South East Branch of the Basset Hound Club - Howl

Puppy with no name

2011-12-10T11:43:00.003Z

the hand-over

On the 7th November we collected our new puppy.

It has taken us 7 months to find a girl to fill the gap left by Cocoa's departure.

After a little fretting when first we set off, she soon settled down to sleep on Miranda's lap whilst we headed south.

The kitchen had been prepared late the night before. A cage kindly lent by Frankie and Tony was set up ready to provide a safe refuge at night. Away from any tempting chewing material (although I had also made sure that access beyond the immediate and pretty safe area of the kitchen was virtually impossible, at least until she grows a little).

settling in at home

a welcome lap complete with commanding view

Miranda couldn't resist providing a new toy and Frankie and Tony, who equally couldn't resist coming to visit the next day, brought with them another, a rather strange cross between a sheep and Father Christmas. The puppy is delighted with both.

Puppy's first visit (with us that is) to the vet was met by all the staff with cries of delight. They had grown to love Cocoa and were very happy to welcome the new arrival. Then followed a totally positive check over, lots of advice and her first injection.

time to rest - it's been a big day

Those in the know will know that we struggle to agree a name.

Of course she does have a kennel name, Malrich Doris. For her pet name, to continue the precedents set by Mango and Cocoa, various exotic fruits have been offered as candidates - Pawpaw, Grenadilla, Papaya, even Ugly fruit! (that had to be a joke, didn't it?) - others, perhaps less exotic - Honey melon, Tangerine - some stray from the brief with - Camilla and Gorgonzola. Miranda wavers in favour of Papaya, I continue to wave my veto.

What about Veto, not a fruit but a topical choice.

Thank you.

2011-04-28T11:33:00.002+01:00

Bessie, Cocoa, Nico & Pablo

Cocoa holidaying with her friends

Thank you to all who responded to my announcement.

Mango & Cocoa
Cocoa when she was a puppy with her Uncle Mango

A Bit Technical

2011-04-16T11:44:00.002+01:00

If you have been looking at our website you will have noticed a few more changes.

The home page is now even less cluttered. Some may say that in its original form it was like some old fashioned children's book. Dare I say it, perhaps it now looks more contemporary.

A major contributor to this de-cluttering is the introduction of an 'accordion' courtesy of Taco HTML Edit. This allows the page content to change at the click of a heading.

The page opens with membership information. A click on the EVENTS heading below, up pops event information and so on.

However, cosmetics apart, the most radical changes are unseen. The homepage has been totally recoded.

The site was originally built using a now defunct program from Microsoft, Front Page. This is a much maligned but quite brilliant program that, providing they are kept fairly simple, allows pages to be built from scratch without any need to look at the underlying code, thus making it all very easy without the need for language learning. But if you want to introduce anything out of the 'ordinary' then, unlike the Apple equivalent, iWeb, it allows you to get into the code and make changes there. Thus the drop down menu system and the slide shows etc..

However the code that Front Page produces is poor in the extreme, producing as it does huge files full of unnecessary repeated instruction. This doesn't matter really except that the bigger the file the longer it takes to download and when it comes to making those tweaks hunting through swathes of repetitive code is a real bore, especially when the tweak is to be made throughout the entire site.

So although Front Page still has its uses, the home page has been rewritten from scratch without it, digging deeper into code than ever before. I have also written a separate style script driving the page's format, the font, colour, element positioning etc.. Something I have been trying to learn for some time but which for some reason has 'till now always proved a step too far.

This I intend to develop as the hub of the entire site providing a site wide uniformity and the ability to make change by just adjusting the style sheet without touching any page. So, for example, the background colour of every page could be changed with just a one word change in the style sheet.

I thought this breakthrough fantastic but I have also managed to write a separate javascript routine that can be called to insert the pictorial side menu that appears on every page. This means should it need adjusting I can make the change in just one file with the effect appearing in every page instantaneously.

The same can be done for any piece of code that appears in all or many pages.

This is no doubt all old hat for professional website designers but not bad I think for a self taught, washed up old .... like me.

Facebook

2011-04-12T09:56:00.003+01:00

This week's summary for the Facebook page of the

South East Branch

of the Basset Hound Club

223 monthly active users. Down 16 since last week.

663 people like this. Up 6 since last week.

10 wall posts or comments this week. Down 7 since last week.

64 visits this week. Down 28 since last week.

Web Design

2011-04-04T17:37:00.011+01:00

Design? Blunder more like.

