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Spammers struck again and filled the photo archive with junk "remarks". I have deleted all of these I hope, but if you find one, let me know and I will remove them.

Unless we have a "sign-in" with password for posting remarks to the photo archive, this problem will continue. It will even continue after that because I presume the spammers will simply register and continue to post junk.

So I have now made it impossible to post additional remarks in the photo archive.

As you may have noticed the Message Board is also getting spam postings as well. For now I am simply erasing them as they occur (about once a week). I suppose that this is not a long term solution though. Obviously a problem to think about.

- Norman '74

Okay the full recovery of all previous data in the online email directory is complete.

Thanks for the kind words Michael; 'preciate 'em.

- Norman '74

Norm,

No apologies necessary...you and Steve are doing all of this on your own and we appreciate you for all of your efforts, even when there are the occasional glitches.

Thanks again for all of your hard work on the site.

Hi Folks -

This is a Mea Culpa message to say that the Online Email Directory has been having problems, but they are now fixed. I won't go into the technical details of things, but the original technical design of the email directory did not expect to be so successful. Currently there are over 1000 records. Bad things happen when someone clicks the update button two times quickly. Unfortunately bad things didn't happen to the single person alone - it happened to everyone. This problem has now been solved. If you click twice - or numerous times - in rapid succession, you will be destroying only your own data. Everyone else's data will be fully isolated from you.

In the past, I'm afraid that we lost some records due to just this problem. I have been able to reconstruct much of the data that was lost, but I am still in the process of doing that.

If some of you have grown frustrated by seeing your data get wiped out, please consider entering it again, because the 'new and improved' database is much more robust.

In the meantime, I hope to have all of the data reconstructed again very soon.

- Norman '74

PS: I presume you've noticed that I am now using the (a) combination of symbols in the email addresses rather than the @ sign. I am doing this to help confuse email harvesting software. Perhaps a bit of an inconvenience for some, but in the long run, probably worth it. - Nn.

Christopher -

I've removed the IP/Hostname from all of your posts. This should solve the problem. I will also remove it from future messages of yours. Do you think your company monitors your internet activity? If so, then removing IP/Hostname won't solve the "problem", 'cause they already know what you're doing.

- Norman '74

Norman, is it possible to turn off the automatic IP addressing (or at least not to post it)? I'd rather not advertise that I'm posting from work, especially when it is against their internet use policy! Thanks.

Jim - please get in touch with Sultan Ghahtani (email: sultan@flashcom.net) has started to work on something like this. Please get in touch with him. The "staging area" feature is certainly a desireable one. I also would prefer it was written in perl.

Thanks for your help Jim!

- Norman '74

Norman,
I believe I can handle the cgi code work to allow users to post pictures to a "staging area" for admin approval...
Actually I had though about this before and hesitated because I thought you may have wanted the cgi to post the pix directly to the DB (in which case the scripts would have to "talk" to each other)...
The staging area is both a more secure and easier way to handle it.

I'll try to get a little test script up this week.

I agree with you Steve, that uploading of images straight onto the website would be a nice feature. I do not believe this is too terribly hard to do, but will require some cgi work. Some of the desired features would include loading images to a "staging" area where they can be looked at by an administrator/webmaster/staff person before actually making them available online. This mostly to be sure that the images are interesting, and relevent - in a few cases if the quality of the image is poor it might also be dropped.

I'm not aware of any shareware/freeware which handles unix/linux based photo archives.

Yahoo.com also has auto uploading of images for their profile pages. Maybe a quick look at the html source is enough to show how to do this. As I say, I don't think this is too hard to do, but require some time, cgi experience, and care.

Excellent suggestion of yours in any case. Thanks for putting it on the wish/todo list.

- Norman '74

The only thing I can think of is some way to automate the uploading and posting of photographs. I know that there are some websites that have this ability (www.ecircles.com), but I don't know of any shareware (like Discus) that handle picture pictures. Do you know of anything?

Hi Folks,

I've received some email recently full of enthusiasm for more great things we can do with the website - with which I completely agree. As many of them go over the same "ground" I thought perhaps it would be useful to mention some of the things that are planned for the future vis a vis the website.

1. The most important near term development will be the migration of the website to a new computer. The new server is a powerful beast and it will handle BAHSAA traffic without any trouble. It will be co-located at a local (San Diego local) ISP. BAHS.ORG will be a fully virtual address - just like the "big boys". I hope to have this set up in the near future (read 1 - 2 months).

2. Once the website is migrated to the new server, some great opportunities will open up for us. This includes online membership sign-up with secure debit of credit cards, as well as online shoping for T-Shirts, and micsellanea.

3. This will also allow for online sign-up for future reunions via credit card.

These will be the most visible improvements, but there will be others "behind the scenes" which I believe will make life easier for everyone, including volunteers and "staff".

Now y'all probably have other ideas, wishes, and desires.... and I'll be most of 'em are good ones. Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me about them, or to post them here, etc.

And don't hesitate to volunteer to help out with the cgi/coding work either. But please bear with me - each week, I still try to work an hour or two on my day job! :-)

- Norman '74