My Web Site List

April 5 2006

I created this Blog to replace
Newsletters At Ogden Point as a way to keep everyone updated as I make changes to my various web sites, and to let more people know about my sites. I also hope to use the blog to completely replace the newsletter so that I can reclaim the server space it takes up.

My sites are:
http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca
http://www.ogdenpoint.ca
My PhotoServer
My WebCam Index

The Hug Page:
http://www.hug.ogdenpoint.ca

Cards From Ogden Point:
The Cards From Ogden Point Index Page
The Cards From Ogden Point Welcome Page
The Cards From Ogden Point Backup Page
The Cards From Ogden Point Card Pickup Page

...ron...

Cards Site Awards

Cards From Ogden Point

Has Won Some Awards.

2nd Place in the Valentine 2006 Cardmasters World Championship

1st Place in the Christmas 2005 Cardmasters World Championship

6th Place in the Autumn 2005 Cardmasters World Championship

5th Place in the Mother's Day 2005 Cardmasters World Championship

4th Place in the Spring Easter 2005 Cardmasters World Championship

2005 & 2006

Thank You To Everyone Who Voted For My Site.

Visit the Cardmaster Hall Of Fame

April 2006 News

April 2006
The Spring/Easter CardMaster Contest started on April 2.
I added 32 pictures from Finnerty Gardens at the University of Victoria to the contest page.
I also added some Flash Cards to the Easter Page to see how they are received.
The Contest.
Visit the Cardmaster Hall Of Fame
*******************************
Visit The Easter Pages Here.
Visit the Pictures From Finnerty Gardens Here.

March 2006 News

March 31 2006
During the month of March I spent a good deal of time improving the Card Pickup Page for Cards From Ogden Point. The task was made more difficult because the page is not hosted on my servers, it is a composite page that loads the various parts of the Posty onto the MyPostcards Network Server for delivery to the viewer. I design and lay out the page and upload the centre of the "body" of the page into a form on the system server. I do not have access to the "head" areas of the page normally used for scripts and other "Meta Data."
In March I added a system to send a "Thank You Posty" direct from the face of the received card. The "Thank You Posty" preloads the names and addresses into a Posty that has space for the recipient to optionally add a brief "Thanks For The Posty" message. The process takes two mouse clicks from beginning to end.
I also was successful in creating buttons for a "Print This Page" function, a "Close This Page" function, a "Save This Page" function (to allow the recipient to save the Posty to their computer), and an "Email This Page" function (to let the recipient either forward a permanent copy of the Posty to themselves or someone else by Email). The "Email This Page" function uses an outside service called www.jkn.com which seems to work very well. The "Print," "Close," and "Save" functions were definitely complicated by my only having access to part of the "Page." Unfortunately, the buttons don't all work in all browsers and on both Apple and Windows platforms. They do work well using Internet Explorer on Windows machines. (More work remains lol.)The "Email" function took a lot of searching and follow up to find an external service I trusted with the visitors (and my) email addresses. I was not able to find any script that let me provide the function directly without the external third party service. I was pleased to find the eternal service at www.jkn.com with no advertising and a very good security policy.
My sites had a regular flow of traffic for the month -- nothing spectacular -- just steady.
Cards From Ogden Point averaged 21.5 visitors per day with a maximum of 36 visitors on the 28th and a minimum of 13 on the 19th.The total was 666 visitors for the month who viewed 8332 pages -- an average of 12.5 pages per visit.
www.ogdenpoint.ca had 64 visitors view 147 pages.
www.ronmclean.bc.ca had 91 visitors view 181 pages.
http://www.photoserver.ogdenpoint.ca had 77 visitors view 494 pages (including the photo albums).

www.hug.ogdenpoint.ca had 55 visitors view 97 pages.
It should be noted that the counters count my first visit on a particular day as a new visit on a new page. That means that if I visited one of the sites every other day, I would account for 15 visits and 15 page views. That can represent a major percentage of the visits in the less frequently visited sites.On Cards From Ogden Point, the maximum number of possible visits would be one per day for totals of 31 visits and 31 page views. That would not have a major impact of the numbers for that site.
March 1 2006
On March 1, Cards From Ogden Point got a new way of displaying my new pictures.
Rather than having a group of pictures on temporary display for a few weeks at a time, I decided to try putting a folder of 2006 pictures in the site with the most recent month's additions at the top of the list. That way the pictures remain available for the whole year.
Click Here For The 2006 Cards Index Page.
March also saw the clean up and overhaul of Cards From Ogden Point.
Here is a "Before" and After view of the site's composition.
The pages were also re-optimized so that most of them would open in less than a minute on a dial up connection. The ones that don't are the original pages and pages containing scripts such as the newly added flash cards for holidays.

And here is an idea of what it takes to make the site operate:

Cards From Ogden Point had 6836 individual web pages on March 21 2006. 46 of those pages were rated to take longer than 60 seconds on a 28.8kb dial up connection. (That would be 30 seconds on a 56kb dial up connection.) 355 were rated to take 45 to 60 seconds, 2633 from 30 to 45 seconds, 3171 from 15 to 30 seconds and 631 less than 15 seconds. All those figures would be halved for a 56kb connection, and less than quartered for a Light Cable or DSL connection. On a regular ADSL or Cable connection, the figures would be approximately 30 to 40 times faster. That would mean that the page that was rated to take 60 seconds at 28.8kb should take 2 seconds to load on an ADSL connection. The limiting factor in Page Loading Times is controlled by the time in which my server can deliver the pages to the internet. My connection gives upload times in the range of 700 to 800kb per second. that is approximately 25 times faster than the 28.8kb dial up and about half or less the download time of ADSL connections. That means that if you are viewing from a Dial up connection, or a Shaw/Cable Lite connection, my server can deliver the pages faster than your computer can download them and your connection is the limiting factor. If you are viewing from a high speed connection such as regular Cable or ADSL, your connection could download the pages faster than my server can deliver them. A page that is rated to take 60 seconds to load at 28.8kb will take approximately 2.5 seconds to upload from my sever to the internet. Then if you add any system delays from the internet and the delay from your computer, it will take whatever delay your connection may have to get it from the internet. The process happens simultaneously, so if you are using that proverbial 28.8kb connection, the page rated at 60 seconds should load on your computer in less than 65 seconds. If you are using ADSL, it can't load in less than 3 seconds.
If you are interested,You can check your connection speed to the internet here:
Internet Connection Speed Tests
You can check your connection to my PhotoServer here:
Ron's Server Connection Speed Tests

February 2006 News

February 28 2006

Second Place Winner.
Valentines 2006 Event CardMasters World Championship
Visit the Cardmaster Hall Of Fame
**************
Read The Reviews for Cards From Ogden Point
Thank You To Everyone Who Voted For My Site.

