Issue 48 online - with the correct front page!

Take a look at the updated PALS Issue 48, which now shows the right date and issue number!

And I thought I'd finished...

There was me thinking that I'd uploaded Issue 48, everything was sorted out and I wouldn't be posting to this blog again for a while... until my dear husband noticed that Issue 48 actually said Issue 47 at the top of the page. "Hmmm, that's fairly easy to fix" I thought... ha ha ha. Nothing is ever that easy.

Well, fixing that was easy; it took two seconds to change the text and re-upload the right part of the page. However, I had also managed to fail to change the date and issue number at the top of page 1 of the issue (have a look at the screenshot in my last post - it says Issue 47 and May/ Jun 2012, not Issue 48 and Jul/ Aug 2012). Now that required using a different computer - one with Publisher 2000, not Publisher 2007 (long, complicated story about how using Publisher 2007 means things look odd in various browsers. I love Microsoft).

That wasn't really a problem, and nor was actually changing the text in Publisher. Nor, it seemed, was just uploading the image from the page so that it overwrote the old image. Testing it, in Firefox, on the PC, it all looked good. Testing it on IE in my laptop it all looked good. So, why, then, has it not updated on Firefox on my laptop? And yes, I've refreshed the page - even going so far as to close the page down and open a new one up. It's still not updated.

Now, hubby has been playing with our computers over the last few days and we now have a shinier, faster shared computer - which might have something to do with it. But I have no idea what. But I still don't understand why one (or two) internet browsers can show one version of a page, and another browser can show a different version of that same page. Surely, once you've uploaded something, an internet page is, well, that page? More on this once hubby gets home and I've abused him about it, I imagine... For now, look at the page in Internet Explorer. It should look right. I hope.

Issue 48 online... and the end of an era

Well, I've just uploaded Issue 48 of PALS. And that will be the last issue for the foreseeable future. Part of me is quite sad, another part of me is quite pleased. It's one less thing to have to fit into a world of new houses, buying baby furniture (not to mention, in the near future, looking after a baby...). But it also means no more having to fight Dan's PC, or Publisher vs. SeaMonkey/ Dreamweaver/ the internet. We still don't have a solution to the second one...

This time around the upload process took 2 and a half hours in total - but that might have something to do with being dragged away to cook and eat dinner in the middle of it... but even so, it still took over an hour. I got less frustrated than in the past because I now know it can take that long, and am able to fix all the things that annoy me. I still wish they didn't need to be fixed though! It also didn't help that I had lots of images I wanted to turn into links this time around.

I guess I should say a bit about what Issue 48 is about too! As I mentioned in my last post, it has something of an (unintentional) Canadian theme; there are articles on Canada Day, the Arctic Hare and my friendship with my penpal Sarah, who lives in Toronto.

After this post, I'm not sure how often this blog will get used. It seems a shame to give it up, as I've kept it going for the past 8 years now. But posts are likely to be a lot more sporadic than in the past (yes, even than they have been recently). I'll try to still use it for any penpal-related news and thoughts I have, and if I do ever have any thoughts on past or future issues of PALS they will, of course, make it on to here! And there's always my two other blogs; Anna's Films and Anna's Library Thoughts, that will continue to be updated as long as I'm watching movies and working as a librarian! I'm sure there was one other thing too... oh yes, I might post some exciting news here in about September (or possibly October...).

Bye for now, and thanks for reading this blog and/or PALS. It's been great fun to put together over the past eight years, and I hope this isn't the end forever - for this blog at least, if not the newsletter!

Issue 46 online

I realise I haven't been posting to this blog much, but I've been a bit busy sorting out a new house... which we've nearly moved in to! Having said that, I have been keeping up with writing letters - I'm still on track with managing to reply to all my pals within about a month.

I have also been putting together the next issue of PALS - and Issue 46 (the March/ April edition) is now on-line. It's out a little earlier than normal, but I wanted to get it up on the website before the mania of moving house began!

This time around there's a "How Things Have Changed" article written by Sarah, a Creature Feature on the firefly from Tracy, and a piece on movies featuring penpals from Katie.

I hope you enjoy the read, and come back in late April/ early May for Issue 47!

Issue 45 online

Having just looked at my PALS blog, I feel a little guilty. The last time I posted was two months ago, when Issue 44 was released. In fairness, I've not had much to say since then. Issue 45 was relatively easy to put together, as it is mostly all about our trip to Cuba last December. And whilst I've spent a lot of time watching movies (see my Anna's Films blog), and doing other useful things like attempting to buy a house, I've not spent a lot of time thinking about, or working on, issues of PALS.

I would claim that writing more blog posts will become a New Years resolution - but my one and only, related, resolution this year is to be far more efficient at answering my pals letters. I aim to answer any letters preferably within a month, but certainly within three. I figure that's far more important than blog posts, and don't want to make so many other resolutions that I can't stick to that one!

