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Irish Sea Shipping - Site News and Technical Information Latest News - yellow back ground |
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April 20 Gremlins and Correction It would appear that the gremlins crept into last weekend's update. Those clicking on the News Bulletin would have seen the header displaying April 06. Hopefully you realised that that news update was infact the update for April 13. Those who did read the news bulletin before Tuesday may also have read a reference to three P&O ships calling at Douglas in 2009. This was incorrect and should have read one ship - this being the ARTEMIS. |
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January 07 Irish Sea Shipping is Back! Happy New Year! After almost one month I am delighted to be able to update Irish Sea Shipping - the online shipping magazine. December 09, 2007 to January 07, 2008 has been the longest period of time that the web site has gone without an update since it began as "Mersey Shipping News" over thirteen years ago. In the past thirteen years there has been the occasional interruption caused by problems with previous web site ISP hosts that has resulted in the site going off line for a short period on a couple of occasions - but this is the longest period of interruption. On a personal basis this is the first Christmas I have been "off line" since 1983, having been a user of the British Telecom's Prestel service since mid 1984, before moving on to CompuServe and finally gaining access to the web in the mid 1990s. One doesn't realise just how one misses something until one doesn't have it and I must confess to having sorely missed normal Internet access. In saying that I have not been totally "off line" - having had limited access to the Yahoo Groups and other parts of the web thanks to my foresight in obtaining a pocket PC a couple of years ago - however - this is no compensation to accessing the web via a conventional PC connected to a high speed broadband link. Updates will now revert to the advertised update schedule with additional updates published as and when required. If anyone has material for inclusion on the web site I will be pleased to receive it once by email at the usual email address irishseashipping@btinternet.com . Finally I would like to draw attention to the change in Irish Sea Shipping mailing address - please visit the ISS Contact Details page for information. John H. Luxton - Web Master January 07, 2008 |
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
SUSPENSION OF UPDATES
Please note that from today December 09, 2007 updates to www.irishseashipping.com are suspended until further notice.
This is due to a relocation and the transfer the broadband connection to a new address. British Telecom have advised that the broadband link will take approximately 10 days to transfer to my new address after the transfer of the voice line on December 10. Unfortunately as that period ends very close to the Christmas and New Year holiday period and there is obviously potential for further delay.
I request that no email contributions are sent for inclusion on the web site until I advise that updates have recommenced.
If you need to make contact by email please send short emails to jhlmobile@btinternet.com. Do not sent any attachments!
Regular visitors to the site who are not members of the Irish Sea Ships Yahoo Group - are recommended to join the group to keep up with the latest news from the Irish & Celtic Seas. [CLICK HERE]
Updates to www.irishseashipping.com will be resumed as soon as possible.
Thank You - John H. Luxton - web master December 09, 2007 |
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September 09, 2007 IRISH SEA PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY REORGANISATION In the near future the photographic galleries for the Irish & Celtic Sea Area will be reorganised into chronological subdirectories covering each year. This is due to the ever increasing size of some of the galleries which is starting to make management of the various files awkward as well as increasing the size of the index pages to unwieldy proportions. It is not intended to remove a significant amount of material from the site during the reorganisation, though as a consequence of the work page URL addresses will change. Thus any 'favourites' book marked in browsers may no longer work. Furthermore for sometime after the change results returned by search engines may not work as it usually takes some time for URL changes to spider through the web. It is likely that some or all of this work will be undertaken between September 09 and September 16.
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March 10 WEB SITE MAINTENANCE & ARCHIVING During the coming week some maintenance and archiving work will be undertaken on the Irish Sea Shipping Web Site. Some older material will be moved to the archives sub site. Therefore some pages will change location. Users accessing Irish Sea Shipping pages via web search engines should be particularly aware of this as some search result links may not point to an accessible page. |
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February 17 NEW HOME PAGE HIT COUNTER Observant visitors to Irish Sea Shipping may have noticed that the home page hit counter has changed. This is due to the fact that Microsoft has discontinued its FC web site counter service on and from February 15. A record had been made of the number of hits on the evening of February 14, and the new counter was installed during the early evening of February 15. It is hoped that this year will see Irish Sea Shipping reach a total of 750,000 home page hits recorded since records began in December 2001. |
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UPDATES Please note that an additional update will be posted on Wednesday November 08 and that next weekend's update will be posted on SUNDAY November 12. |
