Site Timeline

Well, this page will tell you all about the thing that happened to this site, written pretty much as it happened, with a few odd entries for colour and usefulness, concerning pretty much the entire site's history. So that you don't get bombarded by lots of random entries, it's broken down by month. I hope this helps.

2005 / 2006 / 2007 / Complete archive / Most recent

We found 81 random happenings for your reading leisure.

Date	Notes
23 Aug 2007	"Drunken Slur" and "Olde English" both go live on The Voices of Many.
22 Aug 2007	Implemented a long-overdue patch for UTF handling including better support for entities and also for single non-ASCII characters.
31 Mar 2007	The Voices of Many receives its 1,000,000th webpage translation request.
25 Nov 2006	Further bugfix to webpage module, in the handling of @import CSS instructions and some instances of BASE tags.
22 Nov 2006	Started work on the Corporate Talk module.
17 Nov 2006	It seems the site was mentioned today (or a recent day, at least) in a paper in Phoenix, Arizona.
9 Jul 2006	Minor bugfix to the webpage portion of the site.
11 Jun 2006	Reorganised the drop-down system for choosing dialects.
4 Jun 2006	After nearly 2 months absence from the project, I removed the graph showing hits. It was beginning to look very boring, being a nearly perfect straight line going upwards.
21 Apr 2006	Finally implemented a new tracker... every time a voice is used successfully (either in webpage or text mode), it adds one to an internal counter for that voice. Hopefully it'll help me find which voices are most popular, and expect to see information on our stats page to show that very soon...
19 Apr 2006	Added links to Firefox and Thunderbird to help the "Spread Firefox" campaign.
23 Mar 2006	A minor bugfix to the tag parsing system was applied. I have also been reviewing the site logs for the purposes of testing (mostly just the error log).
9 Mar 2006	Final testing of the code for Tutnese and adding it to the site.
8 Mar 2006	Research into a quick entry for the voices list - Tutnese. Most of the code is written and tested. Also did a tidiness fix to the URL engine for processing pure text files.
7 Mar 2006	Minor bug fixes and internal cleanups (such as if a page takes too long to process, the TVOM code itself handles the error now instead of the PHP parser doing it in an ugly way, which means it looks more professional and means I can tune it slightly better) Also finally released the Ubby Dubby voice (having got it to case match correctly)
27 Feb 2006	Started work on the Drunken Slur voice.
26 Feb 2006	Swedish Chef is finally completed, despite having been in development and testing for nearly 3 months.
24 Feb 2006	Added the Daffy Duck voice.
23 Feb 2006	Added the Gollum voice to the live site.
21 Feb 2006	Updated the internals of the webpage processor, which boosts speed by something like 8-10% on that alone, plus implemented a system to improve sitewide performance by something like 50%+.
18 Feb 2006	Started work on the Gollum voice.
11 Feb 2006	We have today finalised - and carried out - the server move from our previous host to our new host. We have not encountered any problems in the transition, but please, if you find any problem, please let us know through the contact page.
5 Feb 2006	Our BS Analyser is written, tested and launched.
1 Feb 2006	Amended a few links and a bugfix (added support for EMBED tags in the webpage engine) Also began work on the helper library for the translation engines.
28 Jan 2006	Converted the site to use PNG images instead of GIF images, in preparation for a server move.
20 Jan 2006	Started to implement the Ubby Dubby dialect.
16 Jan 2006	A little more work on the cosmetic side of the site including a new logo and a bit more work on the Foghorn Leghorn dialect.
15 Jan 2006	Development of the "email a translation" feature halted: I do not believe the site is currently busy enough to warrant it, nor do I think it will generate that much traffic, actually. It just seemed to be one of those "it sounds cool so I think I'll try it" ideas.
14 Jan 2006	Started to add in "Related links" sections on the different voice pages (in the Voices section), for links related to a specific voice.
9 Jan 2006	End-A-Line is complete and implemented in both text and URL engines, and paves the way for all sorts of new ideas.
8 Jan 2006	Begun the rewrite for End-A-Line (based on "Up a tree" and the newly released "Behind a bush"). Basically it bugged me that we had two dialects which did almost precisely the same thing, and internally the same thing, so I started to rewrite them to allow user selection from one dialect, under "End A Line", as in "End A Line with [string]"
