This week's charts are up! I am so unbelievably busy at the moment with work. I've been following the WheelMud project with interest recently, those guys are doing some very interesting stuff using Visual Basic. Another interesting site i've been going to is the MUD32 Project - this is another VB MUD that looks very familiar to anyone who played/es Shades...

It appears that we are back! The outage was caused this time by the Rochdale exchange having a fault of some sort. It was also combined with a general fault across the BTClick.com domain. Humph. Always seems to happen on a friday afternoon doesn't it? This week's charts are up! In other news, I've set up two free Domains via NO-IP.com (new window). These are:
TELNET : avatar.servegame.com
HTTP : http://avatardeveloper.servehttp.com

New charts are up! I've updated the gateway software so I can keep track of which IP addresses last logged on - this helps to see if the server is being attacked. You would not believe the number of times someone logs onto the Avatar ports and just sits there. Presumably its a script that's trying to see if it can log onto a Terminal Server. The gateway is one, but there should be no way users can get to a command shell from there.

Will wonders never cease? Another update! That's twice this week! Whoo! I've amended a couple of things in Avatar, such as colour on the sun rising and also I now give a message that points to the new 'how to' connection section on the web site here. I've also fixed the CR + LF problem i *think* I had when using the colour attribute of $bnl (Begin New Line).

I've been messing with CSS again... The left menu bar is now built with CSS attributes. This should mean that I can change the whole layout of the web site by just mucking about with the style sheet!

New charts uploaded. I've changed the chart.htm file to utilise the HTML re-direct command as this makes my life easier when updating the charts, rather than having two copies of the chart in the same folder. It will take me less time to edit the HTML than it would to copy-paste-rename! As this is a long weekend for us the UK, I'm also thinking about removing Zone Alarm (ZA) and installing a different firewall. I've been looking at something called Outpost which seems to be another free fully featured firewall. If this works ok I may switch over to using that instead of ZA. How ironic, I'm just coming up to the renewal stage for ZA and I may be switching over to a different product. Oh well.

I've updated the charts and added a new link to the navigation bar on the left there. Its called Past Charts and lists all the previous charts I have had over the year (and a bit).

I've still not managed to get around to checking to see if this new version of Zone Alarm plays nice with Apache2. Other news, BT seem to be messing around with how the web sites server is laid out, causing me much fun in page updates. I've also started to use a new FTP client as Voyager FTP was getting persistently stuck on the BT site. I'm now using the CoffeeCup's FTP program and I'm trialing their HTML editor. Charts have now been updated, and I think at some stage I may change the layout.

The developer forums are not working for the moment. There is a problem with Zone Alarm and Apache 2.0 that causes the server to re-boot! I shall await a fix from Zone Labs. I've also taken the time to update the charts and re-arrange some more content in the left hand navigation bar.

I have just had notification from seti@home that I've completed my 1,000th work unit! Whoo-hoo! In other news, I've noticed that the Live server gets a 'Subscript Out of Range' error and then dies. I've no idea where this is happening so if anyone gets chucked off the server without warning, could you please e-mail avatar@btclick.com and tell me what you were doing at the time! Thanks.

I've done today's backup. Also as part of the updates I do occasionally, I've amended the Avatar GUI on the RiscPC. It is now smaller and I removed the button for Super Lethargy which is no longer used. Finally, I've updated the EasySockets program module from Justin Fletcher. It is a new version that had fixed many bugs. The version I was using was from 1998ish! It should hopefully cut down on a couple of the socket errors we infrequently have on the RiscPC.

I've updated the web pages, fixing some of the links. I've also added a link to my Gateway Developer Forums. These are to be used if you wish to communicate anything of a development nature on Avatar, such as Bug reports or new features you'd like to see.

Last Saturday, I re-started Avatar after fixing the snoop bug. This weekend I up-loaded my old village pages to here. They are to be found on the Left-hand navigation bar over there.

I have just re-started Avatar with a slight bug fix. If you did a ‘form ?’ Avatar created a blank party name (actually a control code). I have changed the code base so that you cannot create a party with one character or less.