Anyway, on to the point of this post - Issue 45 is now ready and online! As already mentioned, this Jan/ Feb issue is a Cuba Special. I hope you enjoy it.

Issue 44 online

Issue 44 of PALS is online. This issue has something of a photo theme, with two pages dedicated to photos! The first follows our 'gorilla trail' around Bristol back in August of this year, whilst the second is a selection of Christmas photos from 2010. And that brings us on to the second theme of this issue - Christmas and New Year. As well as the photo page, the Events section focuses on New Year. The Calendar of Events has now run for a full two years, so PALS is going back to focusing on specific events each issue.

And there's more... you can also read about the Malayan Flying Lemur in this issue's Creature Feature, and learn more about the movie Mary and Max and how it's related to penpalling. If you've never heard of the movie and enjoy penpalling, it's definitely worth a read!

Enjoy the issue and look out for Issue 45 when it's released in late December.

Issue 43 online

Issue 43 of PALS, the third and final Spain Special, is now online. The issue follows our journey through the South of Portugal, from Faro, to Zahara de los Atunes in Spain, where a friend's wedding took place. As usual, there is also a calendar of events on page 2.

This newsletter was a fairly easy one to put together as I had a lot of the content already - the only stressful thing was getting the pages to look right in web browsers! Some strategic use of tables and giving up and starting again, thankfully, fixed a lot of the problems...

Issue 42 online

Issue 42 of PALS is now online and ready to read. This issue features articles on Paris, the Emperor Angelfish and a PALS Q and A on the length of your letters. It was relatively easy to upload this time - the only thing I really had a problem with was adding links to the picture credit on the Creature Feature page. However, this seems to be because the pages the credit is meant to link to no longer exist - if this is wrong my apologies to the photographer! For now I've removed the direct links but left the references there, just in case.

I hope you enjoy the read and PALS 43, the third and final Spain Special, will be released at the end of August 2011.

Issue 41 on-line

Issue 41 of PALS, the second of this year's Spain Specials, is now on-line. Uploading it wasn't too tough this time round - the problems were the same as normal, so at least we now know how to fix them. Although Publisher clearly still isn't the best thing for the job... The main problem was finding the time to do it. Enjoy the issue!

Issue 40 on-line

Issue 40 of PALS, which has something of an Easter focus, is now on-line. Thankfully it was as easy as I anticipated, having done all the hard work of making it look right last week!

Easter isn't until the end of April this year, so some of the articles may feel a little early. On the bright side, maybe it will give you a chance to make the Easter nests on page 6 in plenty of time for Easter!

There are, however, other articles to keep you going until Easter as well - this time around there's a PenPals Q and A on posting letters, a Creature Feature on the greater glider, and, as ever, a new events calendar.

Issue 41 of PALS, due out at the end of April, will be the second in this years Spanish-themed newsletters - this time around focusing on Southern Spain, primarily Andalusia - including Seville and Granada.

As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas for future issues please do let me know! But for now, enjoy Issue 40.

Issue 39 on-line

Issue 39 of PALS has finally been uploaded! It's actually only a couple of days late, but considering I was planning on having it ready about 2 weeks ago, it feels to me like there has been a bit of a wait.

This time around, it's a Spain Special; hopefully giving you some sunshine think of in the winter months! It focuses on our trip to Andalusia in February 2009 and our weekend in Madrid in December 2006. I hope you enjoy it, as there are plenty more Spain Specials to come - this is the first of three this year.

Issue 38 Online

I've now uploaded Issue 38 of PALS. It was actually, for a change, a completely painless experience. I think that was a combination of changing things because of the problems I had uploading the last issue, good pre-planning, and luck. Oh, and a little bit of thinking "well, it's good enough" when there were extra white spaces on some of the pages! White space is good though right - nobody likes clutter?!

Anyway, enjoy the issue! I've already begun thinking about Issue 39, which will be a Spain-related Special. Oh, and I've even written a couple of letters in the past few weeks. It's good to still be managing to keep up with it - although (as ever) I know there are still a few of you waiting for a reply...

Issue 37 now on-line

Issue 37 of PALS is now on-line and ready to view. This time around, it's a Lincoln Special, written by Tracy Knight. It's the second of two Special Issues in a row, both to try and have a bit of a "catch-up" and to change which months regular features will appear on. Next issue (#38, in Nov/ Dec 2010) it'll be back to a standard issue.

Happy reading and I hope you enjoy the issue!

Issue 36 on-line

Issue 36 of PALS, a Shetland Special, is now on-line. It's all about our week-long holiday back on the Shetland Islands in 2008. I know it's a couple of years late, but we did go in late June/ early July so at least it's at the right time of the year! Enjoy the read and PALS will be back with another Special (two in a row this time around) in late August...

Issue 35 on-line

Issue 35 of the PALS newsletter is now complete and on-line, and actually happened with very little fuss - for a change! It took me a few minutes to sort out the links, but I'm pretty happy as that was as difficult as it got. So enjoy! This time around there are articles on the snow leopard, our weekend away in Dorset and Flag Day in the USA, amongst other things.

