PAMPA web site announcement!

Hello PAMPA and SSWF members, and interested onlookers!

We can't really keep mum on this anymore. A few of you already know about it, now it is time to tell the world: PAMPA is getting a new website!

Steven Yampolsky has expended an impressive amount of effort and time during the last year constructing a new PAMPA website, which is located at http://www.control-line.org , you are invited to take a look at it now.

Our original PAMPA website was originally created nearly 8 years ago. Although it has undergone periodic minor changes, it has been in bad need of an update for some time. (We have had a few discussions about it on the SSWF forum.)

Steven has completely designed a replacement for it which offers many improvements and features, as well as a lower long term cost to PAMPA. In addition to the fresh, crisp look of the new site, it offers many new capabilities.

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For example, PAMPA members will be able to register on the site and log in, to access features not generally available to everyone. The PAMPA Email Central page, for example, will no longer be easily accessible to "bot" SPAM gathering programs. In addition, a simple mechanism is provided for members to upload photos for the site; photo posting is moderated, and photos are viewable
by everyone.

PAMPA officers will be provided free email links, for PAMPA business. Links are provided so that members can have convenient email access to PAMPA District Directors.

A Documents directory includes our Bylaws, a Membership Application, Stunt Pattern, and various articles and other material, compressed and converted to HTML (net browser), PDF (Adobe Acrobat reader), and ZIP (compressed) formats, which are easily downloaded with a simple mouse click.

Steven has provided an online Calendar subdirectory, which shows monthly activities and can be conveniently updated with information from PAMPA members. (NOW you know why Steven was asking all those questions about calendar data!)

A Tips directory has several relevant FAQs (frequently asked question lists). And a Links directory has the URLs for various CL manufacturers.

Steven will provide password accessible features for maintaining and updating the site in the future. He has already written special programs to extract the existing PAMPA membership information from the database as maintained by Shareen Fancher.

Although the new website is well underway, Steven is exploring additional features and capabilities. We should be able to provide better access to information about our PAMPA advertisers, as well as consider internet access for displaying and perhaps selling PAMPA Products.

It should be noted that the site will be capable of being added to and improved by ordinary folks, those with limited computer savvy. This should encourage more PAMPA members to get involved in its maintenance and updates. Expect a growth in site material in the future.

In summary, Steven has put out a tremendous effort to update our web site to PAMPA's benefit. I would like to invite everyone to visit the new site. Please email Steven and tell him what you think of the site, your comments and suggestions are solicited, of course.

A link to the new site will be provided shortly on the old site at http://www.zianet.com/pampaeditor and we plan to overlap both sites for a few months, before removing the old one.

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(so-called "webmaster" of our old PAMPA web site)

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain." -Dolly Parton

Hi Larry,
As a proud "Pop", I have to say I like the top banner graphics that Aaron chose to add for Steven. He still has a "little" clean up to do. Steven has done a very nice job here.
Bill <><

Larry,

Wonderful! So many people work their elevators off to keep PAMPA and SN the best. Most of this effort goes unrecognized and under-appreciated IMHO.

Steve. Great job and thanks for the effort. I haven't logged onto the PAMPA site for quite some time but will now become a regular "lurker" and occasionaly pop off in my usual style.

Larry,

I went, I looked, I couldn't figure out the registration process.
I guess my comment is that the registration process could be made a
little easier!

Really Really nice! Well done Steve!

>Larry,
>
>I went, I looked, I couldn't figure out the registration
>process.
>I guess my comment is that the registration process could be
>made a
>little easier!
>
>Jim Pollock

Same here! I got "User name does not exist". I hope you'll have PDF's of the judging forms for all the stunt events. That would be useful, but maybe you've already got those. Steve

ADDED: duh. Larry already answered this one.

There is no registration process as such. All accounts are already there for all valid members. We are using a conversion program that takes Shareen's database and creates accounts for every PAMPA member with a valid email address. The only thing you need to do is fetch your password. The password is emailed to the email address on file with PAMPA. If you have switched your address, chances are, you will not receive the email. In that case you have 2 options:
1) send an email to [email protected] with the following info:your name, address,AMA and your new email address. I will update the database with the new address and email the password to you.
2) if you do not wish to email your personal address, call up Shareen and ask her to forward your new email address to me.

Since Shareen has her hands full, I don't mind doing the work for step 1). I will email Shareen all update requests once a month in a batch so that she can keep her database up to date as well. I will only send her email address change. If you need to change your regular mailing address, you still need to contact Shareen.

Steven Yampolsky

P.S. On the main page for www.control-line.org there is a similar message explaining the process of fetching your password.

I have received a bunch of emails telling me that the following email addresses are invalid:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

This is the result of a person trying to retreive their login info. Can you please contact me with the correct email so that I can send you your login information.

The trailing slash after the server name is to indicate to the server that you want to display the default file in the web address's root directory. In the real early days, when everyone used NCSA's web server software, the default file was usually called "index.html", but these days you never know ("default.htm" seems popular). This is something that the web server's administrator sets up. These days, also, the slash is implied when you don't explicitly type it in. In the distant past, in the days of Mosaic, leaving the slash out meant an invalid web address.

Talking about the days of NCSA Mosaic is like telling everyone how old you are.

Good news, Larry!
Great job, Steven! (How's the little princess?)

I made a point of keeping my big mouth shut, but now thar PAMPA has it, I can say:

The old Site wasn't very good looking.

Let me say that Larry's articles made up for the looks, his articles on the profiles and the Mo Best are among the best stuff one can find at the web concerning airmodels.

God bless you all!

In Christ,

Ion (a big thumbs up !) Muniz:D

PS Here at Rio we have nicknamed the Mo' best. It's called "Minha Besta".

