--Pete

If the RNG only picked one number, then you're correct. But, I remember the characteristics of the RNG that John uses, it creates a random order for the full field of numbers. If there were only 10 numbers, the output might look like this: 4,6,8,3,5,1,9,10,2,7 The RNG doesn't pick only one number nor does it pick the first number and then list the others sequentially ... like this: 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1,2,3. Thus, having expired numbers ahead of your number does not tilt the odds in your favor. Yes? Cheers, Tom Correct, all issued numbers (i.e. 1 to 800) appear in random order, single column, same page. I'm no mathematician, but it seems to me that fair chance is preserved. Well, I AM a mathematician (of sorts) and that does seem to work fairly. It isn't how I'd do it, but it is fair.

Want to know how bad it is ... .Cheers, Tom Definitely Facebooked that one.

Hey Pete, Yeah, I understand all of that. It's just that I don't think (IMHO), that we need to start a completely new topic, every time that we go from the front yard, to the back yard, to fly. Just kidding and being a little facetious here, but what I'm saying is that why can't all the topics, about new flying places be combined under one topic ? Take care..........nick I agree on getting them all in one place. I was responding to the question about whether there was a current "discussion" going on and how to find it. I'm a great believer in hierarchical organization. I would probably set up a state-by-state framework and consolidate the flying locations by region within each state. (But then, I'm compulsive about things like that. All my photos are in folders and sub-folders of the 2009/2009-02/2009-02-21 variety. I have hierarchies like that under each subject for my photographs. Easy to determine when I took a photo, but hell to find a particular one if I don't know when it was taken.)

All I can think of is to tune the meta-keywords list a bit. I would include your own name for one thing. Also, if possible/sensible, get some of those words on the page itself, fairly high on the page. I suspect that words which are displayed by javascript (as opposed to actual text) get less weight in ranking. Then try some test searches and look at the keyword lists (and HTML source) of pages that show above kitelife.com. I'm sure they looked at your list.

Sounds like my unofficial motto for the Army Corps of Engineers: "Never let well enough alone." Still, the sites that I enjoy are all the result of continuous tweaking in the past, so I shouldn't try to avoid being part of the process. If you are mainly a reader (I'm a "jump-in" sort of guy) you might consider RSS feeds to an aggregator, which would let you see everything that's going on without having to actually visit those pesky different sites.

Were the new cords correct ? Yep. N42 19.420 W083 35.857 Of course, as a belt-and-suspenders sort of guy (I actually DO wear both) I also pulled the coordinates from Google Earth and got the exact same thing. (Don't forget the extra zero for those whose longitude is under 100 degrees.) Right on the button (er, house). Check it out - right there in SE Michigan. (You know you're from there if you hold your hand up and point at it to give directions.)

Gotcha! Thanks, Reef Runner. That worked.

REorganize? I'm just getting used to the way it IS !!! (And yes, the sub-forum links are useful.)

Mine drives from old email/newsgroup protocols: you used to be able to put a line with just two hyphens before your signature, and most email/newsreader programs would ignore anything beyond that line when quoting someone else's post. I liked the look of it and affixed it before my name as an e-sig. Strictly speaking, the sig should have two spaces before the hyphens to avoid confusing email clients that don't properly ignore anything past lines that have ONLY two hyphens and ignore anything past lines that START with two hyphens. Unfortunately almost all forum software deletes leading whitespace (like spaces and tabs). Someone once referred to me as "decrement Pete" as the double minus sign means to subtract one from a variable (decrement) in some programming language or other. (Maybe "C"?) It has one interesting side-effect: since the ASCII hyphen sorts before any alphabetic character, it tends to sort my "handle" at the beginning of most lists. (Another blast from the past, resurrected by the exploring newbie.)

BTW, this kite was found in Oct 2009. Good job by the entire kiting community. (One more item from history, 'bumped' by the exploring newbie.)

Cool stuff happens around midnight Eastern time on the KiteLife site. John's link is not all there is; click on the "Links" tab at the top of most KiteLife pages.

At the upper right of the main forum page is a link that says "View New Content". Click on that to see everything posted since your last visit. Then click on the little orange icon just to the left of the topic name to be taken to the first unread post. On AKA you can either click on the bright dots in the Forum Index, or click on SEARCH and then SHOW UNREAD POSTS. (There are generally several pages, but not all have new posts. It is a bug in the system they use.)

Hrm... Have you tried entering latitude/longitude instead? Not sure if it would work, just an idea. I did try. It won't accept it; at least in the format I tried: 42°19'21.60"N, 83°35'51.31"W That's OK; you can always zoom in on the house at the end of the long driveway just to the west. Switch to "Hybrid" map to see the house. Or check it out directly: http://home.comcast.net/~ford-rd/house/index.html

Right-hand end of the Tabs at the top of the page.

Fine, except Google (both G-Earth and G-Maps) can't seem to get the addresses right in my neighborhood. The marker is at my neighbor-to-the-east's driveway. The red arrow shows the right location. It would be nice if they would allow Lat/Lon location entry. (I tried. I know my Lat/Lon to the nearest hundredth of a second of Lat/Lon.)

It's Topic-Drift from RNG (several posts back).

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that your current system wouldn't get the desired results (pick a random subscriber), but that depending on how you managed the list, it might be easier (and less load on the random.org server) if you didn't have to run the list more than once to get a current subscriber's number. Given the way you store the membership numbers, I expect the way it is being done is about optimal.

As the RANDOM.ORG owner points out: Q3.1: How do I pick winners for a lottery or drawing? ...you can put your active subscriber numbers in a list, number it (easy to do with a spreadsheet or database), and submit the range (currently 1-295) to the Sequence Generator. Then look at your list to see the member number which is associated with that list number. This will give just as fair a chance for each member and never require regenerating the list of random numbers. This would require re-making the list of subscriber numbers any time you added or lost a subscriber, but, depending on how you maintain the subscriber list, that should not be difficult. If it is in a spreadsheet, sort by the active/inactive flag, and then use the row numbers of the active subscribers as the starting and ending numbers for the sequence generator. If it is in a database of some sort, write a report generator that creates a numbered list of active subscriber numbers.

Thanks for 'bumping' this. I really enjoyed those videos of the Zen Glider.

I moved twice, each time to a bigger house. After each move I had less room for "stuff" than before. This leads to my theorem: Moving fluffs things up. (Like fluffing up a pillow.) Dare to disturb your "stuff" and you will need a larger place to keep it.

I thought RNG was Random Number Generator. It's also all I see when I google { TLA RNG }.

Y'know, I had already found that button and never tried it. I thought 'mod' stood for 'moderator' and was there to allow Moderators to alter things "for the good of the forum", like deleting the picture of my Aunt Sally doing her famous dance. {edit} Got it! Thanks for the pointer.

Any organization run by volunteers attracts people who are both willing and want to run an organization. Frankly, most of us fail on both counts. To me, that means get out of the way and let them run it. As a non-attendee to the convention, what I used see is the magazine as the face of AKA. Now, reading the forum, I'm seeing some of the discontent, but ONLY from those who post on the forum, which is a TINY fraction of the membership. I think I am still in the get-out-of-the-way camp. I will read the forum, but may eventually ignore the political part, and concentrate on the news and assistance sections. Oh, yes, and continue to subscribe at a slightly higher level in return for not having to run the darn thing.

I uploaded a single picture, and was given the opportunity to add a caption and description. Then, I used the bulk uploader to upload 3 pictures. Now I would like to add captions and descriptions. I can't seem to find where to do this. Any help appreciated.