Older Updates
July 6, 2022
- Once again, DarkAlphaWolf has sent several more chapters of her Wake Up fan fiction. Take a look!
November 16, 2021
- Happy to say that DarkAlphaWolf has sent a few more chapters to her Wake Up fan fiction. Definitely check it out! I also wanted to address something that has come up in emails a few times over the last few months...while I do have areas to update with content and flesh out, as of this posting, the comics areas and other print media things are as complete as I can make them unless or until I get more items/donations. I'm not holding anything back in that arena at the moment.
Otherwise, I hope to finally focus back on my own unfinished fan fiction. SITS is a massive epic and I do hope to finish it someday! Watch this space.
July 3, 2021
Finally, made it through the last round of housekeeping updates! Took a while to get through 8 years of dust and cobwebs.
- This update focused on the last few sections in need of some updating/maintenance (site and links). As such, the site map was checked over for accuracy - especially since I've been moving/deleting things lately. Speaking of deleting, I got rid of the site search feature - it was "pending" forever and let's face it, I'm never going to get it going. Just use the map...or stumble around in the dark here. I don't care.
- The contact page was in serious need of updating. AIM? Yahoo messenger? hahaha. No longer viable ways to contact me, folks.
- In the guestbook area, I first laughed at the archaic idea of guestbooks. Then I realized I never archived the comments from the last script I'd been using there, so I added those to the existing archive of comments. But, this IS still the internet and people love to fire off snarky commentary...so if you are here and feel the urge to opine, you can still contact me.
- I changed up the affiliate program to be oriented more toward using my web hosts' sponsored link, which helps this site out with free hosting for every referral. Yes, I know - who is launching their own sites now? But it's still there in case anybody wants to be all throwback and nostalgic like me here ;) So, yes, we are getting to the depressing part soon...
- The awards area, the update archive, and the disclaimer pages didn't need much work - maybe some minor tweaking at best. I did update the credits page for accuracy, clarity, and made it more current with some additional credits.
- The site history page gained some minor snark, but it felt necessary seems how this place has hit 20 years old and I really do feel like I was there, 3,000 years ago. And given it's been 20 years, the page was fun to revisit and see all the changes and growth this place has had over the decades.
- The FAQ page had some annoying html errors that were fixed. I also updated the content to be more current.
- My About Purrsia page joined us in this decade with added info, nixing outdated info, and a few pics to round things out.
- The depression set in when I updated the links page. Fandom as it used to exist - via the creative and fun fan sites - is mostly gone. Even the ways we used to socialize are gone (yahoo groups? RPGs? Message boards? Gone. Gone. Gone.) I deleted a vast majority of the links on that page. It's f-ing sad to me. I don't blame the folks that don't update or let their sites sink into the astral mist, but I miss those times. SO much has changed in the 20 years this site has been rolling. But, I am grateful to have had the experiences along the way, and even more grateful that I have made some dear and life long friends because of my time in this fandom. No regrets!
Will there be 20 more years of whatever the hell this is? Who knows. For now, I'm still interested in carrying on this archaic form of fan expression more than I am about shaking my cane at kids these days. As such, I prepare to work on writing stories and getting the content stuff I skipped before rolled out to you. Stay tuned, as they used to say.
June 10, 2021
This batch of updates concentrated on fan fiction submissions from a new author to the site archive, as well as going over the 2011 series section of the site to continue on the grand (if tedious) task of cleaning things up around here.
- Author Freddo has started sending his stories to be displayed in the fan fiction archive. If you haven't caught his stories in other places, like ff.net, then definitely check them out here. He's got 2011 series themed stories up so far and there will be more to come soon. I'm always thrilled to host more talented authors. Thanks, Freddo!
- The 2011 series section got its little housecleaning once-over this round of updates. Most of it consisted of fixing links in the cast and staff chat areas (videos that no longer linked up anywhere, sites that were long-dead, etc). The episode guide and review received similar housekeeping, although I'd fixed huge errors brought on by the commenting script there last summer. That was a mess!
- Otherwise, areas such as the fan art and image archive got their static html treatment when the classic sections did, so gone is the coppermine management system for this area as well. Less scripts for me the keep updated and hacker-free.
- I do have some new trading cards for the downloads section, but that will have to wait for a future update. I'd like to get back to working on SITS soon, seems how that story is going to be 20 years old along with the site this year, and gee I'd like to actually finish it. Now that I'm done with school and ready to start my new career, I just may have the time.
