New on our Website

Information regarding new content and various technical and structural changes affecting the appearance and function of our website


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May 28, 2014 - New Grand Forks Bread Ladies Web Page

The Grand Forks USCC Bread Committee is now celebrating 20 years of baking and still going strong!  We are pleased to be able to acknowledge and celebrate their remarkable contribution to our community with the design of a new web page, including photos and an account of their accomplishments.

View the Bread Ladies Web Page here ...



April 16, 2014 - New USCC Current News and Events Wordpress Installation
As part of an ongoing reconfiguration of USCC web services, we are investigating the potential of a Wordpress installation for the coverage of Current News and Events of interest to the Doukhobor community. This experiment will be under development for the next few months and if implemented, may go live later this summer.

Link to the new test site.


February 16, 2014 - Important Notice to USCC Members Online Subscribers -
Subscriber Login Access temporarily closed

 

USCC Members Online, our Wordpress "Website Within a Website" for USCC members and friends, has been temporarily closed to subscribers and administrators as a security precaution. An unprecedented number of Wordpress hosting servers across the globe, including ours, are currently being subjected to a malicious brute force password attack by unscrupulous hackers. They are attempting to compromise website accounts and employ them as a means of distributing spam.

Our web group has been communicating with server technicians to better understand and implement precauations, but in the meantime, our Wordpress log-in script has been disabled to prevent all entry to USCC Members Online.  We will continue to monitor the situation and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.



August 28, 2013 - Grand Forks Lapsha Ladies Web Page

In 2013, the Grand Forks Lapsha Ladies celebrated 25 consecutive years of service to the community. Not only have they fed thousands of appreciative people with their delicious noodles, but they have also contributed thousands of dollars in support of numerous worthy causes. As the grateful beneficiary of some of that generous support, we are pleased to add a special Lapsha Ladies page to our USCC Website, in recognition of this inspiring group of women. View the Lapsha Ladies Web Page here ...



April 6, 2013 - Doukhobor Song Library Back Online

After a period of inactivity and dysfunction caused by a malware infection, we are pleased to have the Doukhbor Song Library back online. The DSL is now hosted on our server and is once again accessible through our Link Section, or by visiting the Doukhobor Song Library Website.



February 13, 2013 - Kootenay Men's Group Events and Activities Page

The USCC Kootenay Men's Group is an active participant in USCC functions and offers a variety of services to our organization as well as the local community. We are pleased to be able to keep you informed regarding their upcoming events as well as to periodically document their various activities with brief reports, short articles and photographs. Visit the Kootenay Men's Group Events and Activities Page here.

 


February 12, 2013 - KRUNA Events, Activities and Announcements Page

We are proud of our USCC involvement with the Kootenay Region Branch of UNA-Canada. This group, on its own or in cooperation with others, organizes forums, vigils, and other public events dealing with contemporary environmental, social justice and human rights issues. You can find brief general information about KRUNA on our KRUNA Web Page here or read about the current events and activities of this group on our new KRUNA Events, Activities and Announcements Page.

 


January 29, 2013 - Hospitality - Cooking the Doukhobor Way

We frequently receive email inquiries about this unique recipe book, published as a centennial project and a fund raiser by a group of dedicated USCC ladies. Originally published in 1995, the book continues to be a "Doukhobor Best Seller", now in its third printing. For details about pricing and placing orders, visit this web page in our new Resources section of our website:  http://www.usccdoukhobors.org/resources.htm


You can also preview two popular recipes from "Hospitality" featuring Borshch and Pyrahi on our own Doukhobor Cuisine web page here.  Please note the unique way Doukhobors spell "Borshch", rather than the more common "Borsch" or "Borscht", and also be warned that our Vareniki page is still under construction.



January 20, 2013 - New Resources Section on our Website

We have added a new component to our website with information about Doukhobor-related products including books, audio/video recordings and craftwork by local artisans, as well as services within our website and local community. In time, we also hope to develop an online repository for articles and stories by Doukhobor writers on various topics.implementing a new. You can access this section from our Home Page page or visit the main Resources Page to navigate and view the various content sub headings.



December 05, 2012 - New on our Website - Upcoming USCC Events on our Online Calendar
Aside from events scheduled for the Brilliant Cultural Centre, as described below, we are now hoping to routinely post significant upcoming USCC events on our regular online Events Calendar.  Each event category on this calendar is tagged with its own unique colour - USCC specific events are marked with a light blue tag. You can use the category filter on this calendar to view this or any other category by itself.  - Current calendar event content information, courtesy of our USCC ISKRA and office staff.  View Calendar ...

This calendar likewise, features significant events of interest to the general Doukhobor community.  If you have such an upcoming event, please email us the details in advance and we would be happy to consider it's placement on this calendar.

