blonde poker forum

Well, it been a long time coming, but it’s finally arrived.






Of course, feel free to post any questions here. If you have any suggestions, then may I urge you to utilise the ‘contribution’ feature of the database, which helps keep all my ‘blondepedia’ comments in one place. I’m sure you’re all brimming with questions (cough), but just to try and pre-empt a few, I penned a brief F&Q list...

•   What is blondepedia?

In simple terms, blondepedia is a bio and gallery database. With so many images at our disposal and an extensive knowledge of hundreds of players, it seemed a waste not to use it, so I decided to try create a home for that information that would simultaneously double up as a cracking little resource for anyone who wanted to learn a little bit more about the players that make up the game we love. For me, poker is about more than facts and figures, who won what where and when, it’s about the players, the characters and the true personalities of the game – hopefully the database and the bios go someway to justifying that statement.

•   How do I access blondepedia?

Easy. Either type in www.blondepedia.com (http://www.blondepedia.com) or access it via blonde's menu bar - 'tools & resources'. We're also going to put a link on homepage.

•   How many entries are there?

There are currently 863 entries and 368 bios (not a bad percentage, eh?), but we’re always expanding. There are thousand of pictures.

•   What are the requirements to be entered into the gallery?

To be eligible for entry you have to have (1) participated in a Main Event covered by our blonde live update team and (2) had your mug photographed by the blonde paparazzi.

•   I played such and such event and had my piccy taken. Why aren’t I in there?

There’s a chance we’ve missed you out, but the most likely answer is that we haven’t delved into the galleries of the event you played in. Potential entries from recent live updates will be entered in due course.

•   Why haven’t I got a bio?

Nothing personal, I’ve written as many as I can.

•   Who writes the bios?

Anyone but the player in question can offer to write a bio. However, we can’t upload anything of a poor standard. If you would like to write a bio, please use the ‘contribution’ page.

•   In what other ways can we contribute?

I’m really keen for people to notify of me of any typos, misspelled names, incorrect nationalities and so on. It’s human nature to make the odd slip-up, so please feel free to highlight them via the ‘contribute’ page so I can make the alteration. Similarly, if you have any further information on people or know their name or nationality, then please let me know.

•   Why not use Wikipedia?

This was considered, but I wanted something new, different, unique, charismatic – something of our own.

----------

When I started this project, I had no idea of the time and effort involved. It’s taken up so much of my time that I’ve hardly been able to breathe and, rather disapprovingly, haven’t even bought into a single live comp in 2007. However, now that’s it’s alive and kicking, I’m glad I completed the task in hand as I feel it is a strong contribution to the blonde poker brand and will provide all the blondeites with a useful resource on a variety of players within the game, whether they’re high stakes pro’s or small time local players.

This is all very new to me and the database is on its first outing in the real world, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the odd bug rear it’s ugly head. If you spot anything, then, once again, please let me know. Fingers crossed it doesn’t explode over the next few days.

In closing, I’d like to thank the following people who helped me with bios. They were a great help and conceded their time for no financial gain, in particular the likes of sofa---king, ariston, jaffacake and Lucky Blind who really helped me out with players that I knew very little about. Many thanks and apologies to anyone I have missed out…

Sofa---king
Tikay
TightEnd
Jen
Floppy
Ifm
Jaffacake
I KNOW IT
Danafish
El Blondie
Camel
Dingdell
AndrewT
thetank
Charmaine
Ariston
Lucky Blind (of antesup.com)
Julian
Nic Hicks
Matt674
Geeforce
Karabiner
MC

Finally, a big thank you to Jammer for programming the site (if that is the correct terminology) and Bongo for his assistance blonde side. Both have been stars!

Snoops ;snoopy;



EDIT: There are currently two bugs that need to be rectified and are currently being investigated. (1) The send message option on the contribute page isn't visible on Internet Explorer meaning people can't submit their messages and (2) all apostrophes appear to have vanished from bios.

Just had a quick look before hitting the sack but aesthetically it looks amazing.  Great job Snoops!

All the best for a great idea.  Here's hoping it grows and grows and grows......

By the way, if there's an insult in your bio, such as 'he wears diapers' (cough - Sheriff Fatman), then don't blame us, the Poker Gods made us do it...

 ;scarymoment;

Nice work Boss and everyone else who was involved

there are some great one liners in the bios...only problem is finding the week necessary to read them all again. Oh well, off to start at A, see you at Z.

Turns out the zebra did it!!!

Great snoops, only had a uick glance but looks superb!

Its very good, but I'm surprised and disappointed that Mateyboy hasn't been dignified with an entry.

That is awesome stuff. Top work :)

I promise to write a bio for the man Carter. Maybe he'll write me one in return ;)

I am sure we can ararange that. How many do we need, #1, #2, & #3?

I've just thought of the perfect entry, late as usual


Steve Walmsley (UK)

Alias: Womble


Passes.



Submitted by Tight End 13th June 2007

loving the banners and new artwork - definite nice feeling to it all. the shape of things to come for the rest of blonde perhaps ?