Photo from the-eleventh.com

After long and tedious experimentation trying to make the menu and heading float, that is detach them from the rest of the page so that when scrolling down they stay at the top, success! So now to change more of the one hundred and seventy two other pages, must make them all look and act the same.

Testing fine. Everything LOOKS good. Change the most important page on the site, change the EVENTS page. Done. Looks good. Works fine. Hang on, no it doesn't, none of the links to pages showing event details work! Same on the HOME page, some links work, some don't.

What have I done? Its after midnight.

A night spent wondering what on earth had gone wrong to make most of the links on my web pages cease to work. What had I done in the name of design. All I wanted was for the site heading and the menus to stay visible when scrolling down long, interminably long some might say, pages.

So up in the morning. Take another look before breakfast. Take a look using a Microsoft based machine. That's what most people use isn't it. They work! All the links work!

What a relief. Well if you use a Microsoft based machine it might be, usually I don't.

All the links work using Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP machine. What if it is a Windows 7 machine with Microsoft Internet Explorer 9. Do they work then? Test this on the Apple using Parallels Desktop. Yes fine.

Take another look on the Apple in native OSX mode. They don't work. Why?

Barney & Krishna

If you have an Apple, I'm working on it. That is I'm scratching my brains out over it.......... All is not lost as the drop down menu at the top of the EVENTS page still provides links to current and future events.

So it works with one browser but not the rest. Why?

On the other hand my new Member's Hound Gallery works just fine on the Apple but in Internet Explorer the drop down menus disappear behind it. Currently the only way to see all of the drop down menus is to first go to another page or simply click on the header menu to bring up a page for that category.

Photos of Member's Hounds with names, yours and the hound's, wanted for inclusion.

Chris Cooper sent me the two excellent photos above.

Also new, a calendar of events courtesy of Google. This is shown of the EVENTS page and the SHOWS page and attempts to show all Basset related events in or within striking distance of our area, including dog shows, not of interest to all but we try to cater for everyone.

All, or rather most, LOWDOWN pages now in colour. Some page files lacked the information to retrieve the original colour. Just too much prior manipulation by Tony our editor, manipulated to good effect in the magazine I should add, simply no colour information left in the Word files.

Other minor changes.

Dark blue links changing to red when the cursor passes over them.
Layout of most pages tightened up and simplified to give a more uniform look.

Should I have left well alone? Would have been easier.

Its now just after 5 pm and all is solved or at least working, working on the Apple and the PC. Still not sure exactly why. It seems that my attempt to include a page heading that stayed in place when scrolling down was a step too far. Taking one step backwards to a header that disappears when scrolling but leaving the menus to firmly attached to the top, somehow reinstated all missing links. I would prefer a heading that did what it was told without interfering with the rest of the page but ......... Any ideas anyone?

Mozilla Firefox

Although as yet I can find no remedy for the problem with the Member's Hound Gallery if using Microsoft Internet Explorer there is a solution, use Mozilla Firefox instead. This can be downloaded free by clicking here and is available in versions for Windows, Apple and Linux.

News From Frankie

2011-03-14T10:47:00.010Z

Hi everyone, here is some recent South East Branch news,

AGM The Branch held a very successful and enjoyable Annual General Meeting on Sunday, 6th March at Cuckfield, West Sussex.

Reports from the Chairman, the officers, and members of the committee highlighted the many successes of the previous twelve months.

Jean, our Walks organiser, reported on the high numbers now regularly attending our monthly ‘meets’. Derek, our esteemed webmaster, announced some changes that had been made to the website: www.southeastbasset.org.uk - so, if you haven’t visited the site for a while, please check these out. Our newsletter editor thanked the many excellent contributors to Lowdown including Sheila Williams, the winner of the 2010 Winnie’s Wheelbarrow Trophy. Sue, our Basset Hound Welfare representative delivered an impressive report on the many successful re-homings that she had arranged.

All this was followed by some delicious refreshments. Many thanks go to all those who attended.

DFS CRUFTS 2011 Last Saturday, several Branch members travelled to DFS Crufts at the NEC Birmingham for Hounds Day.

Congratulations to those hounds that achieved some very impressive results at this most prestigious event: Marcus Storton = 1st Veteran Dog; Barnaby Malin = 2nd Veteran Dog; Maximus Storton = 1st Yearling Dog; Leo Culyer-Dawson = 1st Postgraduate Dog; Dutch Storton = 3rd Post Graduate Dog; Nico Roberts = 1st Limit Dog; Chevy Malin = Reserve Limit Dog; Minty Storton = 2nd Open Dog. & Reserve Dog CC; and Pandemonium Storton = Reserve Yearling Bitch.
Well done, everyone!

