwork, are in formats close to WWW compatible and are likely to appear on my website sometime in the future when I get around to finishing them (and getting a bigger bandwidth allocation for the case of photographs) so I have not been completely neglecting to make new material for this site. Updated To Do list.
2006/5/22: Typo corrections
Corrected a typo in my article about C++ const spotted by a reader and two other typos that I found whilst correcting that (how many more typos remain?!). Corrected some typos (including an embarrassingly missing 'not' in a safety disclaimer!) in my novelty wine recipes.
2006/3/16: Updated Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet
Updated my Cotswold Cheat Sheet including HTML, PDF, plain text & Palm Doc versions.
2006/3/15: Updated Cotswold Morris Detailed Notes
Updated my detailed detailed Cotswold Morris dance steps. Only one more dance but lots of corrections to the notes themselves and one correction to the program the converted them to HTML (I found that I embarrassing had an HTML syntax error that screwed up formatting duplicated across 74 pages!).
2006/3/9: More dance links
Added a link to a friend's page advertising a local dance club to Dance Links page, added another found on the WWW & amended one to a site that had moved as requested by its author.
2006/3/2: Site synchronisation correction
A reader pointed out an alternative to my program to delete empty directories. I thought I had included that alternative a year ago. It turned out that I had not uploaded that replacement page! Oops. Wiped & re-uploaded the whole site. It should be fully synchronised now.
2006/3/2: Another dance link
Added a requested link from someone whom I had met at a dance event years ago to their site of Balkan dance videos & music recordings to the Dance Links page.
2006/1/26: Advised on negative, in preference to print, scanning of photographs
With the recent improvements in consumer grade negative scanners, I added advice to use them in preference to scanning prints to my articles anent Scanning Photographic Prints & Photographic Reprint Colour Consistency.
2006/1/26: Correction to Approx. Physical Constants
A reader, Chad Althouse of Pennsylvania State University, spotted a typo in my list of approximate physical constants. I had missed out the "1+" from "ln(1+x) -> x" in 'Small Value Approximations' section. That typo was 17 years old! Corrected it.
2006/1/7: Silent CD: another use
Added another practical use, suggested by a reader, of my CD of silence to its list of uses.
2005/12/18: More detail to 2 recipes
Added some notes to my melting moments recipe & an improved biscuit mashing method to my chocolate freezer cake recipe.
2005/7/23: Minor correction & alterations to Approx. Physical Constants
Corrected a spelling mistake in my list of approximate physical constants. Also added 2 more Imperial units (thou & fathom) & tidied some spacing.
2005/6/9: Another dance link
A friend of mine who runs an international dance group in Bognor Regis has created a website so I added it to my list of dance links.
2005/6/9: Typo correction
The smallest change yet to this site. Added in a missing closing single quotation mark to my C++ const article. Amazingly that rather cynical, but informative, article as become the top in (English language) Google for 'C++' with 'const' despite me not being a trained nor keen programmer!
2005/5/8: Renamed the 'Food Recipes' section to 'Party Food Recipes'
It is more informative. It also removes the unintended implication that my normal diet consists of just cakes & alcohol!
2005/5/8: Correction to flapjack recipe
Corrected a typo in my flapjack recipe that a reader noticed. I had missed out what to do with the sugar! It is amazing that I have had so many compliments anent that recipe with such a big error in it.
2005/3/19: Humanely Stopping Ant Infestations
Got around to writing up a humane way of stopping ant ingress into houses.
2005/3/19: Spelling corrections
Corrected a couple of spelling mistakes a reader spotted in the article anent whatObject Oriented Programming is.
2005/3/19: Silent CD
Added a joke CD of silence to download.
2005/3/5: Program to solve wordsearch puzzles
Added a wordsearch solver program.
2005/3/5: Referenced HTML Tidy
Added a link from my download page for my program to strip formatting from Microsoft Word generated HTML to HTML Tidy which I've found also does that task. Also improved the version history in the source code of my version.
2005/3/5: Minor edit to approximate physical constants list
Removed a couple of duplicates from list of Approximate Physical Constants.
2005/3/5: Shell script to delete empty directories
Added a GNU/Linux/Bash shell script alternative to Perl program to delete empty directories.
2005/2/26: PDFCreator linked to from PDF files creation article
A reader, VoltageX, kindly told me that PDF pseudo printer driver setup is now automated by the PDFCreator freeware so I added links to that to my article anent How to Create PDF Files.
