Area 6 : News & Views

NEWS ARCHIVE - May to Aug 2000

This week has been exceptionally busy again - typical of a month in which the site has so far received over 115,000 visits, the highest ever recorded here. Being that August is traditionally a quiet month for us, we're beginning to wonder what things will be like once the schools go back! The webstats page will be updated as soon as possible, depending on how long it takes to put the Newsletter together.

The Monday "Cheats, Tips & Shortcuts" page at Andy's Guide to Pokémon went up at the beginning of this week, along with new pages for MEW and "Questions and Answers", as well as further site areas for Accessories, Remedies and Power Ups. The other days this week have been largely taken up with residual admin. matters and clearing some degree of mail correspondence backlog - everything is fully up to date now and the remaining items to complete the site integration should be completed next week, after which is scheduled the main pagebuilding for the new French resource offering many free-to-print worksheets for children learning and practising this language.

Our thanks to Eileen Baudinette for her follow-up e-mail and to Jacquie Gill, Vinny's girlfriend, who also sent an update - Vinny had a BBC interview scheduled for today (the BBC haven't yet given details of expected broadcast date/time) and there will also be a documentary ready in a couple of months, which we hope will be shown all around the world. Vinny has a lecture tour planned which includes England, so maybe some of us will get to meet him then. No doubt details will be available on his website shortly - and we're told that the photos of Vinny's homecoming will be up on his site by the end of this week.

16^th August: Things have been unbelievably busy here on the site, with the visit level reaching over 4600 yesterday [see webstats]. This afternoon's been particularly busy, some of you may have noticed the count "crashed" and zeroed somewhere between 3 and 5pm, probably because we had around 900 visits over that 2-hour period. Whether the counter will cope as the site gets busier remains to be seen; we can reinstate it from here as required (our thanks to Mike Ridyard who installed this brilliant counter initially!) but not being on line 24 hours a day means it won't always get done immediately.

16^th August: The new "cheats page" for 14^th August was up on line in the Pokémon area by mid-day on Monday - this is the first chance we've had to update this page since then. Building is still continuing apace for the Pokémon area although finishing the main setting by this weekend is looking increasingly unlikely ..... it may have to be deferred a week or two but we'll see how things go. Building of the French pages remains scheduled for September to December so it will be easier if the main Pokémon pagebuilding is clear by then ..... and the pages for the (final!) major new area, The Magical World of Harry Potter , will be fitted in whenever is possible along the way.

9^th August: New update on line from Vinny Lauwers: 260 miles to go!! Vinny's not having an easy time of things but as ever he's aware of the needs of so many kids out there for whom this extraordinary voyage is raising money ... do read this update, if you get chance (linked from the big map on our FOCUS page).

9^th August: Webstats page just updated - sorry, no time yesterday! - you'll see from the figures that the visit levels for the site as a whole remain extremely high and this increases the workload at all levels. Once the main Pokémon pages are completed, things should settle down a little here.

7^th August: After the recent appeal for help from Namuli Baligidde Peace, a Ugandan girl urgently seeking support to continue her studies (see Guestbook), we wrote asking for an e-mail contact address; Namuli has now been in touch and we've added her e-mail address to the Guestbook entry.

7^th August: Our ISP Force 9 seems to have their webstats facility up and running again ... so we've added the stats provided for this weekend, to the webstats page. Traffic levels have settled down again after the phenomenally busy 7 days from 25^th July (for which we'll never know the full figures!) but have steadied out at a higher level than previously.

5^th August: After some degree of reflection, we've decided that one further (huge!) area should be included on the site: "The Magical World of Harry Potter". This website is for and about children ... and Harry Potter is such a major focus for children these days that we simply couldn't exclude these wonderful books.

We've put a couple of sample pages on line which you can access by clicking here. For now, pagebuilding commitments elsewhere on the site mean that the foreseeable "weeks ahead" are fully booked, but we'll add to this new area whenever the opportunity presents itself. We have a lot planned .....

Meanwhile, Andy's Guide to Pokémon (still a primary interest for kids, as any parent who attended the recent Pokémon trading days will verify!) is still receiving a massive traffic flow, so two "mirror" sites have now been set up, accessible via the main Super Cool Zone index page, to safeguard bandwidth usage. One of the sites (housed at Freeola) is offline just now, till Tuesday or Wednesday next week apparently, but we'll link it back in as soon as it becomes operational again.