A DATE FOR YOUR DIARY This coming Sunday, 20th March, is a Branch walk at Long Car Park, Ashdown Forest (see website for all details, maps and TomTom links). There will be a special guest appearance of Bronwyn Edwards Cryer. Bron is the Australian/Seattle-based singer/songwriter famous for ‘A Basset is an Asset’ – so, why not come along and say ‘Hello’?

That’s all for now! Love to you and your hounds,
Frankie x.

Crufts

2011-03-13T19:25:00.005Z

Back home from what is developing into our annual visit to Crufts staying two nights in our Eriba at the Horse and Jockey, Bentley. About to change hands so hoping the good beer and great atmosphere remain the same. Planned to change are the primitive facilities for campers. That will certainly be very welcome.

Culdaws Dirty Dancing

Despite our caravan being only a short drive from the NEC as ever we missed the first Basset Hound class, Veteran Dog. This featured our Chairman, Brian showing Barnaby, Malrich Voodoo to the show world. Barnaby came second, just pipped to the post I am sure, by Champion Dereheath Marcus Aurelius owned by Derek and Heather Storton, South East members from Nottinghamshire, who came first.

Unfortunately I was only just getting myself together when I noticed that Rosemary, our former Secretary came third with her Moonsmead Double Expresso in the Special Junior Dog class. Having just arrived my cameras were still firmly in their bag so missed a photo there too.

Then Derek and Heather repeated their success with first in Yearling Dog with their Diheath Maximus, jointly owned with Di Melbourne.

By the time the next class with a South East interest, Post Graduate Dog, came I had fortunately woken up, managing to get a photo of the winner, another South East Branch member, Kim Culyer-Dawson, showing her Culdaws Dirty Dancing. Derek and Heather coming third with their Dereheath Going Dutch at Dearduenna, another hound jointly owned with Di Melbourne together with Paul Isted.

Ledline Chevrolet

In the next class, Limit Dog, our Chairman, was head to head with our Secretary, Chevrolet against Nico. Nico, Culdaws Bayleaf shown by Frankie was triumphant taking first place with Chevrolet, Ledline Chevrolet coming in fourth in field of eleven. A great result for both.

After Limit comes Open and it is from this class that it is generally expected that the best dog will emerge and so it was with the winner of the class taking the Dog Challenge Certificate and the second, Derek and Heather's Champion Bromwylva Imperial Mint of Dereheath, taking the Reserve Dog Challenge Certificate.

Heather continued her success with Reserve Yearling Bitch for her Diheath Pandemonium (jointly owned by "MRS H , MISS D & MISS J STORTON, MELBOURNE & MURRAY")

Just time for a quick shop to buy Cocoa new bedding and back to the pub for fish cakes and ale. A leisurely night in the caravan before the drive home in the morning. I don't know how Frankie and Tony manage their one day there and back trips.

Culdaws Bayleaf

Nico, Barnaby and Chevrolet will be back down to earth next Sunday, 20th March, on our walk from Long Car Park on Ashdown Forest.

LOWDOWN in colour

2011-03-01T18:49:00.004Z

Readers of LOWDOWN will know that although it has colour on the outside, inside it is black and white. This as you may guess because it is simply too expensive to produce it in any other way.

However I am in the lucky position of having copies of our editor's original files and many of these contain the original photo images in colour. So with a little bit of effort, actually quite a lot of time, most pages can be reconstructed in colour.

Black and white or colour, makes no difference on the internet from a cost point of view.

Over time you will see the LOWDOWN pages emerge in their full colour glory.

However they will always be at least six months behind their hard copy originals.

Watch this space www.southeastbasset.org.uk

The Webmaster's Howl

2010-09-14T10:27:00.009+01:00

'Mango Chutney' an attempt

several years ago at

drawing with a mouse,

probably best to stick with pencils.

Sadly my idea that members other than me might contribute to a regularly updated blog have come to nothing. So I guess I have the choice of either getting rid of this blog altogether or claiming it as my own, effectively making it an editorial, the online equivalent of (the poor relation to) Tony Roberts' excellent, 'The Editor's Bark' in our newsletter, 'Lowdown'. I doubt that I have enough of interest to say but here goes. From now on this is 'The Webmaster's Howl'.