7 Jan 2006	Added in the "Behind a Bush" voice. Also made a patch to the HTML system which fouled up on some circumstances of non-quoted HTML attributes.
5 Jan 2006	A few improvements are made to the Buccaneer dialect, plus a rewrite to the code of the Links pages makes it easier for me to add new links.
4 Jan 2006	The first update of 2006 brings in a new voice: Buccaneer (Pirate) although more development on others is also planned.
21 Dec 2005	Added in a cool graph feature to the Site Status/Statistics page, showing the growth of the site.
17 Dec 2005	Rewrote part of the URL processing backend to tidy up the URL handling and simplify the code, also shaving 100 lines of the current 650.
14 Dec 2005	Rewrite of the backend system so it is more automated. Although this means that developmental voices are now listed on the "Voices" pages, it will encourage me to not develop new voices willy-nilly and only start to implement those I have some chance of releasing.
13 Dec 2005	Started to implement the "Email this translation" system.
11 Dec 2005	Checked the site for full HTML compatibility. As you can see, every page is now confirmed as being "HTML 4.01 Transitional" and "CSS" compliant. I am also looking to add confirmation of compliance to other standards shortly.
8 Dec 2005	Went on the rampage to add to search engines and self-promote this site.
7 Dec 2005	Implemented another new filter: SMS Txt, just like all those young'uns use on their fancy mobile phones.
4 Dec 2005	Had a look for a few more web filters to cop-... enhance and add to the site. Some of them made it as far as the Links page. Have also added the implemented-today "Up a Tree" voice. I have also done a small amount of performance tweaking on Elmer Fudd.
23 Nov 2005	Added the status page, which currently displays the state of development of all the voices for The Voices of Many, including still-in-development ones. Also it shows the tally so far of hits (not very many!)
21 Nov 2005	Answered another FAQ for the General questions page.
15 Nov 2005	Minor patches to the url.php engine (affected tags: ABBR, ACRONYM), plus finally added ourselves to search engines properly.
14 Nov 2005	New tabbed interface (doesn't affect the side menu too much) now implemented on the live server.
13 Nov 2005	Still playing around with the new layout, although I would like a little feedback from a couple of people before I run with it. Once I get that, all I'll have to do is upload the relevant images, the stylesheet and the one (yep, just one) codepatch module and it's all good to go.
11 Nov 2005	Fiddled around with a new layout for the site, involving a tabbed navigation menu bar at the top of the layout.
9 Nov 2005	Updated the FAQs, added link images for elgooG and The Dialectizer on the links page.
2 Nov 2005	Finished writing the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section (at least for now!)
29 Oct 2005	Tuning performance boosts both the Elmer Fudd and Sylvester the Cat dialects, especially on pages with many tags. (There are so many factors which affect speed, it's crazy)
27 Oct 2005	A bit of backpedaling ensues - the speed increase functions only work on some pages, and not others (due to an error in the handling of the links, and also in the tag processor). Rewriting removes the bugs, and leads to improvements again... the engine runs about 20% faster than v1.0 did, and actually removes some of the bugs introduced in release 1.1 (24 Oct 2005).
24 Oct 2005	Release 1.1: Speed improvements to HTML handler (prelude to any rewrite in Perl), yields speed increase of upto 40% in pages heavy in HTML.
22 Oct 2005	Proper contact form implemented, as well as proper error handling pages (for 404 Page Not Found, 403 Forbidden and 500 Server Error pages)
21 Oct 2005	First draft of the 'Ye Olde English' dialect coded.
14 Oct 2005	Profiling reveals that the individual translation modules themselves are very fast, but that the backend (which handles webpage downloading and processing) is not and that it takes up 70+% of the runtime of the script. Have decided that moving to a language more geared to text parsing might be an idea... am currently learning Perl to this end.
12 Oct 2005	Performance coding time - programming it to be a little faster. (It's already pretty fast, knowing how hard the code actually has to work) Also implemented a check so that when a page is requested from another server, we also check what the server is reporting it as - so if the server reports it as a picture, we don't even bother downloading it, we just abandon straight away (saving bandwidth and processing time)