Looks awesome snoops - a fantastic piece of work.

I really think Flushy should write yours...

Looks great, good work ;applause;

this looks really really good. Well done snoops et al

Snoop, where is your bio ????   ;whistle;

You would think you had been working on this for a while or something ..... ;hide;  ;)







Seriously though, great work Snoops  ;applause;

Hey Snoopy,

The site looks great, I have one suggestion so simple i'm sure it's not implemented for a reason or i've missed it. Is it going to be possible to search for players in the database through their blonde username?

For instance in the search box if i type 'Snoopy' it says 'no matches found'. No I have to admitt I didn't know your real name for quite a while, until i met you last summer in Vegas actually, ditto Red Dog, Matt674, Ariston etc. I know some people have this info if you click their username on the blonde forum but some don't. I'm not sure if it's just me but i'm so used to referring to blondites by their forum names that i often have no clue what their name in the real world is!

wow fella what a great addition to the site. It needs to be on the homepage.

it will be, pride of place, very shortly

Wow!  ;applause;

Bloody amazing Snoops and all involved....so much work has went into this  ;applause; ;applause; ;applause; ;applause; :respect:

Design credit goes to Jammer, also a blonde for a sterling effort.  ;applause;

This is definitely something I have considered, but it will take some extra work. Would definitely like to have this feature enabled though. It's one step at a time though I'm afraid as far as improvements go.

Figured that was the case. Btw what are you drinking in your photo on the home page? Tea, Coffee or are you purely posing for the camera :-)

Am I missing something....or is it just my computer?

Coz on the cotribution page there is a box for your e-mail details and one for you comments.....but no actual way to submit any of the info !

Tell me that what I see is what you get and that there is currently no way to actually submit anything ? !

Apart from that it looks like it could be very good !

Ian.

Lol, it's tea and it's from last year's Blackpool Bonanza. It was half pose/half real. I think I look damn sophisticated though, as if I've elevated myself to a higher intellectual level than my usual one. IQ is now 60!!!

There should be a 'submit message' option in the bottom right hand corner. It's visible on my screen.

Is anyone else encountering this problem?

We are certainly expecting the odd bug to rear his ugly head here and there - hopefully this isn't one.

Many congratulations Mr Chief Blondepediologist Beagle, that's some fine Blondepediologising.

 ;letsparty;

the "send message" button on the "contribute" page is there for me in firefox, but not in IE

Ahh, okay, I'll get Jammer on the case in the morning. Grr.

Please bear with us on some of these bugs. Teething problems are bound to crop up at first, but we'll do our best to get em fixed.

No problem Snoopy...just thought I should let you know... and I was using internet explorer. Cya in Bournemouth...which events are you playing?

Ian.

Unfortunately I'm not playing that Event, I believe Jen is though, so be sure to introduce yourself.

One other note, apostrophes seem to have disappeared in places - this will also be looked at tomorrow.

Unlucky Snoopy...I'm sure you'll get to play a live game again someday ( I feel for you )...as for Jen, we've met and spoken plenty of times, tho I'm still not sure if she knows who I am...lol. Tikay does !

Good luck with the blondepedia...these things always take time to iron out the creases.

Ian.

No Bio for chubbs......oh the fun that could be had!

Looks great, reads great.

Congratulations a fine addition.

Some great one liners as well, should pass the time nicely at work.

 WOW !!..a fantastic addition.

A very big WELL DONE to everyone involved.

You are welcome to pen it......but it hass to pass muster before being published!

We will get the bios complete, by doing the missing ones, as soon as we can, & we apologise to any one's not done so far.

Wow, terrific piece of work to all concerned.

Well done all involved , especially Snoopy  ;applause; ;applause; ;applause; ;applause; ;applause; ;applause;

Superb work Snoppy et al  ;hattip; :respect: :respect:

Fantastic job Snoops and helpers.

Quite often we just log on and take for granted all that is here without really thinking of the effort required to produce it.

A big thanks to all for what must have been an amazing amount of work.

Geo

The design and content are both amazing.

Well done  ;applause;

What a fantastic resource, truly amazing.

The whole thing was done by snoopy - well, 99%, with 5% contributed by others. (Maths is my thing).

Now YOU can all help widen it, by contributing Bios to us, or requesting the we add specific players or missing Bios..

Had a quick look through it this morning, a fantastic job done.. all in Blonde's witty and fantastic style!

I remember writing a load of these for snoops back in Jan or Feb and thought the idea had been binned but looks great. Also to Julian Thew for writing mine I will say tyvm and how the hell did you know? 5 or 6 months down the line I am running a poker school/mentoring scheme and spend probably 10 hours a day teaching now instead of playing- Julian you must be psychic mate.

All I ask is that you don't get Tim Blake ( T8MML ) to write a bio for me. The bugger would have a field day ... lol !

Awesome.   gold star to everybody involved.

Great work Snoops. If you want help promoting it in Vegas I'll get some blondepedia tshirts designed and wear them around the main event (not sure if I can wear it while playing due to PS deal).

