Troop 53 News

What Was News

An archive of items originally posted on the main Troop 53 News page. Currently, news items will remain here about a year, or until the linked page disappears for some reason.

3/30/11 — Rosters Updated

Now that our rechartering process is over the Adult, Youth and Patrol rosters are updated in the Members Area.

2/10/11 — Future-proofing

Over the weekend I started learning how to use HTML5. For the non-geeks among us, HyperText Markup Language is the language of the World Wide Web. No matter whether a website runs off a database, a script, or whatever, it all comes down to HTML to display a page. The latest version, "5.0", is not yet completely live or even widely supported by current browsers, but does offer some advantages and some pretty cool new "toys". I have started incorporating some of the tags and attributes on troop53.net. Mostly you won't see much right now, but if you have an iPhone clicking/tapping in the Search entry to the left will now bring up an onscreen keyboard that has a "Search" key on the bottom right. Similarly on other forms, if you click/tap in a field that asks for an email address, the "@" and ".com" keys appear on the keyboard. For those using a computer (How 2009! ;) ) to view these pages, Opera has the most support for HTML5. Using Opera you will get a "date picker" when you click in a form field that asks for a date; it will also add "http://" to web addresses if asked to provide one. As a good example of these, look at the News Item submission form linked at the top of this page. For those of you who insist on continuing to use outdated web browsers such as Internet Explorer you won't see anything different and the forms will behave like they always have.

1/20/11 — Troop 53 mourns a legend

Former Troop 53 Scoutmaster Joachim "Joe" (and for those of us who knew him in the '70s — "Bear") Giger passed away January 15 after a brief illness. Whatever success Troop 53 has had over the last 40+ years can be attributed directly or indirectly to Joe. His influence was felt long after his tenure as Scoutmaster ended. Former Committee Chair Ed Ackermann often called him "our conscience" and "our godfather". In addition to being Scoutmaster he also served as Troop Committee Chairman, Troop Secretary, FOS/SME Chair, and other ad hoc positions over the years. All on top of his professional life and his volunteer work for other organizations. Troop 53 extends its sympathies to his family. He will be missed. Online obituary

1/18/11 — Court of Honor Date

Invitations to our next Court of Honor in February were mailed to Troop members last week. Unfortunately the date on the invitation is incorrect. The correct date — Tuesday, February 22 — is on our calendar. Jim Maule was going to contact all who received the invitation, but in case you didn't get the word, here ya' go.

1/1/11 — Another Eagle Scout!

Congratulations to Andrew Bridges who recently passed his Eagle Scout Board of Review and becomes Troop 53's 62^nd Eagle Scout!