News from the SCD Community
Anselm Lingnau
posted the newest version of MiniCribs to the Strathspey SCD Database earlier today.
I also changed my automatic notifier to check the new MiniCribs web site, so we shall hopefully see new versions in the database much sooner after they appear on the official site.
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 10 February 2014 21:29 (last edited on 14 February 2014 12:52)
Anselm Lingnau
We moved our mail server to another machine last weekend, and since then Hotmail refuses to talk to the new one. This means that Hotmail-based subscribers to Strathspey mailing lists (including the Strathspey list itself but also lists like dancedata-friends or scddb-issues) will not be receiving mail from these lists (or indeed from myself) until this issue is resolved. I'm working with Hotmail to get this sorted but the experience is very close to kicking a dead whale along the beach.
Hotmail is currently pointing the finger at Symantec (another whale of a company), who, on behalf of Hotmail, seem to operate something called a »Brightmail Filter« – apparently messages from our server aren't bright enough or something. Hotmail promises to get back to me in at most 5 days. I'm not holding my breath. Sorry for the inconvenience.
(PSA: You really don't want to use Hotmail. Their being a Microsoft subsidiary should already tell you all you need to know about Hotmail. If e-mail providers were cars, Hotmail would be a broken-down Yugo. If e-mail providers were movies, Hotmail would be Heaven's Gate. If e-mail providers were places, Hotmail would be that unsavoury area around the train station where the drunks, petty criminals, and hookers hang out and respectable people don't like to stay for longer than they absolutely need to. If you're a Hotmail user, then do yourselves and the rest of the world a favour and find an e-mail provider that actually knows how to do e-mail.)
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 15 January 2014 13:43
Anselm Lingnau
In other news, registration for the 46th Frankfurt Spring Ball & Day School on 26 April is now open. Daphne Scobie will be teaching during the day, Dagmar Suhm will lead the afternoon walk-through, and Christine Moos and yours truly will be scraping the catgut/pounding the ivory on the night. See you there!
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 15 January 2014 12:59 (last edited on 14 February 2014 13:21)
Anselm Lingnau
just added a feature to the »Complex Dance Search« form in the dance database which lets you filter the results by lists. In other words, you get to enter the name of a dance list and the result will only contain dances that are in that list and also match all the other criteria that you specified.
What makes this really useful is that the »list name« can actually be a regular expression that matches a number of lists. Hence if you want to see all the reels on (recent) Frankfurt Spring Ball programmes, select »Reel« in the »Type« drop-down and enter »Frankfurt Spring Ball« into the »Lists« field. If you want to see all the three-couple set dances that the Frankfurt SCD Club did in 2013, set up the »Couples« and »Set shape« drop-downs accordingly and put »FSCDC.*2013« (note: »dot-star« – this stands for »any number of arbitrary characters«) into the »Lists« field. Enjoy!
(This feature was suggested by Sir Toby.)
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 15 January 2014 12:54 (last edited on 14 February 2014 12:52)
Anselm Lingnau
published the invitation to the 10th FSCDC/CGB Tea Dance, which will take place on 11 January. We will be dancing a selection of Ann Dix's dances in her memory.
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 22 November 2013 11:03 (last edited on 14 February 2014 13:21)
Anselm Lingnau
has added an event calendar to the my.strathspey site. (Note also the »Upcoming Events« sidebar in the right-hand column.)
Right now this only displays events from SCD groups which have their web pages on my.strathspey. We'll look at adding events from other sources later.
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 2 October 2013 23:07 (last edited on 14 February 2014 13:22)
David Bowen
Hi I have just updated my web site and offer you my accordion services, I am willing to travel throughout UK to play for Scottish Country Dance groups - give me a call on 07824 333 769
· Posted by David Bowen · 26 September 2013 12:22 (last edited on 26 September 2013 12:22)
Anselm Lingnau
has now rolled out the first version of collection support for the database. Look for the »Collections« link in the navigation box.
