patchcamp.com blog

In my daily Patch-L email digest a fellow Scout asked the collective subscribers for a site related to Sea Scouts insignia. Robert Rodgers quickly replied with a link, and I thought it would be a nice addition to the Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp.

While I was adding it I used the indispensable Firefox extension LinkChecker to verify all of the links on the main page and Free-For-All links page, and removed the Yahoo Scout Auctions link since Yahoo has decided to retire that service shortly.

LinkChecker highlighted 4 nonworking links on the Patchcamp Free-For-All Links page out of 104 sites listed. I will try to contact the site owners to see if there are newer addresses before removing them completely. The sites that LinkChecker could not find are:

• Visual History of the Totin’ Chip
• Adam’s Patch Zone
• Jim’s Bald Eagle CSP’s
• The Scout Image

Every few months I get an email from a visitor advising me that I have a broken link on The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp. Sometimes it’s just a polite “heads up” so I can try to track down the new location. Often it’s a plaintive request that I put it back online, and I have to explain in my reply that the site wasn’t mine to begin with, I just provided a link to it.

Over the years many sites in the world of Scout patch collecting have vanished. As Councils merge their web pages related to emblem history often vanish as a new site quickly replaces those of the merged councils. I witnessed this when my old Council in Alexandria, Louisiana merged with Ouachita Valley Council of Monroe to form Louisiana Purchase Council in May of 2003. The attakapas.org web site featured a great set of pages related to the Council shoulder patches and Ouxouiga Lodge patches. Ouxouiga 264 was my ordeal lodge, and I was devastated when just a few months after the merger attakapas.org was gone, replaced by one of those fake search pages that domain scavengers put up. No where on the new site was any trace of the patch history of Attakapas Council or Ouxouiga Lodge.

The same scenario occurred in the early ’90’s when Peninsula Council and Kecoughtan Lodge 463 (where I became a Brotherhood member) merged with Old Dominion Area Council to form Colonial Virginia Council and Wahunsenakah Lodge 333. I was so alarmed at how the history and tradition of Kecoughtan Lodge vanished from the worldwide web overnight that I was motivated to create my own site to preserve the decades of service that preceded the merger.

If you’ve ever gone to a favorite web site and received the dreaded “404-Page Not Found” error here are a couple of ideas which might help you find what you were looking for. Both are ways for you to see previous copies of the web server content.

The first is use the Google search engine for the site you are looking for. Point your browser to http://www.google.com and enter the exact URL of the site you were unable to connect to.

When Google presents its results it will show you a link to the site (which probably still won’t work if the site is offline) and also an option to view a cached (saved) version of the site. Click on the “Cached” option and if you are lucky you will see what the site included the last time that Google successfully visited and saved it to cache.

Sometimes, though, a site has been offline for so long that Google can’t show a cached version. Or, the site may not have ever been visited by the Google search engine.

In this case I recommend that you try one of the most wonderful free tools on the internet - the “Internet Archive Wayback Machine” at http://www.archive.org

This incredible site lets you view saved copies of web sites which span several years. You can actually go “wayback” to see how a web site has evolved since its inception. The Wayback machine was able to display the Ouxouiga Lodge emblem page complete with pictures of the patches just the way I remembered it.

Next time your bookmark comes up with a “404-Not Found” error don’t just delete it. Search for traces in google’s cache and by using the Wayback Machine at archive.org!

If you aren’t keen on the effect that pops up a small preview window of the web page when you roll over a link, the folks at snap.com have made it very easy to turn off. Just roll over a link, snort with derision at the unwanted window that appears, then notice the link in the upper right corner of that window that says “Options & Disable.” Cross your fingers, click as best you can, and watch in wonder as the preview window changes to a list of options including Disable Snap Preview Anywhere. Click the appropriate link for This Site or All Sites depending upon how seriously you want to banish the effect from your browsing experience, close the window, and be sure to reload the page. The preference is stored in a cookie so if you ever delete your browser cookies the previews will return with a vengeance and you will need to repeat this process.
Personally, I think the effect is very cool and provides useful visual cues about each site linked from the Base Camp, but I can see how those connecting to the internet via dialup would prefer to disable it to make their browsing experience more efficient.

