We are currently doing some upgrades and repairs.
Please forgive any technical difficulties.

 

19960600 Laszlo's Bob Haircut Collection is born. In the second half of 1996 Laszlo left the 4GL DOS-based datatbase world and came into a new Job doing Java and 'Web development. With this came the first, very low-tech, bob haircut collection page. At first it was one big page of graphics with a megabyte of various and unorganized images.

19960800 Hierarchy of heck! Laszlo's bob haircut collection is split into umpteen different pages, one for blonds, one for brunettes, one for long, one for medium, etc. etc. The redundant references and large number of pages made maintenance prohibitively tedious.

19961000 Java - the Bob Haircut Viewer The birth of the Bob Haircut DataBase occurs and paves the way for the Bob Haircut Viewer Java Applet. Never really looking pretty, it gave Laszlo a big learning task using graphics (fighting Netscape) and loading data from a text database on the aluna.com server. It never made it out of beta and proved that NetScape had (and still has) serious memory leaks making some graphical applets totally impossible. MSIE's variance from Java specifications was equally prohibitive.

19970500 CGI arrives! Having just gotten a[nother] good new job doing 'Web applications development, perl and C CGI skills were needed, bringing forth the Bob Haircut collection's database in a dynamic HTML format using perl, CGI, JavaScript, and HTML Frames. Help files are added. a Links page, a Technical page, and even a Featured Bob page are all created.

19970800 Names, Numbers, and more Names! A 'Name' criteria is added to the Bob Haircut database. Also, Laszlo's Bob Haircut Collection begins a name-change to become The Bob Haircut Worship Page. The full change of purpose change (from collection to worship) is postponed for sake of Laszlo's time issues. Also! Laszlo writes his own graphical page counter and puts it on the bob_opening (feature) page.

19971000 Thumbnail, Normal, and Detail Views! The number of images is tripled with the introduction of Thumbnails and Details support requiring three resolutions for each image. This also required a new directory structure and a change to the database and cast additions to the CGI script to handle the various visual layouts now available.

19971100 The Mailing List! The largest yet CGI/HTML project for Laszlo, the Bob Haircut Worship Mailing List was born. 90% of the Mailing List system functionality is never seen by the public but includes many dynamic pages of HTML to maintain any number of mailing lists and mailing list members. Adding, deleting, listing, and of course mailing are all available via html/perl cgi (both obscured and password protected in all cases for security).

19980119 New Date-Added Criteria and History DataBase Modifications are completed to the database to allow selection of Bob Haircuts by when they were added to the database. Also, this very same history database you're reading is created (at the time of this writing) using Laszlo's genericized perl/CGI text database lookup. Notice that prior to 1998 all dates are estimated for lack of a history database at those times.

19980206 New Criteria Frame "Look and Feel" Laszlo's birthday (hint!!) and week of training allows time for a makeuover of the Bob Criteria panel. Moving from HTML Forms format to almost pure JavaScript (heavy on the graphics!) the criteria panel look and feel is transofrmed completely. This page doesn't appear for NS2.x and MSIE3.x users, but for the rest of us it looks way-snazzy! Plus: that cute change-borders-when-clicking-stuff thing!

19990100 Welcome the Message Board! Another exercize in custom CGI writing, the Bob Haircut Message Board added several features to the generic CGI database scripts. With an educated sacrifice of genericness, message threading was added. A datafile can now be marked as being a threaded message board, activating an internal threading system that keeps track of replies to replies to replies, and so on. Even more important for a message board, users can now POST messages. What's threading if nobody can post anything?

20000000 Bob Media Listing OK, records are a little foggy here. Sometime in either 1999 or 2000 the Bob Media listing was added. This is a place to find ideas for movies to see, books to read, etc. which feature in them Bob Haircuts. As foggy as the records are on this, so has been its upkeep. Suggestions are always welcome to make this list grow.

20010115 Nacio Sucks, Bites, and Blows! After nearly 5 years of hosting the Bob Haircut Worship Page, Nacio, who bought out Master Link, has finally gotten SO BAD with their web hosting service that once and for all the Bob Haircut Worship Page picks up and moves, cancelling what was a long, drawn-out torture of lessening services, increased maintenence requirements, and decreased transfer rates.

20010200 "Best" is a misnomer! The second bridge-burning takes place. Since MasterLink/Nacio couldn't offer shell and script support sufficient for the Bob Haircut Worship Page, Best had long since taken over our script and database hosting. This, too, was a poor choice in the long run. Soon after Verio bought Best they, too, declined in quality. Things like...to upgrade your account just a little you would have to pay much more than if you simply had TWO accounts, not to mention greatly declining transfer rates and duplicating Nacio's inability to support ftp from some locations. The Bob Haircut Worship Page flees its second web hosting disaster. Thanks, Best!

20040820 Enter PHP After several years hiatus from technical development work on the Bob Haircut Worship Page, an upgrade, small though it may be, comes to the Bob Donations page. Using mysql, PHP, and a simple 'file' input in an html form, the Bob Donations page receives a file upload facility. Previously people were rquired to type in the donations email address and send their files via email. This should make it much easier for folks to upload their lovely Bob Haircut images.

20040821 Tech History to SQL/PHP The diecision is made to convert all Bob Worship Page data from the custom "ludb" database to SQL. As a first step in that direction, the technical history data is converted to SQL using perl. Subsequently, the technical history data resides in a secure MySQL database and is presented in HTML by way of PHP.

20040821 Bob Media to SQL/PHP The Bob Media section was converted to SQL/PHP. With its "next n titles" and "previous n titles" links, it was a good dry run for later conversion of the main Bob DataBase.

20040823 Message Board to SQL/PHP One of the larger conversions to SQL/PHP is completed - the Bob Haircut Message Board. The Tree sorting algorythm used in message thread presentation ported nicely from perl to PHP. All the message baord HTML pages - list view, message view, post, and reply - are all now handled by one PHP file. Sacrificing the old LUDB quasi-genericism we gain a much greater flexibility in making changes and upgrades.

20040824 Main Bob DB to SQL/PHP The main Bob picture database has been migrated to the new SQL/PHP format. The web page UI remains the same late-1990's legacy JavaScript, but the underlying CGI made the transition seamless. This migration doesn't apply to the images themselves; Those remain as simple OS files.