Paul Schwartz

Well, the upgrade seemed to ge pretty well. It's a BIG upgrade, so please just take your time to learn it (I have no idea what's new either). I'll try to restore the logo and ads as soon as I can figure out how... Thanks for your patience, Paul

I love you man. Nice to actually smile when reading a thread now!! Thanks, Paul

I'm getting ready to upgrade the forums to the new vesrion 3.0. Yes, a lot seems to have changed, but it's the same software so it's not completely new/changed, and it has many new features, and many important new administration features (better anti-spammer and security settings). Coming probably in the next few weeks once I've gotten everything ready and am confident that it's in a stable version... So don't be surprised if the boards are offline for a few hours in the coming weeks and if things suddenly look different!! Thanks, Paul

It looks like a misunderstanding and not a scam... I've seen all levels of "restoration" too... sometimes a person wants a playable instrument, sometimes they want a showpiece... We'll leave it at that. Paul

Then I suggest you take it over to The Session. This forum is for concertina discussion. And no, this is not a democracy. Sincerely, The Dear Supreme Leader

Yes, that's it exactly... it's a CONSTANT battle against the spammers, scammers and hackers. The forums, and the PM system are not a mail system, so if you need to do any serious one-to-one or one-to-many communications, you need to use a proper email-based system. Thanks for your understanding everyone. Paul

Sure, no problem. Once the PDF (or PDFs) get done, just email them to me (paul@concertina.net) and I'll be happy to post them for download on the site and link to them from the home page and Learning pages. Thanks, and good work all! Paul

Your account is not compromised... it's just links to stuff trying to get you to buy their garbage or sign up for porn stuff or whatever the spammers are up to at any particular time. Paul

Yes, I've just downloaded a new patch that does just that. I know, closing the barn door... but this should take care of this new type of spammer who manually registers, then sets up a bot to send the PMs (they used to have bots try to register and then other bots try to post messages in the forums... they were easier to catch). Thanks, and again, sorry for having this jerk get by me, Paul

Sorry about the spammer who got by me yesterday. I've gotten rid of him now. I rarely miss these jerks but this one slipped by me... Best regards, Paul

I'll defer to Chris here. Wise man. It's not a bad idea to make it "transactions-only", but I think the chatter around buying/selling/scams is probably of more value in the end... even if I don't agree with all the opinions, just having them out there helps people form their own conclusions. And this chatter really is often quite useful and informative, so what the heck. But it was a good suggestion, so thanks everyone for the input. Paul

Please keep the political discussions to topics of which governments best support concertina study, concertina music, concertina research & development, and concertina production. I have yet to see either President Palin or President Clinton put forward their concertinist policies, so I reserve judgement on these two fine presidential women. Well, that's my view of things from here in Canada where we most definitely do NOT support arming bears (or moose, even though they should be able to defend themselves against President Palin). Thank you fine citizens of Concertina-land. King Paul

Absolutely. Now you're talking! We've all been through that. Oh my god... you guys are like a bunch of junkies!! He likes his cheap boxes, but now you're trying to get him hooked on "the good stuff". Shame on you all ;-) Paul

Okay guys and gals, enough with the baiting and name-calling. If you can't say something nice, back off... you aren't going to change the world (or anyone in it) but posting nasty personal attacks and "jokes" here... Thanks, Paul

And member deleted. Now, that wasn't so difficult, was it :-) Paul

Wow, sounds nice. Hmmm... looking at Google maps I can see they have a very high resolution photo of the Capitola Wharf... I don't see you there. Come on, wave next time the satellite goes overhead... Paul

The date problem is something I need to fix in the programming... Yes, links inside the description should be fine. Cheers, Paul

The ABC-to-Midi conversion program was causing major problems on the server. I'm investigating, but it doesn't look good... I upgraded a few months ago based on a recommendation, but looks like it was a bad idea... I'll probably downgrade if I can to try and get this feature working again. Paul

The search engine in the forums system is not a perfect system... compromises have to be made for efficiency and reliability. That's why Google exists... for serious searching, I'd suggest using Google to search these forums. Check the Google help documents and you can see how you can easily use google to search a specific site or part of a site (domain). If you have the Google Toolbar installed, there is even a button right there ("Search only on...", the magnifying glass with eyeballs). Paul

Thanks for your efforts, Paul (and I'm really not complaining). But it's happening pretty much every day (twice today). But not every time I check in (which can be several times in a day). You mean it's asking you to sign in again? Is it remembering your name and just asking for your password, or is it not remembering your login name either? Let me know and I'll try to find out the reason... Thanks, Paul

FWIW, it's still happening. About 2/3 of the times I visit the forum I have to reenter my login information, despite tossing my cookies several times. FWIW, yesterday I also had to log in again, though I never bother logging out. But so far it's only happened the once, and that was after I'd been absent for a week. I don't use either AOL or a Mac. Right, one of the new security systems is set to expire old sessions/logins after about a week of inactivity. These new limits are here to help protect against session hijacking. Paul

Thanks. I've done a big cleaning and modified the registration form to cut down on these things. Paul I think we often forget how much you have to do to just keep this forum a useable space. Thankyou for all your hard work. - W

They were appearing inline as always (and they still do), but only if you're logged in. Correct, guests didn't have rights to images. I turned this back on for now, so guests have image access again. Thanks for the feedback. Paul

Yes, I've cut these scammers and spammers out of doing anything bad on the site now (posting such things in the forums for example), but they're still registering and auto/bot-submitting forms wherever they can. I'll see what I can do to further cut them out and remove them from the user database. Thanks for the reminder... Paul

Jim, It's right there in the Member's Profile too... just click the "Options" drop-down near the top left (under the photo). Tabs on top are a quick way to see most recent activity without having to dig deeper. Paul Yep, that's part of what I said. As you say, it doesn't work -- or doesn't work adequately, IMO -- directly from a member's Profile. Thanks for mentioning "the active members list". I've now discovered that in such a list in the "Members" section one can click on a member's name and get a dropdown list that includes "Find Member's Posts"... but "Find Member's Topics" is not an option there. It's that sort of inconsistency that I find frustrating. (I also think it's bad programming practice, since it suggests that there are two separate programs to do "the same" thing, with a danger that in a future upgrade or bug fix, one might be updated and the other not.) I find it strange that one can't access the full information on a member's Profile page -- what I would think of as the primary source, -- and that to access the full list of a member's Topics one first has to find a Topic in which they've posted, since it appears that that is the only place where "Find Member's Posts" both appears and gives access to the entire history.