What's New

Here's a list of changes, additions, tweaks and all that, in reverse chronological order with the most recent change at the top, so you can easily tell what's going on without having to scroll down through the whole thing.

Please use the Write me! box to let me know what you think of the Site, how you think it could be improved, and anything else that happens to be on your mind. I check my mail two or three times a day and I promise a prompt answer. Thanks! (You might also consider buying a print or two, while you're at it....)

(Updated November 1999) After much hair-tearing, clothes-rending, soul-searching, etc., etc., etc.... a Major revamping of the site, including (at long last) CREDIT CARDS!!!:

• The donavan.org domain is now mine: www.donavan.org is an index page which has links to the Organisation and Foundation Sites and it is now the "master" page for everything, with more to be added in the future. (servsite.com is still the server, only the routings have been modified.) The separate Sites are now registered as:
• www.chesley.donavan.org: this Site
• www.foundation.donavan.org: Foundation Site
• www.geetee.donavan.org: My personal page
The existing pages are still accessible through their former urls, and the email address has not changed.
• Index page and most of the ABOUT pages have been rewritten (less wordy and catching up on details); Index page now has the collage on it which will (I hope!) grab people into the Site and encourage them to poke around
• Table of Contents page changes:
• ServSite and Siphon graphics and links added
• About half of the random quotes have been replaced (got rid of much of the silliness and got some more Serious Stuff in there), some graphics have been added, and the links have been checked and updated where necessary
• The Lynx, Guestbook, Order Info, Privacy and Legalese pages now appear in pop-up windows (the same on other pages where their links appear)
• Lynx page has been reformatted to fit the window (including putting the picture into the page)
• Guestbook script now finally works, and the page has been "seeded" with a dummy entry (and, now, a few genuine ones)
• All "click on the thumb to see a bigger view" pictures now appear as a separate page in a new window, centered against a gray background [WebSiphon template]; user instructions have been modified to "Close this window to return to the [calling] page." This prevents having to reload 84,367 thumbnails every time you come back to a Gallery or ABOUT page and (it is to be hoped) will increase the "stickiness" (i.e., deeper exploration) of the Site
• Credit Card ordering and Shopping Cart [written by Chris Buxton and powered by WebSiphon] has been installed in all pages, including Paul's; Carl's pieces are subject to prior sale so it's still a matter of "call and ask," although I will accept credit card payments for purchases of Carl's pieces
• New pix added to Paul Shoemaker's and Foundation pages; a rework of the Foundation site is imminent since I finally have this Shopping Cart nonsense out of my hair and also since Paul, Jon Lackey and I now know what we're doing with it ... sort of ...
• Many new pix and several new picture pages
• Picture file numbers in all pages have been normalized to a consistent format
• 29 Palms page greatly expanded, including a map and a separate Wonder Valley page, and the links have been updated
• More credits and acknowledgments added to Credits page
• Page text color has been changed from red to the present burnt orange; font spec for the Optimum font has been added (for those who have it and allow their browsers to display it); link colors on all pages have been changed from blue to yellow
• Meta tags on all pages have been greatly expanded so as to make the Site more easily found through the search engines [cross fingers on that!]
• Site has been re-promoted to most of the search engines in known Cyberspace through SelfPromotion.com, and various flyers have been (and will continue to be) posted in Newsgroups

(Updated 7-October-1998)

• New images on the Foundation page, including a couple which I had overlooked. (Sorry bout that, Paul.)
• Paul Shoemaker's photo page added; more shots coming shortly.

• New Personal page (which is a separate site at geetee.servsite.com), incorporating previous Rant No. 1 and Photos OF G.T. pages, which have been moved from this Site; more to come
• New Chesley Donavan Foundation page (www.chesley-donavan-foundation.servsite.com)
• Grey Day stuff removed, since GD is now a thing of the past
• Links have been inserted into the random quotations on Table of Contents page--all of them that I could find, that is....
• Working on guestbooks for Personal, Organisation and Foundation pages, but that will take time
• Knocked the type size on this page down to 0 stedda +1

• Two new shots on the GRABBERS page, and all but the Punk Diptych re-scanned from 8x10 prints. (Punk Diptych still has to be reprinted; perseverance furthers.)
• I went through a number of the pages after last night's updates and normalized the punctuation (in other words, " and " rather than ", -- rather than --, etc.), cleaned up some of the wording, added "Chesley Donavan Organisation" to the titles, and stufflikethatthere. (The punctuation changes have not been made to this page, just to show you what the rest of the site used to look like.) I also fiddled a bit more with the Random Quotes on the Table of Contents page.
• Continued the process of cleaning up punctuation, etc.
• Regenerated the smaller logo (textlogo.gif) and redid the HTML for it on the pages that use it.

• Paul Shoemaker has given me a redone CD logo and the Copperplate Gothic type font (which is the proper one), so the logotype has been redone again ... for the final time, one hopes. [Cross fingers.] Had a momentary problem getting the stupid thing to display, which is now cleared up--so if you tried hitting the page at that particular time and didn't see the logo, that's why.
• Paul also caught an error I'd made, so the Photos OF page has been modified accordingly.
• Fiddled with the random messages some more, cleaning up punctuation &c.; also fixed the misspelling of Samuel R. Delany's name (sorry about that, Sam!) and inserted links to a Delany page wherever his name occurs in the random messages.

• The long-threatened expansion of the Portraits page is now (finally!) a reality: 13 new images and five re-scans of existing shots. I also moved the essay to the "About..." page (which will be the new pattern of the site as I get to revising each page), and made some changes in the wording of the descriptive essay.

