What's New 2001

Two new stunning shots by our friend Dave Norton. The enigmatic Powdermilk logo is spotted again in Southern California, harking back to a time when, well, when everyone knew how to turn on an oven. Car buffs will revel in the classic restoration featured in the foreground. Also, one of the most stunning sunrise photographs I've ever seen ... be sure to check these out.

We hope this catches on. For years we've received email comments about some of our stories and articles, and some of these comments are as relevant as the original source material. These add to or expand the scope of the subject area.

"Problem was," (1) there was no place to put these jotted notes, and (2) many folks are extremely reticent about writing for publication, when all they really want to do is share some observations and first-hand experience.

Beginning with Dave Norton's story and article "B-29", we created a page to post some of these contributions. We added a like page for my old story Steam Locomotive. The rules are simple. You get to say it the way you want to say it, and if we like it, up it goes. You call the shots on editing, format and such, and we do the rest. Read more about it at the link above.

In the case of "B-29" we have talked with folks who know the history of the aircraft engines inside and out, and with others who have personal anecdotes to share about the different ways war destroys the fighters. In some cases, it is too late to get permission to publish, but going forward, we want a community forum available for topics that strike a responsive chord with our readers.

In the case of "Steam Locomotive", my friend Al Micheli and I shared email anecdotes from our youthful days, shedding light on both the trains of the time, and the kids of the time. I wanted to make sure we didn't lose the opportunity to share those snapshots. The story "Steam Locomotive" is also linked from the site of Trainnet International Railway Links.

Here is a stunning shot by our friend Dave Norton. A must-see, Emerald Bay is shot from above on a winter day, showing how it joins into the greater Lake Tahoe. Download for your screen-saver or slide show.

Here is a new photo for the holiday season. Sharp-eyed friends of Summitlake have reported noticing other updates here and there, and for the most part they have all been found. We did also upload some new recipes for all you Recipes fans last weekend, and these list in the auto-index with -NEW! appended to their page titles.

For the most part our energies have been consumed on a stealth project, a live CHAT bulletin board we've been developing right under your nose. Special thanks to Al M. and close friends who have helped test and critique the design.

If you like "Easter Egg" hunts, there is currently exactly one way to get to CHAT if you don't elready know the URL. As far as we can tell, no one has found it yet. We still have some work to complete on the public version, before officially rolling it out and putting up the indexes and buttons. We'll let you know.

Summitlake users generally know exactly what they are interested in on our site, go in and browse that content, and leave. That's OK, it's in our mission statement that we support this. Very few people use our existing Guest Log, Chat or Computers Forums, even after we removed the word "database" and substituted "Forum".

We can identify with this. There is a natural desire "not to intrude", and we've observed that many personal computer users are still intimidated by all the fancy buttons and controls and are convinced they'll "break something". We can thank the early command-line gurus and "Nick the Computer Guy" types for this.

CHAT, when rolled out, will just be for fun. While it does have built-in security features, it cannot chase you across the internet to hound you, as do the commercial AOL and MS products. It will be geared toward short public "meet me's" for two, three or a few people. A private version may be opened up at some subsequent date, but only if there is a lot of demand from users we don't regularly hear from.

With a few short days left before we roll into 2002, we'd like to take this opportunity to extend our thanks and best wishes to our Summitlake.com users, each and every one of you, and to wish you all the best for the coming year.

Talking Crow Productions eats a little crow. A trivial upgrade to a critical utility caused us to be unable to access our hard drive or boot our OS. There was never anything wrong with the hard drive. There was never anything wrong with the OS.

The showstopper was probably a single misplaced or unrestored file, of perhaps 100 bytes size. But we never found out which file, or how to fix it.

We've seen the light. We've returned to the fold, again being enthusiastic advocates of full volume or partition backups -- even if we're talking 12 to 100 gigabytes of extra storage.

Read here what happened, what we did about it, and what storage solution we purchased to make it easy to stay with the program going forward.

Are you quite prepared to wind down the year 2001? It's not at all like predictions in the Stanley Kubric movie, or, if you prefer, the Arthur C. Clarke novel. We made it through "1984"; "2001" was a little rougher. Instead of schizoid and malevolent super-computers like HAL, we went with the distributed computing model, with hundreds or thousands of malevolent little "evil-doer" agents coursing through the nation's arteries. After the shock of September 11, the immune system is flooded with antibodies. Large, complex systems need efficient, automated garbage collection systems. We have one of the best. Let's hope no innocents get hurt in the process.

The cause of all this, we are told, is some big fish in Afghanistan. Every day, the circle slowly closes on Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. You know what I want for Christmas. The system will cleanse itself. Life will go on. We will learn something in the process, and we have every reason to believe that life will take a turn for the better for everybody.

Here at Summitlake.com, things remain quiet. Under the surface, we're quietly working away on our live CHAT. Quite frankly, we're having more fun doing Perl techniques research to build up the bag-of-tricks department. Very little "visible progress, visible results" (as a former boss used to preach), but the research should pay off in faster pages and less complexity.

Our new Interland site is still less than two months old, and Summitlake.com fans are still finding bugs. Not very many, but, as I track them down, I am generally amazed at how simple the fix was. This proves an old truism of software QA: never let Programming do the quality control on its own work. Coding and QA are very different mindsets and skill sets.

Programming says: "Of course it works. I wrote it". QA says: "This code can be broken, and I am competent to show that it can fail." Keep those bug reports coming in!

Hope you had a great holiday. We sure did. Some great meals, catching up on the chores, four days of lollygagging around the house ... time off sure flies by fast.

We've been busy around here, too, but you might not have noticed unless you're one of our ever-alert core boosters.

We hate to even bring this up. Even after two months, we're still sore about it. And why not? We have a $3200 Dell laptop, not a year and a half old yet, down for a part that's broken twice since purchase. The part? The laptop keyboard, that we almost never use because we use external keyboards at home and work. Still, this machine will never get through airport security again. Dell took two months to put its foot down and say, "no, we won't fix it."

The way they did it is actually more infuriating. What did I find? In my experience, Dell customer service is totally out of control. Their record-keeping system leaves them unable to track documented customer complaints which already have Dell tracking id's. Telephone response times are abysmal or nonexistent. Every call or email is a completely new visit, you are a total stranger, and you have to start all over again. The ususal result? They'll tell you to go to the back of the line, call some other department, and start all over again.

Dell's the company that's excruciatingly polite when they tell you to stick it where the sun don't shine.

We gave you the short version, a mini-rant, with only the latest correspondence for documentation. (Most of the rest of the 17 emails are form-mail replies anyway).

Even so, if you're feeling bummed out about the economic downturn, this documentation will always be here. Go to C.Bear's World instead, and read something fun.