Basset Hound Club Championship Show

2009-06-04T15:36:00.008+01:00

The Midland Branch Fun Day and the Basset Hound Club Championship Show take place this weekend at Bickenhill, near Birmingham Airport. Readers of LOWDOWN will have read of and seen pictures of branch members enjoying this event last year in the Winter 2008/2009 issue. For those who havn't seen it, the LOWDOWN article is now on the website, here. For those who have seen it the photos are in colour on the web version, so maybe you would like a second look. Why not come along to the event itself? The emphasis on Saturday is on fun, things get more serious for the competitors on Sunday although I hope they are enjoying themselves too. For those, like me who are just there to watch and enjoy, well where else can you get to see so many Basset Hounds all at once.

Derek 'Dusty' Miller

2009-05-25T15:07:00.009+01:00

It is with sadness that I have just heard the news that Dusty died this morning, a fellow member of the committee, as kind and welcoming a man as could be. He will be greatly missed.

addendum:

Dusty's funeral will take place at Eastbourne Crematorium on the 10th June at 2.30. Jean has requested that no one send flowers, and that should people wish to send a donation this should benefit The Stroke Association. Donations can be sent to: Adela Funeral Homes, 44 South Street, Eastbourne, BN21 4UT.

A bit more on Crufts 2009

2009-03-10T10:16:00.005Z

This is just a footnote to Crufts 2009 (the view from home) or rather a link to a view from Sweden.

Crufts 2009 (the view from home)

2009-03-06T15:01:00.030Z

Ironically it was Cocoa, our basset, that caused our decision not to attend Crufts this year. She is on a wait and see bed rest regime following unspecified yelps of pain a few weeks ago.

Such is the power of television, Crufts began this year under a cloud. The BBC having withdrawn its coverage following a controversial Panorama broadcast in 2008. Crufts launched its own television coverage, Crufts TV, broadcast via the Internet with live coverage throughout the whole of the show, far more than in prior years, and, another irony, a potential worldwide audience far greater than that cut off by the BBC. From what I saw on the first day the coverage was excellent, although you may not be surprised that I would have preferred to see a move away from the arena to coverage of the breed judging, obviously that is because I wanted to see how our Bassets progressed and, well, obedience and agility competitions are simply not part of my hound life. There is even a Video on Demand service where for a small sum, £1.99 for a day or £9.99 for a month, a recording of the coverage may be watched at a later time.

KCLovesDogs The Kennel Club Mar 08, 09:29 AM The Crufts channel isnow THE MOST VIEWED CHANNEL ON YOUTUBE!!! WE ARE NUMBER ONE!!!

If you follow The Kennel Club on Twitter you will have seen the Tweet reproduced above. So maybe it's, thank you Panorama, you have launched Crufts from its previous national TV slot into its rightful place, as the worlds greatest celebration of all things canine, as a worldwide Internet TV phenomenon!

Not being able to attend and no coverage of the judging meant that I could not follow the progress of Nico, Barnaby and Cassius instead having to wait until the results appeared on Crufts' website. So fingers crossed, was delighted when eventually the success of two was posted to the net, although naturally disappointed not to find Barnaby amongst them. Have posted the results of all our members, congratulations to them all, to the SHOW RESULTS page on our website.

In case you don't know: Nico is Culdaws Bayleaf, Barnaby is Malrich Voodoo and Cassius is Durins Dain Ironfoot of Eastmill. Our other successes, no less important I should stress my bias is only linked to my personal acquaintance, were Balmacara Orange Blossom forKithalined and Durins Flame of the West

A triumph for the Internet and freedom!

What's that I hear?

2009-03-04T12:13:00.012Z

What's that I hear? Baby patter? Baby elephant patter more like it.

No Ginsberg but a snippet of fellow Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "Dog" currently accompanies the Webmaster's page, but that's not the point. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer will, assuming they have working speakers and have not clicked the mute button, have noticed sound accompanying some of our pages, whereas users of Apple's Safari will not.

Some like my correspondent, whose main query related to "problem on the fist newwsletter on WBarrow. Just comes. goes comes goes. What can it be?" although I had no idea quite what he meant the problem was probably solved by the same method noted in "Is the page up to date" (I say probably because he came back with "Hi. Just tried that. There is improvement, now it bleeps four or five times then the page stays there. Well at least an improvment. Cheer & thanks,..." I was foolish enough to wonder momentarily from what malaise his computer suffered but suspect now that it was a comment on the musical accompaniment), may well say lucky Safari users.

If you hear sound and don't like it I have provided a toggle switch at the top right on some pages to turn it off, or just click on mute, it will probably be at the bottom right of your screen.

