What's New in Tony HJ's site??

What's New?

USE THIS PAGE as an easy way to find the interesting little corners of the website that may have arrived when you weren't looking... or that you may have missed...

November 8, 2006: Upgrading this website is becoming an enjoyable ‘retirement hobby!’ Since the spring of 2006, I’ve been through the “Oxbow” section, and have been bringing the earliest entries up to the current look and feel. Anything earlier than September 23, 2001, has been adjusted. As well, stale Oxbows have been removed.

Of course, I continue to treat the “Currents” section as a kind of “blog,” and after a bizarre adventure with Bell Canada in early October, I wrote it up for this website. The narrative is deliberately funny, and has begun to get a lot of “hits.” Readers may even find it as hilarious as the “tree” narrative of 2002.

Speaking of Bell Canada, I found a horrendous Bell story on the Web, and just now added it to the “Neat Stuff” section.

Finally, just to tantalize you, I’m now working on an expansion of the “Anglican Priest” section, where I intend to post some essays on religious topics. The first entry is entitled: “Death – enemy or friend.”

Stay tuned. In fact, drop in to “Currents” or “Anglican Priest” from time to time, because new entries there will not always be reflected here.
August 7, 2005: Talk about “What’s new!”
In 2005 I retired from full-time ordained parish ministry! A wholly new way of life is upon me. I put a few notes about this enormous step in the Currents/Oxbows section, but my main thrust was to make a brand new Albwost Canada section - where I hope people will go if they wish me to come and give some lectures (something I hope to do plenty of in retirement). As well, I completed work on some unfinished sections in the cottage saga - most notably the hilarious day when I paddled back and forth across the lake fourteen times!
Oct 1, 2004: “Sabbatical” (from “Sabbath,” the divinely-ordained rest from normal activities) - a time of refreshment and renewal, both mentally and spiritually.
The first day of my Sabbatical I had an unexpected stay in a motel, and to pass the time, I began an online diary. Almost every day since, I would put one or two highlights on the web.
Knowing that few would want to read it all, I went on to create a calendar, where a visitor might see at a glance what entries have been completed, and, with a simple click, visit a particular entry wihout reading everything that went before.
Another kind of referral page seemed a logical addition - where a visitor can see the whole Sabbatical’s itinerary, and link to pieces of it as desired.
Some might wish to entitle this web log “Travels with Ol’ Harry,” because a distinct feature of the first month has been coping with a very elderly car whose last valiant duty in its long career has been to take me from Winnipeg to Toronto to Québec.
May 24, 2004: A pleasant day off with lots of tinkering on the site - mostly “look & feel” stuff, and the deletion of really stale items. In the process I noticed that I never told you about putting an essay online! An in-depth study of Christianity and Islam, I wrote it in the early 1990’s for submission to a course on Inter-Religious Dialogue at the University of Manitoba. The title is Sacred Violence - in Christianity and Islam. Sometime in 2003 I began to put it online. The process is time-consuming, because nearly sixty pages with footnotes have to be scanned and put into HTML, so it’s not yet finished.
December 8, 2003: The Chronicles and Oxbows sections continue to be kept current. As well, I’ve written and posted an essay, from a priest’s point of view, on the ingredients of a “good” wedding or funeral. Finally, I’ve begun to upgrade the “look and feel” of one of the oldest sections in this website - the “Neat Stuff” material - adding a [to me] hugely funny email I got in response to my account of an August, 2003 bicycling adventure.
December 9, 2002: I’ve begun to upgrade the look and feel of the whole site. Different sections will have their own colour coding, while the navigation - for which I used different concepts over the years, is being made more uniform. Don't expect everything to have the new look all at once, though. This site is just a hobby, and I only tinker with look and feel when all the high priority things in life (work, housekeeping, getting ready for a wedding, etc.) are done!

The most recent upgrade was done on one of the oldest sections: the “Computer Geek of the 4th Order” Section.
September 9, 2001: The vast majority of the website is in the form I want, so not much change is expected for the forseeable future. However, the Currents and Oxbow sections of the site continue to grow, with various sagas and pictures. Check in there from time to time. There may well be something new.
January 7, 2001: Since October 2000 I have made a few entries in the Currents and Oxbow sections of the site, including some photographs from our trip to Vienna. As well, I posted a paper on 'Liturgy in the Time of Richard Hooker' which I presented at the University of Manitoba November 29, 2000. I've done a bit of detail tidying at various points in the site.
October 6, 2000: ... worked on the photo album, adding a picture of the extended family, when we all gathered in our kitchen at the time of Mom's funeral; and a picture of Rachael Skydiving, August, 2000.
June 18, 2000: ... it's Father's day, and I added a sentimental photo to the Photo Album
May, 2000: ... added several items to the Neat Stuff section.
March, 2000: ... posted a brief tribute to my Mother, Lorna, who died March 16.
February, 2000: I did a thorough house-cleaning, and changed the appearance of the main page.