 



September 11, 2012 - New on our Website - Brilliant Cultural Centre Events Calendar
We have posted a Calendar of Events and Activities scheduled to take place at the Brilliant Cultural Centre. This calendar may be of interest to USCC members or other individuals and organizations wishing to attend a function or reserve the facility. Calendar content is maintained by BCC-USCC staff and is posted under our main website USCC INFORMATION section here.  For additional information about the Brilliant Cuiltural Centre, view our BCC web page or telephone 250 365-3613.



June 10, 2012
- Anna Petrovna Markova Historical Funeral Service Photos
A selection of photos from the personal collection of the photographer, taken during the funeral service at the Brilliant Cultural Centre and the burial site at the Verigin Memorial Park, on September 16 and 17th, 1978. These photos have been scanned from their original negatives, and aside from one or two, have not been previously published.
View in Photo Gallery ...

 

May 20, 2012 - A Revised and Updated Video Web Page
Thanks to the video team at the Brilliant Cultural Centre, and the generosity of an online streaming service called USTREAM, we have been able to view live video coverage of events at the centre for a number of years. We were also able to view a limited number of recordings made from these broadcasts, all of this initially only available from the USTREAM website at  www.ustreamtv.com.  Very soon afterwards, we began to stream this same coverage through our own USCC website pages, for the convenience of our USCC website visitors.

 

Until now, we were simply embedding USTREAM video players into our web pages - one page for USTREAM live broadcasts and a second page for video recordings. And we will continue to stream live USTREAM video on our same USCC web page as usual.  But we are making adjustments to the way we will post and deliver video recordings. It appears that we have used up our storage allowance on USTREAM and will now be downloading all recordings to our own servers, where we have considerable storage capacity and where we can hopefully build and maintain our own permanent video archive. We will also be experimenting with various commercial or open-source players to play these locally stored videos and have designed a special new page for this purpose.

But this is where it gets a little more complicated ... 

Online videos can be broadcast as either "video streams" or "progressive downloads". Viewers would hardly notice a difference in video quality, but the delivery is quite different. True video streams are most efficient and desirable (as in Youtube and USTREAM) because the complete video file is not required on a viewer's hard drive before the video can be viewed. Streamed video is distributed in small chunks of data as you are ready to receive them, unlike progressive downloads, in which the complete video will be downloaded to your temporary computer cache. Progressive video also requires considerably more bandwidth for delivering lengthy videos and may be much slower to load and access before it can be viewed.

It would seem that we should be considering "true" video streaming in a long term, but unfortunately, true video streams are dispensed on specialized media servers and we don't happen to have one. We are therefore looking at the progressive video option, using an open-source video player on our existing server. Although they are excellent players, a common problem with progressive video players arises when a viewer cancels or pauses a video download. Although it may seem that the movie clip has stopped and download has been terminated, it still continues to download in the background. This is not desirable because it clutters the viewer's computer hard drive and wastes our server bandwidth. We will try to address this problem in time, but in the meantime request our viewers to cancel downloads by simply closing our video pages after viewing. Or alternatively, doing a page refresh by clicking the STOP button beside the player.

 

You can observe file download activity on our new video player by paying attention to the video progress bar. The gray portion displays the progress of the actual file download. The red portion indicates the progress of the currently playing video itself.

 

You can read more about streaming and progressive video downloads on this blog:

http://blog.mydeo.com/2009/01/12/streaming-vs-progressive-download-understanding-the-difference

 

March 8, 2012 - A new Doukhobor photo sharing opportunity for our online visitors  March 8, 2012 - A new Doukhobor photo sharing opportunity for our online visitors  
You may be aware of a number of excellent photo sharing website services now available online.  Three of the most popular such services, Picasa, Flickr and Photobucket, offer free accounts, and although in some cases your capacity may be limited, they may be a great place to start your own personal online gallery. Photo uploading is usually straightforward, and you would be in charge of your own photo selection and gallery maintenance.


If you have already posted photos of Doukhobor interest in this manner, we would love to hear from you. We are now able to embed existing public slideshows from these services directly into our own web galleries. You can preview our earliest current selections here.  This new service is accessed from our regular web gallery index page here. If you have something in mind, please send us a short email with a link to your public gallery. Your photos could be shared and enjoyed by the many thousands of our other online visitors who visit this website annually.


 

December 23, 2011 - Christmas and New Year's Program Broadcasts

Our USCC website is pleased to offer those families and friends who are unable to attend the Christmas and New Year's Eve Programs at the Brilliant Cultural Centre, an opportunity to watch the festivities on our website. Both evening programs are scheduled for broadcast at 7:00 PM and can be viewed on our Video Streaming Page, which is accessible from a Home Page link on our main website. We thank Bill Popoff, Andy Ozeroff and Steve Malloff of the UStream Video team, as well as other members of the audio crew, for offering us this much appreciated public service.


