Site Journal April, 2008

04:51 - April 2nd, 2008 - Dani

Well… I've finished the contact tables up to the start of Quebec! (That's aprox. 196 Google Map entries so far!)
We have also just received our first MP photo submission!!!
The lucky winner is …. Peggy Nash! She submitted her photo via e-mail this morning and I have just finished putting it on her profile page.

Thanks for the photo Peggy!!! :)

Dani

18:51 - April 6th, 2008 - Dani

WOW!!! i'm finally done my cross-country MP constituency office tour and filling-out the contact info for the MP profiles… all 302 of them! All i'll say is that given a choice, i would go to our site before the government site for contact info ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.
At least on our site, i know every entry has been seen by human eyes at least once! ;)

But no one's perfect, so if you see any errors PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE e-mail them to us at ac.oohay|sserptruocnotlrac#ac.oohay|sserptruocnotlrac

dani

01:26 - April 7th, 2008 - Paul

I've just finished the vote tables on MP pages for the current recorded votes of government bills. Eventually, there will be a tab-table to toggle between gov't bills and private members' bills, but we're up and running on the current bills! Hooray!

I also corrected Lloyd St. Amand's name (I had it St. Amond).

I've also archived March's site journal.

Next stop… forums!

Paul

01:10 - April 8th, 2008 - Paul

Well… we're into the Private Members' bills now! I've decided to only at present list those bills that have gone to a recorded vote. Most Private Members' bills are stuck in first reading anyway and may never see the light of day. As time goes by, and once we're all caught up, I'll expand the section, but for now, these vote tables are a lot of work. lots of cutting and pasting. No worries, though… it's for a good cause!

On the MP recipe card, I'm going to have to work out how to extend my tabs. When I tried to tab-table the vote record, it didn't quite line up properly. Once I figure that out, though, we'll be rocking! Imagine… right there on the MP's page… gov't bill vote record and a second tab for Private Members' bills vote record. Sweet!

One thing I'm not sure about, though is that the parliament site lists the Third Reading vote of C-287 as being negatived (ie not-passed). The vote, however, did pass.

One other thing I'm not sure about is the flag-lowering motion that was passed on April 2nd. It went to a recorded vote, but it's just a motion and not a bill… so I don't think I'm quite ready to be putting that up on the site just yet.

Did you see the logo? Sweet! Way to go Dani!

Paul

22:48 - April 8th, 2008 - Paul

Wow… get this… in doing the vote table for bill C-394, I've discovered the actual Hansard transcript of the vote has Massimo Pacetti as having voted both for and against the bill. That's right folks, your tax dollars at work. I called Massimo's office and left a message. The problem is that as it stands right now, the votes tally to the official total… SOOOO… that means either Massimo DID vote twice (unlikely) or the parliament site has it wrong (probable).

There's a further problem… when I find out which way Massimo voted, that's going to leave a hole in the tally table. Stay tuned.

Still no word on the text of C-48 or C-49 either. This kind of thing boils my blood. After all, we ARE paying for this site… unlike keepthemhonest.ca. It's up to you to decide whose site is better…

Paul

23:00 - April 9th, 2008 - Dani

Today we set-up the forums and membership applications. Now everyone can Keep Them Honest!

We are still working on the "cosmetics" of the site, but the meat and potatoes are there. Paul is still plowing through Private Members' Bills and I will start putting in cabinet minister info in the next couple of days.

Stay tuned!

23:07 - April 9th, 2008 - Paul

Holy smack! Dani's got the forums up! Go! Go now and join! And type!

I've finished the Private Members' bills vote tables, and am now on MP vote tables. Go check out Jim Abbott's page and see what I did with the tabs. Gov't bills, private members' bills… all there!

In case you were wondering (just to let you in on a little secret), Jim Abbott is always our guinea pig. We try out code on him because he's first alphabetically… nothing more. Ergo… he'll always be the most up-to-date page.

I've also added a brief synopsis on bills C-51 and C-52. They'll be re-written tomorrow in greater detail.

After we've finished MP vote tables for the recipe cards, cabinet ministers lists, and some general prettying-up, we'll do a link check, a fact check, and we'll be up and running hopefully by the end of this weekend. We're planning on officially launching April 20th, which will be one month to the day from when we created this site.

This will also give us some time to catch up to the parliamentary action from April (we've just been updating to March 31st and picking away at it as we go along).

How 'bout them Flames?!?!

Paul.

00:01 - April 10th, 2008 - Paul

Hey gang… one more thing. The line-up problem we've been experiencing with some versions of Internet Explorer is definitely only present with older versions. I just downloaded version 7 and the vote tables line up just fine on the MP recipe cards. So… either live with it, download a newer version of IE, or just give it up, join the revolution, and GO GET FIREFOX.

Paul

01:50 - April 11th, 2008 - Paul

Look what I got by e-mail!

C-48 and C-49 are done! Just keeping them honest, folks!

Also, the vote table tabs are halfway done. I've finished Manitoba, and am about to move into Ontario. This is the last major task for me before we start to catch up on what we've missed since March 31st. We're almost there!

Paul

17:30 - April 14th, 2008 - Paul

I've spent about five hours today on re-doing the main page. I inserted three cells, one for Site News, one for Politirazzi info, and one for On the Hill (Spotlight). The bulk of the time was spent re-sizing the background photo for the cells. In the end, I saved it as three separate photos and cranked up the brightness. So far, I haven't seen anyone else's wikidot page with this set-up yet, but feel free to grab the code.

Paul.

00:36 - April 16th, 2008 - Paul

Well… it looks like we've run an alignment issue. The background of the three boxes at the top of the home page doesn't fill the boxes on a wide-screen monitor (such as a Macbook). Hopefully a solution will be found soon.

I've begun work on a glossary. It's an orphan page right now, but it will be up soon.

It looks like I've missed a private members bill which went to two recorded votes. S-203 - Cruelty to Animals (the 'S' means the bill was introduced in the Senate) has been created, but I've run out of time tonight, so the vote tables are not yet created, nor have the MP vote tables been updated to reflect this addition. This will be done tomorrow when I get home from work.

Guess who called!!! Massimo Pacetti called and left a message. I will call him back tomorrow. I'm trying to find out how he voted on C-394 as Hansard has him having voted both Yea and Nay.

More to come tomorrow…

Paul

05:19 - April 17th, 2008 - Dani

Ok, so i'm almost done monkey-ing around with the sidebar. I'm also looking forward to adding to link-o-rama! Next on my list is finishing my Ministry page. overall, i'm pretty pleased with the site and looking forward to the launch!

dani

22:07 - April 17th, 2008 - Paul

Paul Martin Voted!!! No… really!!!

Paul

13:35 - April 21st, 2008 - Paul

Well, we've officially launched the site, and are quite excited by the positive feedback. In case you were wondering, we re-set our counter (it was at 1769) to 'really' launch the site.

This week, I'll be writing tv and radio stations, as well as newsrooms at newspapers and magazines to get the word out. We'll see what kind of response that gets.

Paul.

02:31 - April 23rd, 2008 - Paul

A quick note here… a member of Stockwell Day's staff confirmed by telephone today that Stockwell indeed voted Yea on the 2nd reading vote on C-50. The Hansard transcript had him (and Wajid Khan as voting Yea as well as being paired. The vote tables have been updated.

Paul

23:24 - April 29th, 2008 - Dani

Went on a bit of a "brain holiday". But the good news is that we were still doing site stuff! You may have noticed that I added a "Press Centre" link in the side bar. This was in order to house a link to our first news article! (and subsequent translation page :)

dani

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