Dave Norton sent us a spectacular new photo. The photo, of jellyfish in the Monterey marine aquarium, is fascinating in its own right. The lighting effects look like every special effect in the PhotoShop bag of tricks was used. In fact, the digital photo was taken in available light, and the camera was handheld. In Friends Gallery.

B-29: In January, we published Dave's fine piece "Requiem for an Aircraft, Farewell to a Pilot". The article is still drawing comment, so we're starting to compile commentary on its own dedicated page: Others' Comments About This Article. If you have a personal anecdote drawn from the B-29 article and topic, you don't need to have memorized the number of cylinders and compression ratio of the engines. To participate, send us your observations. If they are appropriate, and express an interesting experience or recollection, we'll add them to the page.

As always on written submissions, if you submit something you wrote, be sure to tell us how you want credit for the contribution to be given: first name, firat and last, and/or email address are likely options.

The Community Forums survey did not generate a lot of response, but, thanks for your participation if you did submit an entry. We'll leave the form up, since it's indexed on the main index page, and see if we can accumulate enough responses to report back some kind of consensus.

We're working on a live Chat cgi of our very own. There are very sophisticated freeware and shareware chat programs available, but we don't think we want them on our site. One can set up private or public chatrooms, monitor and restrict abusive behavior, post cutesy little "emoticon" icons (happy face; sourpuss face) to spice up conversations for the articulatively impaired.

We were thinking of a simple private chat, just for friends, since those of you who want instant messaging and multiple rooms already have AOL, NetMeeting, ICQ and similar vehicles for surfing the stream of consciousness world.

If you would like to see live public Chats for Summitlake.com, we're quite capable of providing it, but most of us seem to prefer the private, personal site visit with no audit trail in or out. You always can post your opinion on the survey form below, however!

Three weeks into our new home at web host provider Interland, services seem to have settled down and we are pleased with the reliability and responsiveness of the provider. Summitlake.com regulars have already noticed "Site Status Log", a new addition that's accessible through our main index page. There, no news is good news, and we're had no known issues (or entries) all this week.

We also have a Summitlake Calendar, freeware courtesy of Perl author Matt Kruse. We'll use it to post high-level site events, milestones and other items of interest. We put this up on the new site just days before the 10/16 switchover. We think the calendar is quite spiffy, and appreciate the elegant programming involved by its creator.

Please, click the link above and take a minute to tell us some of your reactions to our community forums. At present, these are the Forum databases labeled "Guest", "Chat", and"Computing".

Our new Summitlake site at Interland gives us options we didn't have the luxury of considering before. As you know, more sophisticated bulletin board and chat services are certainly available in many places on the web. We could install them here. Your response will be very important in determining the future direction and appearance of such services at Summitlake.com.

First of all, to celebrate our new larger site, we completely re-wrote "More Photo Gallery" as two Perl scripts. One script fills the "More Photo Gallery" panel with the thumbnail images. When you click an image, it brings you to the same Gallery Browser thatyou are already used to, except that it is is all now 100% smoke and mirrors - a second Perl script that just serves up the appropriate images and text.

And why not? All the old viewer pages were identical except for images and text anyway.

Since all the old pages were numbered (5 of 39, etc.) and the navigation buttons had to be re-tuned every time we added so much as one photo, this saves us a ton of time. It also saves us uploading a whole new set of replacement pages each time we do an update. And this saves cyber-trees.

Used to be, if you did a Site Index, the "More Photo Gallery" directory would contain one index and perhaps 39 individual .shtml pages, one for each picture. Now, there is only one page, the Gallery index. That's the difference -- the rest of the pages are "smoke and mirrors".

So much for the "first of all". What about "second of all"? Well, second of all, we uploaded six new images to the Gallery. You can access them through PHOTOS and MorePhotoGallery, just as before.

The "feature page" still holds exactly one new feature photo, so there's no way to earmark six new photos at once. You'll just have to sit back, relax, and check out our newest Gallery browser to see them. Enjoy!

The site "move" is about 98% complete. We're done. The old HostPro site is only getting a few hits a day, so almost all the ISP's have updated their Network Solutions IP Address files, which match "summitlake.com" to our new "IP Address". And, our mail works; no more mail is going to the HostPro mailbox. The old site will be taken down sometime next week.

For the benefit of any Summitlake.com readers whose ISP's are behind in their file updates, the old index page has an "automatic redirect" to our new site here.

Oh, there must be some bugs left somewhere. There always are. If you find any, we'll appreciate hearing from you more than ever. But all the old "summitlake.com" page links are still good, and all your old bookmarks are still good, 'cause we haven't changed; only our server IP Address has changed.

The times: now is a good time to go to a movie, get a bowl of ice cream, or get to the park or the ball game for one last glorious fall day. Lighten up. Tell a joke to a friend. Order a few more rolls of our free bin Laden Toilet Paper (we need the business) ...

Sure, these are troubled times. There have been troubled times since before the dawn of recorded history. This nation is now resolute that we shall get through these times, and our goal is to get through them with style and finesse.

Enemies and rubberneckers carp that our main offense is that we have incredible military might and economic power, and that we "export our principles" over the world.

Their mistake is in taking these strengths for granted, as if they were mere unearned inheritances, or just so many slices of somebody else's pie. But these strengths came from an enviable work ethic, a viable body politick (Democrats, Republicans and independents alike), and more so from our inner strength and resolution, which is our greatest asset of all. We should take pride in this, and today is truly a good day to be grateful.

Our nation has prepared for generations for times like this. With patience, determination, a keen acumen and heightened alertness, we shall get through this. Go have that ice cream. See you around the campus.

This is going to be more interesting than I thought. The switchover is occurring right now. Some of you will read this on the old site, some, on the new -- depending on whether your ISP has updated their server with the latest Network Solutions info. I'm told it generally will take a day or so more for the dust to settle. We can celebrate when it's complete!

The Summitlake.com domain name switchover is supposed to occur today or tomorrow (see details in October 4th entry). As soon as you see the Interland logo on our home index page, you know the switchover has taken place.

Most of what you see here should look and work the same for you. It is, in fact, the same. Some of the features supported by Perl scripts, such as auto-index, can't be fully tested until the domain name summitlake.com has been switched over to the Interland server machine. If there are to be any bugs, it would be in navigation or scripting. We'll find them, and we hope you'll bear with us for a day or two.

Mail correspondence: this is more problematic, since our new mail (write@summitlake.com) can't be re-configured until the switchover. There will be a period of time, hopefully a few hours or less, where the old mail server won't recognize the domain name, which will then belong to the new server, but the new server won't recognize it either until I become aware the change-over has occurred, and configure my mail on the new server.