3^rd August 2000:
Today marks the most harrowing report ever received from lone skipper Vinny Lauwers, who came unbelievably close to tragedy whilst rounding Eclipse Island, south of Western Australia. As usual he's triumphed against all the odds - but this report makes you realise exactly how close to the edge he's having to take things - and how amazingly lucky he was on this occasion. Take a look at "Close to disaster", linked from the map graphic of Vinny's journey round the world, on our FOCUS page.

2^nd August: The second Newsletter for the Pokémon area of the site is now on line.

2^nd August: Just a note about the webstats page - this has had to be discontinued for the time being, as our ISP isn't providing any logs or stats at all just now - currently traffic is pretty heavy as you'll know from the escalating visitor count on the site, but we have no way of knowing how long it will take Force 9 to get their stats provision up and running again.

1^st August: Project HappyChild News for August 2000 is now on line

28^th July: Apologies to everyone who's had trouble accessing the website during the course of today. This morning, there was a power down at our ISP Force 9, meaning that all systems had to be re-booted; things were just getting back to normal when the cables started arching on their main distribution board just before 6pm and the fire brigade had to be called, consequently all websites on their server were unavailable till about 10pm this evening. Just about everything's up and running again now, but it's been a memorable day .....

28^th July: All 150 Pokémon are now on line in the Pokédex [121-150 uploaded yesterday]. Traffic levels yesterday across the Project HappyChild site were almost as high as on 26^th July - we don't have stats for either day yet as our ISP's portal hasn't yet been updated as they're in the midst of other admin. work, but we're informed the figures should be available soon.

26^th July: The portal is now working at our ISP and the traffic figures for Tuesday 25^th July have been uploaded to our webstats page.

26^th July: Due to rapidly accelerating traffic to "Andy's Guide to Pokémon", a mirror site has been set up at www.supercoolzone.plus.com , to which some of the links from here may be directed in due course, to safeguard the Project HappyChild bandwidth as a whole. Webstats aren't available yet for 25^th July from our ISP (whose portal is down) but the on-site visitor count logged over 4000 yesterday and it's likely the portal figures will be higher. We've updated the webstats page with Monday's figures, and Tuesday's will be added as/when provided to us.

26^th July: The première of Flintstones Viva Rock Vegas (in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital) took place last night so we've taken down the many banners advertising this event, from the main index pages across the site. The page itself will remain on line till the end of today, but the General Events calendar has now been updated. Next major event scheduled is on 10^th September, a celebrity football match "The Battle of The Soaps", at Villa Park [players from a range of soap operas including EastEnders and Coronation Street], arranged by Children in Crisis.

22^nd July: The next 20 Pokémon in the series (61-80) have now been added to the Pokédex at Andy's Guide to Pokémon. Building this area is a fairly lengthy process but once all 150 basic Pokémon characters are in place a great deal of other related information can be added. The Walk Through for the blue, red and yellow games has to be the most comprehensive to be found anywhere on the Internet - and it goes step by step from the very beginning right the way through. Thanks go to the many people who have recommended this area to friends, its separate visitor count is accelerating daily and it has brought many more children into contact with Project HappyChild.

21^st July: Just a reminder that "Fun Day 2000" (organised by The Children's Trust) takes place tomorrow, at Tadworth Court in Surrey. An open day for the whole family with stalls, live music, good selection of craft goods, Punch and Judy Show, family fun, face painting, etc. - see General Events.

Meanwhile it's hoped to complete the Pokémon resource (for red, blue and yellow versions of the game) during July and August 2000 [this area has already had several thousand visits whilst under construction] and we have recently added more pages to the Pokédex, which now has 60 Pokémon in place, interlinked from the huge Evolution index, Types and Elements, and wherever appropriate from the detailed Walk Through for the game. Pagebuilding for the Gold and Silver versions is unlikely to start until after September, being slotted in wherever there are breaks in the French schedule, and allowing for inputting and uploading information sent in for the other many areas of the website as a whole.

14^th July:
We'd like to thank The International Association of Web Masters and Designers for the Golden Web Award 2000-2001, presented to Project HappyChild today "in recognition of creativity, integrity and excellence on the Web".

30^th June: Over the last couple of days we've been adding a number of pages to the new Pokémon resource. There's a lot more detail on the H.M.s page which is now linked where appropriate from the Walk Through for children trying to find their way through red, blue and yellow versions of the game, and we've also added twenty more Pokémon to the Pokédex, and interlinked these from the pages for Evolution, Types and Elements. We still have a huge pagebuilding schedule for this area, but hope to add a few pages at a time regularly for the next few weeks, gradually interlinking all the different factors as each set of new items is added.