11 Oct 2005	A dispute arose - and was sorted out - over the payment of the site. The site spent much of the last 24 hours suspended through apparent non-payment. Meanwhile, I have also rewritten the Sylvester dialect to take advantage of the features of regular expressions, like Fudd's. In so doing, I also realised a couple of sounds which were not processed originally (soft c's, e.g. in dancer and civilisation, which form s sounds)
10 Oct 2005	After a couple of days of proving the site content, I have been made aware of two bugs, one of which has now been patched (the other is not critical and will be fixed in the next day or so). Also rewrote the Elmer Fudd dialect from pure code into using regexp functions (faster, smaller)
8 Oct 2005	Finished writing the How It Works pages. And, guess what... today, WE LAUNCHED! (Version 1.0.0)
7 Oct 2005	Last known outstanding bug fixed. Added a page of outstanding bugs (none) and the known limitations of the server and engine.
6 Oct 2005	Pretty much finished the Sylvester The Cat module. Odd, really, because I'm sure there should be more to it, but I'm really not sure what.
5 Oct 2005	Wrote most of the Sylvester The Cat module, and wrote the Text Engine "How It Works" guide in the About section. Plus a bugfix to the URL processing part of the HTML engine. (That's what beta versions are for, yeah?)
4 Oct 2005	Scrambler and Elmer Fudd dialects complete, and both implemented with full text and webpage support. That means that all the dialects currently on the site are complete. Version 1.0.0-beta2 perhaps?
3 Oct 2005	Pig Latin dialect complete, and implemented with full text and webpage support.
1 Oct 2005	Version 1.0.0-beta1 (I think that's what I'll number it) is ready; internal hit counter implemented, so that I can tell how many text and URL hits I have per day, plus how many failed URLs I get. I am not tracking what type of hit they are, or the address, just whether: Successful Page not found/inaccessible/server error Webmaster has requested site be inaccessible (see here for how)
30 Sep 2005	Finished HTML parsing system to a standard that could almost be passable, quality-wise. Work now turns to finishing the current list of translators, ready for a 1.0 launch... date to be confirmed but hopefully "soon."
26 Sep 2005	Implemented L33T-Speak full translator.
22 Sep 2005	Implemented Binary and Morse Code translators. Also wrote drafts of the "How It Works" pages.
21 Sep 2005	Finally, the URL parsing system (major part of the HTML parsing system) is reliable at tag attribute handling. There are still a few things I want to straighten out first before moving forward, mainly to do with a few major tags (like handling comments, or JavaScript fragments) before I can even consider a launch of any kind. Also implemented the robots.txt analysis routine.
20 Sep 2005	Implemented system for determining whether voices were available for text-only, webpage-only, or full translation service. This will speed up adding new voices into the system, and also appears to be marginally faster than the old implementation.
18 Sep 2005	Timeline and links pages added.
17 Sep 2005	Work on the HTML parsing system proceeds - slowly.
16 Sep 2005	Work begins on the Pig Latin and Scramblation (later titled Scrambler) translators.
13 Sep 2005	Work begins on the new Elmer Fudd code.
11 Sep 2005	Script to handle text in a text box to be altered is complete.
10 Sep 2005	Documents created for copyright, ethics, disclaimer etc.
5 Sep 2005	Domain name 'thevoicesofmany.com' registered. Also began to create the first layout code, based on previous work (the original myperch.org code)
4 Sep 2005	The site gets the name of 'The Voices of Many'. Amongst other names considered: "The Fuddenator" (after the Elmer Fudd voice proposal), "The Text Masher", "The Wordenator" and a few others so bad I've forgotten them.2
2 Sep 2005	Building on from my first test code, I started to build an Elmer Fudd translator, "to see if I could do it." Today I started to build a test implementation of it, the code for which would be completely scrapped as unwieldy and highly inefficient.
29 Aug 2005	First started to build test/demo code for the text processing engine; this code can differentiate between text and tags and implements ROT13 processing, so I can it has modified text and not tag contents. This was built as a proof-of-concept and not intended to be used as a developmental project. I had no idea I would build the site at this point.

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