The final visitor counts for February for Cards From Ogden Point placed it as the month with the second largest page view count in the site's history.
The final tally was 1,237 visitors viewing 19,074 pages. 5,401 of those pages were Valentine card index pages.
February 26 2006
From February 23 till the end of the month, I undertook a major overhaul of Cards From Ogden Point. There had been an number of outstanding "Bugs" in the various pages on the site that had to be cleaned up. The biggest was the "Options Pages" which had a number of grammar and punctuation errors in both the Headings and Signatures on almost every category of card.
I did a review of the "Hit Counters" on the various pages and found that the vast majority of visitors were not even finding the "Options" and "Text" Pages. The statistics also told me that people were not using the simplest pages -- they were opting for cards that allowed them some degree of creativity. I had tried some pages that were mixtures of the best features from the 3 card categories and those pages got the most attention in the Christmas, New Years, and Valentines card periods.
I then sat down and tried to create a page that can be used to create a "Simple" card if that is what they desire and that can incorporate the benefits of the "Options" and/or "Text" cards in that same card. To do this I made a card creation page that is a copy of the old "Simple Card" at the top of a page. That card can be addressed and sent in exactly the same manner as the previous "Simple Card". Then rather than using a different page from a different index page, I added a lower section to the cards that allows the visitor to scroll down and enhance the card. I put a link to a "Headings Suggestion Page" and a "Signature Suggestion Page." that contains the various Headings and Signatures that were on the "Options Pages." (That required editing two pages rather than the thousand or more "Options Pages" with the grammar and punctuation errors.)
The resulting site will be reduced in size to less than half its previous size because one card creation page replaces three. This will make editing and maintenance more straightforward.
A side benefit of the hybrid pages is that the cards that can be created from the Slide Shows and Random Posty Pages are now cards that can be fully enhanced. It also means far less effort for the visitor to be creative in their card preparation.
The results can be seen from the Main Index Page -- which replaced the old "Simple Index Page."
Click here for the Main Index Page.
February 16 2006
At 3pm on February16 the voting page for the CardMaster Championship was taken down and replaced with the winners list.
Cards From Ogden Point was on the winners list in the #2 position with 88 votes.
Second Place Winner.
Valentines 2006 EventCardmasters World Championship
Visit the Cardmaster Hall Of Fame
**************
Read The Reviews for Cards From Ogden Point
Thank You To Everyone Who Voted For My Site.
February 15 2006
Cards From Ogden Point was once again entered in a CardMaster competition.
The February Valentine CardMaster contest started on February 5 shortly after noon with 15 sites in the competition. The voting for all the sites started off quite slowly and never approached the numbers of votes cast in the Christmas contest.
The visitor counts gradually increased as Valentines Day approached. The 11th was the first day on which there were over 1000 pages viewed and the next three days saw increases in Visitor Counts and Page Views each day.
Valentines Day was a busy day for the site.
The daily visitor count for February 14 reached 205 visitors who viewed 3801 pages, making it the site's second busiest day --following behind the May 30 2005 "rush" that came with the site's appearance in the Langa List newsletter. Those totals added to the previous days in the month to show 831 visitors viewing 12,846 pages at the mid point of the month.
Cards From Ogden Point also reached the "Top 20 Sites" in the My Post Cards Network when it appeared as the Number 18 site on February 12 (based on traffic on February 11). That daily ranking is based on the actual cards sent and received on the Network's pages on the day before the listing. It is counted from amongst the 48221 card sites in the Network.
That was the first time the site made it into the Top 20, having been in the Top 40 a total of 3 times in January. The other sites in the system must have been equally busy on Valentines Day because Cards From Ogden Point did not show up in the "Top 40" on the 15th despite the traffic experienced by the site on Valentines Day.

January 2006 News

January 31 2006

First Place Winner.
Christmas 2005 EventCardmasters World Championship
Visit the CardmasterHall Of Fame
**************
Read The ReviewsforCards From Ogden Point
Thank You To Everyone Who Voted For My Site

At some time during January, the hs2go.net domain was "parked" as the person who had sold me the HomeServer software I originally used for my first web site did not renew the DNS service for the hs2go domain when it expired in December 2005.
Fortunately I had expected this after I noticed that the support site and the home page for the software supplier had disappeared into Cyberspace in the fall during my disaster with my ISP.
I did still have a few links that "broke" when the service became unavailable -- they were reasonably easy to clear up. I shudder to think what would have happened had I not reworked my site in anticipation of this demise.
(You can read about the trials and tribulations of my preparedness in earlier editions of this newsletter -- particularly October 2005.)
I would not likely have wound up winning the CardMaster Championship if my site had disappeared mid-contest.
In addition to winning the contest, January has been an unexpectedly busy month for Cards From Ogden Point. The stream of visitors continued even after the end of the contest. By January 28 when Cards From Ogden Point showed up as number 22 in the top 40 card sites on the MyPostcards Network, January 2006 had become the second busiest month in the site history.
January 2006 statistics forCards From Ogden Point:
Daily unique visitors for January 2006: 1364
Page views for January 2006: 16,571
Number of countries represented in the January totals: 48

The busiest day was January 26 with 143 visitors viewing 2257 pages,January 1 was second busiest with 132 people viewing 1885 pages.
The large visitor counts on and around the 26th were a surprise as they came from www.welcome.ogdenpoint.ca which is the welcome page. It is not listed in as many places as some of the other pages.
The statistic counters for January 2006 say that:665 visitors entered through the Welcome page53 came through the CardMaster Contest page69 came through direct links to the index page.(The index includes any from the CardMaster Hall of Fame.)
January 18 2006
The winners were declared for the Christmas 2005 Cardmaster Championship and Cards From Ogden Point won First Prize with 582 votes. The second prize site had 403 votes.
This was the "payoff" for all the effort and optimization that went into improving the site in 2005.
The high visitor counts from the last months in 2005 continue in January 2006.
Cards From Ogden Point has had 720 visitors view 7628 pages before noon on January 18 2006.
This made January 2006 number 5 in page view and visitor counts in the life of the site with 12.5 days remaining in the month.
The busiest page until this time was the New Years Cards with 991 "hits".
In addition to the great numbers of visitors to the site, on January 1 Cards From Ogden Point had sufficient cards sent and picked up to count as number 27 out of 48221 sites on the "My PostCards Network". On January 10 the site showed up in the "Top 40 Sites" again at number 25. This count only takes into account actual cards previewed, sent, and/or picked up on the system server, not the visitors who view the card composition pages and index pages.
The Valentine Cards are ready for the next major card event.
Click Here For Valentine Cards.
The Jigsaw Puzzle page has been reorganized and a thumbnail type index page added so that visitors can see what all the puzzles are rather than just seeing one on the index page with an alphabetic text listing.
Click Here For The Jigsaw Puzzle Index.

December 2005 News

December 31 2005
The large visitor response to Cards From Ogden Point continued to the end of the month. The page count for the year passed the 100,000 mark at approximately 6PM on Dec. 31.At month's end over 26.3% of the yearly page views were in December.The number of visitors tied May at 1957 visits.The December visitors viewed 26,394 pages while the May visitors only viewed 14,123 pages. The final counts for December were very satisfying.
The extra traffic from the contest moved Cards From Ogden Point into 27th place in the top 40 sites of the 48221 sites on the MyPostCards.net system on January 1 2006.
This ranking is taken from the activity on the server on which actual cards are sent and received. The statistics below are the traffic to and from Cards From Ogden Point whether or not the visitor sends or receives a card.
December 2005 statistics forCards From Ogden Point:
Daily unique visitors for December 2005: 1957
Page views for December 2005: 26,394
Number of countries represented in the December totals: 71
Different languages of site visitors for December 2005: 21
Total visitors for 2005: 9028
Total Page Views for 2005: 100,278

