Random Ramblings
Created | Updated Apr 1, 2009
It's been a long, long
Long time...
... 50 years, to be precise, that my parents have been married. It's not always been a good time, but they made it, and so we celebrated the other weekend. It was a wonderful day, and I guess we're all very lucky that both my parents are of good health. Hootoo will be ten this year, which is quite an achievement, too, and we're going to have an h2g2 London meet close to the birthday, on 9th May. Yes, that's just five weeks and two days from today, so if you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for?
Ever since the last 'under-the-bonnet' changes to the DNA service, we've had a lot of bugs, some of which are affecting our work here at the h2g2 Post. For some odd reason which nobody can explain, long articles (and that includes some of our archives) can't be edited. Most of the bugs reported have been fixed by now, but this one prevails. One of the technical team posted to one of the bug threads, saying he hadn't a clue why this happened as they hadn't made any changes to the editing feature. He said he was looking into it. The next morning, all the BBC DNA boards were down1, so I posted and said I had wondered whether he had managed to break the whole of the BBC. He replied he had been afraid of that, too. Which reminds me: has anyone seen Jim Lynn recently? I haven't seen him for ages. Anyway, if your archive doesn't show the latest articles, be patient. We'll update it when the bug is fixed.
The bug that deters the active Researchers from trying to improve the site has yet to be created, though. There's a whole lot of activities going on, even though they're maybe not reflected in the Top 20 list on the Front Page. Icy North compiled a very long list of Edited Guide Entries with spelling mistakes of the common variety (such as accomodate/accommodate) which he posted to Editorial Feedback, and the curators and eds were very quick to set out to correct them. A completely different Special Incentive was started by Malabarista in an attempt to get more people to write for the Edited Guide. If you don't know her art work, have a look at the Anarchy Gordon series here in the Post, at the marvellous blob she painted for The Stretcher, or at the art work she created for EGEs. She even does requests if you ask nicely and time permits – that is how I got the lovely Lorelei blob for one of my entries, and how I'll hopefully have a marvellous Lobscouse blob on another entry soon. I am very pleased about that. If you've always thought about writing an entry (and even if not), don't wait, get writing, because there is a deadline to the offer!
The other week I had the idea of posting something that made me laugh here in my column in the future. So far, the editors have been so nice to provide me with LotD quotes, and this time is no exception. I discovered two mysterious 'No Subject' conversations on their PS, and on investigating, I found that they were blank posts, made by the eds, and with the 'Thread closed' in an area reading: This is the Conversation Forum for 'Deleted'. I was intrigued, because I remembered I had once discovered a similar entry, so I searched for it. Turned out, what I remembered was a different entry, so I posted to an existing conversation there, enquiring about the mysterious threads. The answer wasn't mysterious, but it raised a smile. Yay for the eds – I'd be in serious trouble to find a quote for my LotD without them. 
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