News

Changes to the website (June 2011)

Graham writes:

You may notice that the website looks a little different now. Although I still believe that light on dark text is easier to read on a computer screen I've decided to fall in line with common practice.

No one had contributed to the forum for about fifteen months and it was barely used before that. Add to that the forum software long since having ceased to be supported and you may come to the same conclusion that I did, which is that it was time to zap it. The ECSOSA Facebook page has a discussions tab should anyone wish to use it. I know that means having a Facebook account but that's a whole lot more useful than having a login on the old forum on the site and you don't have to buy in to the whole Facebook thing if you don't want to. 

October 2011 Update: Facebook are removing the discussions tab from 'pages' on 31st October. They seem to think discussions should be on the main wall. I think this is another example of them not really understanding their own website but there you go.

Microsoft have recently updated their Skydrive product. It would have been nice of them to warn their users about it, and also to have the new version back compatible with the old one from day one, but no such luck. So the nice embedded links I had to the newsletters on Skydrive stopped working and the new versions really are next to useless. Fortunately there is no longer a data limit on our hosting so the newsletters can come back on site.

There used to be a site search facility powered by Atomz. Frankly even I'd forgotten about it and I put it there, so that's gone too. Hopefully Google will index most of the site anyway.

I don't hold much hope of Fotopic recovering in the long term so I am restoring on site handling of photos, but I'll take my time over that if you don't mind. I am still hoping it will come up for a week or two just so I can grab some photo descriptions from it. As things stand any updates to captions from late October 2010 until Fotopic went down are lost. though it is quite possible there weren't any. If any photos were added during that time I should have a copy, and it rather looks like there weren't any.

There are a few other things that have changed but those are more admin related so I wont dwell on them.

Site photos and Fotopic.

Graham writes:

Quite some time ago I started migrating the photos on the site to Fotopic but my priorities changed and I never finished the job. It had become rather tedious maintaining bespoke HTML pages on the site, there didn't seem to be any decent gallery software for websites (not for free anyway), and I had concerns about data transfer limits anyway so it seemed better to use a proper online gallery which might also provide another way to publish the Association's activities (or indeed existence). Fotopic.net seemed to fit the bill at the time. Sadly when its founder sold the company things started going downhill with quite a few outages. Eventually in March this year the parent company ceased trading and Fotopic.net went offline. It still isn't clear if it will be rescued. Even bringing it back online for a couple of weeks so people could rescue their images would probably cost several thousand pounds and take a wide range of technical expertise and that doesn't sound like a particularly commercial proposition.

So if Fotopic doesn't come back what will happen? Well basically I'll revert to having the photos on the site for the moment and as I do have a backup of the Fotopic site it should be possible to restore everything. There don't seem to have been any photos added between the backup being taken and Fotopic going down, though it is possible some captions may have been updated.

Dr John Norrington-Davies has published his book about his time at the school during the war. He writes:

The Saga has now been published under the title, 'Cheerful with Insufficient Reason' - John Norrington-Davies. It is 428 pages long and illustrated with around 70 black and white photographs.

It is available now online, from lulu.com. The summary on the back page reads as follows:

"There lies within the story of a London-Welsh Grammar schoolboy who attended the Edmonton County School in North London between 1938 and 1943. Devoted to extra-mural activities he became practised in the art of damage limitation when required by the Teaching Staff to account for his manifold shortcomings. There was no irrelevance too great that was not pursued with vigour in preference to that of academic attainment.

"Bombed and strafed by the enemy a fertile imagination turned to deeds of derring-do yet to come; heroic deeds to be engaged upon varying over time according to the film of the week. The schoolboy analyst examines, in relation to those times, family, war, education, religion, agriculture and personalities; even sex is touched upon, but tastefully!"

There should be giggle or two along the way, the Staff having been watched as closely as they watched the boy.

The book is now also available from Amazon.co.uk where some pages may be previewed and signed copies are available direct from the author.

Reinstatement of the War Memorial

We are delighted to be able to report that following expert restoration, the war memorial was reinstated in the school hall on 5th April 2012.

Reunion of 1958 intake

Keith Wallace writes to say that he is coming over from Vancouver and will be meeting up with Paul Smith in St Albans on Sunday July 8th 2012 at 11:00am at the Fighting Cocks.  Keith graduated in 1965 and would like extend the invite to anyone in his year (he was in the 1958 intake). If you can make it, or would just like to get in touch with Keith, please send him an e-mail (his name is an e-mail link if you have scripting enabled in your browser).