Behind the scenes I was actually rebuilding the entire site from the ground up... in "frames." It was a lot of work, and I had almost finished, when I thought it might be good to see what it looked like on a few other platforms.

What a shock! On my old Powerbook 180, most of the new navigation buttons were invisible, and the rest of the material was misshapen and oversized. Then I checked it on a couple of Windows 95 Pentium machines. Although the graphics were in colour, the beautiful layout apparent on my own machine had been distorted into something crammed and ugly!

Sigh.

I tinkered, shrank navigation buttons and pictures, and tried again, with very little improvement.

In the end, I left the site in its non-"frames" format, but used some of the new graphics to spruce things up. So, my visitors are now greeted with bright yellow buttons and a blue gradient background - not to mention a colour portrait of yours truly - where once there was a neutral background and a cartoon drawing of me!

The complete overhaul also helped me find stale links, and a few other details of the site which weren't working at their best. Those were cleaned up.

Enjoy your browsing!
December, 1999: A moment I had long been waiting for came on October 30, 1999. That's the day I acquired a brand new Powerbook G3. It is wonderful, but so far advanced from my previous, 1995 model machine, that there was an intense learning curve! It took me more than a month to get up and running efficiently, but, by December I was able to do a little website housework. I upgraded the family page, put a detailed biography of my daughter, Ariel, on the site, and wrote up some recent news in the Currents section.
September 3, 1999: I amused myself while on vacation writing a few illustrated vacation adventures for the Currents section of my website.; In a very limited way, I have begun adding photos to the site. Chris scanned some photos for me while I was visiting him at his home, and I posted them online in my nascent photo section.
May 17, 1999: Sympatico’s magazine, NetLife printed an article about my website! When they phoned to interview me, I thought the piece would be simultaneously published online, but I was wrong. It was to remain exclusively in print format.
So I wrote to Peter Giffen, the magazine editor, and to Kevin Brooker (author of the article), and they gave me permission to post the article on this website. So, for your delectation, click here! Thanks, Kevin and Peter!
August 14, 1998: How did I spend my summer vacation? Part of it was spent enabling online credit card ordering of my book, A Little Bible Handbook. Check out the website of Albwost Books, the desktop publishing business through which I distribute the book.
June 29, 1998: Began the process of dismantling the “St.Chad” portion of my website, having been appointed to the parish of St.George, Winnipeg. If you had ever bookmarked one or more parts of St.Chad’s website and came back after September 1998, you'll either find a "404 - Not Found," or a "Sorry!" notice on the more frequently accessed URL's. The current website for St.Chad’s is located here.
November 12, 1997: Made a new section entitled "Chronicles." This may turn out to be the most personal section of the website. Glimpses of me... useful particularly for friends and acquaintances to whom I may not have written for some time, but who are curious about what I've been up to. This is where I ended up putting my resumé. The "Currents" section functions almost like a diary, although it will not be as detailed as one, nor will it be updated with manic frequency. Maybe every couple of months or so.
February 24, 1997: I began to develop a whole new section about life as an ordained person. It can be found leading from the word "Anglican Priest" on my main home page.; The section includes a list of prayers that mean a lot to me, and a position statement on some of the burning issues facing the church today....
January 25, 1997: The creation of this "What's new??" page... I hope it tantalises the curious and rewards the regular visitor....
January 17, 1997: I posted my formal Resumé... imagine, a whole life story in a few cryptic lines!
January 13, 1997: Pop the champagne! Cheer! Or, stand up and sing a hymn! This day saw the official launch of my online Bible Study resource, “A Little Bible Handbook.”
April 15, 1996 - This Website is Launched: This day is my first day as an amateur webmaster. I have made a basic home page, including with it a cartoon that had once been drawn of me by Linda McIntosh (a member of my parish, and a talented artist, but also a noted Manitoba politician).; (Thus began my life as an amateur HTML editor! That home page remained, virtually unchanged, to December, 1999, when the arrival of powerful new tools made some serious variants possible.)