Category Archives: Website Updates

New Layout

  By Leanne | August 18, 2008 - 6:03 pm | Flyball, undermybed, Website Updates
7 Comments

New layout! Hopefully this explains why the site was down all day Monday. I loved my green layout but I wanted to try a different colour and some new techniques for the pages. I know it doesn’t quite work in Internet Explorer, I’m still working on it, but as IE tends to render code totally differently to every other browser I might be fighting a losing battle. Everyone should just use Firefox instead!

Anyway, Leeds ‘Owlers had a fab weekend at the Summer Champs! Barney’s came home as Div 4 Champs and Marsh came a very respectable 4th. I’m loving hearing about everything but it’s a bit tough to listen to sometimes, I’m so disappointed we couldn’t go and it sounds like we really missed out on a great weekend with some fab racing. I’m trying not to wallow in self-pity and be miserable but it’s a bit hard at the moment!

A British Agility Record Book Program … thing.

  By Leanne | June 27, 2008 - 6:37 pm | Website Updates
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I was up very late last night, and for whatever unknown reason I thought how good it would be to have a British version of the Agility Record Book program. It would work out your Agility Warrant points and your BAA League Table points (and probably your UKA titling points as well) and would be a wonderful computerised way of keeping track of your dog’s progression.

And then I read that the advanced Agility Record Book program had originally started as a MS Excel Spreadsheet, and my sleep-deprived brain thought “ah! I can work with Excel! It will merely be a matter of throwing together some If Statements and VLookup tables and we’ll be off! How hard can it be?!”

Remind me never to say that again.

Still, 14 hours later and I have a working prototype running. It currently calculates BAA League Table Points and Agility Warrant points (including different points for the different BAA levels and different AW points for agility/jumping classes) depending on clear round places. UKA might take me longer because I don’t really know how their system works, but that’s project for next week. And then I’ll try and add some kind of Calender, although I don’t really need that because there’s the online Agility Organiser which is far better than anything I could come up with!

Although I originally intended this to be for personal use (I’m a geek, I like to keep track!) would anyone be interested in downloading a more polished version? If so, what other stuff would you like available?

Currently the format is pretty simple, and only works for one dog:
Sheet 1 = Dog Information (Call name, registered name, breed, DOB, registration number(s), grade/level)
Sheet 2 = Show Records
Sheet 3 (Locked) = Points Tables

Obviously it would be good to have it work for more than one dog, and I have got the foundations of that in there but I haven’t quite worked out which is the best way to do it yet.

An Essay Writing Diversion: Kim and Dylan

  By Leanne | April 30, 2008 - 2:20 pm | Agility, Dylan, Dylan's Blog, Kim, Training, Website Updates
4 Comments

I really should be writing my essays right now, especially because I entered Shrewsbury this weekend knowing full-well that my essays would be due in next week. Just another 3500 words to go …

Dylan and I had a horrible training session yesterday. I was going to post about it in an attempt to try and work out what is going wrong, but I’ve been chatting to people and wrangling it out that way, and really I already know the problems. Dylan always takes the easy route. This is not like me or Kim at all, and so I’m used to working with a dog who will try something different or stretch herself to reach something if she (or I!) dares. Dylan never dares! He is happier drifting along with what he knows rather than doing something new and scary. It’s all about our mental outlook, and Dylan and I are thinking on different wavelengths right now. Despite all the frustration, I know Dylan and I will have a better relationship when I work out how to fix things.

Kim sulked because I didn’t take her training last night, which also left her enough energy to wake me up this morning. Normally she’s quite a lazy dog and will happily stay in bed until 8am or later. But today she squirmed over 5:50am and, once she knew I was awake, rolled on my head. She then fetched her toy and threw it at me, which was not appreciated but did make me laugh! She’s usually very elegant and dignified so it’s always funny to see her doing something puppy-like or silly. I’m looking forward to this weekend with her, we haven’t had a competition without Dylan for a couple of months and so I’ll be able to concentrate on her properly. I don’t know how people manage to run 3 or more dogs, I can barely make the switch between two! We also have Pairs with Bailey this weekend, which should be fun. Neither Emma or I are very serious about Pairs or Team events, we do them for a bit of fun and an extra run for the dogs.

Lastly, I’m sorry the website went down for 24 hours! I attempted to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1, and it (for whatever reason) didn’t work. I didn’t have chance to fix it immediately, which has played havoc with my web stats! For those odd people who are interested in this kind of thing, undermybed.co.uk has had over 1100 hits this month, and had about 200 click-outs from the links on this page, mainly through comments. So if you want some more visitors, comment with a link from your name to your website. Plus I love getting comments.

New Layout/Flyin Kai

  By Leanne | April 3, 2008 - 5:40 pm | Dylan, undermybed, Website Updates
8 Comments

Well, everyone seemed to like the first one, so here it is!

There are quite a few changes from the original design, mainly to the header image, but I think I’m satisfied now. Anyone who has been around this website for a while will know I’m rarely happy with a layout for long. The last layout (the pink and black one) was up from November – April, which is a relatively long time for me! Feedback on this one is most definitely welcome, please let me know if you find anything that isn’t working or that you just don’t like.

Kai

In more doggy news, I can’t believe how much Kai looks like her big brother right now! She’s there on the right. Her ears are exactly the same as his, and they have a very similar build. Isn’t she gorgeous? She’ll be 9months old at the end of April, and I think she’s got a lot of growing to do yet! Dylan didn’t stop growing until he was 16months. I can’t imagine this pretty girl will be done much before he was, her paws are still huge. Natalie is keeping track of her agility training in her blog.

Nat hasn’t confirmed what Kai’s KC name will be yet, but the blog url always reminds me that I really need to get Dylan’s registration sent in. I’m still dithering over names, and any suggestions are very welcome. I’m not overly fussed about having his name included as Dylan is hard to fit in properly. The guys over at Ruffdogs came up with some great ideas but none of them quite fit him.

Website Updates

  By Leanne | April 1, 2008 - 2:53 pm | undermybed, Website Updates
6 Comments

Time for another boring post on the website! I’ve upgraded WordPress to the new 2.5, and I’m really not sure I like it. It’s a bit confusing, everything is switched around. My biggest peeve is the new image gallery feature. I can see how it might be useful for someone who doesn’t edit their images much and just uploads them direct, but for me … well, it doesn’t work with Lightbox properly and I don’t like the thumbnails it takes, just a square out of the center of the picture which looks daft, most of the time. I’d rather be able to move the square to a different place on the original image, or just make my own thumbnails. Currently not an option.

Also have two possible new layouts, but I’m not sure which one I want to use yet. So, poll time! Which do you prefer? Do you think anything specific needs changing?

[EDIT: Thanks everyone who voted! I'm going to go with the first one, and it'll debut in a couple of days. Need to finish off a few things first!]

Neither are quite finished yet, the graphics need tidying up on both. I wanted something a bit more fresh and spring-like, hence the green and white. I also really like green. A lot of my layouts are green!