There was one visitor from hydro.mb.ca in Winnipeg who visited 242 pages on December 28. That was the only person to visit over 200 pages after the 23rd. There were a number who viewed between 100 and 200 pages.
December 27 2005
In response to a very good suggestion from a voter in the contest, I created and added thank you cards to the Cards From Ogden Point line up.
Click Here For Thank You Cards From Ogden Point
In the afternoon of Dec. 27th the page view counter passed 20,000 pages for the month of December.
The voting in the CardMaster competition continues and I am extremely pleased with my performance there. The MyPostCards Network claims to have 48,221 sites in their system and several of the sites in the contest are in the "Top 40 Sites" on that system. I have no idea how many visitors those sites get. I do see that one of the other sites that is not in the "Top 40" has over 4,000 visitors and 14,000 page views per month every month this year.
The ranking for the "Top 40" is based on the MyPostCards server traffic which is just the sending and receiving of cards. The visitor and page view numbers for the site are the people who visit the site whether they send a card or not. One has a direct bearing on the other as you can't send a card without visiting the site but things like my puzzles and slide shows may entertain the visitors and keep them on the site for longer visits but that won't change the MyPostCards ranking unless the visitor sends a card. My estimates for December is that one card is sent for every 45 to 50 pages viewed. There is no way to correlate the number of visitors to the number of cards sent as 100 cards sent by 200 visitors could indicate that half the visitors set one card each. It could also indicate that 2 visitors sent 50 cards each and the other 198 didn't send any cards. My sense from the other counters on the site is that in December a number of people used the site to send several cards each. There is no way to quantify that. I also think that in other months the ratio would be less cards per visitor. At Christmas and The New Year, it is more likely that an individual visitor will send more than one card. At other times like birthdays etc, a visitor will not have a list of recipients -- they will want to send one card.
December 23 2005
By 10 AM on the 23rd Cards From Ogden Point had 351 votes in the CardMaster Championship -- more votes than the site received in any previous contest.
December had also become the site's busiest month. On the 22nd the number of page views in December exceeded those in any previous month.(The total count for December 2005 had also exceeded the total views and visits for all of 2004 by this time.)At 10 AM on the 23rd, there were 16074 pages viewed by 1108 visitors in December.This is an average of 14.5 pages per visitor.The previous high month was May with 14123 pages viewed by 1957 visitors(an average of 7.2 pages per visit.)
May had the large influx of visitors at the end of the month from my listing on the Langa List as well as Mother's Day earlier in the month. The visitors on those days didn't visit nearly as many pages as those at Christmas are. The number of pages per visit has been steadily increasing since the additions of slide shows and puzzles in the fall. December has no "big days" like the ones at the end of May, it has had a steady stream of traffic all month that is growing as Christmas approaches.
The large visitor numbers on the 23rd included one particular visitor who increased the counter readings all by themselves. A visitor from Warren Pa. watched the slide shows for nearly 5 hours while they viewed 1434 pages.
They aren't the only visitor this month who viewed large numbers of pages. Other "major visits" include:
A visitor from Calgary on Dec. 15 who visited 476 pages.
A visitor from Warren Pa. (maybe the same person) on Dec. 12 who visited 333 pages.
A visitor from Ottawa on Dec. 10 who visited 466 pages.
A visitor from Winnipeg on Dec.4 who visited 524 pages.
December 20 2005
The Winter holidays contest started well with Cards From Ogden Point ending up at the top of the listing page.
The combination of the contest and the exposure the site has had all year are providing more visits than I would have imagined possible -- especially a year ago.
Shortly after noon on the 20th with Christmas Day and New Years Eve still to come in the month, the visitor count hit 700 visitors who visited over 10,000 pages during the first 19.5 days in the month of December.
The contest runs till January so the winners are far from being decided.
Click here to see the votes received by Cards From Ogden Point.
Click here to see the Cardmaster Hall Of Fame.
December 1 2005
I added Christmas, New Year Cards, and pictures of the Victoria BC Santa Claus Parade to Cards From Ogden Point for the holiday season.
Click Here for the Christmas Cards.
Click Here for the New Years Cards.
Click Here for the Parade Cards.

November 2005 News

November 30 2005
The fall CardMaster contest ended with Cards From Ogden point in 6th place, just 4 votes behind the 5th place site.
Click here to read the votes the site received.
The largest number of pages viewed by a single person during the contest was on November 18 when a visitor from London England Viewed 531 pages.
The contest period saw a total of 1,064 visitors who viewed 15,776 pages during October and November.
The majority of these visitors arrived via the following routes:
By picking up and/or viewing a card: 303 visitors.
From the Contest Page and/or the Autumn Page: 228 visitors.
From the New Card Listings and/or Welcome Page: 191 visitors.
From the Index Page -- (search engines and bookmarks): 84 visitors.
November 11 2005
From November 4 to November 11 I optimized all my web sites and added more Jigsaw Puzzle cards to Cards From Ogden Point. I also added just the puzzles to the Games Page on http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca/
I also created a slide show for http://www.ogdenpoint.ca/ that I ended up placing on the site as one big slide show and 4 partial slide shows for users on slower connections. I sent a few of the slide shows as Posties to some friends. They were well received so I added the possibility of sending the slide shows to Cards From Ogden Point.
I put the puzzle cards and the slide show cards into the backup site because they need nothing from the PhotoServer. That makes the "Backup Site" a sizeable card site in its own right. It contains the ability to use internet pictures and upload your own pictures for an infinite array of cards, and contains the ability to create over 120 standard Posty type cards, over 50 puzzle cards, and two different variations of 5 different Slide Show Cards.
Click here for the Puzzle Cards Index.
Click here for the Slide Show Cards Index.
Click here for the Backup Card Site Index.
Click here for the slide shows with no cards.
Click here for the Puzzle Index with no cards.
I also did the preliminary work for a Christmas Card Page that will be on line shortly.
November 4 2005
On November 4 2005, I uploaded an entirely new version of http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca/ with a tabbed index page that works properly on more computers and in more browsers than the sliding index on the main home page. The sliding index works well on Windows computers with Internet Explorer -- it doesn't work well on Apple Computers or in Firefox and Netscape on Windows Machines. In some cases it loads as a table at the top of the browser screen and in some cases it does not load at all. The new tabbed index seems to work on most if not all major browsers on both Windows and Apple Computers.
I also finally got all of my web pages running using proper DNS Addressing rather than direct addressing. That makes them less vulnerable to various changes that may come from Telus ( my ISP ) or for that matter any future ISP that I may use. You can read about all the hassles I had with a wet cable on my incoming telephone service from Telus in the October 2005 Newsletter.
I also integrated several Jig Saw Puzzles from http://www.jigzone.com/ into both my Games Page and into Cards From Ogden Point.
Click here for the Games Page.
Click here for the Puzzle Cards.
Cards From Ogden Point is now set up with a full backup site. The normal entry pages from
http://www.welcome.ogdenpoint.ca/
http://www.cardsfrom.ogdenpoint.ca/
and
http://www.pickup.ogdenpoint.ca/
all will work with or without the PhotoServer and if the photoserver is not responding for some reason, the visitor can go directly to the
Backup Welcome Page
or the
Backup Index Page
from links on the entry pages.