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HALF A MILLION HITS! This week Irish Sea Shipping's home page counter recorded the 500,000 hit since December 10, 2001. Whilst an excellent figure in itself this number only records the number of people arriving at the site's front page - it does not record those that enter the site via other pages located via a search engine or stored bookmark. Viewing the web hosts statistics reveals an even higher level of access with people dipping into in the site from out side- therefore the number of actual visitors is considerably more than those recorded. FURTHER SITE CHANGES As a result of recent feedback the home page has been changed again - removing the Java powered slide show and replacing it with a montage of four of the previously displayed slides. This should increase the speed at which the home page loads on slow speed connections. Your is webmaster is not sure if this is an improvement or not. The slide show home page has been archived should it be decided to reinstate it at a future date. WEB MASTER AWAY Please note that your Webmaster will be away from Sunday October 22 until October 28. During this time please note there will not be any replies to emails sent to the usual email addresses. However, I expect to be able to maintain contact with the main Irish Sea Shipping Yahoo Group during part of this period as the hotel where I stay in Devon now has WiFi. Emails may be sent to my mobile email address at jhlmobile@btinternet.com and cc'd please to irishseashipping@btinternet.com - PLEASE DO NOT send any attachments to this mobile email address - it downloads to a pocket PC! SMS Text Messages can be sent to 07973363370. Please do not phone the landline number during this period as relayed messages often loose their meaning! |
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WEBSITE CHANGES A number of web site changes have now been implemented including the removal of the rather dated background. Most font's should now have reverted to "Arial". The background sound has now been removed from the front page as this appeared to be a very unpopular feature! Strange that we now have sophisticated sound systems on most PCs and many don't want to take advantage - though I'll concede that listening to the "Leaving of Liverpool" for the umpteenth time can probably be as annoying as hearing "Ferry Across The Mersey" every time a Mersey Ferry berths at Liverpool! However, from time to time you web master reserves the right to use a suitable tune now and again for a feature or photo gallery - so the site won't necessarily remain completely silent! WEB SITE SLOW & OCCASIONALLY NOT AVAILABLE?? Over the past week or so your web master has noticed that the site has been running slowly at times, with pages taking a while to load and sometimes the front page has not loaded at all - returning the "Page Cannot Be Displayed Error" or defaulting to "Yahoo Search". This appears to suggest that the server is running slowly. Updates have also proved slow to post, Wednesday's update took an hour to post despite being rather small and posted over an 8MB connection! This sluggish response appears particularly noticeable in the evenings. The hosting company was advised at the end of the week. Apparently the problems were due to server maintenance. |
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WEBSITE CHANGES Further changes to improve the presentation and layout of the web site have been undertaken during the past few days. This work is currently on-going. Some text may not be in its usual uniform font and some hyperlinks may be displaying incorrectly, however, all links etc should function and I would be grateful if any page display problems could be reported. Thank You |
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WEB MASTER AWAY Please note that your Webmaster will be away from Tuesday August 22 until returning on August 29 as I will be sailing on the PONT-AVEN and attending Navy Days at Devonport. During this time please note there will not be any replies to emails sent to the usual email addresses. However, I expect to be able to maintain contact with the main Irish Sea Shipping Yahoo Group during part of this period as the hotel where I stay in Devon now has WiFi. Emails may be sent to my mobile email address at jhlmobile@btinternet.com and cc'd please to irishseashipping@btinternet.com - PLEASE DO NOT send any attachments to this mobile email address - it downloads to a pocket PC! SMS Text Messages can be sent to 07973363370. Please do not phone the landline number as relayed messages often loose their meaning! |
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CHANGES As indicated a few days ago some maintenance and changes are now being effected. At present the photographic record of the Isle of Man Steam Packet 175 Anniversary Year has now been moved to the archives sub site a few days ago. Today, the 2005 News Bulletins and Voyage Reports have also been moved over to the Irish Sea Shipping Archives subside. These remain fully accessible either from the News or Voyage Report menus as well as the Archives option on the page top menu which displays on each page. Furthermore, all the Irish Sea Express material has been moved to the archives. The Shipping Company Photo Feature Menu has been redesigned - with companies now listed in two categories Coastal / Deep Sea and Estuarine / River / Inland Navigation. Further changes are anticipated in the next few days. John H. Luxton Webmaster |
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SUMMER MAINTENANCE During the next few weeks maintenance work will be undertaken on the Irish Sea Shipping web site. This may result in some changes as well as the relocation and deletion of certain pages. It is now almost a year since Irish Sea Shipping was forced to move to a new web host - 1 & 1 Internet. This new hosting company has provided an excellent service during the last twelve months as well as offering significantly increased web storage space of 1 gigabyte. Given the greater space during past 12 months the web site has increased in size from around 200 Megabytes to 473 megabytes - more than doubling in size! This means that older material can remain on line for much longer - some of the busy picture galleries often had a shelf life of only around 3 to 4 months. To date nothing has been deleted since last August, though some reorganisations have taken place. However, it has become apparent that some galleries have become just a little too big and often record run of the mill arrivals and departures rather than special events / occurrences. Therefore, during the next few weeks there will be some thinning out of material to ensure the site remains manageable. Criteria for removal of material will not be based on how long the page has been displayed, rather more the nature of the content. This will ensure that interesting older photographs remain on the site providing an archive resource. As a consequence some people may well find when using a search engine that should it return a result from Irish Sea Shipping - that result may not work either due to a relocation of pages or their deletion. During this period of maintenance it is recommended that the site is entered via the home page at www.irishseashipping.com - this will always provide a link to the current "What's New" page. The daisy chain linked "What's New" pages will be retained on line for approximately 11 months, providing a records of updates during the past year, therefore the "What's New" pages for July and August 2005 have now been removed. However, should more recent material be removed from the site its corresponding entry in "What's New" archive will also be removed. John H. Luxton Web Master |