• Added Paul Shoemaker's photo of me leaning on the Bright Angel Trail sign to the Photos OF page
• Updated punctuation on Photos OF page
• Changed/deleted a number of the random messages and cleaned up punctuation in all of them
• Changed Table of Contents banner to reflect most recent changes

• Added Kurosawa memorial as temporary index page

• Index page logo and type rearranged so that it doesn't fill the entire screen and looks better
• Index page SPAM warning added
• Miscellaneous minor changes to wording of Index page
• Moved random messages back to Contents page from Text page

• Art For Sale Webring and Ring of Fine Art stuff have been added. The images don't show and the links don't work yet because I'm not set up with the rings, but that should happen later this evening. You might consider browsing other sites on the Webrings, and passing news of them along to friends ... who might then encounter this site and buy things here.

• Karnak on Fairfax page has been redone with new scans. More are yet to come, but it may take longer because I'm freshly reprinting all of the shots ... and I'm running short on paper. You can help by buying prints, so that I can buy some more paper (and pay my bills, too).

• Tattoo Show page has been completely redone, the beginning of yet another complete re-vamping of the site: all scans have been redone from new prints, detail views have been made available, new and larger thumbnails; other pages updated to reflect that
• As pages are revised, proper typographical characters (" " " ' -- - and others) are being substituted, since the new HTML spec finally supports them (I worked for many years as a typesetter)
• Random messages have been moved to the Other Stuff page
• Brief banner of new stuff put on the Table of Contents page, which will change with each update although this log will still be maintained
• A lot of the cutesy stuff has been written out of various pages. Eventually the personal side of things will be split off entirely, but we'll let it ride for the time being, if only because I haven't the time for that right now.

• Shot of me with buzzcut, taken the night before, added to Photos OF page

• Added shots of Terry and Mike Hodel and Bob Stodder to the Acknowledgments section
• Fixed missing link on About Grabbers page (why don't people tell me about these things?! grumble grumble grumble)
• Oh yeah ... added the random messages to the Contents page a few days ago and purposely didn't tell you about it, har har har

• Completed Karnak on Fairfax page with the remaining three photos (okay, so it wasn't a couple of days, I lied, mea culpa), did some final circumfornication with the page text, and documented all that here

• Added Karnak on Fairfax page (minus three images which still must be printed)
• Added credit and link to Ron Cobb, acknowledgment to Terry and Mike Hodel, and photo of Kris Deegan to Acknowledgments page

• Added Stained Glass by Carl Riggins and changed Index and Table of Contents to reflect that
• Made the links on Table of Contents a size larger so they're easier to click on

• Added Rant #1 and Lynx to oThER sTufF page and reformatted it to make things a tad more consistent
• Changed main [index] page counter to odometer-style

• ARGHHH!! Some image files got scrubbed in the midst of the upgrade, resulting in nonexistent thumbnails and missing files. WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE TELL ME THIS?! Fixing that now; meanwhile I have a temporary "under construction" index page up. Sheesh! --You see that BOX up there, at the top right of the page? What's it FOR, already?! I mean, like, duh!
• kPaul Shoemaker sent me a new scan of the photo of me at the age of 25, and that's going up (along with a revised credit) on the Photos OF page.

• Added search engine and SelfPromotion.com links to Credits page
• Added PigVision link to oThER sTufF page

Continuing yesterday's revision:

• A couple of links (to the Cam-Cam, for instance) were improperly entered; those have been fixed
• Four new images in Portraits page
• Six new images in the Photos OF G.T. page. (Oboy, I'll bet you're excited about those!!!)
• All counters except that on the index page have been reset and will now count from this date or the date the page was first added, whichever is later; index page counter started 12/17/97, when the site was first opened to the public

Major overhaul/upgrade:

• New images in Tattoo Show(7), Tattoo Shop (1), Haircuts (6) and Grabbers (1) pages, all of them offering high-resolution scans
• New Desert page with 3 images
• New Credits, Acknowledgments and Awards page (no Awards yet, that's a hint)
• Some existing Tattoo Show and other images are now freshly-scanned high-resolution
• TRAVESTY.EXE, Cam-Cam and "I Have A Dream" added to Other Stuff
• Reduced size of main logo on index page and redid type
• Removed all button boxes (except ABOUT... on all pages and Write me! on this one) and replaced with standard links
• Got rid of miscellaneous garbage which had snuck in here and there
• Cleaned up code on all pages so that tables now align properly (for the most part ...)

(Updated 12/25/97, 02:12)

• Three images added to TatShop page
• Marines page added, 7 images (mostly hi-res)
• Portraits page added, 13 images
• Existing scans cleaned up, sharper and better-looking

(Updated 12/21/97, 18:44) The bug in the @#$%^& order form has finally been fixed and it's now online for your convenience (and mine).
 

(UIpdated 12/21/97, 13:03) Oops, still have a bug in the order form so it has been commented out in the code until we can straighten things out.
 

(Updated 12/21/97)

• PHOTOS OF G.T. now up
• "ABOUT..." boxes are now at top as well as bottom of index pages
• Thumbs in the "ABOUT..." pages now link to associated image
• Still have a bug in the ordering form, working on it
• Cleaning up existing pages and adding reference to "Click on thumb"; HTM code submitted as Unix which should correct display weirdnesses on some browsers

(updated 12/17/97)
The Haircuts and GRABBERS photo pages have been added, each with a few images; and there has been something stuck into the oTHER sTUFF page as well. Now that I have the site online and functional, I'll be able to get back into the darkroom and start printing up more Stuff, which will be online soon.