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9th June 1999 -- the day CalPageApl.java was born

This is just a static image. On the front page what you're seeing is a Java Applet, wot I wrote, that renders a calendar page for the date of the site's most recent change.  Here 'tis, showing the current date (I hope):
The idea was that I wanted a graphic link on the front page to give access to the site's change history. A suitable image, in keeping with the theme, was a calendar page.  I could've just produced a static image but of course I'd have to redo it every time I updated the site.   The obvious choice was to write some software to create the calendar image, given a date (Obvious?  Well to me at least.  Why?  Because I can.).  Even better, make it a Java app that renders the calendar page image automatically.  All I need to do is change parameters in the HTML source!  It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was a fun little app to write (my first one quite some time after taking a course in Java).   Probably the trickiest part was trying to make the APPLET act the same was as an A HREF= with an IMG SRC=.  I quite quickly got it to respond to a click by jumping to a URL I provide as a parameter (and to change the mouse pointer to indicate that a link was there).  I can't make the applet draw a "transparent" image so the best I can do is paint the background paper GIF underneath it (unless your firewall doesn't let the applet read it).   What I haven't done yet is implement a tooltip.   This may be quite complicated (I suspect I'll have to render it myself, but I can't draw outside the Applet's area...) so all I do at the moment is update the status line.  One day...   The other downsides are that it's a bit slow to load and not everyone has Java enabled (I guess).

The static image at the top of the page is showing the date I wrote the class(es).