2005/2/7: Corrections to attribution of Irish Tea Cake recipe
In correcting the origin of the Irish tea cake recipe, I messed up some grammar. That is now fixed.
2005/2/6: Updated one dance site link
Updated one link on the dance links page after being notified of the change from that site's maintainer.
2005/2/6: Correction to attribution of Irish Tea Cake recipe
Corrected the origin of the Irish tea cake recipe. I had attributed it to the wrong grandparent. I also corrected some spelling.
2005/1/16: Google likes this site
Last month a reader informed me that that this site was the top hit in Google for Sachertorte+recipe which seemed rather unfair to the many sites with more sophisticated or authentic recipes. I checked & found it to he the top hit in the English language search & second from to in several other languages. Maybe it was because my page was simple plain text that search engines can easily processes. It is now down to third but flapjack+recipe, tea+cake+recipe, melting+moments+recipe & rock+cakes+recipe are all top hits! In the case of tea+cake+recipe, it top out of 573,000 hits & even for tea+cake it is 3rd out of 2,600,000 hits. I wonder if I should feel pleased that I am giving so many people enjoyable food or guilty for fattening them (though, with those search terms, I expect they were intending to produce cakes anyway). At least they can get fit dancing as this site is the 3rd hit out of 202,000 for morris+dances.
2005/1/12: Addition to Kmail to Eudora mbox transfer instructions
Added a simple comment anent changing line breaks to how to correct the 'Who' field when transferring mbox e-mail (email) to Eudora.
2004/12/31: Program to delete empty directories
Added a very simple (one line!) Perl program to delete empty directories.
2004/12/30: Kmail to Eudora mbox transfer
Although the two programs have so similar mailbox formats that e-mail files can be copied directly, a small non-standardness in Eudora's version typically messes up the display of the To/From information. Here is how to correct the 'Who' field when transferring mbox e-mail (email) to Eudora.
2004/12/30: Typo correction
Corrected a typo which a reader, J.O. Williams, spotted in Why C has Pointers. I had changed the order of program lines in a pair of examples without changing the output data to match.
2004/12/30: Removals from To Do list
Removed some things which have been done (but which I had forgotten to remove from the list) and my intention of writing an M$ Word tips article (although the principles would be the same, many readers would probably want details for specific recent versions of Word whereas I stopped updating at Word 2k and intend to migrate Open Office or similar) from the 'To Do' list.
2004/10/9: Source-Highlight linked to
After finding GNU Source-Highlight which is far more sophisticated than my own Source Files to Tabless Text, I added a recommendation that readers use that instead.
2004/10/9: Golden syrup translated
Added the USAnian English translation of golden syrup to flapjack recipe.
2004/10/4: Latest version of Cotswold Morris notes
Updated both my Cotswold Morris detailed notes & Cotswold Cheat Sheet.
2004/10/3: PDF creation for Mac & Linux users
They don't need my article anent how to create PDF files because (unlike in pitiful M$ Windows) they have it set up automatically for them when they install the operating system so I added a comment to that affect near the beginning of the article to save them time.
2004/8/17: A bit more anent dust removing
Added more details anent automated dust removal & named GIMP & Photoshop Elements equivalents of the Paint Shop Pro dust filter I used in my article anent scanning photographic prints
2004/8/17: Stupid search engine sends computer gamers to this site: update
I got no reply to my message informing them of their mistake but it seems that they have acted on it because my Cotswold Morris dance cheat sheet is no longer amongst their top recommendations for computer gamers looking for game cheat codes.
2004/7/30: Correction to OOP article
A reader, James Denvir, had spotted that I had accidentally labelled 'overloading' as 'polymorphism' in "What is Object Oriented Programming". Fixed it.
2004/7/19: Removed faulty Java example from C++ const article
Removed references to Java 'in:', 'out' & 'inout:' parameter types from The C++ 'const' Declaration: Why & How because I have now programmed in Java and regrettably found that Java does not have them either. (I should have tested it myself rather than relying on examples from an MSc lecturer in a rather dodgy MSc course.)
2004/7/19: Flapjack recipe augment & spell-check
Added a definition of 'golden syrup' to my flapjack recipe after a North American English speaker queried as to what it was. Also spell-checked it. I somehow forgot to do that both when I made the page & last edited it. There were embarrassingly many spelling mistakes for the most popular page on my site! So I spell-checked this page too and found quite a lot.
