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WebLog

This page also doubles as a blog.  It is in reverse chronological order

25-Nov-09  Added a The Harp on the Willow page.  All the 2009 shows now moved from the Events page to the (new) 2009 page under Prior Shows.  Added the requisite lines to the 2000s show table.  That's it for the 2000s decade page now, next year there will need to be a 2010s decade page.  Incidentally I know full well the decade really starts on 1 January 2011, but by convention I start the decades pages on the zero year so the first 3 digits of the year are in the same directory.  IE "1960" is under "1960s", etc despite the decade REALLY starting in 1961.  (For those who wish to argue the point, buy a raffle ticket.  The book is numbered from 1 to 100, NOT 0 to 99!)

22-Nov-09  Sorted out all the What E-Newses and thanks to Rose Cooper, added the three issues from 2004 I was missing.  The archive is now truly complete, checked and double-checked.  One more E-News had been wrongly named (was in 2005 when it was actually from 2004), so it has also been fixed up.

18-Nov-09  Added a few more links to the Links Page.  These are to more local groups and My Blog and Karen Ractliffe's Blog.  Some other links have been removed as they have fallen by the wayside.  Don't forget to check these out, as they are all very relevant.

11-Nov-09  Gee, there were certainly some events to note after yesterday's meeting!  The TheatreFest 2010 dates have been put back a week; Cosi Auditions are on 24th & 26th November, Our Christmas Party is to be held on 12 December and there is to be a Working Bee Cleanup on Sunday 7 Feb 2010.  There is now a Cosi page.  There have been quite a few updates to the No Sex Please page as well.  Better also check out the Events Page for all these dates and times.

22-Oct-09  Put some Bush Bash programmes and posters online from the early days: 1989, 1990, 1991 & 1992

14-Oct-09  Revised the "Balloon Caper" page with actual video screen dumps from the real event in 1988.  This is an absolutely classic sequence, it's well worth the look!

14-Oct-09  Found three more programmes from 1993 (Dark Brown, Home Fires Burning & The Mummy's Comb) which were festival plays, and so represented in Festival programmes (Zenith TheatreFest '93 and GLADS DramaFest 1993).  The Mummy's Comb also was used as the 1993 Bush Bash play.  This means there's now a page for every production from the 1990s except the Cinderella Pantomime in 1992.

07-Oct-09  Wow!!  I have now scanned and put online EVERY programme in the programme archive folder (and a few more besides).  Of course, I've also been keeping up to date with copies of the latest ones supplied directly from the printer, Graham Vale.  When I started scanning them in, I really had no idea how big a job it was, and after getting the 1950s done, I wondered whether I'd ever finish it or not.  I started on 15-Aug-2007.  What now?  It's still not complete.  I hope to chase down copies of the missing programmes.  However in this case, now, it might take longer to obtain the programmes than to put them online!  It also means I'll now return to the existing history pages and add more information and more material progressively.  Of late I've been putting brief plot summaries of the plays online, so many of the existing pages need this information added as well.  So there's always going to be a constant state of flux around here - it'll just be less noticeable on the surface.

06-Oct-09  More programmes online.  Today, my old monitor blew up.  It went "crack", there was a blinding flash and all it would do was display a very bright pinpoint of light in the middle of the screen.  I've had it for probably eight years, and it was second-hand when I got it.  Suffice to say I will be chucking it out.  I now have a brand new Acer LCD monitor, which is amazingly wide.  The website looks quite different, I must say!  This will probably have implications for display and setout in the future, however the object is to keep the website compatible with those who do have small screens.  It's just that now I am no longer a small screen user myself!

02-Oct-09  Gee, check out the 1990s page - we are getting close to completion there now.  The 1980s are also sneaking up on us...

30-Sep-09  I popped over to see Julie Bailey who was able to lend me programmes for 14 shows from the early 1990s (and even one from 1985).  These have all been digitised and converted to pdf files, and three of them are now online, the others will follow very shortly.

29-Sep-09  Back to late 1985 with the programmes.  There are several missing from the mid-80s, also.  Added a page for the Trivia Night in 2001

28-Sep-09  Back to mid-1987 with the programmes.  Also noticed a few errors in the show chronology from the early 1980s.  The early to mid 90s also contain a few errors which will be fixed this week when I get some more material.  PS:  I know the Top Ten statistics page isn't working - I will be chasing this up with the web host, as it should work.

27-Sep-09  Back to early 1988 with the programmes now.   Trying to add at least two shows daily now, as we are getting tantalisingly close to completion of the programme archive!

25-Sep-09  HELP!!!!!!  Prior to today the reason why there were missing links in the 1990s production table was that I hadn't gotten around to putting up the programmes.  Now that is not the case!  The Drama Group archives are sadly lacking a number of programmes from this period, and the ones that are missing are the ones that now do not have links.  Unfortunately it's about a third of the actual productions in the 1990s!  Mind you, a large number of these are one-act plays and may simply not have had programmes produced, but there are some major productions missing as well.  I will be hassling a number of you over the coming weeks attempting to borrow these programmes, please have a look at the 1990s page and if you can lend me a programme or two it would be much appreciated.  You will get them back as soon as I have scanned them in unless you do care to donate them to the archives outright.

24-Sep-09  Added a Photo Gallery for those extremely talented students of the XtrAct Drama Academy, showcasing some of their recent public performances.

22-Sep-09  It's nice when you find missing links.  Located a copy of the Hiss the Villain programme (albeit tattered and discoloured) from 1976.  It's now online, and the names of the producers have been unearthed (previously completely unknown).  Added a page of Top Ten Web Statistics, and re-wrote the History article (with facts, of course) adding much more information therein.  Added more programmes from 1995 back.