 

December 13, 2011 - In Memoriam Service now fully activated.

After many years of anticipation and much planning and effort, the USCC Doukhobor Website is now fully prepared to host all of the services provided in our new "In Memoriam" Section. While we appreciate that it will take some time for viewers and other members of the community to become aware of this new service, and to become accustomed to using it, we trust that it will soon be seen as providing a convenient, indispensible function in our fast-paced 21st century lifestyle.

Most of our Doukhobor families have already become accustomed to placing obituaries and "In Memoriam" messages for deceased loved ones in ISKRA and local newspapers, purchasing and placing memorial headstones at cemeteries, purchasing needed items such as park benches, medical equipment, etc., and even establishing special memorial trust funds and other ongoing arrangements. Funds are expended in various ways to memorialize the life of a deceased loved one in a worthy and permanent way.

With the appearance of the Internet, there is now an amazing new opportunity to memorialize the life of a loved one who's passed on. For one thing, it is now very convenient to almost immediately notify all those who might be concerned about the passing of an individual, and about the actual arrangements that will be taking place. Daily newspapers and local radio have been providing this service in the past, but now the Internet is much more immediate and also much more far-reaching.

The USCC Website now offers this service - to post a "Funeral Notice" - which should be of value to everyone in the Doukhobor community and its friends. Take a moment to check this aspect of our Website, and you will undoubtedly agree. Make a point to use this service, if the sad occasion arises when you have to. Let other people know about it. This will not only relieve the USCC Office staff and the bereaved family of unnecessary inquiries, it will also increase the positive support and response from the community at the difficult time of parting.

After the funeral, you may well decide to post the obituary of your loved one, not only in ISKRA and local papers, but also in our new USCC Website Obituary Section. This not only will memorialize your loved one and provide a public tribute to their life, but it will become a permanent ("vechnaya") memorial to that person's life, which can be accompanied by a variety of biographical material, including text, photos, etc. - more potential for a beautiful portrayal of the person's life than ever existed before! And, just imagine the interest for future descendants and other relatives doing genealogical research of their family trees! We now have the opportunity to build a rich and colourful Doukhobor community legacy, for future generations to experience and learn from…

 

November 07, 2011 - Additional Walter Kanigan photos - Contemporary Doukhobor Woodcraft

View Slideshow ..

 

October 23, 2011 - Online Funeral Notices - a new service on our website.

We are offering our viewers a free online funeral notice service available to all families and friends of the overall Doukhobor community. Notices will be posted in our In Memoriam section on the Funeral Notices page and will remain online as part of the permanent informational archive of the site. You can submit a funeral notice on this page  here ...

 

October 19, 2011 - Contemporary Doukhobor Woodcraft - Walter Kanigan

New photos on our website
As an active member of the USCC Kootenay Men's Group, Walter spends a good part of his typical day at the USCC Arts and Crafts Centre in Brilliant, where he contributes his woodworking skills to various practical collaborative projects. The rest of his typical day is dedicated to his personal woodwork, crafting his personal "artistic" designs. We are proud to feature his work in our web gallery and hopefully will likewise be able to feature the work of other skilled woodcraft practitioners.
View Slideshow ..

 

October 17, 2011 - Authentic 19th Century Russian Doukhobor Woodcraft

New slide show in our photo gallery featuring detailed photos of the typical decorative woodwork traditionally applied to Doukhobor homes in the Georgian Caucasus - villages of Gorelovka and Orlovka.
Photos contributed by Walter Kanigan and Mike A. Kanigan.
View Slideshow ..


October 05, 2011 - Changes to our Home Page

We have updated our "Home Page" navigational structure somewhat to clarify and facilitate easier access to our online content.

 

The News Headlines Block, as it appears on the right hand side of our Home Page, will continue to feature a rotating short list of headlines covering recent news. These headlines will now, however, cover "all things new" that may be of some potential interest to Doukhobors. The News Headlines Bar above the block now points to a special "News Headline Archive Page", where all expired headlines will be stored for later retreival. Each headline will of course, also have its own link to the news story or article itself, either on our own "Current News" Page or another outside or external website. Please note that we have removed our Upcoming Special Events Menu Item as well as the page itself  and this information will now be amalgamated with our Current News.

 

The "New on our Website" link points to this page (which you are now viewing) where we will keep you posted regarding technical changes or special content or component updates to the USCC Doukhobor website itself.

 

The "Resources" menu link and page is also new and will feature various bits of useful informational content in various categories. This component of our website is currently under consideration.

 

The "In Memoriam" page is likewise under consideration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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