- One final note: I did bite the bullet and upped my web hosting package to the biggest shared hosting they offer (I was nearing my 10 gig limit on the old one for content). Nice thing about that is I can move my Voltron site over to the same package and pay one bill for both sites. Hopefully that goes well and there are not major snafus but if something gets wonky around here in the near future - sorting that out is likely why. Bear with me!
November 28, 2020
Happy turkey day! I gave myself the day off of histotech school and decided to give us all something to digest with our holiday meals. This group of updates has some additions/tweaks to the fan fiction section, and a clean-up of the fun stuff area:
- Checking the entire fun stuff section for errors, bad links, and so on. I ditched any of the games that weren't working anymore. Probably about a quarter of them didn't work and got nuked. I was sad to see some go as cheesy as they were. For some reason, for example, I'd found the fazer eyes game hiiiilarious. I do need to fix the images for the quiz results, but I have to find them first...so that will happen in some update down the road. I also nuked the ecard page (since it was dependent on the coppermine screen capture gallery and that is now gone as a format) and the adooption page. If I missed something, let me know.
- I updated the caption game and archive to include the couple of captions that had been submitted by users of the old coppermine set-up.
- In the fic archive, I tweaked it a bit so that when you mouse over the images that open each author's collection, it shows the general category of the stories within. This came after some feedback from a visitor who had a hard time finding the 2011 series based stories. Hopefully that helps.
- Also in the fic archive, DarkAlphaWolf01 submitted a rewrite to her Wake Up story, so be sure to check that out. Hopefully she will have more to come!
- Speaking of DarkAlphaWolf, she also submitted a piece of fan art which depicts a scene from my fan fic, Signal in the Sky. I am proud to add it to the story's picture book. I did also add a few of my own sketches there too, of the Cerise character. They are old drawings, but the character is in the story so they were relevent.
- On a related note, I did add a few profiles for the characters in SITS: Lynxana, Cerise, Jagara and Torr gained profile pages. There will be more to come soon.
November 2, 2020
This group of updates concentrated on the Fanon section of the site and include:
- Checking the entire section for errors, bad links, and so on. If I missed something, let me know.
- Of course we know from the last site update that the archive of the message board forum moved to the fanon section.
- The ThunderArt gallery of fan art was reformatted into a static html set-up - gone is the coppermine management system.
- I updated the main fanon faq to reflect the changes to the art gallery, and moved the fan fic faq to reflect changes to that area as well.
- Speaking of the fic archive, the biggest part (and what took the longest for this round of updates) was the fic archive also reverted from an automated format (efiction) to an html static format. Efiction was just becoming increasingly unstable and unreliable.
- On a related note, there's a "new" author in the archive, DarkAlphaWolf01. I say "new" because they submitted their work to this site in 2017 and I just now realized it had been sitting there for approval...testament to efiction and it failing to notify me I had a pending new author/story to approve.
- Personally, I have renewed interest in my own stories. You will gasp, no doubt, to see I have finished not one, but BOTH of the trilogies in my story section here. Where's that historical marker image macro when you need it? The stupidest part of this, folks, is I've had the last parts of these stories sitting mostly-finished on a thumb drive for years. Just had to go in and do a final edit and in one case, add the last scene. I did also take the liberty while in there to polish up the first few sections of the Fruit Nut story to make some ideas more clear. I wouldn't call it a rewrite, but rather, a clarifying edit. Sometimes I forget y'all aren't in my head and can't know by osmosis what I'm thinking/envisioning.
And what about the big epic, SITS? Well, I am back in touch with Knight Writer. I went and revamped my notes for the rest of Era 2, and we are both inspired to start writing on it again. I also ran across a file containing concrit a friend was nice enough to provide for that story years ago, and would love to finally do those rewrites - particularly on the earlier chapters - I've long talked about, using those notes as a tool. - In the meantime, I did some rearranging with where the supplimental material is for SITS, and did some updating with the chapter notes, lyrics pages, and the story's picture book here. A bunch of art was missing for some reason. I moved the SITS faq here as well. I hope in the next round of updates to round out the profiles more with the newer characters.
- The mary sue page can now be accessed off the main fan fiction page, and I fixed the link to Al's litmus test. Since his site no longer exists, I found a ghost of that page courtesy of the WayBackMachine and linked accordingly. The fan fiction audio archive is also now linked off the main fiction page.