2004/7/19: Flapjack recipe augment & spell-check
Added a definition of 'golden syrup' to my flapjack recipe after a North American English speaker queried as to what it was. Also spell-checked it. I somehow forgot to do that both when I made the page & last edited it. There were embarrassingly many spelling mistakes for the most popular page on my site! So I spell-checked this page too and found quite a lot.
2004/7/19: Stupid search engine sends computer gamers to this site
Checking the server logs, I found a surprisingly high number of visits from one search engine (a disreputable one which gets its users by deliberately having as its domain name a common URL typo rather than by the quality of its searches). Even more surprisingly, these were for searches for computer game 'cheat codes' of which this site has none. Instead the lousy search engine was listing my Cotswold Morris dancing cheat sheet in its first page of game cheat sites! By coincidence it had started on April 1st but was not a joke as it was still going on 3 months later. I sent a message to the search engine admin' as it both wastes my bandwidth & annoys their users. I doubt that many computer gamers are interested in Morris dancing but maybe a few of them have been converted :-) .
2004/4/21: Debug
The programs recently put on the Tips for Scanning Photographic Prints with a Flatbed Scanner page had bugs. Replaced them with a debugged versions.
2004/4/14: Minor alterations to programs section
Updated HTML external image links remover utility to only rewrite files that have been altered not all files so as to preserve modification dates of files which did not have links removed (it also runs faster). Added links to the programs (Morris Dance HTML page & PSP Python scripts) elsewhere on this site to the Computer Programs index page.
2004/4/10: Additions to scanning advice page
Added yet more Tips for Scanning Photographic Prints with a Flatbed Scanner. Also added the Paint Shop Pro Python scripts I use to the page.
2004/4/5: Corrections & more FAQs
Some minor corrections to links on home page (one was missing, another doubled) & some additions to the FAQs.
2004/3/30: More dance links
Added more links to the dance links page.
2004/3/18: Additions colour consistency & scanning advice pages
Added the (successful) results of my solution to The Problem of Colour Consistency in Photographic Reprints and added a few more Tips for Scanning Photographic Prints with a Flatbed Scanner.
2004/2/13: Photography advice pages anent colour consistency & scanning
Added pages anent The Problem of Colour Consistency in Photographic Reprints & Tips for Scanning Photographic Prints with a Flatbed Scanner. This has increased the number of images on this site two dozen fold from just 1 to 24!
2004/2/13: New top-level section: photography
Created a section for things related to photography & moved my check-list of Things which don't Look Good In Photographs into it from the Misc. section.
2004/1/4: FAQ
Added a Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) page anent this site.
2004/1/4: Stylesheet changes
Reduced the font size from 12 pt to 11 pt to reduce scrolling. Computer monitors have become clearer since I first created this site and the popular web browsers at last (to a limited extend) allow text magnification so the large clear fonts are not as necessary. Also changed active link highlighting to hover highlighting as browsers now apply 'hover' where Netscape originally applied 'active'.
2003/12/29: To-do list
Added a list of things I intend to add to this website. Made an 'Anent' subdirectory for such pages. Also moved this Site History page into it from the top level.
2003/12/14: Spelling correction
A reader pointed out that 'ambidextrousness' in How to Punt should be 'ambidexterity' so I corrected it.
2003/9/28: More novelty wine flavours
Added some more silly flavours to my Novelty Wines Recipes.
2003/9/28: Sobig worm/trojan
The e-mail server for this site now specifically blocks the Sobig worm but before that block was put in place, the e-mail address I use for comments, info@duramecho.com, received over 600 copies of it. Of course I was not stupid enough to run any but it was a bit irritating deleting them. At least it shows that this is site is well visible on the WWW.
2003/8/11: Typo correction
Corrected a typo in some C syntax in Why C has Pointers.
2003/6/21: Bugfix for Copy File to Next Version and Open utility
Removed a M$ Win32 specific system call accidentally left in Copy File to Next Version and Open & added a work-around of a bug in M$ Office's command-line processing so the program could invoke M$ Word as an editor if one wants it to.
2003/6/19: Updated Morris dance notes
Uploaded latest versions of my Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet & Cotswold Morris dance notes.
2003/6/19: Updated Copy File to Next Version and Open utility
Put the latest version of my Copy File to Next Version and Open program on the site which replaces both the old M$ Win32 specific version & the cut-down Copy File to Next Version (without opening) version (thereby removing the first program I ever put on the WWW!).
