The Forums? Oh... perleease!

Actually, I *have* just installed forum software on the Forum/Blog site but you can't see it just yet :)

Actually I'm looking for a way to integrate the blog with the forum so they share a common theme... not easy apparantly... something about them not sharing much coding... ah well. If you'd like a sneak preview of the 'bog standard site'... then click here where you can register, post, or whatever... it just doesn't *look* quite right yet :)

Ever felt like a parrot?

Not this isn't some gastronomical quiz, not is it an advert for some fetish group. It's just that I seem to be constantly repeating "Who's a silly boy then?"... or some similar theme.

Talking of themes... that's what I did... changed the theme on the forum/blog site to one that wasn't 100% ready for use... and sort of... killed it :)

Kyte - bless her little cotton socks - has fixed the theme. and I'm currently uploading it. My assumption is that it'll repair it self and all will be well... tell ya... this blind faith is an amazing thing!

'Corse it might well *not* work and if it doesn't I'm of a mind to scrap the whole thing yet again and take it back to a 'proper' forum... maybe using 'Simple Machine' software this time. Xoops was just a bit heavy for what was after all more of a blog than a forum.

Anyway... less chat - more action. It *might* yet work... we'll see!

Oh Lord, I can be SO stupid!

After all this time I've realised why we weren't getting the usual floods of submissions... I changed the 'mailto' address to a gmail one... and it all *bounces*. Flaming Google probably thinks it's spam or something..

Problem fixed - it's back to the original one - but how many words have been lost forever.

People who feel like kicking me - form a line :(

The March Back Begins!

I've been looking at the stats and it looks like the ODPS is beginning to recover. Of course we still need more submissions and similar but at least visitor numbers are increasing so... we're on the way!!

By the way - you might wonder where the new words are... well... as yet another excuse for not doing any work I've had my sister and brother in law staying here for the past few weeks and to be quite honest... real life beats the virtual one hands down! We've been out doing the tourist stuff and having fun... but she leaves in a day or two so then is when I'll get back to it... honest... so send 'em on in and they'll be up there by Monday ok??

And slowly times change!

After some short deliberation... oooh... a good ten seconds... I decided to totally remove all traces of the 'old' forum site and create a new 'forum/blog' site built around Wordpress... which I might add is a nice bit of kit!!

Ok it doesn't have the same 'feel' as before, but it's a lot more practical to manage and update. So far it's there... with a couple of posts... but little else:) It'll fill up slowly as things start to happen with the Dictionary... but in the meantime... if you'd like a sneak preview... try here... it's at ODPS Forums/Blog - what else would it be called?? :)

Seedy Songs indeed :)

Finally finished off re-entering all the playground songs and rhymes I found in the database. There *are* more out there... millions of them... I just need you to send them to me! Well ok... maybe not only you... maybe your friends? family? strangers on the street? We always need new material and since the site has been down we've lost a lot of the impetus. Let's go guys!!

And now... let's get to the 'Dirty Ditties' of the Rugby Songs!

Getting there slowly.

At the time of writing I've managed to get 175 terms re-entered into the 'Seedy Songs' dictionary. There're still another 200 or so to go that are still in the database, but the work is at last going on. Give me a week and it'll all be back up ready to put in the *new* entries. Then I can get on to all the filthy lyrics in the Rugby songs... now *that* ought to be a giggle! :)

My fingers ache!

I've spent most of today uploading entry after entry to the 'Seedy Songs' dictionary and have so far made very little headway relatively! At least I mananged to extract a database dump of the 'old' entries which is allowing me to do it. The thought of having to look through four years of mail trying to find the entries one at a time still gives me the shivers! On the other hand, looking through all the entries again has been real fun... some have made me laugh as much as they did when I first entered them :)

Anway, for those of you new to the site you'll have *no* idea what I'm talking about so just ignore me and go enjoy yourselves... for the regulars... well it will take me days, maybe weeks, to get each entry ready for inclusion so bear with me. It is happening. Soon the site will be restored to its former glory... so go get your friends and relatives and get more slang, songs, and games. C'mon guys... let's get the ball rolling again!!

The Times they *are* a changing!

Well - this time I really *am* back. The slipped disc is sufficiently recovered for me to start working on my sites. I've already revamped my 'personal' blog and sorted out the forums on Talk Tidy which is another dictionary site dedicated to Wenglish, the English dialect spoken around the place of my birth, i.e. S.Wales, UK.

The time has come to look closely at the forum site (odps.net) which also seems to have suffered a total collapse while I've been away. My feelings on this are to pretty abandon it in its current form and to simply replace it with either a vanilla phpBB forum or reduce it still further to essentially a 'blog' site. In fact, I've been wondering whether to simply extend this occasional blog/update window to fill the other site and allow it to accept comments etc as a means of communicating between each other.

As usual I'll be guided by the comments I get to via contact/feedback mail I get via the link above.

I'll move onto the main ODPS site - i.e. here - once the other sites are in place. There is simply too much to do here for me to be able to work on the other sites concurrently and, since they are all far smaller, I may as well get them updated and functioning before settling down to rebuilding this.

On that theme, after the eventual debacle surrounding Dmitry's rebuilding and loss of the backups [grrr... ] I'm looking round for a new source of dictionary building software. If anyone has any suggestions I'll be pleased to take a look - even commercially sourced software will be acceptable!

Finally, once more this blog is seeing me apologise for the mess the site is in and the way it deteriorated so badly. It really wasn't intentional, and despite my best efforts I have just been physically unable to give the place the attention it deserves. Hopefully, this will be the last apology from me for a while, and from here on I'll just be posting *good* news :)