This is a link to a stunning photo statement assembled by Ilona Feher, editor of the Peninsula Apple User Group newsletter. Evene after the recent barrage of media photo-op on this tragedy, I found this page eloquent, powerful, moving and strangely peaceful. I recommend that you take a look.

Very early morning observations on the many difficulties of obtaining and interpreting the news.

Summitlake.com is moving - well, sort of. Our ISP, HostPro, has merged with Interland, a leading provider based in Atlanta. The whole story is predictable and complicated. You may remember reading part of it. Micron Computer sold its PC manufacturing business and acquired HostPro as the first step of a plan to become a leader in a cutting-edge industry .... In March of this year, HostPro announced the acquisition of Interland, the sixth-largest ISP in the US. The combined company will become Interland. You can read more about it on HostPro's announcement page.

Our old hosting plan is "going away", replaced by newer plans with slightly richer feature sets. The old plans will be "grandfathered", but support for expansion will not be offered. We did what any feature-hungry consumer would do. We upgraded.

This will all take place in the middle of October. It's supposed to be transparent. Our domain name, summitlake.com, will have to be switched over. If there are any problems at all, you will notice them briefly around October 15th. At that time, mail routing and all the internal and external links to "summitlake.com" will have to be flipped simultaneously.

Our site has already been physically copied to its new server. It is being tested now. Most things work the same. We are testing with the "ip address" only, since the domain name will not be available until switchover day.

How will you know? The entire site has been copied. The pages are the same. The domain name you see will still be www.summitlake.com. With over 700 pages, we expect some surprises, but nothing major. On the home index page, the only difference you should see is the "powered by" buttons:

Advantages? Few you'd notice. We'll have more space, so we can offer more or larger PHOTOS. The cgi-bin (Perl scripting) setup is more sophisticated, so we could offer more upscale database Forums. For you techies, our package includes mySQL. This could allow us to use fully developed shareware or commercial packages for community bulletin boards, forums or chat rooms more like what you see on larger sites.

Bin Laden Toilet Paper Generator - New! Summitlake.com decided it was time to take a break from scholarly analysis, and just say what we really think. So, we teamed up with Talking Crow Productions, Rocky & Fluffy Computer Co. and our seldom-heard-from affiliate named "Very Mature Productions".

Using a little Yankee ingenuity, we wrote a little Perl script that generates enough tissue squares for almost any job, no matter how big. We use only the finest tissue, lovingly embossed with appropriate images. Remember, no job is finished until the paperwork is done. We hope you will find this useful when all else fails.

Very Mature Productions only has one other accomplishment in its portfolio. That's our generated text verses for "99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall", except we've run it for 99,999 bottles. With a suitable speech engine and monotone "voice", it's perfect for driving away unwanted company, scaring away potential burglars, and getting even with the noisy upstairs apartment tenant when leaving for the weekend.

New photo in PHOTOS. While current affairs are a kaleidoscope of Twin Towers, bin Laden, mobilization, anguish and healing, I do know this. The world is still a beautiful place. Now, more than ever, we need to remind ourselves of that. Hope you enjoy the peaceful scene depicted in this PHOTO.

"We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets." -- Osama Bin Laden, interview with ABC reporter John Miller, May 1998.

I found the PBS link below on Richard Wanderman's LD Resources site, and spent several hours reading firsthand interviews and biographical sketches of Osama Bin Laden. It appears that we are facing a more capable and formidable foe than before imagined.

The PBS material shows beyond reasonable doubt that bin Laden has been candid and forthright about his plans for the devastation of America all along. From the PBS material, it is possible to gain a fairly clear understanding of who the man is, how he views the world, what he wants, and what he's capable of doing to get it.

For the sake of those of us who simply do not have time to explore the PBS documentation for themselves (though I strongly recommend it), Summitlake.com has prepared most of our own Notes as bullet points, followed by selected quotes from the collection of articles, biographical material, and interviews.

My friend Richard Wanderman has written an excellent article on a variety of aspects of the horrible week of "911", notably, on how it affects the lives of ordinary Americans like ourselves, and on the dangers and injustice of stereotyping. His article appears in the entry for Thursday, September 13, 2001. Richard has also posted excellent links to other topical resources (some of which may also be found at Summitlake.com; we find ourselves exchanging the better resources as we discover them). Please check out Richard's site at LD Resources.

Here is a link to a Salon article, An Afghan-American speaks by Tamim Ansary that is touching, cogent, timely, and stirring. It confirmed what I have believed all along (and alluded to in my 9/14 mini-ed on this page) : the people themselves, the citizens of these despotic lands, are themselves hostages.

The Ansary critique is the best analysis I have ever read on Afghanistan, and the most authoritative too. Please review it; we will need to understand this in coming months.

Letter to a friend -- we have been thinking about why America is so hated in so many developing nations, and the list of plausible motives is intimidating.

The usual suspects have been re-aired in recent days: envy of our wealth and standard of living, anger at our power and seeming arrogance, and resentment of the hopelessly contradictory tangle of alliances and marriages of convenience the US has formed since World War II toward the ostensible end of "making the world safe for democracy". On this last and least-examined topic, here are some of the thoughts that I wrote:

Insensitive Bastard

As if the unthinkably horrible events of this week have not stressed Americans to the limit, once again, the Rev. Falwell has seized upon the moment to demonize those who do not pay homage and tithe to his particular cult, those who defend individual rights, and those who simply happen to be different.

Once again, the Rev. Falwell has gone beyond the pale. He is a disgrace to organized religions, a disgrace to all thinking peoples, and a disgrace to his homeland and birthright, whatever that may be.

Summitlake.com invites thinking readers to compare Falwell to other religious fanatics: Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Our challenge is to find substantive differences, if any, beyond those denied to Falwell merely because they are still prohibited by the laws of our land.

We further invite those who have the opportunity to do so, to speak out vociferously against all such agenda-laden divisiveness, and to repudiate Falwell's verbal defecation upon the Bill of Rights. If there is to be finger-pointing, we should be looking at the parents who dropped this monster upon the fertile soil of the United States of America. Small wonder that he is opposed to abortion.

Hoodlum ethnic "reprisals" against our own neighbors and fellow citizens who happen to be of different heritage is not only itself terrorism, but should be dealt with as such by the authorities.

It is true. Twin Towers was not just an attack on America. Here is a silent collection of photos from all over the world, one that we Americans need to see, understand and accept.

The debate: ... "even if we were able to do all that, we would succeed only in turning every true believer in Islam into a terrorist for the next 3 generations."

We will always remember. We will mourn and grieve first. We will take care of our lost, our friends, our families, and our own. Then, once and for all, we will take the appropriate action.

