Yes, Ringo's closing in on 64.
Continuing thanks to Mike Burns for the birthday stuff. I haven't used a single one, but I've saved them all.
I really like adding musicians to BT, though it's sometimes difficult to find a good quote, even with the Library of Congress here in the unused portion of my brain.
I've been beefing up and standardizing the pages. Just finished updating the birthday pages thru the end of August, and the Died Today pages go now from May thru September. It never ends, trust me on this, but there will come a time soon when there's a DT page for every day of the year.
Recently, among others, added:
(These are newish in the database: I lost about two months worth of database updates back in October.)
I will continue, as I get quotes and dates...
"Born Today/Died Today" has perhaps been the college education I never got (and ex-college students everywhere would probably thank me for not looking 'em up!). Besides providing no small number of laughs ("laughs" was where I started with all this...), the research has turned me on to many many excellent people from all eras of humanity, and has inspired me to buy many a book I'd have otherwise passed right by.
In addition, I have "met" some of the quotees, and HUNDREDS of webmasters, and they have been, with one exception (see Klaus Shulze, of Tangerine Dream?), polite, considerate, generous, and friendly.
I encourage anyone who surfs the BT and DT sites to occasionally take a side trip on the links I provide (many aren't broken!). Often, I include specific links in exchange for use of pictures from the linked site - they let me use the picture in the hope that you'd go on to THEIR place. Most people have been really gracious about letting me use their images.
In redesigning the pages, I chose to use a table format at the top and bottom of each page. You can get to a born or died page today, tomorrow, or yesterday, or to the main born or died calendar "selector pages." I hope this facilitates navigation for everyone. All birth dates on the site link to a Died page (which may not yet exist); all death dates link to a Born page.
Except on the "special" pages. In case you didn't know, for some people, I include an additional page with one more picture, e.g. Maureen O'Sullivan. (Click the picture or the name to see the "special" page.) On these pages, listed birthdates go back to the Born page, and death dates go to the Died page (if any). There's a lot of "cheesecake" on these special pages. Sorry! It's my site and I'll do what I want with it. (There is no full-frontal nudity, to my immediate recollection, except the "secret" one linked from the picture on the Janis Joplin page.) At any rate, for me, it's more about pulchritude (or elucidation, or humor) than titillation. You'll find mostly women, but also Morey Amsterdam, Humphrey Bogart, David Bowie, Jim Carrey, Charlie Chaplin, Eric Clapton, Alice Cooper, Noel Coward, Dick Dale, Brian Eno... Sometimes, there's just more than one good picture. If you surf it enough, you'll get the idea.
Still haven't found a way to count hits on the entire site. Since each day is a page, I have a counter on the main BT calendar page - thru which not everyone goes. Oh well. I'm seeing 833 hits since I moved the site and installed a new counter in April or so - after some 15000 hits on the old SBT site from Nov 1998 to March 2000... Yeah, I like to see lots of hits, even though I don't get a penny for 'em (I SPEND pennies for 'em, truth be known).
Thing is, though I would get a lot from this site with absolutely no input, I LOVE to get input, and I want people to hit this site often. Tell your friends. Do hit the guestbook, if you like something from BT/DT. If you see a quote you like, let me know; I may have several more from the same person. If you want to know more about a person, I might have some info. If you don't think it looks like a lot of work, come visit some morning when I'm working on it! T will testify I spend HOURS on this thing. It bugs me that DT is not done, and that you may click a link to a page that doesn't yet exist in my domain. Wait a week or three, and try again. I've built five months of DT pages in about four months, and I anticipate finishing before the end of this year.
The Born Today site, oddly, turned out to be nearly a perfect application of HTML. The finite calendar contains infinite cross-linking, and people who have something to say talk about each other, and it all became a gigantic web of information - ultimately, 732+ pages and 1700+ pictures. You could not do this on paper, not in the same way. It has influenced my approach to my work, and it has educated me well beyond my high-school-and-hitchhiking education. Small encouragement from here and there (see Daily Cocktails) has driven me on to improve it.
Keep on surfin' and Enjoy!
s