WWWboard.pl program error and Forecasting Program Update

Hi Canie,

Earthquake Forecasting Program Update

My earthquake forecasting computer program is back running again after being out of service since the beginning of the year. And my forecasting charts etc. are now being updated. There is so much work to do on the charts that it will be a few days to get them organized.

It is too bad this took so long. Perhaps it might have been possible to spot the approaches of those highly destructive New Zealand and Japan earthquakes.

And, now that the following bulletin board problem has finally been solved I should actually be able to comment on the information in the charts etc. in posts on my new bulletin board.

WWWboard Program Problem

Your version of the WWWboard.pl program might not have this in it. But, with the one I downloaded from Matt Wright’s Web site there is a problem that it took me ages to find. I just located it a short time ago. And this is a problem that I have been having since I first stated work on the program probably back in January or February.

Each response post contains a hidden value called “followup.” It is a series of post numbers that the program uses to keep track of what the response post and earlier posts are.

The value works okay. However, back in 1998 someone apparently discovered that under certain conditions it generates some false data. So, Matt added an error check routine to the WWWboard.pl program.

Unfortunately, when it checks for errors it gets the post order confused. So, posts that are supposed to go in order of 4, 5, 6, 7 etc. might be changed to 4, 6, 5, 7.

Then when the program creates a new response post and also when it creates a new version of wwwboard.html it will sometimes put the new response post in the wrong place in the thread order.

That problem was making it impossible to get the board to run correctly both on my PC and also at the Web site. Now that I located the error point I can make a correction. And work should start to get done faster on the new bulletin board.

That error really took a lot of searching and experimenting to find. It probably would have helped if I were actually a Perl language or Web site expert. Anyway, another hurtle to progress has been cleared, by whatever means.