October 2005 News

October 31 2005
Ron's Fall Rant.
The other editions have been sorted with the newest entries at the top because each entry was sort of independent from one another -- this one starts at the top and progresses to the end of the month at the bottom because it carries on in sequence.
October 11 2005
The beginning of October wasn't a good time for Cards From Ogden Point.
My web pages had just sort of evolved into a mixture of properly created web pages interspersed with lots of pages that were not really well constructed from a technical stand point. I had started by using a number of photo sharing systems so that family and friends -- especially those at a distance -- could enjoy some of my pictures. My move to a new home that is 2000 miles from my previous location meant that I couldn't just take a photo album along to visit and share any more. At the time I was experimenting, the picture sharing services that were available were not as good as they are now or I might never have decided to build my own photo sharing sites.
I started with a software package called HomeServer which I purchased and downloaded from a service that started as "home2all.com" and evolved after a software upgrade to "ip-hs2go.net" It was specifically designed to run on my own computer and was intended primarily for sharing digital photographs. I run that software on a computer in my living room. That computer acts as the server for my various web sites. You can see the home page of that server at My PhotoServer I created Cards From Ogden Point using that server as the source for the photographs for the greeting cards. The "Card Site" wasn't really a site -- it was just a bunch of randomly created web pages that were done up differently from page to page and were linked together by some poorly constructed index pages.
When my visitor totals reached beyond any of my expectations in the first year of operation I realized that it was time to reconstruct the service into a properly constructed web site. I targeted this revised site to be on line on the first anniversary of the site's existence and it went on line on August 23, 2005 which was the first anniversary of Cards From Ogden Point's first appearance.
You can read more about that in the earlier newsletters.
During the conversion of Cards From Ogden Point to its new style and location, I found that the suppliers of the ip-hs2go.net service were no longer on line and that things like the help and support services that had been on their site were gone.
I began readdressing my various web services so that if the DNS service that finds my web site.
If you type http://ip-ronaldmclean.hs2go.net into your browser, that address has followed the software manufacturer into cyberspace.
The card site ended up being built with a mixture of addresses because of the uncertainty of the ip-hs2go service. I had spent the time after the "move" of Cards From Ogden Point cleaning up page addressing for all my sites and was about half finished that effort at the end of September.
I was at a point that was ripe for a disaster and that disaster came along.
On September 29. Vancouver Island got the first heavy rainfall since spring. That rain resulted in moisture getting into the cable that feeds the telephone and ADSL computer connection into my house. The moisture caused a ground fault on the cable that severely reduced the connection speed on my ADSL connection and by the morning of Sept. 30 the connection was running slower than a dial up connection. Since Cards From Ogden Point runs from a server computer in my home, the site was for all intents and purposes not accessible. That condition got worse as the situation continued.
My internet connection is a Business Connection that is designed to run at twice the speed of normal residential ADSL service and it is designed to support running a web site from the service. My web sites are a hobby, not a business -- the level of service I subscribe to is the minimum that supports hosting your own site. Theoretically as a business service Telus should give it appropriate levels of attention.
I first reported the poor connection to Telus, my ISP on Friday Sept 30 at about 9 am. I did this with much reservation as the Unionized staff at Telus have been on the picket line for a couple of months. (Mixed emotions for a retired Union Rep on this end to be sure -- however my service that Telus quite happily cashes my cheques for was not working. They promise service labor dispute or not.) My experience as a communications technician told me the first thing I would check would be the cables -- rain has a habit of finding the weak spots in a cable system. I specifically mentioned this to the first person I reported my problem to. I spent much of the early part of the day on and off the phone as various folks at Telus tried all sorts of things to get me on line that just got me further and further from being on line. By early evening, not only was my ADSL connection dead, so was my telephone despite calls to my Cell Phone telling me that all was repaired with my connection. The phone was restored Friday evening -- the ADSL didn't fare as well. I used dial up to put a single page on line that told people that my site was off line due to "Problems with my ISP".
By Monday, I had a very slow internet connection back that was not on the "fixed addresses" that are part of the service I subscribe to.
I used what connection time I had to hastily put backup sites on line for Cards From Ogden Point, http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca/ and http://www.ogdenpoint.ca/ and to put a temporary "site not available" page at the address for the PhotoServer. The ADSL service would work better for a short while after I called to complain and/or if the sun was shining and would drop back to its creeping speeds as soon as the rain started and/or the humidity rose. Finally on Thursday Oct 6 I got a person at Telus who sorted out my addresses (the old "fixed addresses" were long gone) and got me reconnected to new addresses. He was ready to hang up when I got a connection back when I suggested that we do a speed test since that was my original complaint. I did various tests and the results were predictably dismal. That started him on the right path -- finally -- and later in the day he phoned back to make an appointment for someone to check my connection the next day
The next day Friday Oct 7 I was visited by two representatives from Telus who told me that one of the wires on the cable feeding my house had a "ground" on it and that they would be sectionalizing the cable to find out where it was. They cleared the fault in the connection box on the pole outside the house where the wires running to the house connect to the larger cable that runs back to the system.
8 days after the first sign of trouble and 7 days after the first reports to the ISP, I finally had a normal internet connection again. The connection speed is slightly better than before the problem and it has been working since that time.
Getting an internet connection back was only part of the solution for my various web sites. My efforts in September to change the addressing on my web pages left Cards From Ogden Point in a situation where there was no predicting whether the photographs would display in the final cards. To make matters even worse, the cards would appear to be working properly as people checked them out as they prepared them to send.
I had no choice other than leaving the temporary site up and running as the only site until I checked every page and repaired the addressing of the photographs. That meant opening approximately 12,000 web page documents in my editing software and changing one line of addressing text in each. At 11 am on October 11, I returned Cards From Ogden Point to full service with approximately 10,000 pages edited. There are still 2250 that will work with their current address and still need to be finalized.
The whole disaster also pointed out how vulnerable the site was. I tried a number of possibilities and settled on small group of pages that are not on my HomeServer that act as the "Home Page" to the site. The Home Page will load whether the computer in my living room is connected to the internet or not. That way the Home Pages, the Card Pickup Page and the Backup Pages are permanently located at a more secure web location.
You can check out the final results at:
Cards From Ogden Point

September 2005 News

September 2005
On September 14 a visitor from an ISP based in Warren Pennsylvania viewed 689 pages on Cards From Ogden Point. This is a site record for a single visit according to my page counters.
On September 28 and 29 a visitor from California viewed a total of 873 pages in two visits -- 353 the night of the 28th and 520 more the morning of the 29th.
Since the Site Meter Counter service added the map of visitor locations to their service that I described last month, I also discovered www.clustrmaps.com and www.gvisit.com both of whom offer visitor maps.
I created a page with links to various visitor map pages.
Click here for the Visitor Map List.
Seeing how the maps interact with visitors has been a good learning experience.
The map location accuracy depends on the accuracy of the IP locator data base used by each of the map services. The three services used for these pages give different information about some visitors which means they must use different geolocation services. Visitors from large ISP's that operate in several cities/areas may indicate that the visit is from the wrong location. Often that will be the location where the ISP is registered, and in some cases it may be where the "signal" left the ISP's internal equipment and entered the open internet. For example I have shown up on Site Meter as if visiting from Vancouver and Kelowna as well as the correct location of Victoria on different visits even though I have not moved and my connection is at a fixed IP address (all locations did correctly identify Telus as the ISP - Telus is the primary telephone service provider for British Columbia and Alberta and offers internet services all across both provinces).
If you click the newsletter maps below after visiting this page your location should show up on the map as one of the latest visitors depending on whether there is a second (or more) visitors on the page at one time.
You can click here for another geolocation service to see where it places you on their map.
The flag and the map on the lower half of the page show where that system "thinks" you are and it gives you the option of correcting that information if it is not accurate.
You can also do a connection speed test while you visit that page.
ClustrMaps offer a basic map that tracks visitors with different sizes of dots for the number of visitors from a particular area on the map. The service provides no other information about the visitors. It has no way of "turning off" its counter for my address so the biggest cluster dot will likely always be over Victoria BC because the system counts every visit I make to the site including previews as I edit the pages. The "cluster" dot that covers Victoria appears to also include Vancouver and the Lower Mainland so it is a very coarse measurement. The map updates once daily at about 4am GMT which makes it 8pm here in Victoria while both other services are "live" and are constantly updated.
Their service is driven by the thumbnail map on the pages that are counted.
Click here for a map of visitors to Cards From Ogden Point from ClusterMaps.com
Gvisit uses Google Maps and the visitor map is interactive, allowing the viewer to zoom the map for closer looks and more information. I was sufficiently impressed with the service that I sent them a donation to expand from their basic service. The transaction (from the time I decided to send the donation until the conversion was complete) took about 16 hours which I think is amazing service from someone 3 time zones away on the other side of the continent. Excellent service and an excellent product in my opinion. The internet certainly has made the world a smaller place.
I built a page with a frame to house their map and their visitor lists on one page.
Click here for a map of the most recent visitors to Cards From Ogden Point using Gvisit and Google Maps.
Click here for a map of the most recent visitors to Newsletter From Ogden Point using Gvisit and Google Maps.
Click here for a map of visitors to my PhotoServer.
Click here for a map of visitors to Hug From Ogden Point.
Click here for a map of visitors to www.ogdenpoint.ca.
Click here for a map of visitors to www.ronmclean.bc.ca.
The map provided by the Site Meter counter shows up to the last 100 locations from which the site was visited. You can see the individual visitors by placing your mouse over the dots on the map. The dots are color coded to show the most recent visitors.
The map is quite good and there are lots of options on the page for finding more information about the visitors as the site you are viewing is the home page for the counter itself. You can select the number of visitors and their home continents from the links on the page. You can view lots of other information about the last 100 visitors from other links on the page.
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to Cards From Ogden Point from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to News From Ogden Point from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to www.ogdenpoint.ca from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to www.ronmclean.bc.ca from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to my PhotoServer from Site Meter
In addition to learning about and installing the visitor map systems, I have been experimenting with and learning about VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone service. (You know -- once a telecom tech always a telecom tech??!! lol) So far I've found the best performance on Skype and the best conversation quality on Gizmo.
I think the technology has the potential to revolutionize telephony as it is/was known -- specially long distance services. With the possibility from several providers of getting a telephone for my home in Victoria that behaves like I'm in Winnipeg, Ottawa, or Halifax -- or in Europe somewhere -- the traditional notions we have about long distance telephone service have to change, and the traditional telephone service providers have to do something to make their service attractive and competitive.
The service may never replace the actual wired telephone as the household's primary communication device. VOIP by its nature doesn't lend itself to services such as 911 calling easily. (Which police/fire department or which ambulance does it dispatch?) It also depends on system power for the device and/or computer that make it operate so you couldn't do things like report a power outage. The "on line" services such as Skype or Gizmo don't care if you are calling next door or across the country, their charges are the same (their call in / call out charges are per minute). The "phone replacement" services such as Vonage and Primus charge flat rates for monthly access and various services which operate like wired telephones except that you can get your "virtual wired telephone" to appear to be in any location in which they offer service. I could get a telephone connection here in Victoria that behaves like it is a wired telephone in Winnipeg (including my old telephone number if it is still available).
The owners of E-Bay recently bought Skype for several billion dollars so it remains to be seen what will happen from that.
(I wonder if they found it listed on E-Bay and used Pay Pal for the transaction? lol)
More about my foray into VOIP will follow I'm sure.