Issue 34 online...

Finally!

It has taken Dan and I two hours to get this up and working, and Issue 33 (mostly) fixed. I hope you enjoy it, because quite honestly I'm not sure I can be arsed anymore. It's meant to be easier than THIS.

Anyway, in case you care, Issue 34 is all about Croatia. Thanks to Tamara for the text - the only easy part of my job, writing the actual thing!

Issue 33 is as good as it's ever going to be. I wish I'd never looked at it in Internet Explorer, and I never would have known about all the problems. If you ARE using IE to look at it, there's a link to the polls at the top of the newsletter. Some appear in the correct places, some just don't. We have at least managed to remove all the odd looking text - thanks for your suggestion Andy, but removing all that text deleted the entire content from the page. Uploading the page again worked, for no obvious reason. Dan's solution to the whole scenario, which seems like a pretty good idea, is to shove a red hot poker up Bill Gate's arse for writing such rubbish software.

I'm meant to make a start on Issue 35 soon. We'll see. Dan certainly never wants to deal with PALS again.

Issue 33 on-line

Issue 33 of PALS has now been uploaded and is ready to view. It's a week or so early this time around, what with it being Christmas in few days time! I have a few days spare before we head back down to Exeter, and then I'm likely to be busy right up to New Years, so thought I would get the issue uploaded now whien I knew I had time.

This time around there are articles on Waitangi Day in New Zealand, a Creature Feature on the Kookaburra, and an article about possible changes to PALS in the New Year. There are a couple of (very!) short surveys about changes to PALS (literally, you have to click one button) on pages 3 and 4 of the newsletter, so please do have your say about how you'd like future PALS to look. I have to admit, I did have to enlist Dan's help with that part though...

Otherwise the upload went incredibly smoothly - I did all the hard work last week so this week has been pretty easy!

After 2 hours... Issue 32 on-line!

I'm probably making that sound a lot worse than it really is (or than it feels at least)...

Basically, I just kept doing stupid things when uploading this particular issue. There's a lesson in thinking before you act here, I feel. Originally I wasn't intending to upload Issue 32 today - I have plenty of other things to be getting on with, like packing for the weekend and sorting out the washing.

But I sat down to write the last article (an events article on Bonfire Night) and found myself quite enjoying what I was doing. It was also quite quick to write, being that I know enough about the event not to have to do too much research. That took 15 minutes. So I thought "why not start getting the issue ready to upload?" At least that way I'll have a bit less work to do next week... well, one thing led to another and it seemed silly to only do half the job.

When I started to upload the newsletter things looked a bit odd, but that was easily fixed by giving up with Seamonkey and using Dreamweaver (often infinitely superior it seems) to add links instead. Then pages weren't appearing where they should be... but that was all down to me failing to specify the target page, it seems. It took me 10 minutes to figure that out.

Then I thought I'd finished. It all uploaded easily enough, all the links worked, nothing looked out of place or odd... then I noticed the date. I'd written Sept/ Oct instead of Nov/ Dec.

Initally thinking I was going to have to upload the entire thing again, I realised soon enough that I could just upload the first page and leave everything else as it was. Unfortunately that meant having to re-do all the contents links on the first page, which I did. But the date still hadn't changed - whyever not? I definitely changed it. I deleted the first page with the intention of trying again... only to realise that things weren't as complicated as I had at first thought.

The part with the date in it is a picture, and all I had to do was recreate the picture (which I had already done in about 2 seconds) and just upload that. Great! Except for the fact that now I didn't have a front page (yes, because I had deleted it) so I needed to upload it and add all the links back in again... for the fourth time. And only one of those times was it actually needed. Very much a case of human error here, I feel. *sigh*

Anyways, Issue 32, a Hot Air Balloon Special, is now online and ready to view. I hope you enjoy it - I think it looks quite good!

Issue 31 On-line

Issue 31 of the PALS newsletter is now available on-line. This time around there are articles on the two-toed sloth, where your pals come from and top travel tips. Enjoy the read!

Issue 30 of PALS on-line...

Eventually. A large part of me wants to sell anything that relies on electricity (except maybe the fridge and oven- oh, OK, anything that's electronic and designed for "pleasure") and just buy a piano. Well, it's a dream...

After many hours of swearing at Dreamweaver for refusing to do the simplest of tasks (in order to create links on the latest newsletter, I had to resort to copying and pasting text from old newsletters that were already links, as apparently adding links to pre-generated text is NOT ALLOWED). Hence my now very frustrated mood, which results in things being thrown... it was nearly the computer itself...

Anyway, Issue 30 should now all be working and available to look at. If you find any problems, please keep them to yourself. I am wasting no more time "fixing" it! The actual newsletter was fun to create this time around - it's all about my pal Katie's trip around Western Australia back in August last year. Enjoy the read more than I enjoyed the upload!