Archive from August 2001

4:04 PM - Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (at the box office?) (posted by Allen )
This has very little to do with Disney, but Kevin Smith's latest film, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", was number one at the box office last night (Friday). Smith is asking for everyone to go see it Saturday to help is beat out American Pie 2 as the number one film for the weekend (a first for any of his films). So, if anyone is thinking of going to see this movie, go see it today/tonight. (Other Kevin Smith films include Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma.)

8:28 PM - CGI SCRIPT ERRORS! ...oops... (posted by Allen )
Here is another example of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. Lately, spammers have figured out that they can hijack CGI feedback form scripts and use them to send anonymous spam! If you have gotten any weird spam lately that says "Here is the results of your feedback form" or similar, that is what is going on.

Due to complaints against our server (apparently other accounts have had this problem), Webhost turned on a restriction that prevented CGIs from being ran from ANY page that was not loaded from this server. What this means is if you type in "www.disneyfans.com" and load the front page, you did NOT come FROM my server -- it came from your bookmarks or browser. Those scripts would be refused. This caused the first problem.

Next, anyone trying to access a script directly -- like a banner exchange or the message board .cgi -- would be refused.

Lastly, anyone with the referrer tag in their browser turned off (for security or anonynimity reasons) would not be able to see the results of scripts on pages they visit.

These issues are being addressed right now and things should be back to normal "real soon". Thanks for your patience with all the errors...

3:27 PM - Never miss another Disney TV program again... (posted by Allen )
Earlier this year I picked up a TiVo digital VCR. If you don't know about these, you need to. It records TV to a hard disk. You can pause live TV for up to 30 minutes and anything on the hard drive has fast forward and rewind capabilities with no waiting -- like a CD or DVD only faster. You pay a small subscription fee to get access to the TV listings. Scroll around and click on what you want to record and TiVo "tapes" it each time. Basically, anytime you turn it on there will be something on the hard drive to watch. This thing even LEARNS what you like and tries to tape things you might enjoy -- always a suprise!

Early this year a new update came out (for free) that let you do more searching. I can now enter "Disneyland" as a keyword and ANY program that comes on with that in the description it will tape. It tapes all those reruns that come on at 3am, and then I watch them the next day when I have time -- zipping past commercials ;-) I never watched much TV before I got this thing, but now I catch the Haunted Mansion special every time it's on :)

Anyway, TiVo is giving a $100 price break and FREE SHIPPING right now -- they asked me to pass along this information:

"Go to http:www.tivo.com/order or call
1-877-806-0883 and enjoy instant savings."

It's the best gadget I've ever bought ;-)

11:44 PM - Another record breaking month...! (posted by Allen )
July server stats are in. There were 552,020 hits with a transfer amount of 3502 megs. Again, thanks for visiting!

4:48 PM - June 2001 - Great month! (posted by Allen )
Server stats from June 2001 are in and they show the amount of data transferred was 2741 megs -- the highest we've ever had! Server hits were over 465,000 (though we did beat that back in April with over 490,000 hits then). Putting this in perspective: DisneyFans.com transferred enough data in June to fill almost 5 CDs. Can you imagine how long that would take from a dial-up connection? A big thanks to everyone for visiting, and to Scott at webhost.fm for making this kind of storage and bandwidth affordable. If you need a site here, let me know and I'll set you up. Also, if you'd like to drop a dollar or two my way, there is a "PayPal Donate" button on the main page for that purpose. Hosting this site is cheap ($7/month), but buying the software used to build and maintain it is not. I just invested in another tool for creating the mpeg audio/video galleries and I certainly wouldn't turn down any hand outs right now. Thanks!

4:40 PM - Christmas in August? (posted by Allen )
I just wanted to point out a completely non-Disney related web site I found: www.lettersfromsanta.com. They works with St. Nick to send letters (postmarked at "North Pole") to good boys and girls. I encourage you to drop by. One of the helpers, Chris Overstreet, helped me improve one of my CGI scripts (which I use on my opening page) so I thought I'd plug his good work as a thank you. So, thanks, Chris!

7:34 PM - Audio/Video Gallery Online! (posted by Allen )
After acquiring a new indexing program last night, I have taken a few minutes to put together a new version of the Audio/Video Gallery. There are currently over 100 movie and audio clips available. The movies include Disneyland snow, Rocket Rods, and other sections of the park. The audio clips are actually digital pictures with a five second audio track -- not just a .wav file or something to download. It's experimental, but please take a look and let me know what you think. Click on "[more]" to go directly to this section.

3:23 AM - CGI scripts, anyone? (posted by Allen )
It's been awhile since I've done any programming, so I decided to start working on some PERL CGI scripts to enhance this site. If you want to check out what I've been doing, click the "[more]" link. Enjoy!

3:51 PM - "Secret" Walt Disney Anniversary Site (posted by Allen )
I thought I'd share this with everyone who isn't already on the Disney mailing list. It has some screen savers, icons, desktop images and a version of the personality test from DCA's Animation experience. Pretty cool!

Subject: Hey Disney Fans. Check out this cool Disney site!
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 14:42:43 -0700
From: Allen Huffman
To: "Disney Fans"

Take a peek!

Allen Huffman thought you should check this out! It's got Disney characters and magical memories, along with some great interactive surprises. You can also get a sneak peek at some big things to come in the Walt Disney World(R) Theme Parks. You'll need the Magic Password below to get in.

Go to the Secret Disney Site
http://disneyworldsecret.click-url.com/go/disney_text_viral_/direct/
The Magic Password: WALT