22-Sep-09  We have now cracked the 250-megabyte allocation of the web host, and this has fortunately been increased to 500-megabytes!  Most recent changes are that 1999 and 1998 have all been completely revised, with stacks more photos and other material added for every show in those years, such as the TheatreFest 1998 results.  I've also added a few more plays from the late 1990s.  In fact, what is missing now is from 1980 to 1995 only.  Every other show is online with at least a programme, and many shows have a lot more material than that.  Thanks to Ron Baker for providing some material from the Gulgong visit in 1999.  Statistics:  252 megabytes, 2,066 files, 906 pictures, and 180 pdf files.  More coming soon.

15-Sep-09  I am now back to 2004, having made a number of revisions to the existing pages, and adding a couple of missing ones such as Heaven Can Wait, 'Allo, 'Allo and TheatreFest 2005.  Also substantially revised the 2004 TheatreFest page.  Discovered two of the What E-News numbers were renamed wrongly and were sitting in the wrong months (June 2005).  Fixed.

14-Sep-09  Now that the programmes are complete for the 50s, 60s and 70s, I have decided to start working backwards from the present and filling in the gaps.  Today I added only two pages: TheatreFest 2006 and the Canberra Drama Festival.  Of course, the fact that we have a lot more material available means it takes a lot longer to construct these pages.  There are photo spreads for both of these pages, along with a list of awards and so on, which takes a lot longer than just writing a paragraph or two and scanning in the programme.

13-Sep-09  Programmes now complete up until the end of 1979.

12-Sep-09  Discovered two missing programmes in amongst the box of "dross" I have here which I am finally starting to rummage through.  They were She Stoops to Conquer and A Letter from the General.

12-Sep-09  Programmes are now complete up to the end of 1975.  I have even found fragments of a missing programme from the 1950s and put it online (Laburnum Grove).  Have revised a few of the play histories in light of the research through the programmes.  I have also revised the order in which the Prior Shows pages list up.  Everything now is in normal chronological order, so when you click "Back" you actually go backwards in time, and "Next" takes you forward.  It was previously around the other way because the pages were ordered in reverse chronological order, and thus was a little confusing.

10-Sep-09  Did a few minor revisions to the Prior Shows pages fixing up small errors.  I have now scanned in the Drama Group archives (1952 to 1967) which were in the Large Red Book.  While going through it I extensively referred to these web pages and made a few cosmetic revisions in the process.  This has produced 391 files (mainly newspaper clippings and photographs); all up 118 megabytes of data.  I now have to figure out the best way of distributing this stuff, eventually I suppose the ultimate aim is to make it available online.  There is a LOT of fascinating stuff, and CD distribution might be faster and more convenient enabling the complete archive to be obtained.

09-Sep-09  I'm continually adding stuff to the No Sex Please, We're British pages.  The Flyer is now available on the site, which you can download and send to all your friends!  The cast is also listed, and I will add photographs soon.

07-Sep-09  Added a complete (46-1/2 minute) thumbnail video of the Home Fires Burning production in 2004 as a tribute to Bonnie as well.  This play was directed by Bonnie and written by Peter Kocan and it won 5 awards at the Theatrefest in 2004.  I also dropped up some screenshots from the production.

06-Sep-09  Added a tribute to Bonnie Bryant, and also the 2010 show dates.

03-Sep-09  I've been mucking around with the VideoSoft conversion program on an experimental basis, and have put online a few short video clips from a play which look very interesting.  The possibilities and implications are many, really.  Take a look at the play I selected The One Day of the Year from 2001.  Might I emphasise that SUBSTANTIALLY less than 10% of the play has been reproduced on the website and thus copyright cannot possibly be infringed from placing less than 3 minutes of a 110 minute play online.  I have also applied to HLA Management Pty Ltd (Alan Seymour's agent) for clearance for these videos.

28-Aug-09  Added over a hundred production shots of Fawlty Towers in a seven-page photo gallery.  Check it out, it's very nice.

01-Aug-09  Have made many changes to the current year pages, adding info and editing things.  Added a photo gallery to the 2006 Fawlty Towers page, so the current show can be publicised by local media by using these photos.  Today, I also suffered from a computer crash while actually saving the website, and had to revert to a backup copy.  This is the first time something like this has happened, and resulted in total corruption of the navigation structure of the site on my hard drive.  Fortunately, the backup was less than five weeks old, so I didn't have too much to manually re-type.   If you get the odd "File Not Found" error when clicking on links, please let me know what you were trying to access as I'll have to do a few fixes.  I think I got them all, but you never know.

19-June-09  After getting out of hospital and sufficiently recovering, I have finally knocked the site into shape and it is now up to date again.  This involved getting the 2008 plays into the "Prior Shows" page, and getting new pages up for the 2009 plays, Inheritance, TheatreFest 2009,  Fawlty Towers 2009 and No Sex Please, We're British. 

For those of you unaware, I went into Gosford Hospital Casualty late on 5 February in great pain.  It turned out to be a ruptured oesophagus, I was flown to Royal North Shore early on 6 February, and I finally was discharged on 24 April just in time for the final day of Inheritance, which I came along to see.  Three months of my life was gone, and it was another month before I was even up to typing at the computer!  Thanks must go to Ian Abbott for having a general hack at the website and putting up the Inheritance page during my absence.

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Copyright © Jul-10 by Peter Deane   -  Last modified: Saturday, 31 July 2010 12:24 AM