Glenn

I was surprised and honored today to find The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp selected to appear in The SPA 100, a selection of sites highlighted by Snap Preview Anywhere as “some of the more interesting, notable and funky sites that are now using the Snap Preview Anywhereâ„¢ product.”

Snap Preview Anywhere is the cool technology service from snap.com that provides a thumbnail preview of the web sites linked from the Patchcamp home page, and I continue to admire the speed and reliability of their service, especially since it has not diminished even as they have grown in just 8 weeks to serving over 30,000 customers. Do yourself a favor and try out the snap search engine and especially their cool new image search! As you might imagine, the search results include graphic previews which makes finding what you are seeking much more efficient and entertaining!

If your web site is included on the Base Camp home page you are welcome to include a special badge that says “This site featured on The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp” on your site! There are several styles to choose from and quick, simple instructions to follow to add the badge on this page.

For those of you who would like to support The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp but don’t have a site featured on the front page, you are encouraged to add a Base Camp badge, too. You’ll find instructions and sample badges here.

Thanks for your support!

After trying WebSnapr for almost two weeks and never seeing improvement on thumbnail load times or successful image loading statistics I went on the hunt for an affordable replacement. It didn’t take long to find snap.com’s Snap Preview Anywhere service, and even less time to implement it. Using BBEdit’s “find and replace” function I stripped out the websnapr code from the home page, copied and pasted the code snap.com generated for my site, and saved the changes.

I was literally amazed at the results. I even delayed proclaiming victory until I got home to check it on another network and verify my findings with a friend who tested the changes for me from a faraway state.

In 5 minutes I managed to replace the thumbnail images that took multiple seconds to appear (if they did at all) from WebSnapr with thumbnails that literally popped up almost immediately from snap.com.

When I first read about the free website thumbnail service provided by WebSnapr I immediately thought it would make a very cool feature addition to The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp. Using google I scoured the web for reports from other web developers who had implemented it, and found very few negative remarks. A common concern was that WebSnapr was featured on Digg, and shortly afterwards suffered the “Digg effect” of servers overloaded by Digg readers eager to check out the service. But this situation was expected to be transitory and that WebSnapr would scale their hardware accordingly with their growth to handle increased traffic.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, December 1 the patchcamp.com domain was changed to point to the servers at Wirenine.com, ending the official beta testing period and making the revisions planned for Fall, 2006 live.

Thanks to all who took the time to participate and provide feedback!

It took a little less than 24 hours for the DNS changes to propagate so that the URL http://www.patchcamp.com began to point to the new servers. Now that patchcamp.com is a unique domain of it’s own on the Wirenine servers, the prior testing URL of patchcamp.ranchochase.com is no longer active. I still plan to track changes to the site through this blog and your comments are more than welcome.

The most helpful new feature of the revised Patch Collector’s Base Camp is probably the integrated search engine (powered by Google) that returns results only from web sites related to Scout memorabilia.

You are invited to help improve the scope and accuracy of the results by submitting sites you feel are appropriate to the search group.

It’s quick and easy to volunteer to contribute to this search engine. A Google ID is required to particpate, but if you don’t have one it only takes a moment to get one. Once you’ve signed up drag the Google Marker into your menubar links. Then whenever you come across a site you think belongs in those included in the search engine just click the marker to add it.

Thanks for taking the time to test-drive the December, 2006 update to The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp! You’ll find the updated site available for your review at http://patchcamp.ranchochase.com

There’s a couple of ways to provide feedback. First, please fill out the quick and easy survey.

Then, if you’d like to provide more specific details about the site I encourage you to try out a very cool new way to annotate a web site with your comments using fleck.com. It will enable you to add the electronic equivalent of sticky notes to the Base Camp and share them. Fleck only works with the Firefox browser so far, but does not require you to install any plugins or register for an account. If you are using Firefox, here’s a link to annotate the newly updated Base Camp with your comments. Please feel free to send me your annotated pages via email (spanky at mac dot com).

You’ll find links to the survey and to annotate the Patch Collector’s Base Camp at the bottom of the home page. Of course you are always welcome to send me a direct email as well.

I’m looking forward to reading your comments and opinions!