Future Police --The nanobots are coming! Nanobots, artificial intelligence, virtual reality. Superfast computing (by powers of ten) is closer than you think. Summitlake.com takes a close look at what all the fuss is about. We found some fascinating and genuinely useful developments in science. We also found a lot of puffed-up alarmism, some Luddites who think "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski had something really important to say, and the first trial balloon proposals for thought police who would limit our investigation into knowledge itself.

We had a lot of fun researching this article. Extensive links, references, a cross-referenced Feature Article browser, and some great graphics. New also: an email form Survey, so you can effortlessly tell us what you liked about the article (or didn't) -- A Feature Article for Commentary.

We're still working on our article. It is still tentatively named "Future Police". As you might guess, the possibilities of the future can be a broad subject, and anybody can play. Here at Summitlake.com, we'll focus on what the current fuss is all about (it seems it all started with 3 bad books published in the late 1990's).

While we polish up a most palatable way to discuss the dangers of Chicken Little-ism, we're pleased that Scientific American has "scooped us" with a series of fascinating articles on what nano-tech will actually do for us, and what it won't. We're also pleased that their take on "the sky is falling!" is about the same as ours. Please do take the time to at least scan some of the Scientific American articles and illustrations (link above).

This week, we also got tangled up in someone else's problems getting a Perl script running under a Windows NT server. We know Perl, but Summitlake is hosted on a UNIX box. Maybe we weren't able to be much help -- unless it wins another customer for HostPro.

Webmastering combines the best of both worlds, the creative and the technical. I've always liked both, and never felt the need to make the sharp "left-brain right-brain" distinction that folks draw upon so heavily in explaining why they can't do something.

But I will admit that webmastering often requires me to take my creative brain off, put it on the shelf, and put on the other one to get some tasks done! It will be nice to resume work on the article.

Her Blue Haven, by Bill Plaschke - Bill Plaschke is a sportswriter for the LA Times, but this is not your basic sports column. It blew me away. Plaschke is a good writer. Highly recommended reading.

At Summitlake.com, we're having another record month. Our WRITING Department has picked up another 35,000 visitors since last time we looked, with about 148,000 visitors since we put the counter on the page way back when.

We've been busy at work on another major feature article, "Future Police" (tentative name) covering expected advances in technology over the next thirty to three hundred years. As you might guess from our title, some crystal ball gazers are already seeing a future of humankind without any humans in it, and some of these folks would like to put curbs and brakes on investigative knowledge itself, not just on gadgets and gizmos. Given current developments over stem cell research, you might guess the source of all this noise would be the ultra-right religious conservative movement. But you'd be wrong.

Since a future thirty or more years distant is not likely to "scoop" us here at Summitlake.com, we're talking our time, and we're having a ball researching the topic. Much of the research was handed to us on a silver platter by the editors of PC Magazine, who assembled special guest writers to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the PC. If you have time and any interest in the topic, do check out their 20th Anniversary Special Report. The captain has asked that you do fasten your seat belts at this time.

If you thought August's feature "Almost Pretty Good" was arcane, wait 'til you see "Future Police".

Your car overheats, breaks down, and sends a wheel crashing through Mrs. McCarthy's plate glass window. When you call for help, a pleasant voice tells you to shut down, restart, and call back if the problem doesn't go away.

Summitlake.com takes a look at the software industry, now in business for a fifth of a century. It's not a pretty sight. This major article gives you the inside scoop on software design, QA and marketing. We discuss it both on a technical level (but not too technical), and on a practical business level. The industry has matured without growing up. Despite industry claims that "things are different out here, Pilgrim", the only part of the west that hasn't been tamed is right here in Silicon Valley. You can order it any way you want, but this ain't Wendy's.

This eight-part article is organized, tabbed and indexed so that you can browse and skip through it as you see fit. This article should give you a better understanding of the software industry, and help your software shopping and purchasing decisions. In COMPUTERS.

Two new photos posted to PHOTOS and MorePhotoGallery. We have a stunning, jumbo detail-rich panoramic image, and a nice outdoors floral -- from our own back apartment balcony.

July isn't quite over yet, but it's already by far the biggest month for visitors and pages viewed at Summitlake.com. We'd like to use this occasion to thank you again for dropping by.

For all you patient Mac fans: we discovered yet a different bug, on the databases, affecting only Mac OS9.1 using MSIE 5.0. The bug was preventing these Mac users from using the Search button (or any other!) on Guest Log, Chat Forum and the other interactive forums. Mac Netscape users and Windows users were not affected. The bug was fixed.

All our visitors and regulars are encouraged to "turn in your bugs". Our site is now serving over 700 pages, 3000 files of all sorts, and 210 folders. It's inevitable there are going to be bugs, but we work hard to stamp them all out. Believe it or not, if you submit a "bug" report, we WILL look at it. You don't need to fill out a form or follow a complicated procedure. Just tell us what you don't like and what happened. If we can't reproduce it, we might ask some questions, but we won't hassle you or give you the third degree (as we ourselves have experienced from many Internet sources).

Speaking of bugs, we're working on another major new article. It will give you some real inside scoop on the nuts and bolts of software QA - quality assurance. Our tentative name for the article: "Almost Pretty Good - The Emerging Software Standard". Stay tuned!

The Meta-Process: Getting Stuff Done-- Article on adopting conscious learning processes as a building-block technique. We originally completed this article in October, 2000, for hosting in a plain-text format at the LD Resources site of my friend Richard Wanderman. Without changing the text, this article may now also be found in our WRITING department. I added font styling, hypertext links and a scrollable index in a browser frame. This should aid in visualizing and navigating what is really a big subject and a long article. I also added a Synopsis of key points, and a Postscript page for 2001.

Elsewhere, we hope you noticed the site "consistent look and feel" project here has been mostly completed. Fast navigation between departments should now be a snap using the tabs at the top of the major department index pages. We're also in the process of gradually changing over page formatting to cascading style sheet (CSS), since, in the web-authoring world, support for the old <FONT> markup protocol is already going away. Readers of our HUMOR pages will notice the consistent style from page to page, much as we did for RECIPES, but we're only up to the letter D in the alphabetical HUMOR index.

Beijing 2008 -- OLYMPICS: It's not what you think, and it isn't what you don't think: Summitlake.com takes a look at the biggest thing to happen in China since Tiananmen Square. Our call: if you want to promote liberty, you have to allow people to live freely. "Recognition" be damned; let the games begin. In Observations.

New "More Photo Gallery" -- We think you'll be pleased. Summitlake.com's growing PHOTO Department has been upgraded again. Now, you can use a true Web Photo Browser to skim through dozens of our favorite images. We retained our text narrative descriptions, and the ability to download any image as an 899x600 desktop picture. Better yet, we uploaded all of them, recovering completely from the server crash of October 2000.