August 2005 News

August 31 2005
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to Cards From Ogden Point
(The map is provided by the Site Meter counter on the index pages. You can see the locations from which the site was visited by placing your mouse over the dots on the map.)
Click here for a map of the most recent visitors to Cards From Ogden Point using Google Maps.
August 30 marked the first anniversary of http://www.ogdenpoint.ca/. That means that all my web pages have been on line for a year. They have grown and changed quite a lot in that year.The most visited site is Cards From Ogden Point.
I had originally thought that either http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca/ or http://www.ogdenpoint.ca/ would be my primary web site and that the card site would be a secondary site that might keep people coming back to the other sites. That turned out to be the opposite of what really happened. Cards From Ogden Point became the primary focus and the site that has taught me the most about building and operating a web site. Its visitor count is much different than either of the other sites could ever have attracted.
The increase in visit length that showed up in early August continued with the average of page views per visitor in August ending up to be 17.6 pages. This is double the average for the first 7 months of the year. This increase is primarily because of the "Slide Show" links. The longest visits were a viewer from Honduras who visited 621 pages one day and one from Brooklyn N.Y. who viewed 362 pages.
In August I also overcame some of the difficulty I had originally encountered with my PhotoServer and I created a new Front Page for that site that works much better than the one that the server software provides. The changes there came after I found that the vendor who supplied the software has disappeared from the internet taking any hope of upgrades and/or tech support with them. In the process of exploring other server systems, I found ways to improve the system I was already using. The original server address of http://ip-ronaldmclean.hs2go.net still worked and I continued to use it Until January 2006 when it no longer worked. When the address followed the hs2go software vendor into cyberspace, I used a contingency address and system that allowed my sites to operate from the server computer in my living room. The front page from the PhotoServer is also available using the address: http://www.photoserver.ogdenpoint.ca/ where it will operate with or without the hs2go DNS server.
(Updated in January 2006.)
I also spent some time working with my WebCams during August to get them to be visible without the hassle of a password.
My webcams are now available by clicking this link: My Webcam Page (None of the webcams require a password.)
For Those who are interested in statistics,Here are some of the details of theCards From Ogden Pointsite as of August 31:
Size: 278mb.
Size on Disk: 317mb.
Number of Files: 18,735
Number of Folders: 76
Number of URL's: 15,132
Visitors to Date in 2005: 5746
Page Views to Date in 2005: 53,555
Visitors since August 23 2004: 6769
Number of home countries of 2005 visitors: 59
August 23 2005
August 23 is the first anniversary of Cards From Ogden Point. To mark the occasion, I switched the site over to its new location and format. The links below are now the final links for the site.
The peek at the slide show function that came from the "Random Posty", "Tall Ships", and "New Pictures" links on the "old" site appear to have been successful in persuading visitors to view more of the site. The average page views per visitor count for the first 7 months of 2005 was approximately 9 pages viewed per visitor. The early part of August with only the 3 slide show links the views per visitor has averaged over 20 pages with some visitors looking at 200 or 300 pictures.
Those numbers should climb as the "new" site offers slide shows for every card category as well as an expanded number of choices in the "Random Posties" function.
August 8 2005
I have spent several days reorganizing Cards From Ogden Point in preparation for a new version of the site to go on line for the site's first anniversary.
The site wasn't really a site -- it was just a group of loosely connected web pages that had numerous errors and inconsistencies from page to page. It is now assembled as a web site should be and it will run completely on the PhotoServer computer in my living room for a while to check it out. In time some of the index pages will return to my web space that is provided by Telus (my ISP) as part of my internet account. That will allow me to have some pages on an alternate server so I can take the Photoserver off line for some much needed service.
You can click the links below for the pages in their new location.
The old site will remain on line for a short while as I check out the new site.
Welcome Page
Simple Index

Random Posty Slide Show
The Original 10 Pages
New Listings Page
Table Of Contents
Remember to change your bookmarks.
The slide shows seem to be quite popular.
There were a few slide shows accessible from the old site and they generated some interest according to the counters. The new site has slide shows for every card category, and every card is available on a feature called a "Q" that cycles through the actual card pages like a slide show.
Prior to the slide shows the average visit to the site was approximately 8.5 pages per visit. The first 8 days in August the guests are averaging 15 page views per visit.

July 2005 News

July 2005
I have been constantly upgrading how I display my pictures on my websites in the year they have been on line. The creation of the Albums using ACDSee software in January was the best step in that process to date. I have left the older versions of the photo displays on line for computers that can't handle the albums the ACDSee program creates. In July 2005 I have gone one step further in the refinement of the display process. I analyzed the results from my visitor counters and found that out of 5108 visitors to the Cards From Ogden Point site only 2 were using screen resolutions less than 800 X 600 pixels. 50% of the visitors were using 1024 X 768 resolution, 40% were using 800 X 600 resolution, and 8.5% were using resolutions greater than 1024 X 768. I had been creating my albums to work on 680 X 480 pixel screens which meant that they were being displayed with less quality than the viewers could have viewed. I created some albums so that they were best viewed on 800 X 600 resolutions, and I made the album window fit that screen size when it opened. The results were obvious the first time I viewed these albums. I then created the May, June, and July Large and small albums in the larger size. I also created and posted new special albums for my trip to Manitoba, the Victoria Tall Ships Festival, the Canada Day Fireworks, and a demo of a new camera I've been using. I put links to all those albums on my www.ronmclean.bc.ca page and started telling people about them. The results are showing that they are working as there are visitors looking at large numbers of pages in those albums -- partly because of the content and mostly because the content they want to see is being well displayed for them.
I have studied NLP which is about how people use language to convey what is happening with them in their lives. It deals with how people show how they understand and deal with their world through their communications. The lesson that kept repeating in my NLP training is that "There is no content in content worth knowing, What matters is context, process and structure." That lesson is repeated in my websites. The best or the worst photographs mean nothing unless they are displayed in a manner whose "context process and structure" keeps the viewer on the site. They have to be presented in a pleasing and effective manner -- no matter how good (or bad) they may seem to be.
These albums will work well in any browser resolution from 800 X 600 and larger. In smaller resolutions such as 640 X 480, the individual pictures and pages will be larger than full screen. They are best viewed in 1024 X 768 Pixels as in that resolution, the pictures and the slide show controls are all displayed on the screen at once without having to scroll down for the "controls."
Once you open the album you can scroll through the thumbnail pages or click an individual thumbnail picture to see it larger. To view the album as a slide show, click any picture and then click the red "Play" button under the picture. The delay is about 10 seconds per slide so nothing will happen until the picture changes 10 sec. after you push the button.
Click here for an album of pictures from my summer trip to Manitoba.
Click here for an album of pictures from the 2005 Victoria Tall Ships Festival.
Click here for an album of pictures of the Canda Day 2005 fireworks.
Click here for an album of my most recent pictures.
Click here for an album of pictures from a Minolta Z5 camera.
I recently added a Konica-Minolta Dimage Z5 camera to my collection. I use it when I don't want the bulk and hassle of my Nikon SLR Camera outfit. I'm very pleased with the results from the Z5.
Click here for albums of my better pictures from 2002 to date.

