New Web Site Design - September 2003

I rewrote my web site dropping all references to Linux as I found it more and more time consuming using Linux. I am sorry to say I prefer Windows XP for ease of use. Note that I did not say reliability or security!

I wrote the code concentrating on creating JavaScript macros to make web page creation simple. I decided that I would document my new hobby of model railways, my primary interests being the model making and the electronics. I would also keep the Humour section and complete the task of publishing the junk I had collected over the years.

Unfortunately search engines never seemed to pick up any of the pages so during November 2003 I used a Perl program to convert the macros to HTML.

Following this I did a quick visual check and corrected minor conversion problems primarily with ampersands, single and double quotes and the semicolons. (Would you have expected anything else with JavaScript and Perl?)

The next phase involved using Tidy from http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ within a batch file created by some Perl code to check and correct the HTML whilst tidying the format.

To complete the task, I submitted by code to the various validators. (See Link - Validators page)

My favourite tools are:

Notetab Light Editor (Freeware)
Easy Thumbnails (Freeware)
Xenu's Link Sleuth (Freeware)
CadStd Pro ($25)
Paint Shop Pro and
Frontpage

My Internet History

The first ISP I was with was CompuServe back in March 1995, however, it did not take long to realise that there must be better. So I moved to Demon in January 1996 and had my own domain superpan.demon.co.uk.

I was a Demon customer migrating from modems to ISDN. I registered my own domain superpan.org in April 2000 piggy backing of a friend's Linux server for web and mail (POP/SMTP) support.

I used RedHotAnt dialup, one of the early fixed cost 0800 dial up numbers in April 2000 for an annual cost of £60. The company did not last a year, but I still calculated that I had more than my money's worth compared to other 0845 (local rate) suppliers.

During February 2002 I moved away from Demon as they could no longer meet my needs when I wanted broadband (at that time it was not available with Demon). I then moved to NTL 500k link (now 600k).

In September 2003 I started hosting with Self Managed Web Hosting using DIY Hosts using their Standard Plan. So far the service has been very reliable. The help through the forums from staff members has been fast. Although I do not use most of the plug-in facilities that are available, I still consider this a best buy for my needs.