As stated ten months earlier, there isn't going to be any updates to the English part of my site. However, a kind stranger has donated three new language courses, and such a magnificent gift must naturally be added to the academy's selection of courses. The new additions are courses in Basque, Georgian and Arabic.
Okay, so I totally lied when I said that the English part of my website was quite unlikely to ever be updated again. There's a French language course (don't read it after you've eaten). But that's it for updates in English for now. You really shouldn't expect any more.
A bit of bad news, I'm afraid: I've decided to put the English part of Scampton Manor on indefinite hold. I simply haven't had the time to translate any of the past year's many updates to the Danish part of the site, and getting that backlog of work done would require several weeks that I just don't have. So for what it's worth, the English part of the site will remain as it is, but it won't be updated in any foreseeable future - not unless I get a translation slave, which is hard to find on a slave market that mainly offers manual labourers and prostitutes. I have asked the Saracen slave traders I deal with to let me know if they capture any proficient translators, but they are not very optimistic.
Now I've done it: As warned, Scampton Manor's HTML has been restructured and modernised. The outward appearance hasn't changed considerably, but the underlying code has been simplified, so it will take a little less work to update Scampton Manor in the future (and without significant efforts I can convert all of Scampton Manor to XML/XHTML; I have sinister plans to do so sometime).
The changes have rather drastic consequences for Netscape 4.x users - Scampton Manor's front page can cause the Windows version of Netscape 4.x to crash (so if you've gotten this far with Netscape 4.x for Windows, you may have been lucky). Scampton's other pages doesn't make Netscape 4.x faint, but it renders the pages as wrongly as possible (one is tempted to think that it makes a serious effort to do everything wrong). My best advice to Netscape 4.x users is to disable stylesheet support and get a newer browser soon.
The above shouldn't be interpreted as if I've got anything personal against Netscape 4.x. As mentioned earlier, I make no other demands on the browsers visiting Scampton Manor than being able to understand HTML 4 and CSS1 (which have been established web-standards since 1997 and 1996). And since Scampton Manor now can pass W3C's HTML-validation without errors, I'm afraid I really can't do much more for Netscape 4.x. Even Lynx can display Scampton Manor's web pages without difficulties.
Concerning the newspaper, I am proud to finally present an English translation of the first two issues of the Scampton Observer, which have been available in Danish since June 2000. There are eleven issues available in Danish, and I hope to translate one issue each week (as with other promised updates, this is subject to change due to sloth, forgetfulness and other engagements).
Most stories in the Scampton Observer report on Danish political events, but hopefully the content is not too obscure for those who haven't got an extensive knowledge about Danish politics. At least I hope you may enjoy the nice press photos.
Concerning the cinema, I am again proud to introduce another addition to Scampton Manor's web pages. There are now two new movies in addition to the two that have been experimentally and temporarily available for a couple of years. All are in RealVideo 8 format, so I hope that interested visitors have the latest version of RealPlayer or are able to find the free version at Real.com (I must admit they make a serious effort to hide the free player and instead draw attention to their commercial player).
I can't promise if or when there will be more movies available; so far, web server space is the major inhibiting factor. At least when I get more of that, there should be room for higher bandwidth versions of the present movies.
Concerning the weekly poem it is for once updated on time, but this time the poem is not created by my dear brother's poetry-robot. I am currently building a new poetry-robot in PHP, and by now it is sufficiently operational to allow its poems to be published. This week's poem is in romantic style - the new poetry-robot can so far make poems in romantic, depressive or religious style (or a mixture thereof), which the coming Mondays will bring examples of.
Like my dear brother's poetry-robot, the new poetry-robot is in Danish. I haven't planned an English version, as it will require a complete reconstruction of the poetry-robot. However, the Danish robot will be on-line at Scampton Manor sometime in the not too distant future, when Scamton moves to a webhotel provider with PHP capabilities. I haven't set a specific date yet, but it will happen when the poetry-robot is finished.
A little delayed, there is a new poem today. Regrettably there won't be any updates the next two weeks, as I'm on vacation.
The Scampton Manor homepage has been deplorably quiet for far too long, and thus I have decided to update it more frequently and to keep my honoured visitors informed about what transpires in and around the homepage. I have consequently set up this logbook, in which one may read periodic remarks and bulletins about new initiatives on the Scampton Manor homepage, and about other matters I find relevant.
Concerning the weekly poem, I am happy to inform that it finally lives up to its name. Meaning that it has in fact been updated and will henceforth again be updated weekly (sloth and forgetfulness permitting). The long lack of a weekly poem was due to the sad demise of my dear brother's poetry-robot, or rather: It suddenly ceased functioning in my Windows 98 and just poured out an unpoetic runtime-error rather than composing surreal stanzas. The poetry-robot is a fairly aged DOS-based Pascal program, and it has had increasing difficulties adapting to more modern versions of Microsoft's operating systems. However, not long ago I installed Linux and stumbled upon a DOS-emulator that has no objections against running the poetry-robot. The poetry-robot is very content with its new, emulated DOS environment, and thus I am confident that it can continue to compose more weekly poems for the enjoyment of those tremendously patient readers that have pined for its particular kind of odd poems.
Concerning my dear brother, I am immensely happy to announce to those that didn't read the Danish newspaper Politiken on April 19th that his homepage was "Homepage of the week" in the paper's internet supplement.
Concerning Scampton Manor in general, I must warn users of Netscape 4.x and Internet Explorer 4.0 (as well as other, older browsers) that Scampton Manor's HTML will be modernised in the near future, and consequently there will be substantial difficulties in accessing Scampton Manor with the browsers in question. Scampton Manor will make extensive use of stylesheets, which unfortunately are supported miserably by the aforementioned browsers.
I shall with fortissimo emphasise that Scampton Manor will observe the agreed-upon standards for HTML and CSS as laid down by W3C. If one has a browser that is incapable of understanding the current standards, I can only recommend getting a browser that complies with canonical HTML. Scampton Manor will not be designed to cater for specific browsers - Scampton Manor will be designed in accordance with the web's common language: HTML.
When Scampton Manor's HTML redesign is finished, two new areas of Scampton Manor will be added: A cinema and a newspaper. Both have been available on the Danish version of this site for more than a year, but I just never got round to translating them to English.