A handy new feature for interested readers: I’ve added separate RSS feeds for both Star Trek: Series ? and The Celestial Parodies, so that you can keep up to date with the latest episodes (whenever they’re published) without relying on me publishing a separate entry in the updates section.
I’ve posted a minor update to the Warp Speed Calculator widget. It turns out that some unintentionally sloppy coding on my part caused the widget to break when it’s run in OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”). That’s been fixed.
I managed to do some minor housecleaning during my forced exile. (Yes, there’s actually an excuse other than laziness for the long time since the last official update! See the Subspace Cafe for more details there.) The housecleaning mainly had to do with updating links, reformatting certain outdated HTML, et cetera.
But I won’t be able to build momentum, unfortunately. I’ve got a wacky work schedule the next few days, due to a certain high-profile event that’s happening on Friday. I don’t mind the extra work at all (I actually enjoy systems management, sort of), but it’s the crazy hours that really get to me. Oh, well.
The Celestial scares off powerful new allies in Episode 44: “Cause and Suspect”. Also, Reverend has posted a few additions to his logo gallery.
(I’ll try not to get too repetitive with the next update...)
I’ve made a small change to the style sheets, to improve the appearance of the search field and button at the top corner of the page. Firefox users should now see some nicely rounded corners... although the edges may still appear jagged due to lousy anti-aliasing algorithms.
[begin shameless plug]
Visitors using Safari (or another WebKit-powered browser) have had nicer-looking search fields for a while now, though. Look at those smooth, well-rounded corners!
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
This also seems like a good opportunity to post updated stats concerning web browser use at STM. No spectacularly good news, sadly. At least IE7 has made some half-assed improvements to finally join the 21st century. Still, compared to five years ago, when IE5 visitors constituted 80% of my traffic, this is a good thing.
Here’s to an improving web browser ecosystem in the next five years!
The Celestial continues to wreak havoc with the next two episodes, Episode 42: “Uninvited Guests” and Episode 43: “Whose Console Is It, Anyway?”.
Also, Reverend was recently bitten by the creative bug again, and has posted a set of new Federation and Starfleet logos.
Dan’s Excuse of the Day Week Moment for Not Updating Stuff: I’ve been extra-busy at work (overtime, even) with all the back-to-school kids coming ’round to get new stuff. After the big rush to get the site finished and published, I lost some of the momentum.
In the mean time, here’s two new parody episodes! It’s the return of Trip Tucker in Series ? Episode 140: “Tuckered Out, Part I”... but does this mean that Damar is out of a job? And meanwhile, on the Celestial, Genocide gets to cause another gigantic explosion (for a good cause, even!) in Episode 41: “Aftermath, During Biology”.
It seems that some visitors using Internet Explorer are having trouble viewing the new site after I switched things over. If the site does not look right to you, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the refresh button, or hit CTRL-F5. This will clear IE’s cache and load the latest style sheets.
(Or you could download a better web browser...) 😀
I think I’ve finally wrapped up all of my site reconstruction tasks. The missing/relocated archives for the Subspace Cafe and the site updates have been corrected, so that old links will now continue to work as they should. I’ve also gotten the little menu form to browse the monthly archives for said blogs to work, thanks to a handy redirection script I found. And finally, I’ve bailed on my plan for a link blog, because I realized that anything I’d likely have to say there can be said in the Subspace Cafe instead. Hooray for simplicity!
After a bit of unexpected work to get existing features up and running, I can now declare “Star Trek Minutiae” to be completely mostly reopened for business! There’s a few niggling features I need to set up still, like the Divertissements (essentially a link blog), and some minor troubleshooting of the site’s style sheets (because Internet Explorer still sucks after all these years). And I’ve still got a little catching up to do on some content. Details below:
While most of you weren’t looking, I actually was updating the site during the past two years (jeez, it really has been that long, hasn’t it?), even if I didn’t publish any official notices. The numerous episodes of Series ? are the primary example here. (“Krenim” is well into the sixth season of his crime against sanity now.)
I’ve also discovered another hilarious parody series that I found worthy of inclusion in the Humor Archive. The Celestial Parodies, a story by “Swordtail”, is about the (mis-)adventures of the misfit crew of the USS Celestial. Commanded by a loony Bajoran vedek, Captain Righteous Lee, the ship wreaks havoc across the Federation. The story was well into the first season when I discovered the show and started to archive new episodes as they were published. “Swordtail” recently finished his fortieth episode, ending the second season.
Another ongoing project has been the return of new “You’re the Admiral!” scenarios, this time moderated by Shik over at the Flare forums. We had great fun with the Dorza Sector scenario (have you ever played chicken with a Gorn?), and the Sobchak Sector scenario has started, although it’s currently on hiatus due to Real Life interruptions. Shik has added some interesting new twists, not to mention a third dimension, to the original concept.
By popular request, I’ve made some updates to my cross-series starship comparison charts. I’ve managed to scrounge up some new images from shows both new and old, and I filled in a gap by adding a fourth scaled chart for small- to medium-sized ships. One request, though... please don’t request that I add a ship unless you can point me to a decent-quality image that I can use!
Finally, the project that I’m personally most proud of: back in December 2006, I finally finished work on my first Dashboard widget, a Warp Speed Calculator. Unlike my previous, clumsy effort in FileMaker Pro, this widget is tiny and accurate, not to mention easy to use. And I’ve got a couple more ideas in the pipeline, too.
Yes, “Star Trek Minutiae” is actually coming back from the dead! I can’t make any promises about exactly how frequently I’ll be updating things (and some of you might remember my past history in this department...). But I realized that my site has been neglected for far too long. So I gave it a nice makeover and moved to a new host, and I’m in the process of putting the pieces back together! More to come as things develop; I’ll also post an overview of all the new features that’ve been added. (Hint: Check the Humor Archive.)