h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm here now Thanks for trying to sort that Bel

HtH, I haven't quite followed all that in this thread, so my apologies but I think it would be better if we started from scratch. I have to go report another bug I just found, but will come back in a bit and we can take if from there.


kea

In short everything works in Settings except
the screen name function.


HtH

OK, let's try this. I know you may have done those things before, but I need to test this methodically:

- go to your browser settings and clear all cookies with h2g2 in them. If you're not sure how to do that, come back and ask me before you do the next steps (and post here with your operating system and browser).

- log out of h2g2 and then log back in.

- go to Settings

- there are 7 fields there. We're going to ignore the first 3: Login Name, Password, Email Address)

- in Screen Name, put the name HtH ~ (exactly like that)

- set Skin to Alabaster

- set Forum Style to Standard

- set User Mode to Advanced

- press update


- Take notes of anything unusual that happens.

- Wait ten minutes and then open a new page to see if the screen name shows up as changed. I would suggest not using your account for ten minutes.

- Post back here and let me know what happens.

Say, how's tomorrow about this time looking for you?

Seriously, step one is something I have never done before.
I will need your guidance to find and clear cookies. I also wonder
how many of those might actually be for my other account. Been using
this laptop for six years and never logged out of h2g2. Anyway...

I have a Vista Home Edition laptop and I use Firefox as my browser.

I was going to spend tomorrow cleaning out several hundred bookmarks
because I've been getting warnings that Firefox is using almost all of
my available memory. It had never occurred to me that it may be
loading all of them every time I boot up - I thought they were just
a list of URLs but now I'm suspecting that they are more 'alive' than
that and I need to clean them out before I start poking at things
like browser settings. I also have several hundred unread emails in
each of my two email programs that need to be deleted.

Fear not, there is no rush on fixing this account's lack of function of the
Screen name, everything else is working well and I am able to read and
post fine for now. But I do want to figger out what I might be doing wrong
before I try re-activating my old account and possibly run into the same
screen name problem. It would be nice to play with taglines again but I've
lived without that since you warned me about the loss of tildes when the
Barlesque came in.

Thanks for your patience and let me know if you need anymore info about
my system and if we can take a crack at this tomorrow. Go enjoy your day.
It's Friday night here and I'm just going to relax.



~jwf~

Tomorrow is fine.

If you want, try the steps without deleting the cookies. If that doesn't work we can try the cookie thing.

I wouldn't worry so much about the emails. I asked my new latop's tech support yesterday if having 20,000 emails* would be a problem He thought no, but he said he only had 4 or 5 thousand on his computer.

*most of them are from an email list that I search regularly.

I don't know about the bookmarks/memory issue. I use a mac version of Firefox and I wouldn't have thought that several hundred bookmarks would have been a problem. Might be the cache, and it would be worthing starting a thread on Ask to get advice about that.

talk soon,
kea.

Hey ~jwf~

Were you able to do the test above (without the cookie reset)?

Hi kea,
Thanks for your patience.

I will now log out and log in and go to settings
ignoring the first three boxes and putting HtH
in the Screen Name box and the other skin settings
you suggest.

Back in a bit.

peace
HtH

Just dropping this in because it's useful to know:

>>>
But first I just want to acknowledge Ben's last question of whether
I was trying to use an apostrophe.

OMG! Yes. But just once. Long, long ago.
On the very first attempt to change my screen name I was testing
to see if I could safely use a ~tilde~ and without really thinking
about it I threw in an apostrophe. It was supposed to read as:

hairy the horse ~ ride 'em cowboy

It failed and gave me my first glimpse of the error message.
That's what seems to be stuck in the plumbing.
That *&#^$%#$@ apostrophe.

I've backspaced the box and deleted everything in it many times
since and replaced it with just plain English text letters and it still
thinks I am trying to inject that original (and until Ben asked,
completely forgotten) apostrophe.

Having realised this now I am glad I asked here after all.
In my mind I can now see what's plugging up the system.
<<<

That worked!