27^th June: Some thought-provoking insights on line today from Solo Skipper Vinny Lauwers, on inspiring kids to believe in themselves and their abilities. If you compare the map of his current position against the one on our FOCUS page, the beginning of the journey, it shows just how far he has travelled - and how near he is to achieving his goal of being the first disabled person ever to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world. For Vinny's latest diary update, "Some Thoughts", please see the link from FOCUS.

25^th June: World Memory Championships 2000 - organised by Michael Tipper, who writes the Accelerated Learning area here - the dates for this event in London, in August 2000, have been *changed*. Please see the latest Press Release for more details.

23^rd June: One of the most harrowing accounts yet from Solo Skipper Vinny Lauwers has just gone on line - "Surfing Vinny Style" ..... for this latest diary update please see the link from FOCUS.

23^rd June: Just a reminder that "Celebrity Clay Pigeon Shooting" (Children's Trust) and the "Ladies' Golf-a-Thon" (Norwood Ravenswood), both events raising funds to help disadvantaged children, are taking place next week [Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively] - see the General Events page for further details.

23^rd June: The entry for I CAN [the national educational charity for children and young people with speech and language difficulties] has been updated in the Project HappyChild Directory. If you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory, you may wish to update this.

21^st June: We've been unable to discover any more about what happened to the Millennium Balloon launched from Quesnel, BC, Canada (despite several e-mails) - we'll leave the link from FOCUS for the time being but have removed the picture / link from the main Welcome page here. In its place we have put direct links to The Hunger Site and The Rainforest Site.

Simply visiting the Hunger Site each day and pressing the "donate" button gives 1/4 cup of food to the World Food Programme multiplied by the number of sponsors for any given day [eg 4 sponsors equals one cup of food]. Donations via The Hunger Site have helped the World Food Programme (WFP) provide more than 1..8 million meals to Ethiopian school children in the midst of the drought that is currently threatening 13.4 million people in five countries - Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Somalia, in Africa. Donations via The Hunger Site have also helped WFP to provide 5.5 million rations of Indiamix, a special blend of food for malnourished women and children.

A daily visit to The Rainforest Site donates *land* - your donation adds to the more than 550,000 acres of rainforest already protected by The Nature Conservancy's Adopt An Acre® program. Each sponsor on the page on any given day pays for 2.4 square feet of land - eg if you visit today you personally will protect 12 square feet of rainforest. Multiply that up by a year's visits (assuming an ongoing rate of 5 commercial sponsors on their site per day) and you will have saved over 4000 square feet of rainforest by this time next year.

You can access links to both sites from the main Welcome page here [you'll need to scroll down to just below the opening screen].

9^th June: A new website link has been added for BREAK [holidays and respite care for children and adults with learning disabilities] in the Project HappyChild Directory.

9^th June: The "Surftime" helplines at BT were entirely unavailable last night - we've had clarification this morning that it's necessary to actually register and book the service with BT, as well as setting up the access to Surftime via individual ISPs. Delay on using the service is likely to be 4-8 days if you haven't pre-registered with BT, and 48 hours if you've pre-registered but not actually booked, and dependent also on ISPs actually having their systems fully set up for the access. We've been informed also that using the ISP-provided 0844 number will enable access provided your exchange is compatible, but that BT will actually be charging for individual calls on 0844 until such time as they issue individual confirmations to users, that they are fully booked onto the service.

6^th June: Another update from Solo Skipper Vinny Lauwers is on line - "Thinking of home" - Vinny reflects on living his dream, the increased worldwide focus on his epic voyage, and the new challenges that await him when he returns home ..... for today's diary update please see the link from FOCUS.

6^th June: Just a reminder that the originals of pages duplicated during the streamlining of Schools and Appeals areas will be removed as soon as BT Surftime finally goes live (now scheduled for this Friday) - so please, if you have chance, update bookmarks and site links to any of these areas by locating new page addresses via the main Index pages for Schools Interchange and Appeals & Projects Worldwide.

Another area which has been both streamlined and re-located is the French worksheets area, currently under construction. This area is linked from around 700 pages across the site and at present we're in the process of updating and re-uploading linked pages; this should be completed within the next day or two, after which the original French pages will be removed. Being that this area will span several hundred pages in due course, we have streamlined to minimise download times as well as increasing accessibility.

We're hoping to return to building the French pages (and the new Pokémon area) within the next few days.

5^th June: The Millennium Balloon launch went ahead on 4^th June - hope you got a chance to look at some of the live streaming video of the view from the balloon - payload now recovered (came down on fire!) - see their site for photos of the launch and ongoing updates - link from FOCUS.