June 2005 News

June 30 2005
From June 23 to 26 downtown Victoria was quite busy with visitors from all over the world. The visitors were here to see theTall Ships Festival that was held in the inner harbour.
I took lots of pictures and got quite sunburned.
The Pictures are linked from www.ronmclean.bc.ca
Click here for an album of pictures from the 2005 Victoria Tall Ships Festival.
Besides the Tall Ships and my trip to Manitoba I managed to take other pictures too.
Click here for an album of my most recent pictures.
Click here for an album of my Manitoba trip pictures.
The visits to Cards From Ogden Point resulting from the Langa List link continued in the early days of June and by the end of the month traffic was back to a slower pace.
The net result was that the month of June had less visitors than the last three days of May.
June 2005 statistics forCards From Ogden Point:
Daily unique visitors for the June 2005: 861
Page views for June 2005: 6407
Number of countries represented in the June totals: 31
Different languages of site visitors for June 2005: 12
June 20 2005
The increased number of visitors brought from The Langa List continued on Cards From Ogden Point in June.
I left Victoria on May 27 to drive to Manitoba to attend a 90th Birthday celebration for my Mother and a 50th Anniversary celebration for an Aunt and Uncle. I drove approximately 7000 km and took lots of pictures. Those pictures are being added to the web sites right now, and will be added to the cards in Cards From Ogden Point over the next few weeks.
Click here for an album of my Manitoba trip pictures.

May 2005 News

May 31 2005
On May 3, I sent an E-Mail to The Langa List Newsletter (a twice weekly newsletter about computer maintenance that I subscribed to from http://www.langa.com ) Each edition Fred Langa (the editor) displayed the addresses of 10 subscriber websites in the newsletter in exchange for a banner link to his newsletter on the subscribers' websites. He cues the entries so that every site submitted eventually shows up in the listings -- the waiting period varies depending on how many sites have been submitted for listing.
Cards From Ogden Point showed up in the newsletter which was sent out at approximately midnight Eastern Daylight Time on Sunday May 29 for delivery on Monday. By the time midnight Pacific Daylight Time rolled around, 198 visitors had viewed 1233 pages on the 29th. This represented the third largest day in the site's history up until that time -- running just behind the Easter and Mother's Day visitor counts. May 30 saw 632 visitors who viewed 4014 pages. This represented 3 to 4 times more visitors and page views that any previous day in the site's history -- in fact that day had more visitors than the months of January, February or April had seen in complete months. The 31st abated somewhat with "only" 225 visitors viewing 1428 pages making it the fourth busiest day in the site's history. The combined effects of Mother's Day and "Loading The (Langa) Code" brought May's total to 1957 visitors who opened 14,123 pages on the site.
(Remember that this total only represents visitors whose browsers accept cookies -- there is no way of knowing the actual totals.)
May 2005 statistics forCards From Ogden Point:
Daily unique visitors for May 2005: 1957
Page views for May 2005: 14,123
Daily unique visitors for Monday May 30: 632
Page Views For Monday May 30: 4014
Number of countries represented in the May totals: 42
Different languages of site visitors for May 2005: 14
The server computer that sits in the corner of my living room and hosts the individual card pages and the photographs for the cards was quite busy and it worked very well. I was on the road visiting family and friends 2000 miles away in Manitoba when the listing was published so I just kept checking the site to see the numbers on the counters and to see that it was holding up under the workload. It performed very well.
I do have some pages on a backup server which would have reduced the number of cards and card pages very drastically if I had been forced to call on it. My server did its job with no apparent difficulty so "Plan B" never had to be tested.
May 16 2005
The effects of the modifications to Cards From Ogden Point that I started in February are definitely showing up as more people are visiting the site and when they visit, they are viewing larger numbers of pages than they were in 2004. The new pages have been listed in the "New Listings" on the "My Postcards Network" a number of times in the the February to May period. That plus entering the Easter Cards contest and the Mother's Day Cards contest have brought lots of new visitors to the site. Some visitors are viewing 100 or even 200 individual pages when they visit. The average visit is now over 20 pages. In 2004 most visits were one or two pages. In fact a large number of visitors either viewed the Welcome Page, the Index Page, or both those pages and then left the site. Most visitors are now checking out at least one or two card index pages before they leave the site. The only visitors who only visit one page are some who are picking up cards. About half the people who visit the "View Posty" page only visit that page while the other half follow the links on that page into the rest of the site.
The number of visitors in the first half of May has been quite encouraging. The Saturday before Mother's Day had the second largest number of visitors the site has ever had and those visitors viewed more pages than have been viewed on any day since the site was put on line in September 2004.
May 1 - 16 statistics forCards From Ogden Point:
Daily unique visitors for the first half of May 2005: 704
Page views for the first half of May 2005: 8611
Daily unique visitors for Saturday May 7: 219
Page Views For Saturday May 7: 1651
Number of countries represented in the above totals: 35
Different languages of site visitors for May 1 -16 2005: 12
These visitors boosted the total count on the "Cards Received" page to 1706.
(Remember that the counters use cookies to track the visitor progress through the site so the above numbers do not include visitors whose browsers block cookies.)
In May 2005 the early efforts went into creating"Mother's Day Cards From Ogden Point".
That paid off with the winner's badge.
Cards From Ogden Point Has Won Some Awards.
4th Place in the Spring-Easter 2005Cardmasters World Champoinship
5th Place in the Mother's Day 2005Cardmasters World Championship
Thank You To Everyone Who Voted For My Site.

In May I also added a feature to my sites that may interest some visitors -- especially the technically inclined:
You Can Check out your Internet Connection Here:
(The Flag Should Indicate Your Country.)
Check Your IP Address
Click Here For A Map To Your Location.
Click Here If The Location Is Not Correct.
Click Here For A Zooming Map To My Server's Location.

April 2005 News

April 28 2005
I added Spring Flowers Page 2 and a Spring Tulips Page using the Mother's Day pictures.
Click Here for Spring Flowers P2
Click Here for Spring Tulips
April 11 2005
With the extra traffic coming to the site from the Easter Competition I felt it would be worth while to enter the Mother's Day competition. I am somewhat more prepared this time as I have the pages created in advance and the appropriate counters reset and ready to record the traffic. I have already placed my entry which will be displayed when the contest starts on April 17.
You can view the Mothers Day Pages Here.
On April 9 I took advantage of a beautiful spring day to take a number of really good photographs at the gardens at Royal Roads University. I added a page to the Mothers Day Card pages with tulip pictures from that afternoon.
You can view the Mother's Day Flower Cards Here.
After the Easter Competition, I created Card Pages that I named "Spring Flowers" using the Easter pictures and cards.
You can view the Spring Flowers Cards Here.
My Easter Pages won 4th place in the CardMaster Championship.

You can view the votes/reviews here.
Thank you to all who voted for my site.

March 2005 News

March 31 2005
The overall effect of entering the CardMaster competition became very obvious as I checked the statistics from the various counters on the pages. The combination of providing bright spring flowers for Easter Cards and the exposure that came with just being in the competition made March 2005 the busiest month ever on my various sites -- especially Cards From Ogden Point.The other competitors in the contest provided some very good "traditional cards" that were like greeting cards you would buy in a store and send in the mail. I'm sure they got a lot of attention as well. Cards From Ogden Point provided variety because my cards were the only cards that were more like a photo postcard with pictures of flowers that had in fact been taken in the two weeks prior to Easter. The feedback I got indicated that the different approach was appreciated because it allowed those who wanted more traditional cards and/or cards with a religious theme to find them at the other sites, and my site provided pleasing pictures for those that wanted a visual celebration of the spring season. The reaction to the celebration of spring included those who were enjoying spring weather where they lived, and those who chose the cards because it reminded them of spring's impending arrival because it was still winter for them.I had more visits during the month of March than the card service had experienced totally since putting it on line in September 2004. The biggest day was Good Friday.
The March statistics for Cards From Ogden Point:
Daily unique visitors for the month of March 2005: 1085
Page views for the month of March 2005: 8611
Daily unique visitors for Friday March 25: 247
Page Views For March Friday 25: 1430
Number of countries represented in the monthly totals: 36
Different languages of site visitors for March 2005: 16
These visitors boosted the overall count on the "Cards Received" page to 1262.
(And remember that the counters use cookies to track the visitor progress through the site so the above numbers do not include visitors whose browsers block cookies.)
An interesting side benefit of having the site and of having found ways to make it appealing and interesting was that it reunited me with some family members that I had lost connection with due to various family moves and deaths.A person who liked my site had sent cards and messages to friends and family telling them to check out my site. One of the people she sent an email to was a first cousin of mine that I had not been in contact with for several years. That cousin sent the card to her sister in California who I had last seen when the two sisters were together. The cousin in California contacted me. The loop of the messages included BC, the UK, Manitoba and California.That definitely shows how the internet has made the world a much smaller place.
March 15 2005
At the end of February, I took a sequence of pictures from a seat on a driftwood log on the beach at Holland Point in Victoria BC. The pictures show the Ogden Point Breakwater which is about half a mile from my vantage point. I created a group of web pages to show the pictures with some explanation on March 1. The pictures show the effect of using different focal length lenses from a 10.5mm fisheye lens to a 400mm telephoto lens.
You can see the pictures in that series by clicking here.
March 14 2005
On March 14 I received notice of the Spring Postcard Championship from the "My Postcards Network" and decided to create Easter Card Pages to enter in that competition.
You can view the Easter Cards here.
You can view the votes/reviews here.
Those pages ended up winning 4th place in the CardMaster Championship.