We also hope you noticed: most department index pages now have navigation tabs. From any index page that has them, click a tab to navigate to any other department. We'll have to redesign a few pages to make this feature universal, and we're working on that too.

C.Bear and the Weather Gods -- Our intrepid little Bear is on vacation: Summitlake.com's own C.Bear looks at raindrops and weather systems, wonders where the mountains go when they turn to sand, and goes to the movies. We look at the profitable insurance industry, and, speaking of which, whether Bears might even have their own religion. We can't be sure of everything in life, but nothing beats a fresh cup of coffee while we say good morning to C.Bear's bougainvillea. In C.Bear's World.

"Inalienable"-- What the Creator does is His own business, but it's not legally binding: Summitlake.com takes a look at the recent Supreme Court arguments on the indefinite detention of "deportable immigrants", in Commentary:Observations.

"More Fluff": Maybe it was time to add an image to the Summitlake.com home page that actually is Summit Lake. So that's what we did. There are probably about 200 Summit Lakes across these several United States, but this is the Summit Lake. We've been purposefully cagey about its exact location. Some readers expressed concern that the area might be overrun, so we can only give you a couple of hints.

(1) If you know how to read a map, you can probably locate it, and (2) if you can, you'll note that you can't drive there. This is not a place to which you can ever get closer by vehicle, but it can always remain close in mind.

The photo was taken in 1971. I was back in 1972 and then again in about 1978. I would be surprised if it has changed much there since.

Thanks to the Anfy team for the image animation. Also, we uploaded a new PHOTO last night, "Saguaro Sunset". Download the 899x600 and put it on your desktop. We hope you like it.

Some of you are wondering why some of our pages recently got narrower. Although we're not sure there are any standards any more, these pages should now be completely visible on a browser in a 14" laptop display panel, with the resolution set to 800x600. No more horizontal scroll bars for small screens.

I went to 17" monitors years ago, and I let my pages suffer middle-age spread. I like a big screen. In the apartment, I use a 15" LCD monitor to save space, but at 1024x768 resolution, these pages still fit comfortably.

But certain kinds of pages (like this one) "fit" entirely within a browser window regardless of size. Try it. If you widen the browser window, this text expands to fit the window. If you narrow it, the text "wraps" as it would in a word processor.

But graphic images don't shrink, and nasty things happen when you change the page size. Images that don't fit on one line simply wrap to the next line. The page goes cattywompus. To give the page designer control of what happens to an image-intensive page, or to text that needs to be closely positioned in any browser window, HTML offers "tables".

Tables can enclose the page content, and even predefine its width, which is what I've done, since page width is the issue here. You'll now find 658-pixel wide pages on the Summitlake home index page, as well as in most of our Departments. In time, you'll notice the departments are color-coded too, and you'll see why in due time!

Here, on the eve of us serving our 15,000th home index page, Summit Lake has finally come to Summitlake.com.

<"Pure Fluff", and Why We didn't Write Home. Ma, just because we didn't write doesn't mean we don't care about you. We just had stuff to do, that's all. We know how time flies. Tell us about it.

The dates on these entries must be wrong. No way can it be ten days, can it? No, we're not writing home for money this time, just tellin' ya what we been up to.

Oh, yeah, we finally fixed C.Bear's slide show. It runs in its own window, and it runs forever until you close the window. C.Bear doesn't care, but if you know how to get "nph-push" running under HostPro, drop us a line?

Tech Talk: Macromedia Dreamweaver -- Increasingly, we've been using Allaire HomeSite 4.5 to manually edit code generated in Microsoft FrontPage 2000 on my PC. HomeSite is a great little product for $49.95. It performs much the same function as BBEdit for the Mac, only it includes a useful design view and browse view. Allaire also offers a free trial version.

to edit code generated by a $179 flagship Microsoft product? Well, FrontPage is a powerful product and we used it for two years, but, um, well, it generates bad code. Oh yes, you can be pretty sure any FrontPage code will display properly on Internet Explorer on a PC. Will it display properly on Netscape, or on a Mac? Hint: if you own a Mac and write HTML of any sort, keep MSIE 5.0 handy as a "bad code checker". This version for the Mac is a very good browser, but it is brutally ruthless about exposing malformed HTML tags.

Microsoft FrontPage has other bad habits. It generates proprietary files and folders for FrontPage Extensions, whether you want them or not. (These do not work well on other OS's and browsers, if at all -- as my Mac friends can testify.) When I read a user review of a FrontPage 2002 upgrade (on which I passed), I noted a comment that Microsoft doesn't let you manage your site the way you want to manage it. Microsoft makes you manage your site the way Microsoft wants you to manage it.

Well, I knew that. Sometimes affirmation helps. And, you know, I just decided to bail. Interestingly, Macromedia recently merged with Allaire, and the two products work together. Dreamweaver may be a hokey name, but it's one of the most respected authoring tools in use by the pros. I like it already. I'll keep you posted.

We cleaned out all the old FrontPage files from the Server, so if you notice some graphics or other glitches, please bear with us as we reorganize for a world without FrontPage Extensions.

Mini-Rant: Forces of Weed Wacker Evil -- A good friend wrote of the agonies of an extended stint with one of these weed wacker devices. This brought back a flood of resentful observations from the days when I had property and grounds to hack back. For all you sore, stiff Sunday afternoon yard cowboys, we present our own coveted views on what's wrong with these machines, and who's responsible. In Commentary.

Mini-Ed: E-mail Standards -- A few warning shots across the old bow, on slipping Internet standards and customary protocols. Are our standards slipping? Are we setting ourselves up for calamity? Have you noticed that few people bother to use Stuffit or WinZIP to archive attachments they send any more? Attachment size isn't the issue it used to be, but security and file integrity still are. In Computers.

OS-X and 9.1 bug fixes: We tracked down a code problem that caused the new index page to display wallpaper over part of the text. It was peculiar to MSIE 5.1.1 (Mac) but worked fine under Netscape 4.7 (Mac) and MSIE 5.5 (Win). This kind of dual-platform maintenance is a fourfold pain. In this case, the bug was traced to line breaks inserted inside another tag by FrontPage 2000 (!) ... we made the required fixes by hand in Allaire HomeSite 4.5 (Win) and BBEdit 6.01 (Mac). Thank you for letting us vent.

OS-X and Java: This just in from Omni Group, maker of the fine new native OS-X browser: Apple still has major work to do on their Java API before "complex" Java and JavaScript objects will load properly, or, in some cases, at all. Click our COMPUTING button below for details in the Computer Form, or, check out the latest on OS-X and browsers at the Omni Group website.