2003/5/20: Improvements to various pages
Minor improvements to the Sachertorte recipe (a way of reducing whisking time), Dance links (a couple more added) & Novelty Wines (three more flavours added).
2003/4/21: Physics (approximate) data sheet
Added an HTML version of my old physics (approximate) data sheets (which I originally made when I was at school but are still useful for order-of-magnitude calculations).
2003/3/1: Powerpoint poster making tips
Followed up my article anent how to do Powerpoint animations, which was one of the founding pages of this site, with one anent How to do Powerpoint posters.
2003/2/20: Cleaning up site structure
Removed the temporary redirects from the old locations of the Morris dance notes. Added shortcuts on the home page to the subsections as the list now scrolls well off the bottom of the screen. Added subindex pages for Dance and Misc categories, even though they only have 3 items apiece, so as not look like an error if visitors reverse up the site's directory tree after jumping into it from a websearch (it had automatic directory listing enabled on the server but thesedays most WWW users do not expect to see such raw 'computery' pages). Also changed the link from the home page of an example of a more artistic site of mine from BTexact Avatar site (for which its year-2000 UK Millennium Dome fame is getting rather out-dated) to a link to my recently produced Lagabag Morris side website.
2003/2/17: More dance links
Added some more links for Balkan/Israeli/International/Circle dance notes to my dance links page.
2002/12/12: Minor alterations to Cotswold notes
Made a correction to the Cotswold Morris dance notes which was pointed by a reader of this site & hyperlinked the pages to Lagabag Morris's website (which I recently created).
2002/11/25: Corrections
Corrected some awful grammar on the food index page.
2002/9/28: Novelty wine recipe. Food sub-index. Removing faulty program
Added novelty home-brewed wine instructions as this site's first non-cake recipe. Added a sub-index for the recipes to encourage readers to move from the overly popular Flapjack to the better Sachertorte. Removed a simple program for removing comments from C, C++ & Perl source files from the site because it had a serious error (I forgot to ignore comment characters which are in string constants) which fixing of would have made the program considerably less simple. This is the first time any section has been removed from this site.
2002/8/21: Corrections
Corrections (repairing a slight file corruption) to my Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet.
2002/8/18: More Cotswold Morris summary notes. Tidying structure
Added several more dances to my Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet and moved it from a top level directory to a subdirectory of the 'Dance' directory. Removed the temporary redirects the 'ComputerInformation' directory from its previous location.
2002/8/9: More Cotswold Morris detailed notes. Tidying structure. Amendments
Added several more dances to my Detailed Cotswold Morris dance notes and moved it from a top level directory to a subdirectory of the 'Dance' directory. Also added a few sentences more detail to the description of my program for strippingformatting from M$ Word generated HTML and my explanation of 'const' in C++.
2002/5/19: Perl script correction
Added another cake recipe, that for Melting Moments.
2002/5/19: Perl script correction
Corrected a mistake which made a regexp ambiguous in the version incrementing file/directory copy program & the version incrementing file/directory copy & open program.
2002/4/20: Minor tidying
Renamed the 'Computers' directory to 'ComputerInformation' to make it distinctly different from the new 'ComputerPrograms' directory and put in redirects from the old URLs to it. Added a sub-index for the Computer Information directory.
2002/4/16: Object Oriented Programming explanations & photography tips
After having a yet another person independently ask me to explain what Object Oriented Programming was and knowing that the confusion comes from it normally being made to seem unnecessarily complicated by keen advocates, I added an article explaining what Object Oriented Programming is without the hype. I also put some advice I wrote 7 years ago about things which don't look good in photographs on the site and moved my dance links from the 'misc' folder to a new 'dance' folder.
2002/4/12: Flapjack experiments
After seeing from my server logs that the most popular article on this site was my precise flapjack recipe, I added a write-up of the flapjack cooking experiment I used to arrive at the recipe. This included adding the first image to this site (a purely functional photograph of the resulting cakes). It has a text alternative, of course.
2002/4/11: Many more Perl scripts
Added Perl scripts which will add a table of contents to an HTML page, extract 'ALT' text from an HTML file for easy editing and put it back again, remove formatting & garbage from HTML generated by M$ Word, remove remote image links from download web pages for off-line reading, convert multiple C, C++ & Perl source code files into tabless text & remove comments from multiple C, C++ & Perl source code files. Added cross-platform linebreak converters to the installation instructions page.