26^th May: With notifications due to go out today for the UK Pokémon championships, new pages for the first 20 Pokémon in the Pokédex have been added to the Pokémon guide to the blue and red games. Pages for the remaining 130 Pokémon will be on line shortly.

The date has now been fixed for the "Battle of the Soaps" - 10^th September - taking place at Villa Park - details of all these events (and many more) are on the General Events Calendar.

20^th May: The Millennium Balloon launch scheduled for today has been deferred due to "Bad Weather and Jetstream" - now re-scheduled to Saturday 27^th May 2000 - see FOCUS.

19^th May: After comments received that the Site History could usefully be a little more comprehensive, this page and Penny's bio page have been updated.

18^th May: Links have been changed on the Booklists page for the National Association of Toy & Leisure Libraries' range of publications including a directoryof companies producing or selling toys and play equipment suitable for children or adults with special needs and the results of the Good Toy Awards for 1999, for products which have been rigorously tested in toy libraries.

16^th May: Our thanks to Phil (original Guestbook entry 14.4.99) for alerting us to a broken link for Regent [Schools China], and to Jiang at Regent for providing updated info. The Schools China page has now been updated.

15^th May: Solo Skipper Vinny Lauwers' latest update is on line - "Parasail Fundraiser" [money raised for disabled and disadvantaged kids] ..... you'll find the link to this update in FOCUS.

14^th May: With the Pokémon Championship 2000 scheduled to begin in the UK in June, pages are being added to the Pokémon resource as fast as they can be built. The Evolution page gives full details of levels and modes of evolution [this page is extraordinarily comprehensive] and details will be added with respect to "Hard to find" Pokémon in due course. Pages have been set up for H.M.s and T.M.s, with full details to be added shortly, and the first item has been added to the "Cheats & Shortcuts" page [although Cheats cannot be used in the Championship]. The Pokédex page is now on line - all 150 page blanks for individual Pokémon have now been built and these will be completed, uploaded and interlinked as soon as time allows. The Walk Through already on line is very straightforward and should allow most children to navigate their way through the many complex stages of the game.

13^th May: Millennium Balloon launch scheduled for 13^th May has been deferred due to "Thunderstorms and Ground Winds" - to Saturday 20^th May 2000 - see FOCUS.

12^th May: The text entry for Fairbridge has been updated in the Project HappyChild Directory; Fairbridge now have 12 centres in some of the most disadvantaged inner city areas across the UK.

11^th May: We have added a direct link to the website of BLISS * The National Charity for the Newborn, from their entry in the Project HappyChild Directory. Their wish-list of equipment required for special and intensive care baby units nationwide has now been fulfilled, and has been removed from our UK Appeals area.

10^th May: Solo Skipper Vinny Lauwers' latest update is on line - "My very own pool" ..... you'll find the link to this update in FOCUS.

For children who visit this site - and all you parents out there who'd like to know a little more about this game which so absorbs them - a new resource is being built, "Andy's guide to Pokémon".

This area has a no-nonsense "walk through" for the red and blue games - easy for kids to read (and a comprehensive guide to the many different stages required to complete the game, for those children who are having trouble with the harder stages) as well as a list of all the different Pokémon with their elements and types [1-150].

All resources in the Pokémon area are free to print - new items will be added whenever time allows.

5^th May: Solo Skipper Vinny Lauwers' latest update - "Overwhelmed" - 5th May 2000 is now on line, along with a photo of Vinny with Trindade in the background, the only land he's seen since Chile and rounding the Horn. He's heading for the Tristan da Cunha group now, 1300 miles on, then it's straight home .....

3^rd May: An appeal has been received for help with education costs for a Russian orphan girl called Dasha [please see Guestbook]. Also now linked from the Russia page in Appeals and Projects Worldwide.

3^rd May: The e-mail address for POD [Entertainment for Children in Hospitals] has been modified in the Project HappyChild Directory - if you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory you may wish to update this.

2^nd May: Because of the growing size of the mailing list for the Newsletter, we have finally yielded to the inevitable and set up a ListBot [automatic] account to send out the monthly mailing of Project HappyChild News. This month took over one hundred separate sends to a portion of the mailing list each, which isn't viable long term.

There's a "sign up" facility for the auto-version of the Newsletter at the foot of our "Welcome Page" - we'll be writing to existing subscribers to request they transfer to the new list, and new subscribers are welcome to use this facility straight away.

2^nd May: The postal address for Fairbridge has been modified in the Project HappyChild Directory - if you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory you may wish to update this.

1^st May: Project HappyChild News May 2000 now on line.

NEWSLETTERS - this website has been on line since 1998 - there have been a lot of Newsletters! The archive is here and the very last Newsletter is here.