We'll continue to support our special OS-X web index page for the time being (OS-X users should be automatically directed to it). Other users can continue to enjoy the AnfyJava image on the regular index page.

Site Updates: If you came to this page through our home index page, you noticed we've revamped it again. We like wood paneling, but the '60's retro novelty fades fast. It's pretty, but distracts from anything you hang on the wall. The new page with its plain white background looks stark, but the text should be more readable and the features easier to find. We hope you like the drop shadows on all our glass buttons.

Computer Forum: We've set up a new interactive area just for topics of interest to Mac and PC users. Please feel free to browse the topics, or start your own. You can respond to topics, start a new one, or ask a question to get the best possible chance of it reaching someone who has dealt with the issue before.

Feature Review: Datadesk Mac-101E Keyboard

-- Summitlake.com reviews the coolest standard computer keyboard. The written word is a big part of our life at Summitlake.com. It should come as no surprise that many of our reviews focus on the best writing tools. Last week's review praises the AlphaSmart, a self-contained keyboard and text processor. The Datadesk is a standard computer keyboard, but it's the best standard keyboard we ever used in our life. Both products are outstanding in their respective categories, and serve very different functions. Read how we re-discovered Datadesk, and why we'll never be without one again.

Shareware -- Summitlake.com 'discards' and 'keepers' . We tried and discarded a piece of shareware intended to read Mac-formatted media (floppies and other removable media) on a PC. Having published shareware ourselves, we're, if anything, overly-sensitive to harsh criticism of the unsung programming talent that continues to bring great free and low-cost software to computer owners worldwide. This particular effort, "Trans Mac", was awarded five stars by the respected shareware site Tucows, but we think it needs more work. We don't like to see the rating systems abused by reviewers who are evidently unfamiliar with the product's functional area and/or the OS. Read our mini-review "Trans Mac for Win 2000" in Computers and Networking.

The Panorama Factory: We much prefer sharing good news. We were searching Google for photo-stitching software (to make one image out of three, like the panorama above). We found a shareware product called The Panorama Factory, written by Pittsburgh PA resident John Strait and Smoky City Design.

I downloaded the software and tried it out. It is awesome and very easy to use. The pan image in the middle of the OUTDOORS page was originally 17MB (done in Panorama Factory importing three original 6MB TIF scans), at 2752 x 1008 pixels. I saved in JPG format, PhotoShop quality '7', and scaled it down to 3134 x 768 pixels for the web. Click the image above, or this link to OUTDOORS, to see thumbnails of the three individual photos that this software put together. Then, click that image to see an awesome high-resolution panorama that will more than fill any monitor! Definitely a "Keeper". We'll plan a review as we gain more experience with The Panorama Factory, but we're impressed already. The panorama above was produced on our very first try.

Feature Review: AlphaSmart 3000 -- Summitlake.com reviews the coolest personal writing tool. The AlphaSmart is a lightweight, truly portable writing tool for authors, students, professionals, note-takers and people on the go. We think AlphaSmart is one of the best-designed writing tools to ever have come out of the computer revolution. I’m delighted and grateful I own one.

Complete National Geographic -- 111 years of National Geographic. On disc. The collection is indisputably great. Should you go for the currently offered 32-CD-ROM set, or wait in the hope that National Geographic will go ahead with another DVD release in 2002? What if you have an old set with the 1998 code release, but you want to run it on Windows 2000 or Mac OS-X? We have some inside information gleaned from a National Geographic executive. This article was first published in the PAUG newsletter, May 2001 edition. In COMPUTERS.

Ford TFI Ignition Recall - Tip Of The Iceberg?: You'll recall our article last year on the Ford TFI Ignition legal maneuvering. The syndrome: A Ford truck (certain years, makes and models) inexplicably stalls on the highway.

We received a letter from Angel Brown of Washington, whose husband was killed in March 2001 while driving a Ford Ranger. Ford basically told Mrs. Brown that the Ranger wasn't on the recall list. Please read Mrs. Brown's letter and follow the link to our most recent observations in Commentary.

Building Your Own PC -- Feature article. Illustrated. We finished "building our own box" last month, and we sure are pleased with the effort. For the very detailed "How To" articles, this article refers you to other sites. For an overview of what's involved and why you might want to consider this approach yourself, we offer this article. There were some surprises, but it's just not as difficult as you might think.

Java Compromise: Earlier today, we established that AnfyJava applets (and most or all other Java we have tried) do not load or run properly under Mac OS-X. While we wait for this new OS to catch up, we're going to post the spiffier Anfy version of the index page. For now, Mac OS-X users will have their own (discontinued 10-16-2001) Mac home index page. We suggest OS-X users boot into 9.1 to view the animated page under MSIE 5.0 (for now).

More Mac Notes: We are not getting MSIE 5.0 or 5.1b, or OmniWeb 4.0, to display the "ALT TEXT" that is supposed to pop up when you hover the mouse over an image. Almost every image on our home page has the pop-up alternate text embedded in the image. You will not see the instruction to click the still image to get the animation on a separate page, but do try it. Also, we are having better luck with OmniWeb than MSIE 5.1b under OS-X. Ah, the price we gladly endure for a new OS ...

AnfyJava: Yesterday, we gave you a cool, refreshing new photo for your desktop pictures, "Palms at Dusk". Last night, we animated it with free AnfyJava applets downloaded from their remarkable site.

Some purists might feel this kind of stuff is still anti-html "fluff". We've been of two minds on this. Images and animation should enhance the message content of the page, not distract from it. When we looked at the results, we were sure of it: this animation conveys the theme Summitlake readers have come to expect.

If you haven't looked carefully at our new home page, do so now. Go to about the middle of the index page, where you'll find a still photo of "Palms At Dusk". Hover your mouse over the picture. The ALT text popup will suggest that you click the image for an AnfyJava animation with reflecting pond. Please do so at this time. (changed again June 2001).

If you don't agree that this animated image is really consistent with the theme Summitlake already offers, we'd be surprised. Java is not new, but it is an extra layer that has to work right across all platforms. We think, in this case, it's worth it.

We've tested this technology on Mac and Windows. Java does not yet appear to be implemented fully on the newest Mac OS-X (see our hover-button ordeal, logged for May 9). The standalone implementation you just saw works well on Windows 98 and 2000, and on Internet Explorer for Mac OS 9.1 and OS-X. (We had very spotty luck running it under OmniWeb 4 for OS-X: sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't). Embedded according to Anfy directions in a complex page that contains other scripting, we encountered severe problems with OS-X, but it ran well under all other operating systems tried. We think the Mac OS-X solution under Sun Java 2 is still too new.

