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Crappy web pages over which I have dominion don’t just annoy me, they gnaw at my soul.  Each time an crappy UI or non-standard implementation of a tool is required, I feel that somewhere, a member of ICANN or the W3C cries a little and I feel responsible.  For the last two months, Team Interrobang used phpBB3 as its forum software and WordPress as its front end and, while  I absolutely adore WordPress, phpBB is a well intentioned pile of PHP, spit and duct tape.  This experiment was such a farce that I’m starting  a campaign to ignore Rev 4 of teaminterrobang.com and convince people that it just took us two longs months to switch from Joomla! to vBulletin and have posted such repeatedly.  Someone picked up on my attempted whitewash and replied to my statement that we’d never used phpBB with “We‘ve Always Been at War with Eastasia“.

Culturally aware bastard.

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I visited one of the units for which I commission and had an exchange with the Scoutmaster:

Scoutmaster: I hear you’re leaving Scouting.
Me: For a bit.
Scoutmaster: But you’re staying on as Roundtable Commissioner?
Me: No.  It takes 5-10 hours to prep for a good roundtable.
Scoutmaster: How about as Unit Commissioner?
Me:  I don’t think so.  The task doesn’t take too much time but I’d like my split to be clean.
Scoutmaster: Who’ll update the web page?
Me: … probably me.
Scoutmaster:  Good.   We just have to re-assign the District Camporee as a responsibility of the webmaster and everything…
Me:  I would firebomb the data center.
Scoutmaster: Ok, enjoy your time away from Scouting.
Me: I hope to.

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The Ockanickon Leader Meeting is an opportunity to show polish. The directors deliver prepared comments, and then answer what are usually straight forward questions. This year, I did a large webpage update before the event to make sure I was on the same page as the program directors and went so far as to have a projector at the meeting showing the pertinent parts of the webpage as directors spoke. This went swimmingly until one area director decided to add two new merit badges to her program. So there she was, talking about her six badges, and there I was displaying four on my screen.

We broke for a break and a steady stream of leaders approached me in a daze telling me “the screen said four badges, she said six badged, which is right?” I told them six and got quizzical looks that said “but the webpage said 4” followed by an angry grimace that I’ve only seen before in disappointed children. I think camp finally met it’s goal of having an up-to-date web page that people could trust that inconsistencies were treated like someone just told them there wasn’t a Santa Claus. Maybe I’ll seed the leader guide with errors to keep everyone on their toes and prevent this disappointment in the future.

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CIS 1055 requires us to create a cross linked site for an organization in which we participate.  Suddenly the Ockanickon Leader Guide that I’ve slaved over for nigh on two months is useful.  I added some stupid functionality like an image map and a few other things and one thing was the addition of a midi that starts when you click on something  in this case Scout Vespers plays when you click the map itself.  This was ultimately my undoing as the instructor thought I mislabeled the MIDI file as “Oh, Christmastree” instead of “Scout Vespers”.  For both the non-Boy Scouts that read this, Scout Vespers is the same tune as “Oh, Christmastree”.

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CIS 1055 requires us to create a cross linked site for an organization in which we participate.  Suddenly the Ockanickon Leader Guide that I’ve slaved over for nigh on two months is useful.  I added some stupid functionality like an image map and a few other things and one thing was the addition of a midi that starts when you click on something  in this case Scout Vespers plays when you click the map itself.  This was ultimately my undoing as the instructor thought I mislabeled the MIDI file as “Oh, Christmastree” instead of “Scout Vespers”.  For both the non-Boy Scouts that read this, Scout Vespers is the same tune as “Oh, Christmastree”.