Obviously that is the call of you, Tikay and co but happy to help promote the site and drum up some new recruits.

 

That would be awesome, thank you!

wow tyvm that would be great.

Hi, I believe this has been fixed now. Am I correct? I don't have IE.

Congrats snoopy. :)

You're correct Snoopy...that particular bug has been fixed. I had a look this morning.

Ian.

Phew, thanks for highlighting it crapper, top man.

(Can't believe I'm calling someone crapper, lol)

Just a quick note to say thank you to Jammer for the design. I simply doodled what I wanted it to look like, he did the magic, so any positive comments on the way it looks should be directed towards him as I feel hid did a fantastic job on limited time.

Thank you for all the kind words concerning the design, and congratulations to Snoopy for getting this off the ground.

It is only a start but this could be the beginning of an incredible resource for poker. I really think it has that much potential - there are so many things that could be done next it will be hard to prioritize them, so the idea is to get something solid and stable first as a basis. (And please excuse the lack of apostrophes. These were lost due to a combination of word encoding them in a strange font, which the databases couldn't cope with when they were copied from the test site to the live version.)

Congratulations again to Adam for creating the project (I am very proud of him), Tikay for having the vision to sanction this thing, and the rest of the blonde team for their contributions.

This place has so much going for it would be sad not to see it all come to fruitiion.

No-one has laughed at this yet.....

Oh trust me, we have ... just not out loud ;)

Brilliant!!! very well done guys

lol@ the picture chosen for Flushy. Class. it looks amazing..I'll have a proper look over the weekend but have a feeling i could spend days on this.

Jen's is better....

Very good, must have taken some doing....So much goes on behind the scenes here. I take my bra hat off to you guys..xxxx

There is a serious, overlooked flaw in Blondepedia, which is that it uses Flash as its sole means of navigation.  A visitor to the site who does not have Flash is totally unable to explore the site.  With Flash browser penetration approaching 99%, you might think this not to be a great problem.  But remember that your site\'s Number One Most Important Vistor does NOT have Flash... and that visitor is Googlebot.

In its current state, Google will not properly index the Blondepedia website.  I am no SEO expert, but I believe this will severely limit Blondepedia\'s PageRank (Google\'s scoring system).  I challenge you to point to examples of websites that are constantly on the top of Google listings, which use Flash as their sole means of navigation.  As far as Google (and other search engines) are concerned, every single page on Blondepedia is a \"dead end\", and this (among other things) will lead to a low PageRank.

In other words: in its current state, Blondepedia will effectively not be search-engine listed, and as a result will receive little/no incoming hits.

To be honest, the Flash menu on Blondepedia does not bring anything to the site; and the header and footer are pure gratuitousness.  If you want Blondepedia to gain hits other than those from \'within the fold\', you would do well to replace the Flash navigation with, say, a more semantically-correct styled unordered list. 

These are good points, but be aware that the aim was to get blondepedia up as quickly as possible, and most of what you have said will be incorporated into immediate iterations. Thanks for your useful comments.

I was aware of this as I encountered the same problem several months back with the Main Site, it simply slipped my my mind with blondepedia.

However, the menu is a relatively simple one, so rectifying the problem should be a relatively easy process.

Many thanks for pointing out mi ol fruit.  :)up

That's most helpful - thank you.

Also, I don\\\'t know if it is possible for you to use so-called \\\'friendly URLs\\\'.
I.e. instead of: /blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=198
you would have: /blondepedia/jennifer-mason
Once set up it is automatic, and it\\\'s better for both search engines and humans :-)

Here is a link: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Apache/Search-Engine-Friendly-URLs-with-mod-rewrite/ (http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Apache/Search-Engine-Friendly-URLs-with-mod-rewrite/)

Anyway, well done & good luck

(http://www.officesafety.co.uk/images/products/gl90-small.png)(http://www.wpclipart.com/food/fruit/lime/lime_half.png)

Again, many thanks.

Gotta love the Lime, Mrs!

are you Sofa-King ?

its someone who is a big fan of backslashes that's for sure...

Michael Myers?

I'm very very impressed by the snoopster's work, every one I've looked up has made me laugh...the boy done good

or Matt Dale...

I think you should get busy on those two ASAP James.

It's fantastic - laughed out loud reading some of them. Well done Snoops and all involved.

Superb work

Has anyone encountered any major problems with the database? There are a few browser problems, but I'm sure we can iron them out over time.

This is a tactical  ;bump; for those who may not have been on the forum over the last few days, but also to make you aware of a tiny feature you might have missed - no biggy, just that if you click the little 'lines' icon to the right of 'Blondepedia Players', you get a slightly different presentation of the players which just gives you a choice for how you want it to look as you browse through.

Finally, the 'apostrophe' bug that was highlighted earlier has 'hopefully' been rectified. If you spot any that have been missed, please identify the faux-pas via the 'contribute' page. Making me aware of these typos is most welcomed, so don't worry about sounding 'arsey'.

Many thanks.  ;hattip;

The database is currently out of action due to server issues but we hope to get it up and running again tomorrow. Apologies.