ANNOUNCE: Alan Flavell's web pages

At 09:21:03 on Fri, 29 Aug 2008, Geoff Berrow <blthecat@ckdog.co.uk>
wrote in <nacfb4d55fm4c63ki6ep5o8vtihdmjleja@4ax.com>:
Indeed I was. They are many and complex, and there came a point where,
before I had finished, I got overtaken by all kinds of other stuff; and
somehow, somewhen, I have to find the time to go back and see what still
needs doing, and do it. I know for a fact that none of the CGI scripts
work yet (but maybe it's not that important that they should, I might be
being over-perfectionist here); but there was also all kinds of stuff
which depended on the specific configuration of Glasgow University's
server and which didn't work on Gradwell, and I spent ages (a) figuring
out what Alan had done (some of it was seriously mind-stretching in its
ingenuity) and (b) how best to do it differently, but with the same
results. Sometimes I simply ended up hard-coding stuff which Alan had
coded as dynamic, just because it's the only way I could find of getting
it to work reliably. I wanted him there beside me, to help and advise
me.

OK, that's a lot of excuses. It probably wouldn't take me more than one
full weekend to finish the job. I just haven't been able find that full
weekend yet. This year's been a wee bit busy.

In the meantime, the salvaged site is (and has been for quite a while,
albeit unannounced) at <http://www.alanflavell.org.uk/>. Feel free to
explore, and link to any pages to which y'all used to link on the
original site; the site structure *will not change*. I would
appreciate an e-mail (to my Reply-To) with details of anything you find
wrong - I had to re-do the entire navigation, for a start, and I haven't
triple-checked it yet. Various pages had to be removed entirely, along
with all references to them, at the request of Glasgow University; but
rest assured that nothing crucial has been lost. There may, however, be
broken links. I haven't Xenu-ed it yet.

(Andy - there is no organisational chart on the site. Never was. There
is an "amusing exercise" involving a table displaying competition
results; but that's totally different.)

As youse all work through the rediscovery of the intricacies of Alan's
site, make sure that you don't miss the photos of Alan's Official VM
Teddy (awarded to Sir Alan of the Twinkling Eye in 1992). Also, please
ensure that you make an entry in your diaries, for somewhere in the
brief December-February window which is the Seville orange season, to
look up and follow Alan's marmalade recipe. When I made it, it was the
best I've ever tasted. The recipe was Alan's mother's, and she lived to
be 102.

I wish he had.

[XP to unwa and ciwah; FU to unwa]
--
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)