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 29 August 2013 10:07 (last edited on 14 February 2014 12:53)
SCDDB Collections Q&A
# SCDDB Collections Q & A I wrote this in January 2013 to introduce the idea of collections on the SCDDB “dancedata-friends” mailing list. Since I've been working on collections recently, it seems like a good idea to give the article a more prominent place. **Q. What are “collections” and what are they good for?** A. The idea is that you tell the database what stuff you have, and the database then lets you restrict its operation to deal only with that stuff. %%!MORE **Q. Why would that be useful?** A. Imagine you're a dance teacher planning your next lesson. When searching for dances with a specific formation, there's little sense in having to look at lots of dances that you don't actually have instructions for. **Q. Are collections only for dances?** A. No – collections are going to be able to contain publications, dances, albums, and recordings. (At first, anyway. Tunes might also be useful for musicians but we won't go there quite yet.) **Q. Why bother with dances and recordings – won't dealing with just publications and albums be enough?** A. In theory, yes. In real life, people tend to amass photocopies (or PDF files) of dance descriptions, and – using web sites such as the iTunes store – it is now possible to download individual tracks from some albums. Also, some dances circulate as leaflets without having been formally published, so they are not part of any publication in the database and would be impossible to add to a collection in a system that only dealt with publications. **Q. Will I have to go to the database page for every single dance, publication, album, and recording that I have in order to add it to the database?** A. Hopefully not! While it will be quite possible to add individual “items” to a collection, there will be a way of giving the database a list of items to add in bulk. Generally, adding a publication to a collection will add all the dances in that publication (and the same applies to albums and recordings). So you will only need to add “loose” dances individually. **Q. How is “bulk adding” supposed to work?** A. The current idea is that you will be able to download a CSV file containing the database IDs, names, and useful additional information (such as a book's publisher) for all the publications or albums in the database. You can then use a program like Excel or OpenOffice Calc to “import” this file and flag all the items that you actually have, before “exporting” it to CSV and re-uploading it to the SCDDB web site. Adding dances could work the same way, but a 14,000+ line Excel sheet might be a bit unwieldy (the same applies to recordings, to a lesser degree). We'll have to see what people are prepared to put up with, or whether anyone has a better idea. **Q. I used to use Alan Paterson's DanceData program to keep track of what I have. Will it be possible to “import” that existing data into the web-based database?** A. Perhaps. I haven't looked into it yet. **Q. What about Patty Lindsay's “GhillieTracks” program? Will it be possible to “synchronise” GhillieTracks's idea of what I own with that of SCDDB?** A. Perhaps. I shall have to talk to Patty about this. (I don't know a lot about GhillieTracks.) **Q. I have a list of all my dance books together with the number of the shelf where each book is stored. Will I be able to store the shelf numbers in a SCDDB collection?** A. Yes – every item will have a free-form “comment”/“additional data” field that is designed to contain that sort of information. You will need to come up with your own conventions for what goes in there. **Q. I have lots of dance descriptions as PDF files on my computer, and also lots of MP3 files. Can the database know about these and help me organise them?** A. We're considering storing URLs with collection items, which could also refer to local files. (If you use several computers to store items you will need to arrange for the file names to be the same on all of your computers for this to work best.) At first you will probably be responsible for entering your own file names into the database, although someone could write a program to scan your hard disk and do this automatically. **Q. How will collections show up on SCDDB's web pages?** A. The current idea is to add a “collection selector” to the “Navigation” box in the right-hand column. This would let you pick “no collection”, one of your collections, or “any of your collections”. From that moment, the database will restrict its operations to the items (albums, recordings, dances, or publications) in that collection – until you select another collection, “no collection”, or “any collection”. On the detail pages for items that are able to be part of a collection, there will be a list of all of your collections that contain the item in question, together with any additional data or URL that you entered. There is also going to be a “Collections” page where you can look at your collections, add new collections, or delete existing ones if you need to (among other things). **Q. Why would I want to have more than one collection?** A. Suppose you have lots of music on your PC and part of that music on your iPod. This lets you keep track of what is on either. Or consider that you're teaching a workshop abroad and can only bring so many books. If for whatever reason you need to be able to re-plan your lessons it is convenient to have the use of a temporary collection of exactly the material you brought with you, instead of having to go through various paper books manually. **Q. Can other database users look at my collections at all?** A. Not at first. Generally, collections can only be accessed by their “owners” – the people who originally set them up. In the future it may become possible to let other users look at your collections, or even change them. **Q. Why on earth would that be useful?** A. Consider the case of a shared “club laptop” where teachers can add new CDs that the club bought, or new dance descriptions that they downloaded from the Internet. You could let other local teachers look at your collection of resources and vice-versa. That would make it easier to lend and borrow publications because you don't need to ask the other teachers whether they have X, and they don't need to go check. Finally, consider the way some dance clubs, or federations of dance clubs, operate for the purpose of holding regular dances. There could be a pool of dances or publications that are eligible for social programmes, and that pool could change over time. A shared collection would be one way of managing that pool conveniently for all its users. **Q. All right, this sounds somewhat useful. When can we expect to see this in the database?** A. Hopefully soon, but of course with spare-time projects such as these it is difficult to make concrete promises. In the meantime, feel free to suggest improvements or additional features that you might like to see.
· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 26 August 2013 16:00 (last edited on 17 April 2023 1:39)
Recently seen
Sign in to see recent visitors!
Sites
Upcoming Events
- Nothing just now