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Pete Atkin / News / Re: The Pheasantry |
28.11.24 at 17:52 |
| Started by S J Birkill | Newest post by Chris H |
Thanks for the clip of Julie singing "Just in passing".
"The Party's Moving On", was a favourite of mine and the sort of quirky and interesting programme that I soubt would be given the chance today.
After hearing Pete on the radio, I spotted an entry for rhis progarmme in the LWT shedules purely by chance and was hooked.
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| 7 |
Pete Atkin / Words / Re: Clive James -- twelve months gone |
30.10.24 at 05:24 |
| Started by S J Birkill | Newest post by S J Birkill |
That's great -- thank you for these. I also have a handful of review pieces of Clive's, sent to me by another contributor, that have been 'on the back burner' here for rather too long. I think your comments, along with these new acquisitions, will prompt some overdue action here.
I'll have to decide just how to incorporate them: I've always been a little uneasy about copying articles that are still 'live' on the Web, especially where that would breach a paywall (despite having the blessing of Clive's estate and the unproven assumption that he retained rights on these pieces), so some of them may be included as direct hyperlinks from my menu/index rather than have their own page(s) here. We'll see. Problem with that approach is that I need to check back periodically that each is still on line, so that if necessary I can create a new page in the 'Archive' from my stored copy. This may already apply to some of the links I've marked with the red dollar sign as long as five years ago. Need to make some space in my busy schedule 
Onward!
Steve
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| 8 |
Pete Atkin / Members / Moderators |
27.10.24 at 08:01 |
| Started by S J Birkill | Newest post by S J Birkill |
I'm about to make a small and long-overdue change to the MV Forum which will have effectively zero impact on anyone here, but it's my duty to announce it anyway.
When I set up this Forum in 2004, to take over from the original e-mail list, I followed conventional protocol for such systems and divided the Forum into a number of subject-area 'Boards', appointing a 'Moderator' for each board. The function of the moderator was to monitor messages in his or her board, with the power to intervene, to censor or even delete posts, should discussion or content stray beyond what the moderator judged to be socially (or legally) acceptable limits.
I was pleased to receive a number of nominations and indeed worthy volunteers for the advertised honorary positions (check out the relevant thread, HERE) and the following members were duly appointed:
Gigs -- Gerry Smith
*oDs -- Leslie Moss
Music -- Ian Chippett
Words -- Mike Walters
Chums -- Cary Bernard
Shrinks -- Dave Lewis
Tech -- Snoopy (Alexis Birkill)
Other boards, some added later, were moderated by myself (News, the FAQs and Members) or by Pete (Newsletter).
Twenty years have since gone by, and as far as I can recall there hasn't been a single case requiring moderation (there have been a couple of requests for post hoc edits, which I have applied myself). Indeed, some of our moderators now seldom log in to the Forum, if at all, and one (dear Gerry Smith) is no longer with us. And in any case, with the much reduced volume of posts since we began, there's just no need for seven or more members to share moderation 'duties'. After all, as admin I can do anything a moderator can do and more. So I've decided to de-clutter, and revoke 'Moderator' status and privileges completely.
Nothing personal, and I'm pretty sure no-one will detect any difference. Only fair though to give everyone notice, chance to speak up, so if you have any comments or objections please reply in this thread. Otherwise I'll make the change in a week's time.
Steve
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| 10 |
Atkin admin / Tech / New MV feature: Draft saving |
17.10.24 at 08:59 |
| Started by S J Birkill | Newest post by S J Birkill |
Have you ever been in the middle of posting a message to our Forum, a message with text enhancements including bold, italic, underlined, resized or coloured text, or any of those other less-used stylings (fancy fonts, centred, crossed through, bulleted, tabulated or justified text -- you get the idea), or you've felt it necessary to include 'code' or 'quote' panels in your post?
Probably not.
But it must be pretty common to find yourself sharing thoughts with other members in a post which might stretch to several paragraphs, with embedded set-lists, photos or links to other sites, email addresses or video files. Composing such messages can be time-consuming, and may involve frequent checks of (say) Web pages or e-mails to check sources and details. So the mounting sense of anxiety might be familiar: suppose your browser crashes, or the power goes out, or you inadvertently close the wrong tab. You come back here and your message is no longer anywhere to be found -- gone! Twenty minutes' work vanished without a trace.
You might have developed a routine involving a text editor and frequent cut and paste operations to ensure you have a backup in case something goes wrong. All rather tedious -- you can't usefully do a <Ctrl>-S either. The software behind MV's forum dates from the late 1990s, when automatic save-as-you-type routines were a new thing and very slow; adding such a feature at this stage would involve a complete rewrite of several of the program's modules. You might wish we would switch to a new, modern messaging system (an even bigger job if it were to retain all our features and history), and/or abandon the MV we love to Facebook or Google, again losing all of our twenty-year back story.
In an effort to relieve our collective anxiety I have added a new trick to MV: the facility to save a draft of one's post on demand and recall it whenever desired or necessary. Each operation is called by clicking a button below the text compose/edit box, either "Save Draft" or "Load Draft". Whenever the Save Draft button is clicked, the entire message, subject line and all, is saved to a local file on your computer. No, not a 'cookie' -- rather this employs the browser's 'Local Storage' feature, and the server knows nothing about it. So if you're needing to use the 'back' button or switch tabs to check a source for inclusion in your post, just hit Save Draft first, then off you confidently go.
When you return to complete your message, just go back to MV's 'New Post' (or 'Reply', or wherever you were). In the event that the message has disappeared (for this may be days or weeks later, in another city, after several restarts of your device), just click Load Draft and your message will instantly reappear in all its detail, ready for completion, editing or posting as if you'd never been away.
Just a couple of things to watch. To simplify operation I've chosen to make the 'Load' operation overwrite any existing text in the compose/edit box, rather than having you specify whether to replace (overwrite), insert (load at cursor) or append (load at end). Generally you'll want the first of these, as the original message will be absent. Your recovered message will, naturally enough, only be complete up to the point you last did a 'Save'. You should also avoid clicking Save Draft when the text box is empty, as this will overwrite your existing saved draft (there's only room for one) with an empty message. Note also that the Clear button can safely be used to delete the contents of the text box without hurting the saved draft.
As always, the Preview button will open a Preview panel above the edit box, so you can safely check how your message will look when posted. When it's complete and you're happy with it, click Post.
Comments welcome; any problems I'd very much like to know about, and fix. Complaints office next door.
Steve
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