New Photo in PHOTO Gallery: We gave you a cool, refreshing new photo for your desktop pictures, "Palms at Dusk". This one was scanned from a Nikon N70 slide and is particularly crisp and relaxing. Also, be sure to check out our HUMOR department for our latest fishing gag, "Fish Story". Cheers!

Spectacular New Photo in Friends Gallery: Gary Newell has done it again. This hi-resolution digital photo of the Merced River, against the base of El Capitan, frames color and light and shadow into a unique and memorable mood. Please see this for yourself!

Another New Home Page! What happened to the "old one" we put up on April 22d? To make a long story short, we found that the nifty glow-in-the-dark "hover buttons" we rely on so much just don't work under any browser we've tried under Mac OS-X. While we're pretty sure this has to do more with Microsoft Front Page extensions support, and that it will be ironed out eventually, we can't get the hover buttons to work NOW.

We had 140 hover buttons on the site. We dumped them all on the home page, and will work on the others gradually. PC users and Mac users using system 9.1 or older were never affected, so far as we know. Under MSIE 5.0 or OmniWeb and Mac OS-X, the buttons will not load properly, the page may hang, and OmniWeb may crash. While Java is supported fully under OS-X, the Microsoft class implementation for these buttons is loaded through JavaScript, and maybe the combination is too great for some browsers.

We admit to liking hi-tech, but solutions that aren't supported for all platforms and OS's don't work for us. We hope you like the new blue glass buttons. We made them all in PhotoShop.

More New Photos in Friends Gallery: Gary Newell has taken some spectacular shots of Half Dome, from the Valley. I posted "White Flowering Dogwood"; all three photos are awesome and it was tough to choose just one. All may be viewed at his album at: http://community.webshots.com/album/13483637wwoigenNZB.

Mac-specific bug in Guest Log: My friend Richard Wanderman spotted a show-stopper bug in Guest Log (and all other databases; they are driven by the same engine). Basically, when you clicked "Search" or any of the other buttons on the Database Home Page, "nothing happened". Ted Wagner confirmed. It seemed to be specific to MSIE 5.0 running under Mac OS 9.1, with more emphasis on Internet Explorer than a particular Mac OS. It worked fine under older Mac browsers, Netscape, and OmniWeb 4.0 under Mac OS-X. No PC user ever reported a problem. I could not reproduce it.

I bought a new iMac Special Edition. Old-time readers know I practically founded the Mac community, then left it after Apple pulled the plug on my Mac clone. Four or five years is enough. I reproduced the bug, and found and fixed it in a few days. (It turns out that MSIE 5.0 for Mac is less forgiving of malformed html tags than other browsers).

I'm delighted to be back in the community as a Mac user (I've been in the community non-stop as a Mac owner since 1985). The iMac under the new way-cool OS-X will help me with web development and upcoming multimedia projects. PC fans needn't fear I would abandon my new 1GHz Pentium III workhorse. (I still owe you an article on how I built it and some surprising problems I encountered in unexpected areas.)

Mac and Wintel users alike will just have to get used to a renewed cross-platform patter around this place. I can hardly wait to upgrade to BBEdit 6.1 under OS-X, for html text processing and, probably, Perl scripting. Under OS-X's pretty face there's a powerful BSD Unix platform. You knew you couldn't keep me away from that, didn't you?

I'll continue to use FrontPage 2000 for graphics page web development. There are amazing things you can do on each platform that you can't do as well on the other. You can count on SummitLake.com to keep you up to date on them!

New Photos in Friends Gallery: We uploaded two great new digital images from friend Dave Norton. They depict an ordinary Yucca plant, a hardy southwestern desert denizen. This one is in bloom, so we have a detail shot as well.

By the way, whether you're new to Summitlake.com, or you come back again and again, have you signed our Guest Log yet? We only get around 200 visitors a day, which means we're pretty small potatoes. We don't sell anything, rent out advertising space, refer products, sell mailing lists, and this site champions personal privacy. There's nobody here to whom you can send money; no salesman will call. But people still hesitate to sign a guest log.

We will be launching a simple, free, moderated Message Board very soon, where users can create topics, post questions, look for answers, or just exchange views. Many of the technical PC questions I field will be handled in, or posted to, this forum.

The message board will be based on the same database we use for the Guest Log. If there's interest, this can be expanded to separate areas for each Summitlake "Department", such as Computers, Writing, La Parola, Photos, and Recipes!

Of course we hope you do like our new look. The navigation features are two different Microsoft JavaScript implementations. The left vertical panel is a navigation bar for other pages on the root level of the home directory. These highest-level pages cover topics that apply to the entire site. The hover buttons, just to the right, lead the user to our various department directories and indexes, for example, Writing.

Images: there is only one image over 33K in size. You should notice that the new page loads faster than the old one. We've eliminated almost all of the text and text panels that graced the old page. After all, if you want to know what's on the writing page, this is the Web: it should be simple enough to click a button and go have a look. If you care to take the time to jot a note, we'd be more than interested in hearing your feedback.

Pending Projects: We're behind schedule on a couple of articles that have been in the planning stages a long time now:

New Photo: We uploaded a new scenic desktop picture dating all the way back to 1974! Check it out, in Photos ...

Poem: Our CEO, or division VP, or whatever people wanted to call him, is retiring this month. We just called him "Norm". Norm piloted a tiny little startup into the world's second or third-largest operation of its kind. He enjoyed an unusual loyalty with his employees, because he was fiercely loyal to the employees and the product. We'll miss him greatly and wish him a grand new voyage in his retirement.

This poem has its own maritime theme, but one that's reassuringly familiar even if you don't spend a lot of time thinking about the great sailing ships of another era. We hope you'll check out this poem.

Much of California is still in denial about its energy crisis. Among those rest of us who know exactly how we got here, and what California might do to actually pump more energy into the grid, there is still much finger-pointing. Underlying the energy crisis are a number of conflicting core political beliefs, so all the fingers are not pointing in the same direction. Warning: you could get blamed for the whole mess. Be aware that when you discuss issues of this sort, you could rub somebody's fur the wrong way. We have seen a couple of cases bordering on "energy rage" already.

Letter in Commentary: - Still in Denial: I met some co-workers from out of state today, and we talked about how the news of California's energy crisis is in the news, but not in the same way that it's in the news in California!

In this state, perhaps, we're still far too preoccupied with finger-pointing to start reaching any clear consensus on how to produce more of our own energy. There are interesting parallels to the oil shortages of the 1970's; in that decade we became abjectly dependent on "foreign" oil producers because most of us really believed we had a virtually unlimited supply of cheap oil. We paid for this fantasy accordingly. Today, starting with (but not limited to) California, we are witnessing a repeat of the same "day late, dollar short" mentality, but, this time, the "foreigners" are us!