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July 21 Please note that your Webmaster will be away from late Wednesday afternoon July 26 until the morning of Tuesday August 01. During this time please note there will not be any replies to emails sent to the usual email addresses. Short urgent messages should be sent by text to my mobile 07973363370 or by email via jhlmobile@btinternet.com and CC to irishseashipping@btinternet.com - PLEASE DO NOT send any attachments to this mobile email address - it downloads to a pocket PC! Please do not phone the landline number as relayed messages often loose their meaning! |
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June 18 PHOTO-GALLERY MAINTENANCE Given the additional space now available to Irish Sea Shipping and the ever expanding number of galleries I have today carried out some maintenance on the Photographic Galleries. The Shipping In Irish Waters gallery has been split. Dublin Bay and Port now forms a separate section in the same manner that the Mersey and Mersey Approaches also has a dedicated section. As a consequence of the split the URL page addresses of the Dublin material has changed, Access to these galleries can be had via the main Irish and Celtic Sea gallery index CLICK HERE. During the next few weeks some further changes are planned as is the creation of a new sub-site. The new sub-site will be used to display photographs of the past. Whilst the main site has always featured photographs of the current scene - apart from the occasional feature - material from the recent or more distant past has been noticeable by its absence. This omission will be rectified this summer - more details will be posted soon. Your web master is also planning the addition of some further changes relevant to the photographic which will enhance the site - more details soon. |
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WEBMASTER AWAY Please note that your Webmaster will be away from Friday May 26 until the morning of Friday June 02. During this time please note there will not be replies to emails sent to the usual email addresses. Short urgent messages should be sent by text to my mobile 07973363370 or by email via jhlmobile@btinternet.com and CC to irishseashipping@btinternet.com - PLEASE DO NOT send any attachments to this mobile email address - it downloads to a pocket PC! Please do not phone the landline number as relayed messages often loose their meaning! UPDATES The scheduled update for Wednesday May 24 has been changed to May 25. |
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RECENT VIRUS / TROJAN PROBLEMS As many regular visitors to the Irish Sea Shipping web site may be aware a number of problems with Trojan / Virus attacks have been experienced since April 7. Not only was the main editing computer infected twice but also the Daniel Adamson Preservation Society web site which is run by Irish Sea Shipping - The Online Shipping Magazine was also itself hacked by a web site virus - Dr.Max. Steps are being taken to get the Daniel Adamson website sorted and the host ISP his promptly sorted the matter by wiping the site and permitting a new upload. Quite commendable considering they dealt with the problem over the weekend. The site is now on line again. Though it may take a while for it to spider through the various web servers. As far as the ISS editing computer is concerned the cause of the original trojan attack is unknown and occurred despite all the usual precautions - Norton Internet Security / Anti Virus - fully updated - all latest Microsoft updates in place ete. Fortunately the web sites are well backed up and I would urge everyone to look after their own data and make sure you have adequate back up arrangements. It was always thought that the editing computer was fully secure from attack - there was no reason to think otherwise - but the malicious individuals who create such "mal-ware" are constantly looks for ways in. During the past two weeks - 7 days have been spend reformatting machines reinstalling and testing software etc. Even now, I am still trying to sort out a suspicious problem which is effecting Norton Internet Security and won't rest easy until I get a reply from the publishers Symantec which I currently await. Please do take care of your data - make sure it is backed up and ensure any precious photos are off your machine and saved to CD Roms or other secure media. I have been fortunate in that data on the main computer was not destroyed - just the operating systems deranged. Some virus / trojan programs can cause significantly greater damage than I experienced. Take care out there! John H. Luxton Webmaster |
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Please note that your Webmaster will be away from April 11 to 17 inclusive for a trip to Devon and Cornwall and a voyage to Santander. During this period there will be no responses to emails. Any urgent communication should sent by text message or mobile. <contact details>. Please see the schedule for details of updates during April. |
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REVISION TO UPDATE SCHEDULE Please note that the update schedule has been revised for the first week in March. There will be an update this coming week on Wednesday March 01 at 23:00. Next weekend's update will be posted on Sunday March 05. There will not now be an update as originally scheduled on Wednesday March 08 unless there is a significant backlog of material. |
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OVER 400,000 SITE HITS & 600 GROUP MEMBERS On the evening of January 28, 2006 the home page hit counter recorded its 400,000th hit since December 10, 2001. It is anticipated that by late Summer 2006 the number of visitors to the home page will have reached the half million mark. Of course the counter does not record those reaching the web site via other bookmarked pages or search engines. Meanwhile the Irish Sea Ships Yahoo Group has broken through the 600 members mark this week! |
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