If you are using an Apple and would like to hear the sound files, I can only apologize as I know of no way of overcoming the problem. I believe it is just one of many incompatibility issues between Microsoft and Apple. If anyone has any ideas I would be glad to hear them.

Is it up to date?

2009-02-27T17:54:00.048Z

Some, more than others, are anxious to be up to date. Some may avidly read their daily over breakfast each morning, thinking that somehow doing so keeps them abreast with all that is important in life. Others believing newspapers a medium from a bygone age switch on their TV. A growing number go instead for their daily massage to a desktop, perhaps place a laptop on the breakfast table. There are probably even those who do both. In the cyber-global-village they can ride their mouse to information old and new, google their way through a gamut of knowledge and disinformation, seemingly never ending. But can they be sure they are seeing the most up to date version of their chosen nugget. If they have visited a page before then they cannot.

As both Internet Explorer and Safari save, as "temporary Internet files", copies of previously viewed Internet pages to speed access and decrease Internet traffic, it may sometimes be that what you see on your screen is not the latest version of a given page, but just one surreptitiously stored on your hard drive by your browser when you saw it earlier. If you suspect that what you see is out of date try the following.

First you could simply try refreshing the page, but if this does not work:

In Internet Explorer either click on Tools on the menu bar or Tools in the options given alongside the tabs. Then, from the drop down menu, select Delete Browsing History. A box will appear, there, in Temporary Internet Files click Delete files. Close the box. Once this is complete refresh the screen.

In Safari select Empty Cache from the Edit drop down menu. Click on empty when it asks if you are sure. Again, once done, refresh the screen.

Of course if the page is out of date then there is nothing you can do except to point out its obsolescence by sending its maker a message. Something along the lines of that of Arthur Mow.

CONTACT form

2009-02-26T15:15:00.016Z

An issue that has been troubling me for some time,

"does the form on the CONTACT page work"?

The first response received from the CONTACT form, I received on the 8th February this year. I am not sure when the form first appeared but the domain name was purchased in June 2008 and the website was online in some form immediately. For many months I wondered if anyone had looked at the site.

It had got back to me that some people had difficulty with the form, their computers not letting them use it. In response I had others test it, some, but not all, found no problem with it. I suspect that where it doesn't work it is being subverted by a zealous firewall. Unfortunately I am not expert enough to offer advice on how this may be overcome. Clearly Wayne, my first responder, had no problem with it. To help those whose systems lock them up tight I have included an email address for use in whatever is the normal way their emails are sent.

Today I had my second response, which read as follows:

Name=Arthur Mow
AppName=Microsoft Internet Explorer
AppVersion=4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; GTB5; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506) Resolution=1280 X 800 Email= amow@wentamowameadow.com Query=Dear Mr Webmaster man,
Am I not too late to partake of the walk that flashes before my eyes on your home sweet home page?
Like me, I suppose you are a creature of some antiquity, who finds this new technology a bit baffling. eh!
There must be some button you can press to update the date of the next date. Am I right, or am I right?
Enough, already. I must go and water the cactus.
Yours in eager anticipation.
Arthur.

Mr. Mow's message was gratefully received. I had forgotten to change the banner headline on our HOME page and set about putting it right as soon as reminded. I cannot promise that I will attend so promptly to everything that is brought to my attention, but please, please let me know of anything else that ought to be adjusted, amended on the site. Mr. Mow hid his identity (not very well) but there was no need, I am very selective of whom I bite (Mr. Mow's head, however, is on the stake on the right).

Back to the point. The CONTACT form does work, but if not for you use the email address. Oh, and I need contact!

Webmaster ban dropped (was this a mistake)

2009-02-25T15:12:00.014Z

Those who are familiar with our website, http://www.southeastbasset.org.uk/, may know me from there as the Webmaster (grand sounding title which just means: the one mad enough to spend a large amount of his time tweaking web pages). Others may know me as the slightly (somewhat) overweight, fairly quiet (self opinionated, not very sociable), bearded bloke on Basset Hound walks; has a dog called Cocoa (...she's lovely). It occurred to me that using google's blog system might be a simpler than adjusting the Webmaster's Page on our website, so here goes, lets see.

It is true to say that over the last few years my use of the Internet has increased to, what some consider, an unhealthy extent. Apart from involvement in four websites I have become entangled (following a trip to Egypt) in Facebook and latterly in Twitter.

However whilst innocently posting on various Facebook groups set up for basset hound lovers the entirely innocent message "Take a look at www.southeastbasset.org.uk for our take on life and the Basset." Facebook responded with....... (well I won't bore you with all that)