Minha - My

Besta - Beast, or a traction mule.

So, Mo Best in Rio is My Beast...

>
>Let me say that Larry's articles made up for the looks, ..

Sheesh! Well, Dan Rutherford told me I was muy feo..

Ion, you need my full fuselage Mo'Best, Robert Compton had already named it Mo'Beast.

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"Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it." -Mark Twain

Is there some strange reason why text cannot be written to fit the page? Why produce a page that is wider than most browser windows and then write text so that it doesn't fit the window.
If the object is to dispense information, it fails dismally for me. If the object is to impress people, it might work for some, but not me.
If the object IS to dispense information, then it should work on all platforms, not just the fastest computers with the latest software. C/L stunt is elitist enough without this.

What pages are giving you a problem?

On your site rating page, you use 1 to 5. Is 5 the highest or it 1 the highest?

The higher, the better. 5 meanst the best, 1 means the least favorite
Steven Yampolsky

That's what I e-mailed you about three times. I got two failure messages (webmaster address). Did you get the third one? Unfortunately, I did rate one link all wrong. It is excellent, but I put down a "1". Could you fix that one for me? If you didn't get my e-mail, it was B.G.'s Classic site.

Meanwhile, have you still been getting e-mail failure messages? I haven't received anything yet.

Serge

Larry,

In the link you have in your first message, there is a trailing slash (just hover over the link and you'll see it - it's not in the TEXT that's displayed in the message, just in the LINK to the site). When I click on that, I get a dot-Net error message, which basically boils down to "Invalid URI: The URI scheme is not valid.". When I remove the trailing slash (in the browser's "Address" window), I don't get that error (however, I do get that same error in at least one link on the site). I'm using IE 6 with all the latest updates, running under Win XP Home, I have a router and a personal firewall, and my browser is set up to prompt me whether to accept cookies. I've already emailed Steven Yampolsky. As an application developer (and webmaster) myself, I know you guys'll want to know about this kind of thing. Sounds like so far I'm the only one who's run into it, tho. Don't be upset - this happens to everyone sooner or later. I love the site - it's a major upgrade from the old one. If this is the biggest problem it has, we're in for a great time with it...

Tim,
I did some asking around. What kind of firewall are you rinning? Are you running a proxy? This information may help me with troubleshooting.

What kind of info would you like to see? Take a look at the About page: is that what you had in mind?

>BTW, Larry, there's a mistake in your link to the site - you
>have a trailing "/" which causes an error when I click on
>your link. Removing the slash allows me to visit the site.
>Sure looks great!

Tim,

Are you running some kind of debug environment on your machine? I used to get that error on my work computer but not anymore.

Steve,

I do have an Apache server running on my machine, but it doesn't cause any problems with any other website I've visited. I'll try the new site from one or two other machines - it's very possible that my "main" machine has some kind of setup issue that is causing this. Can you give me a clue as to what changed on your work computer? The curious thing is that my computers are all Microsoft thru and thru, and your website is based on Microsoft technology, but it's causing me grief. At this point, I get that error whenever I try an interactive part of the website. Even if the database was updated to show my recent membership, I wouldn't be able to log on (at least from this machine) because I get that error when I hit the "logon" button. If I truly am the only person getting that error, then it must be on my end. I sure hope it at least works from my Win98 computer...

Tim,

I will try and retrace my steps to see what I did on my work computer to get that error. So far, you are the only one who encountered this error and that's a good thing. I am still learning the intricacies of .net so bear with me. I am sure we'll get this licked.

Send me what you want me to talk about; I'll do the article and send it to Will Hubin ASAP.

I added a link on the old site to the new site..

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Our old site on Zianet will disappear in a month or two.

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"The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer." -Victor Borge

>.. No more reading those "Better Profile" articles to those catchy tunes!

OS, I suppose you could ask Steven to add a Tacky Midi section on the new site!

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"To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." -Elbert Hubbard

I DO regret that I haven't figured out how to save the entire files, i.e., text, graphics and "midis" to my hard drive, so that I could enjoy them at my leisure, and as back up in case my hard copies disappear or are damaged in some way. Another problem with the hard copies is the fact that a lot of data (picture size, diagram size and detail, etc.), is lost when the files are printed.

I'm slowly learning and mastering the "Cowboy Way!"

OS, just go to the new site and download the PDF files for the articles. They are better (prettier) anyway than the HTML versions and you won't have such problems. Better for printing as well.

Also, I recommend Mozilla for a web browser, and it WILL save the entire web pages without hassle. Google to find and download it, it's free - superior to Netscape.

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"Cricket is best described as organised loafing." -Anonymous British Radio Broadcaster, 1996

>Talking about the days of NCSA Mosaic is like telling
>everyone how old you are.
>
>Steven Yampolsky

You know, come to think of it.. all this stuff was going on around 1991-92, so one doesn't have to be that old to remember Mosaic. Its amazing to think it was just 10-12 years ago. I first put up a CL web site in 1992 or 93, I think.. (Goran remembers..) running some freeware web server software I downloaded, under Windows 3.0 (and then 3.1). Before that, it was an FTP server. What an interesting time it was - I never did imagine what it'd be like today, either, having no real idea of what one could do with CGI. No plug-ins, no Acrobat, etc. back then.

...What an interesting time it was - I never did imagine what it'd be like today, either, having no real idea of what one could do with CGI. No plug-ins, no Acrobat, etc. back then.

Ah, but don't you sometimes miss the questions and comments about submarine blueprints, Krylon paint, diesel mechanics, etc.?
Wonder if that guy ever got his Honda to run right?
Then there were the folks who dropped by and accused us of being dopies or perverts because some of our terms are used elsewhere.

Actually,..I don't miss them.