This letter to a friend is the first attempt we've made to address this situation at SummitLake.com. It may not be the last. You may not think private enterprise, certainly not the kind we are witnessing today, can possibly participate in a solution to the energy problem. Or, you may think the "Greens", the religiously environmental groups, are to blame. And then, of course, it's always fashionable to blame "the government", but it's another thing entirely to show just how the mechanisms operate. This is our modest and incomplete start. In case you get hot under the collar, keep an energy-efficient fire extinguisher handy. Enjoy!

Dear President Bush It was February 28, 2001. President Bush had recently remarked that California had gotten itself into its own energy crisis, and he didn't think the government should intervene to bail it out. A lot of readers may agree. In principle. I lost track of how many Californians live in this state today. Few of them deserve to be "blamed" for the current energy problems, and no one voted for energy deregulation. It was legislated upon us.

In the true SummitLake.com tradition, we asked ourselves this question: if we take President Bush at his word, how would this work? This letter, privately circulated to date, is our tongue-in-cheek answer.

Databases -- We've talked about it enough. Now, they're here! Read all about it in our Databases rollout article, linked to the left. But, don't just read about it. They're simple. They're fun. Soon, informative and educational. Try them out!

"Enjoyously, Ed" -- Verse by Ed Lockhart. We've added a new collection, "Snippets", to Ed's delightful, inimitable verse collection. Ed, who passed away last year, wrote under the name "Edlock Hart". You will see this same whimsical touch in the exploratory way in which Ed finds new magic in old words. For example:

Last year we introduced some of Ed's verse in Guest Authors. Thanks to Dave Norton for finding, and sharing with our readers, more samples of Ed's work.

Fishin' License -- HUMOR. We've posted a few more good jokes on our HUMOR page today. If you haven't been up there recently, you'll want to check out the listings in the scrollable menu. Look for the entries with the red - NEW! posting. Enjoy!

Friends Gallery -- Be sure to visit our showcase of some spectacular photos. You'll see what we mean. In PHOTOS, from friends of Summitlake.com.

HUMOR: If you enjoy "occupational jokes" (jokes about doctors, lawyers, plumbers and the like), we have a growing collection of "Engineer" jokes which help capture the flavor of this breed of professional. For the latest collection of 9 "new" jokes, check out our HUMOR Index, and scroll down the menu to "E". Click the selection for "Engineer Takes". Enjoy! Thanks to -- Dave Norton.

Bears At Glen Aulin -- Not one story, but TWO great anecdotes. Glen Aulin is a Sierra Club base camp, perhaps a couple of trail miles north of Tuolumne Meadows, in Yosemite National Park. It's close enough to the more densely populated human camp grounds and habitats that the Yosemite bears can be a problem. You can, in fact, find bear signs up and down the park high country, at Benson Lake, Pate Valley, Miller Lake and almost all other points two, four, even seven trail days away from The Valley.

These two true stories are, then, named Bear At Glen Aulin (by myself), and Bears at Glen Aulin, by guest author Dave Norton. Each story is very different, very true, and very much representative (in its own way) of "learning to live with the bears" in Yosemite. We hope you enjoy them!

Going forward, we'll have to distinguish between the ursine brown bears and black bears, and our very own inimitable stuffies, C.Bear and his Pals. C.Bear's fans will be interested to find out that this year, C.Bear saw his shadow on Groundhog Day. And he's not complainin'. Even though C.Bear is not even distantly related to his more famous pal Punxsutawney Phil, everybody knows we are in for six more weeks of winter.

Cookies -- What they are, what they do, and why and where they're coming to Summitlake.com. We'll be adding interactive databases to our site soon. Rather than first write the code that regulates cookie usage on new forms and databases, which would be saying "our policy is whatever the code does", we thought we'd do it differently. We wrote the policy first, the code will follow shortly, and we upgraded our policy into a feature article. Now in COMPUTERS.

We're pleased to announce an important new article contributed by Guest Author Dave Norton. Requiem for an Aircraft, Farewell to a Pilot is a dramatic eyewitness recounting of the flight of one of the last two operational B-29 bombers in existence, the legendary "Superfortress" of World War II. It is also an unusually insightful look at those who flew them. We will see a hint of the value conflicts inherent in victory, which are imposed upon those who win wars, and offer last respects for men and machines now entering the realm of history. Highly recommended.

Just when you thought we'd heard altogether enough about "autoindex": we've revamped our index engine once again. Automatic directory lists have been tested and installed in Commentary, Computers, Humor, La Parola and Writing, as well as at our Summitlake.com main index.

Our ever-patience RECIPES readers have been spared, since their index menu page has been the target of so much recent experimentation. Besides, Recipes is one of two departments where the only way to browse within the department is through the browser menu.

The way autoindex works is simple, in theory: a "Hover Button" labeled "(department) Index" is installed on the main index page of each of the above departments. Clicking on the button gives you an up-to-the-second fresh view of the contents of the directory, plus any sub-directory folders that may be present. Try this:

If the directory has changed since the last use of the automenu, a new view is generated dynamically, and the results are saved off for the next time. It can take an appreciable amount of time to index a larger department, particularly if the engine has to traverse a lot of subdirectories to find all the files. (The main Summitlake.com index takes 56 seconds to generate, on a good day!).

If you can't find a page where the index menu states "Directory has changed since last index; processing real-time.", it's probably because I played with it before you got to. This generally only happens when a new page is uploaded.

If the directory has not changed, the old view is loaded to save time, lots of it. In this mode it acts like indexes on any other site.

You'll find subtle differences in things like font size and footers when the autoindex is installed in a "menu panel" in the left-hand pane of a frames browser. The font should be smaller to fit the panel, and the "footer" with the rainbow bar and copyright info should be missing, since it will not fit in the narrow menu panels. So this is not a bug. But it's inevitable some will be found.

Welcome to the new year and new millennium (yes, that's what they say!) We bring you a wonderful new illustrated recipe contributed by Dave Norton. The moisture and flavor of food prepared by wood fire or pit roasting is well known since ancient times. Even if you do not normally cook or barbecue, you will want to check this one out for the next time you plan to host a very special meal for special occasions, friends or family. 12 photographs. Our grateful thanks to Dave for this mouth-watering recipe and great write-up and photos!

"Rocky & Fluffy Computer Co. " and "Talking Crow Productions"

are trademarks of Alex Forbes and SummitLake.com

Comments about this site? Write to: Write Summitlake.com.

Edited for Netscape and Internet Explorer

What's New 2001 @ Summitlake.com

Interland

latest PHOTO posted: December 25, 2001- NEW!

Please, click the link above and take a minute to tell us some of your reactions to our community forums. At present, these are the Forum databases labeled "Guest", "Chat", and"Computing".

Insensitive Bastard