Getting a good-looking date

Hello to all my readers. Welcome to the latest of the bi-weekly Public Newsletters. – At least, it’s the latest until the next one’s published. Getting a good-looking date The first thing I’m going to tell you in this Newsletter is why I always write the date, online, as above in the title: - It’s all because of Americans. who make up around 1/4 to 1/3rd (0.25 to 0.34) of my readership. As you probably already know; Americans write the date differently compared to we Brits: Where an American would write the date above as 10.23.2009 Brits would write it as 23.10.2009 From the above it seems fairly obvious, provided that you are aware that they’re both the same day, that one is the date written by an American, and one is the date written by a Brit; particularly if you know that it’s the date related to an article published on 23rd October: There’s really no issue there; until it comes to a date like 08.09.2009, or 10.11.2010: One of those dates was written by an American, but which one? - So rather than cause any confusion by writing the date as 08.09.2009; which to an American is 9th August, yet to a Brit is 8th September, I write it out so that it can be understood whichever way round you do it in your part of the world. “Surely everybody knows what month it is!” You retort. Currently yes; but imagine you’re an American digging through archives, finding the post you’re looking for by date, loading it onto a USB stuck, driving to your next destination, and then finding that the post was written by a Brit and that you got the wrong post because you read the date in American format rather than British format. Blog Contents Page Next; I’ve automated the Blog Contents page: In doing so I’ve lost a number of the listings. Everything related to that is explained near the top of that page itself; but I’ll reproduce the important parts here also: - “Previously I was hard-coding each post into the list manually. I actually devised a way of doing it fairly quickly and with little effort. – I just wasn’t happy with doing things that way though: It was something else that had to be done, costing more time, and I also didn’t always remember to do it after every post’s publication. It is in the light of the above that I’ve configured an existing script to handle the matter of posting and updating this Blog Contents page. While the operation is almost perfect, the script is unable to handle [all the previously viewable entries in the list.] …I’ve just done the best I can for now. …Approximately 7 months of posts are currently listed, in total. I’m seeking a solution that will allow me to list more posts: Please bear with me until that time.” Changes to the Welcome Page As you may have noticed, I’ve partially automated the Welcome Page by adding a display of a snippet of my latest post to the page, as well as adding a clickable listings link to any of the latest 20 posts. I’ve also amended and partially rewritten the “Objective of This Blog” text section, in addition to which I’ve made all fonts on the page Trebuchet MS, and all linked text is now standard-link-blue (0000FF hex value.). Reduced input As I stated in the last Public Newsletter, I might yet have to reign back on the frequency with which I post articles at some point. It’s not that I don’t like writing; it’s just that I don’t have a lot of time some days or weeks. If there’s no content added to this blog one day, don’t instantly assume that it’s died. – Anyway, I currently announce future content on the welcome Page, previous to publication, so I’ll announce any gaps too, or simply won’t announce when there’ll be no new material. – If it’s not announced then it won’t happen. Yes I do hand-code that announcement; although if anybody knows of a plugin which will list articles scheduled for publication then I’d be most happy to know about it myself. – With WordPress there’s normally a plugin for it, whatever it is. – It’s just a matter of finding it. I’m going to be producing a different type of content as well as free articles from this coming Monday onwards; that being paid-for premium content, which will be on sale in due course: Yes I’m beginning to step up a gear with monetising this blog. – Well something’s got to pay the rent. As a result I’ll be unable to produce as many articles as I have recently been doing – I just don’t have an unlimited amount of time on my hands. I can probably still produce a few per week for the forseeable future; but if you have something technical and factual that you’d like to post on this blog; be my guest, literally: Submit your prospective guest-posts in line with the contest Can Your Post Make it to The Number One Slot? You never know; you might win.