February 2005 News

February 10 2005
The response in numbers on the page counters clearly said that the theme pages were a success so I continued to modify all the pages. I also created a duplicate of all the pages in Cards From Ogden Point that allows creation of basic cards with nothing to complete except the message and the addresses. I made the simple cards the default on entering the site, and created indexes for the "Simple Cards" and the "Options Cards" and set them up so that users can choose their preferred style and/or flip back and forth at any point. I also cleaned up the "Slow Connections Index" and added links to all the pages that will load more easily on slower internet connections and/or older and slower computers.
I continued the creation of more user friendly pages so that the only pages that combine the selection of pictures and the card creation process are the four pages on the backup server -- which doesn't lend itself to the number of individual HTML (Web) pages required for the separate create and select functions. The 10 original pages are converted as well so the whole site uses the "new" format.
And all of that just in time for Valentines Day.
Click here for the "Simple Pages" index.
Click here for the "Options Pages" index.
Click here for the "Slow Connections" index.
February 4 2005
Hello everyone;
This quick update falls close on the heels of the January newsletter.
When I created the ACDSee Photo Albums and posted them on my web site, the improvement was very evident. I had always wondered what people viewing the pages thought. My only measure of the effectiveness of the pages were the "Hit Counters" on the various pages. Frankly the counts were not very high.
I had always felt that the viewing options that I had to offer were part of the reason people came to my sites and didn't stay long. I did get good feedback about the quality of the pictures from guest book entries and other email. I didn't get much feedback about the operation of the site itself.
After putting together the "Albums" I sent a "Card From Ogden Point" announcement about them to everyone in my address book and everyone that had signed my guest book. The response was immediate and positive. I received good feedback about the viewing process for the first time, and the "Hit Counters" showed that people were visiting and staying.
That resolved the lack of numbers in visitors to http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca
You can test the effectiveness of my albums creation here:
Click here for an album of my most recent pictures.
The other thing my counters were saying was that people were finding Cards From Ogden Point. They just didn't stay long there either. I received feedback that the pages had to much introductory information and instructions and that creating a card was almost overwhelming amongst all the other stuff. That combined with the large diversity of pictures on each page was too much for some potential site users. I received specific feedback that my index page (which was really a home page, not an index page) was confusing enough that people weren't sure how to find the card pages. The counters confirmed that assessment. A large percentage of the visits to the site started with the Welcome Page and ended with the index page.
I began by making "Theme Pages" so that the visitor could select a page and have a good idea what to expect for pictures on the creation pages. I minimized the text on these pages and set them up so that when you enter the page you are right into the card creation process.
Then I separated the text information from the card creation links on the index by creating an information page and by making the index page more graphical with thumbnail pictures rather than text links to entice people to the card creation pages.
Those efforts succeeded. The people who found their way to the welcome page and the index page are also going to the card pages. The counters are recording more card page visits in a couple of days that the previous month had seen. There are almost no counts that come through the Welcome Page to the Index Page without also viewing a card creation page or two. Those visits to the card creation pages have also increased the number of counts on the send and receive pages.
You can join those counts and check out these pages here:
Click Here for the welcome page.
Click here for the index page.

January 2005 News

News From Ogden Point
Ron McLean
January 18 2005
Hello everyone;
The last few months since my last newsletter have been consumed with various things other than specific new web site tasks. I used
Cards From Ogden Point
to send my Christmas greetings to everyone in my e-mail address book as it seemed that if I owned a service, I should use it myself. That received a positive response in both feedback and site traffic.
I traveled to Manitoba to be with friends and family over the holiday season so not much was done on my internet sites during that period.
Once the holiday season was over, I returned to website things and did year end backups and archiving.
I also returned my focus to a "pet project". From the very start of my website operation, I had been trying to find a more user friendly way for visitors to view my pictures. The photosite and all of the links into it brought the thumbnail pictures onto the visitor's screen quite well. Then when they wanted to view a larger version of the picture, it was a "one at a time" process where they had to open and close a new window for every picture they wanted to see. I knew that as long as the system worked that way most viewers would check one or two pictures and then give up.
I wanted interfaces like the commercial photo hosting services had that allowed one at a time viewing and/or slide shows that were accessible by opening one window, not by a long series of opening and closing successive windows.
When I finally found the solution it was in a program -- ACDSee -- that I had experimented with and rejected earlier in my quest. When I had tried it using its default setup, it changed slides too quickly for use on slower internet connections. This time I "disassembled" some of the control functions in the albums and found that I could "retroactively" change the slide transition time after I created the show even though it was not adjustable while creating the show. To make things even better, I found that I only had do it once and then "copy and paste" my modifications into each of the slide show file folders.
I was pleased that my solution was from "very close to home" as it is a Canadian product. -- In fact ACDSee is not only a Canadian product, it is a Vancouver Island product.
It is produced by ACDSee Systems whose headquarters is in Victoria/Saanichton BC.
You can check it out at out:
http://www.acdsystems.com
I used ACDSee V6.0 software to create "albums" that display the pictures in "thumbnail" format when the pages load. The viewer then can view larger versions of the individual pictures one by one or as a slide show by clicking on any of the "thumbnails."
I spent a lot of time with experimentation that is best described as "trial and error" to determine the best settings to display the pictures so that they would load on most if not all computers regardless of age, speed or operating system. I also worked on finding settings that worked well on slower internet connections such as "dial-up" or "light speed cable".
I found a script that allowed me to open the new window for the slide show in a controlled size and modified ACDSee's standard layout so that the slide shows ran in that window without the need to scroll the page up or down during the show. The window will open on computers with small screen resolutions and it can be resized for viewers with larger screen resolutions.
I chose options that limited the page size to 20 thumbnails. I set the slide transition times to provide ten second delays between slide changes.
I wanted to create displays that worked satisfactorily on slow connections without appearing to "drag" with long delays on faster connections.
I think I have achieved a good balance. Please use the feedback links on this page to let me know whether or not you think I succeeded.
Here are my results:
1: This page is one I will update regularly with my newer pictures. It shows directly how the new browser window opens with the Album:
Click here for an album of my most recent pictures.
2: This page is what I think is the best way to view my better pictures:
Small Picture Albums

The pictures are reduced in size and quality to allow them to run and display in the slide show process.
For those of you using Firefox and Netscape browsers, the albums work there as well. The Photosite and some of the other attempts at displaying my pictures did not work well (or sometimes even at all) in those browsers.
That was a side effect I hadn't considered when I first decide to go with ACDSee. I had created and uploaded all the albums without even thinking of trying those browsers. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the albums in each of the browsers with full operation

October 2004 News

News From Ogden Point
Ron McLean
October 15 2004
Hello
If you have found that my various web sites were unavailable recently please accept my apologies.
My greatest frustration in putting together a Web Site has been my vulnerability to influence from systems beyond my control. I have found my site inaccessible several times in the last month due to the external links I have on the pages. I removed one counter system entirely after their "third strike" Their system's problems kept my pages from loading for two days. The Government of Canada Weather service had www.ronmclean.bc.ca "off the air' for several hours one day.
The AFS counters I use have been undergoing changes that made my pages refuse to load at their normal speed, and the HTML Gear service I use for links and the "My Favorite Quotes" applets shut me down on still another day. I have removed a number of things that I thought added some individuality to my pages to reduce my vulnerability. I have also reorganized pages to put "external" services below anything that is essential on the pages so that the upper sections of the pages will load and function in the event of an external service crash.
That did bring me back to my days as a technician at the Power Utility where system redundancy and backups were a way of life. You will find that Cards From Ogden Point has a backup/failsafe system which can be accessed from the boxes that tell you to "Click Here" in the event the pages are not loading. I in fact incorporated the backup system with the less graphically intense pages I created for people using Dial Up internet connections.
There is a similar dial up and back up system on www.ogdenpoint.ca that is available by clicking here.
While I was experimenting with the backup system I created what I feel is my most interesting POSTY page. I was testing the "Tell A Friend About Ogden Point" page and kept adding pictures and commentary to it until it became a good documentary page about Ogden Point. I liked it so much that besides posting it as the "Pass It On" page there, I redid it and added it to Cards From Ogden Point as the Ogden Point Page.

