Thanks to VAXman.

Long overdue thanks must go to VAX for all the great changes made to our beloved site recently.

I'm sure you'll all agree that the new "Now Playing" area is fantastic and I know that other "behind the scenes" changes have been made that really improves Aural Moon.

You Rock!!!!!!

[Ted]

VAX,

I agree with Keithie about this - THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

You have made - and continue to make Aural Moon a wonderful place. Thank you for your contributions and skills. Your knowledge has made it easier for all of us.

I appreciate you and all you are doing.

Regards from Texas,
Ted

[Rick and Roll]

Agreed - the best place on the net for music and the work you do is great.

Love that spinning Moon!

[NorCalKurt]

you are greatly appreciated here, Vax !!!!!

[DamoXt7942]

Always thanks VAX, and all Moonies!
Hope this year will be more progressive on AM for us all.

[podakayne]

here, here!

thanks from the heart VAX

Here's to you

[eloy1964]

A big thanks to the man in the Moon with all the techy nohow to help create such a wonderful place. Cheers.

[teermin8r]

Thanks for all you do

[OverHillandDale(Admin)]

Your dedication to the Moon is Outstanding!

Thank you for all the great improvements. Your expertise and creativity helps create the best site for us prog heads.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now, if only you'd pop your head in to shout once in a while so we can share your friendship too.

[Thor]

Yes, I concur ... Thank you Vax, now all wee need to do is get the site out of this boxy joomla thing and make it a little more bright and cheery

[MrMagoo]

Diito, kudo's, etc to the VaxMaster!!! Beyond the look-n-feel, all the pages are loading much faster now, so I know there's been some expert black magic down in the guts of the machine

Originally Posted by Thor

...make it a little more bright and cheery

[Shudder] You mean like your seizure inducing avatar?

[normandr]

Thanks a lot Vaxman for the great work.

Merci pour le très beau travail. Vive Aural Moon

Normand

[RogorMortis]

Thanks........need I say more ?

[jtmckinley]

Yes great job VAX, I've been seeing neat things here and there pretty frequently when I log in over the last few months (today included ), thanks for all the work, many thanks amigo!

[progdirjim(Admin)]

You all do realize that his screen name is short for "VAX is the MAN", right?

[VAXman(Admin)]

Thank you * 1E+06, one and all. Special thanks to those of you who made modest and well appreciated donations for the web site during the recently past holiday season.

Many of the changes I have implemented were driven by you; others were things that I have longed to change from its inception.

The Latest Music Library Updates (LMLU) section was born out of ProgDirJim's OCCDD (Obsessive Compulsive CD Disorder). Maintaining the new library adds in the forum was becoming burdensome. Because the information was so readily available from SAM's database, it was advantageous for all to allow the new addition information to be pulled from the database. Jim now no longer needs to replicate his efforts on the station in the furum when new tracks are added; you, the listeners, can now request directly from the LMLU; and, while I was coding, I figured why not allow a history of additions to be viewed (sadly this is history since the 6th of Dec. database debacle).

Sharc, with sight issues akin to many aging proggers and moonies, prompted me to change the ON-THE-AIR/RECENTLY-PLAYED (OTA/RP) section of the web site to make it easier to read even if the specs are straddling the bridge of the nose.

I never liked the dark icons in the OTA/RP part of the page. There was also some lack of parallelism. The [Buy] icon, for one, stood out. I added some brighter and consistent icons from an icon library I recently acquired. Also, while working on the "sight" issues, I aligned the RP portion of the OTA/RP header.

Wizzzard, IIRC, suggested moving the date in the OTA display. Not only did I move it but I added an icon view to signify the track time. I did the same with the release date (year). This also allowed the recovery of a line because both are now displayed on the same line where as before they consumed separate lines in the display.

The "marquee" effect, which comes into play if the information is greater then 24 characters in length, was an attempt to keep all of the information displayed in that tiny space aligned for all of those short Forever Einstein track titles.

I have also removed the [Help] link in the shout box and replaced it with an icon; same icon set as used in the OTA/RP header too. I was then able to align the shout box title section giving you slightly more space in the shout box. I am working on the "sound" button too which I plan to place in the shout box header on the right (opposite the help icon). It will probably be a little bell icon with a green [+] and red [-] to indicate on and off, respectively. (Does anyone have a Flash de-compiler?)

There are myriad other things I could mention and many which I've implemented and have forgotten.

Nothing is perfect; nothing is static. These changes were driven by many of your ideas, requests, dislikes, and suggestions as well as mine. I am trying to make the AM site look NOTHING like the other progressive radio sites which, IMHO, are too chock full of ads and banners and, generally, are WAY TOO BUSY. They look, IMHO, more my MyWaste.com sites than serious web radio web sites.

I've also read, here and privately, some of the comments about having the AM site on the new internet service. I know it is MUCH faster; I'm lavishing in having so much more bandwidth. I may even change the OTA/RP history back to 24 hrs.

Sadly, a system which as been an internet staple for 20+ years has recently experienced a severe hardware failure. It has been off-the-air since the 22nd of Dec. If you all recall, AM had experienced some long bouts without. This is technology and it's not immortal. I am hoping that this system will soon be restored to its former glory as I used it quite often to check out changes I would make to the routers and infrastructure here which provide you with the AM web site. Within about a week of changing providers and access technologies, my new /29 subnet was being probed and scanned at the same level as on the old /29. I need this system back on-line to experiment with new router configs so that the bandwidth I purchase can be used for that which I intend for it such as the Aural Moon web site.