What's this site all about, anyway?
WHY IS THIS SITE HERE?
I've been square dancing since 1995, when I took my first Mainstream class with El Camino Reelers. One of the problems I faced as a new dancer was - predictably - asking all of the questions that all of ECR's new dancers had asked before over the years.
Some of the questions I asked, didn't have answers. Other questions had answers, but people were appearing mighty tired of giving out the same answers year after year after year. When I started hearing even newer dancers than myself asking the same questions I'd asked the previous year ... well, this just seemed like an awful lot of wasted time and energy.
WHERE DID THE SITE CONTENT COME FROM?
Uh, actually ... I wrote it. (Yes, all of it. By myself.)
One of my (many) professional duties is creating proposals, presentations, and training classes to explain complex technical issues to nontechnical people.
Since I'm told I can write, I decided to write some articles which answered these questions, and have done so for many different publications.
Many of the articles on this site have appeared in one or more of: SquareUp! Magazine, the GCA Call Sheet, and many different club newsletters.
Most of the articles here are intended for new square dancers or dancers who are just plain curious. Many of the articles here are also intended for callers.
SO, WHY CREATE THIS SITE?
Rather than continually pester people to post updated copies of the articles ... it seemed a lot more sensible (and polite) to put all of the articles on a single site. This allows other webmasters to link to the site once, while allowing me to update only one copy of each changed article.
Truthfully, the idea of my creating this site originated with Rich Reel, who's the webmaster for El Camino Reelers. He didn't know he was giving me the idea at the time, but I appreciate and thank him for it just the same. (Thank you, Rich!)
HOW DID YOU CREATE THIS SITE?
Professionally, I'm a network engineer.
A fairly well-experienced engineer, actually.
That means I never reinvent that which I could easily stea--uh, adapt and use myself.
(In the caller community, this is termed "doing research.")
Allan's Web Colophon:
I found a simple, fast-loading website, and used that as a template, modifying the content and format to meet my needs.
- I don't know how the HTML for these pages was originally generated. I just liked the design and the speed with which the code loaded.
- I made all of my changes the old-fashioned way ... by hand, using Windows Notepad or Wordpad.
- I changed all of the page fonts to Arial. I know that serifed fonts are supposedly easier to read, but I really hated the way the pages looked. Arial is a clean, readable font which to me appears to have more visually pleasing kerning than Times Roman ... at least on webpages. (Sorry, Times New Roman fans...) Frankly, I'd rather have used Helvetica, but one works with the tools one has at hand.
- I recomposed all of the articles in Microsoft Word 2000 using the "Save As" command to generate a hideously clunky HTML version. (Yes, I know Word's HTML sucks.)
- In case I haven't mentioned it yet ... I really hate the inefficient and icky HTML code generated by Word. Unfortunately, this really was the fastest way to get the site up and running.
- NOTE: This particular issue will change soon, as I'm in the process of converting all of the articles on this site into PDF files for easy portability.
- I use WS-FTP LE to move the files up to the web host. Very quick, very easy, and took all of about 5 minutes to locate (via shareware.com), download, and install.
- I registered the domain name using GoDaddy.com, and am using their web hosting services. For $3.95/month, instant setup, and no hassle ... GoDaddy's web hosting seems like a pretty good deal. I'm pretty happy with them at this point.
"SO, LIKE, DUDE - WHERE'S YOUR BLOG?"
There aren't enough blogs on the Net already? I can't possibly imagine that my internal ramblings would be of interest to anyone else. If enough people ask me for a blog, I may put one up in the future, but -- oh, never mind. Yes, I have a blog. Just click here.
I very strongly recommend Kris Jensen's truly wonderful squarez.com - A Caller's Weblog. Now that's a proper square dance blog.
WHY IS THIS SITE SO PLAIN?
Want to see animation? Go to the movies or rent a video. You won't find dancing baloney on any of my web pages. I despise little cutesy icons (animated or static) as bullet points. I spit on the ground in front of those who would force me to endure even more revolting animated cursors that resemble swarming insects or playful little baby animals. Don't even get me started on pretentious intro screens or animated menus that take three minutes to load so you can spend three seconds viewing scant content or "coming soon" pages.
OK, I'm feeling much better now. No. Really.
Nu? Hey, I don't claim to be an HTML wizard. (Good thing, after you've seen so much of the site.)
The most charitable thing I can say about my HTML coding is, "my talents lie elsewhere."
I admit that the site's visually ugly and boring, but at least it loads quickly. Long live the Bandwidth Conservation Society!
CAN I REPRINT YOUR ARTICLES IN MY CLUB NEWSLETTER OR MAGAZINE?
Sure! For info on reprinting any of these articles, please click here.
Enjoy!
...a.
Content © Allan Hurst 1995-2006 - Updated 07 September 2006