I listed Cards From Ogden Point officially as a new site on the MyPostcards Network on October First. That has brought a large number of counts on the page counters and it has brought some really good commentary that you can read in the Guest Books for my sites.
It has also resulted in hits from Google and other search engines.
I had decided in mid September to pay for the monthly service to the "Pro" version of the POSTY network so that the pages would have no advertising, pop ups, or spyware. From that point I took it as a personal challenge to find other alternatives to any function that would subject the site user to any form of banner advertising. That led to the removal of the commercial Guest Book, Feedback, and "Tell A Friend About this Site" services I had originally installed. The final outcome is in fact something that is purely "home grown" and it works at least as well if not better than the service I was using.
I continued using counters link generators and a rotating favorite quotes line from commercial services. They display no advertising banners as such although they do put templates on the pages. If you do click them you do get ads and in some cases lots of them. Clicking a counter is not anything that would be considered a necessary part of making a POSTY so as long as the user sticks to the task at hand, they get no advertising.
The counters I use set "session" cookies that let me know which pages have been viewed. They are not spyware cookies and the system will work just fine if you block all cookies. The counting of which pages are used does help me decide what types of cards to add to future pages and which pages and cards may be removed or changed to make way for more. you can actually see the information they provide if you click them and follow the links they provide to the statistics. -- Remember if you do click them that I did warn you about the ads and pop ups.
The "platinum" version of the "mypostcards network" includes the option of uploading your own pictures as part of the "package". Cards From Ogden Point is a free service to the user. I pay a small monthly service fee to keep it free of advertising. It has no way of generating revenue to keep it going. I'm not prepared to subscribe to the platinum version of the service.
The other part of the premium service that I can't provide is the safe storage of pictures in a secure virus immune server. I considered enabling an FTP service on my PhotoServer for temporary storage of uploaded pictures and rejected that idea because it is too risky. My computer is a normal computer running a normal operating system and I have no way of providing the level of security the platinum service does. They use a mainframe system running special server software. I decided to experiment with various "on line" photo storage services. Using an on line service had the advantage of using their security against viruses and hackers. It also had the necessary uploading and display processes established with no special software or equipment needed at my end. To be of interest to me, it also had to be inexpensive (or free) and easy to use.
I ended up using Photobucket to accomplish the upload and display process for the cards. It works very well. You just log in , browse for your picture, upload it, and copy the required URL address in an easy coherent series of steps. The free version of their system is "advertising supported" which meant that each time it was used, the user was subjected to various forms of advertising banners and popups. I agonized for some time as to whether to include it as part of my service. In the end I decided to subscribe to their paid service so that neither the card sender nor recipient sees any advertising other than Photobucket's name plates.. Once you get your linking URL from the Photobucket page, you are back into Cards From Ogden Point and the pages are the same as any other card page.
A service called Flickr! also does the uploading, storage viewing and linking very well and it does it without any advertising. It is actually where the pictures I'm using on several pages are stored. It wasn't useful for the card site because it took too many steps from the point at which you decided what picture you wanted to use until you could upload it and get the link information you need to enter in the Posty composition line. If you plan on setting up an on line photo gallery - to share pictures with your family and friends and/or to use with my card site - I would suggest that you check both Flickr! and Photobucket out. If you want specifics on how to use it with my card site, send me a feedback message and I'll email you a step by step guide Another option I considered was providing links to other card sites that provided the upload service. That meant sending you into the advertising on those sites and having both you and the recipient of your card subjected to that site's advertising. There is a link on my links page to a site with less (note I said less) advertising than some others if you want to check out that option.
I am in no way connected to MyPostCards.com, Photobucket, nor Flickr!. I am a customer of their services because they do the jobs I want done.
Click the logos for more information.


This site is a member of MyPostCards.com Network.
There is a good description of what a POSTY is and the advantages of using them on "The Original Posty Page" which you can read by clicking the link.

September 2004 News

September 11 2004
Hello,
I have recently built a web site at http://www.ogdenpoint.ca
From that site you can read some things about the Ogden Point area which is where I live.
You can follow links to my personal home page: http://www.ronmclean.bc.ca to
my PhotoSite which was originally at http://ip-ronaldmclean.hs2go.netand had to be moved to http://www.photoserver.dynu.com when the DNS sever at hs2go.net was no longer in service.
My "Posty" (card) site is at http://welcome.ogdenpoint.ca
If you need a hug today, you can click for A BIG HUG
You can view my photo collection from the links on my home page as the Photosite is not very user friendly. It hosts all the pictures for the other two and is an integral part of the system in that way.

The Card Site will likely be the area of most interest to people.
For People who have never created an E-Card before and for people using dial up and other slow internet connections there are clickable links on the welcome screens that lead to special pages for first time users and those of you using slower connections.
I created it to allow more people to enjoy and share some of my better pictures. The pictures are currently in one big long series and are just numbered in the order they were taken. My next project will be building separate pages for various locations pictures were taken and/or themes like wildlife and sunsets.. There will be pages (for sure) from Ogden Point (probably a separate "Ogden Point Sunsets" page), Beacon Hill Park, Butchart Gardens, Victoria BC, Vancouver BC, Assinniboine Park (Winnipeg), Manitoba in general, and Nova Scotia (I have lots of pictures from those places.). The pages are stored on one web space at Telus (the BC telephone company) and the pictures are stored on a server computer in my living room. Building and editing those pages will take some time. I will post each page as I get it ready.

When you send a "POSTY" from the card site, a notice is sent to the recipient notifying them the card has been created. The card is not actually sent at that time. The card is stored at the card service pickup site and they must retrieve it within 3 weeks to see it. They then view it in their browser so that it never actually downloads to their computer (unless they "Save it as a Web Page").
When the recipient opens the actual card it generates an email notice back to you saying they have picked it up. You can look at the original message and/or do with the email as you wish.
Once the recipient (or you) has viewed the card, they can delete the e-mail notice and the card will self destruct at the appointed time with no further action necessary.

This system allows people to send messages with pictures through firewalls and Spam filters that might block graphic attachments (like Hotmail, AOL and most business systems do) It also allows you to send cards with pictures (and sound) in much smaller messages that won't overload small mailboxes like Hotmail or Yahoo because the card is not actually sent, only the pickup notification is sent.

The site is a "Pro Posty Site" so it is not supported by the nuisance pop up ads, banner ads, and spyware that are the normal part of the advertising supported "Free " sites. I have created the various pages and mail messages myself and the only links to "mypostcards.com" (on whose server the posties are stored for pickup) are some safe links that they require as part of their service.

The process of creating and viewing the Posties is one that does not actually cause the posties to enter your computer in the same way as email. The email messages related to sending and pickup of the posties are an automated process from the service's system, not from an individual computer. That means the messages can't become infected and carry viruses like normal email.

The service is unlimited so you may send as many cards as you want, and if you have friends who would enjoy using the cards, please feel free to tell them about it. You can either forward a copy of this page by email or
Send A Card From Ogden Point
to let them know about it.

If you do forward any email I do ask that you do so responsibly to avoid spam harvesters by backspacing through all old addresses that may be in the body of the message and by forwarding the message to one person at a time or to yourself with the other recipients as BCC's (Blind Copies -- so they don't see each other's addresses and especially so Viruses, Worms, and Spam Harvesters can't find them.)
(If that confuses you send me an email and I'll try to say it in more user friendly terms.)

...ron...