Randy Cassingham's Blog

This week's issue marks a milestone: True's Ten-Year Anniversary! It's hard to believe it's been 10 years, since I feel like I'm just getting started. I find I still have plenty to say, but most of all I'm still having a lot of fun writing it. I certainly hope you're still having fun reading it.

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Some time back I "spun off" some sections of True's web site that didn't really have anything to do with True's "mission". The result included the Spam Primer, a Dvorak keyboard (the keyboard I use to write) primer, and the "Get Out of Hell Free" cards.

That trend continues this week with True's popular Honorary Unsubscribe feature. The HU archive was really awful: just a huge mass of names linked to pages filled with a year's worth of entries each, stacked one after another. Not very dignified! And not really "doing it right", as I want my online efforts to be. There are "only" 312 of them, as of this week. So my site programmer -- Leo of Ask Leo -- and I worked most of the last week to get it all up and running.

One part of "doing it right": despite the site being database-driven (SQL, for the geeks), the URLs are both logical and static (always the same) so you can link to the honorees you have particular interest in. Another part of doing it right: I've added "suggestions for further reading" on all of the items. The matching algorithm isn't quite perfect on those (some of the results are fairly weird), but for the most part there are some great reading suggestions shown. Have fun looking around; I sure had fun revisiting the write-ups of "the Unknown, the Forgotten and the Obscure People who Had an Impact on Our Lives": http://www.HonoraryUnsubscribe.com.