It worked instantaneously as all the other non-screen name
Updates had and went immediately back to my homepage showing
the change.

Now I am HtH.
In Frames, Advanced Alabaster as I prefer.

But why would HtH work in the Screen Name box and
nothing, absolutely nothing else would?

I had tried just hairy and several other things and
it all came up still complaining about that forgotten
apostrophe it thought was an unclosed quote.

You musta used a loo brush to clear that drain.


~ ~
HtH

No I haven't done anything, so that's very curious. I will log the apostrophe thing too and give Pastey a nudge when he gets back.

I will also have a think on this and get back to you later. I wonder if it was to do with you rebooting your computer. In general when testing for something it's a good idea to only do one thing at a time. This is why I wanted you to do the test above before we do anything else. Now we have a couple of variables to sort out. I'm sure it's all resolvable though

I had rebooted a coupla times over the past few days.
This keyboard is so tiny it keeps letting me hit all the wrong
buttons when I get excited and type fast. There is some strange
combination of SHFT and CTRL that I keep skimming when reaching
for the caps button that sets off an ALT keyboard function.

Every key takes on a whole new character. I lose the < > and
the ~~~ and can't post smileys or sign my old name ~properly~
until I shut it all off and on again. If it happens when I'm well
into a long reply I will resort to -dashes- instead of ~tildes~
in my old signature.

The keyboard is so sensitive that I have yet to figure out what it
is I have actually keyed in accidentally. Another regular touchy-
feely keystroke accident pops up a window that asks me if I want
to turn on 'sticky keys' and I have no idea what that is but expect
it's summat to do with what we used to call macros about which I
know even less.

Anyway, thanks for your help and patience.
Do you think I can try to reset my Screen Name again?
HtH is a good signature but I'd like to have a longer nickname
and tagline and maybe try a ~tilde~ or two.

I might even become ~jwf~ on this account and leave the old Unumber
buried in the archeological ruins of old hootoo.


My guess is that either the Settings page gets rebooted every 24
hours or so, or it drops what was first entered upon logout. I do not
usually log out of h2g2 and return with a bookmark every time.
This time I typed www.h2g2.com into my browser and came to the
h2g2 Brunel front page, chose 'log in' and got the pretty new page
with two boxes for ID and password. My browser filled them in
automatically and I was transferred to the HtH homepage where
I hit Settings and filled in the lower boxes as you suggested and
presto I was back on my homepage with the new nickname HtH.

I suspect it has to be either logging off and resigning in (rather
than going via bookmark to an already logged in page) OR the
daily reboot of h2g2 pages which cleared the apostrophe hangup.

Dare I try another change in screen name?
No apostrophes just ~tildes~



~ ~
HtH

I would probably try it. After all, it's a new account, so no big loss if you manage to destroy it.

~jwf~ what I really need you to do is to do the steps outlined and then let me know what happens. If you do lots of other things we will have no idea what's affecting what.

So, in the first instance, can you please do the following, and before you do ANYTHING else, please come back here and tell me what happened.


- log out of h2g2 and then log back in.

- go to Settings

- there are 7 fields there. We're going to ignore the first 3: Login Name, Password, Email Address)

- in Screen Name, put the name Harry (DON"T put anything else, just the word Harry)

- set Skin to Alabaster

- set Forum Style to Standard

- set User Mode to Advanced

- press update


- Take notes of anything unusual that happens.

- Wait ten minutes and then open a new page to see if the screen name shows up as changed. I would suggest not using your account for ten minutes.

- Post back here and let me know what happens.

Yes dear.
Logging off now.
Back in a flash.
Hopefully

~ ~
HtH

Done.
Now I'm Harry.
And I hate not having Frames.

~ ~
HtH

Excellent!

Ok, now stay logged in and try changing the name to ~harry~. Leave ALL the other settings exactly the same.

(we can look at the Frames thing a bit later).

~Harry~ I am!

Next?

~ ~
HtH

Woohoo! Ok try changing to Frames, leaving everything else the same, and see what happens.

Done.

I really think the blockage has gone now.



~ ~
HtH