2002/4/3: Made Perl script collection more systematic
Separated computer programs from other computer information and made a sub-index for the computer programs, added some basic installation instructions and split the version incrementing file/directory copy & open program extended version off from the basic version incrementing file/directory copy program.
2002/3/24: Copy to next version Perl script
Started putting some of my useful little general purpose programs on this site with a Perl script for (a version incrementing file/directory copy program).
2002/3/13: C programming explanations
I converted some explanations of C/C++ programming language features - pointers & 'const' - from e-mails I had sent friends into essays in HTML.
2002/1/18: Correction
Corrected a serious typo in the Irish Tea Cake Recipe; the ingredients should not have included margarine.
2002/1/4: PDF making instructions
As making PDF files was not at all straightforward, I added instructions to this site on how to make PDF files. As it used a Definition List for its problem-solution pairs, I added formatting for it do the site's style sheet. I also added instructions for ink jet printers (originally it was for laser printers) to my instructions for doing two sided printing in a normal one-sided printer.
2001/12/21: Improved printer versions of the Cotswold Morris notes
At last I found out how to produce PDF files at good resolution (my previous software would only produce low resolution big file bitmapped text instead of embedded fonts!) so my Cotswold Morris Notes & Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet are now available in good quality printing form (as well as HTML, text, Palm Doc, etc.).
2001/11/29: Corrections
Typo corrected in flapjack recipe. Language element moved from <BODY> to <HTML> elements.
2001/9/30: Flapjack recipe.
Added a flapjack recipe
2001/8/24: Dance links.
Added a Dance Information Link List containing links to Balkan, Israeli, Scottish & Morris dance websites.
2001/8/20: Powerpoint animation amendments
Corrected some typos & added comment on a Powerpoint 2000 bug.
2001/7/8: Recipe corrections.
Corrected some typos in some cake recipes.
2001/6/6: Cotswold Morris Dance Notes, multiple page
Added more dances to Cotswold Morris notes, both details & summaries.
2001/6/4: Cotswold Morris Dance Notes, multiple page
Quintupled the number of files on this site by adding a version of my Cotswold Morris Dance Detailed Notes separated into individual files per dance (another Perl script job). Also GNUishly added the source code (which, Zip compressed, turned out to be a tenth the size of the resulting files!).
2001/5/30: Cotswold Morris Dance Notes, single page
Added my Cotswold Morris Dance Detailed Notes, more than doubling the size (in bytes) of the site, custom formatted into a huge page of HTML from Word RTF by a Perl script I wrote. Also added a printer-formatted RTF version. Had to slightly improve the site's CSS after findi> > ng that the default paragraph first line indenting was also being applied to preformatted text messing up the layout (I don't know a cure though for the Netscape bug that messes up CSS specified paragraph fonts after a use of preformatted text).
2001/5/20: Instructions for two sided printing
Felt guilty that I might be causing a lot of paper wastage by putting big documents of Morris Dance notes that readers will probably want to print on the WWW so added instructions anent how to do two sided printing on single sided printers for readers to halve the paper needed.
2001/5/20: Cotswold Morris Cheat Sheet
Doubled the size of the site by adding my Cotswold Morris Dancing Cheat Sheet (i.e. quick reference instructions) in HTML, text, Word, PDF & Palm Pilot Doc format.
2001/5/20: Change from partly business to purely personal site
This http://duramecho.com site is no longer in commercial use so removed the little remaining business stuff and moved this information section to the top level so it now comprises the whole site. Changed my pseudonym to Duramecho to match the domain name.
2000/10/20: Freezer cake, rock cakes, Irish tea cake, standard deviation
Added recipes for alcoholic chocolate freezer cake, rock cakes & Irish tea cake by request. This was getting to look too much like a cookery site so I also added an explanation of why there is the "minus one" in some formulae for standard deviations.
2000/9/16: Start, Sachertorte, Powerpoint animations, punting instructions
Started this site with a recipe for Sachertorte, instructions on how to do animations in Powerpoint & instructions on how to punt. The web-space is a virtual server hosted on Virtual Names UK, it being the cheapest WWW hosting I found with CGI support.

N.B. The dates here are the dates at which the changes were uploaded to the public website and so some are later than when the changes were written.

By Andrew Hardwick.