- The fandom awards page got a bit of housekeeping and denotation that its archival in nature since the fandom no longer holds such awards. Not to mention Yahoo Groups are officially dead. Yup, feeling old here!
- Speaking of Yahoo Groups, I nuked the section on the TCATGR. It was fun while it lasted but that part of my fandom life is relegated to the mists of memories.
September 10, 2020
This group of updates concentrated on the Downloads/Forum sections of the site. They include:
- Checking the entire section for errors, bad links, and so on. If I missed something, let me know.
- When I updated the screen capture gallery, it kind of broke the link to the animated gifs page in the navigation menu, so I fixed that.
- I decided to add some YouTube links to the series audio page, which offers a quick way to listen to the files as well.
- In the Wallpaper section, I fixed a few broken links and may rework how things are displayed there later.
- Additionally, I moved the LJ icons over to the Icons page and reworked things a bit.
- Indeed, some things got nuked. Among those pages: Yahoo Skins (wow, does anyone use Yahoo messenger anymore? Does it even exist??), LJ moods, and PSP tubes. Outdated and useless, I figured, so I ghosted them.
- Finally, I decided to move the archive of the message board forum to the fanon section, and got rid of the chat portal (yeah, I don't even remember how to log on to mIRC, do you?) and the calendar. So I didn't feel like an inactive board needed its own section and moved it accordingly. I was on the fence about nuking it, but the board itself has a lot of information or amusement factor and therefore I saved it in read-only mode.
September 6, 2020
This group of updates concentrated on the Memorabilia section of the site. They include:
- Checking the entire section for errors, bad links, and so on. If I missed something, let me know.
- In the Wildstorm Comics section, I updated the credits page - dead links were deleted, while any new links were added. Again, if I'm missing something crucial, give me a shout.
- When it came to the activity books area, I took off the color online feature since the applet apparently fails to function at all. I may or may not replace it, but you can still print out pages to color if that's your thing.
- In the Marvel Star Comics section, I finally added donated files and scans that a couple of fans donated to me years ago. It's with great gratitude that I present to visitors these additional files, some of which completed entire sections in the UK comics area, and thank the contributors - Riki Lovatt and Robert H - for both their contributions and patience.
- Additionally, I updated the staff credits page for those involved in creating the Marvel Comics of the 1980s and 90s. Dead links were removed, and anything useful I could find was added. If I missed anything, be sure to let me know.
- Finally, in the Merchandise area, I decided to mostly nuke it. I got rid of the coppermine gallery that housed the haphazard collection of pics and fan collections (really, only mine was there and let's face it - this entire site is an homage to my collection so, meh). I did keep a few items here: LJN toy lists and the Rankin Bass licensing letters and lists from back in the day. I also reformatted and moved the promotional pics and snapshots from the Bandai line of toys for the 2011 reboot, and moved all that into the more appropriate section of the site that deals with that newer series, here.
August 22, 2020
It took a bit of plowing through tedious code, but I'm finally ready to announce the first wave of updates.
First, however, there's been some exciting news for fans. Hulu has announced it is streaming both the classic 80s series (the entire 130 episode run), in addition to both seasons of the 2011 CN reboot.
Click here for the 80s classic on Hulu.
or Click here to watch the modern day reboot, which first aired on Cartoon Network in 2011.
This group of updates concentrated on the Classic Show section of the site. Those include:
- Checking the entire section for errors, bad links, and so on. If I missed something, let me know.
- I updated the links for cast members on the cast page - dead links were deleted, while any new links were added. Again, if I'm missing something crucial, give me a shout.
- In the Fan Episode Guide, I removed the comment script as it no longer functioned correctly and had collected tons of spam. I archived any comments to the existing comment archives, and have shifted to manual comments for the future. Those can be sent to me via email if the mood strikes you.
- Asthetically, I fixed an html goof that was producting a layout error on some pages. That one was subtle but annoying my perfectionist tendencies. Worse than that, I discovered after having a template that's at least 10 years old propping up the site, it was not rendering properly in some more modern formats like smartphone or tablet. I realized it was mainly due to the css the design relies on not rendering correctly in those formats. I looked up some code fixes and at least got the site to show up legibly on my android phone and in safari on a tablet I have access to. Below is a screen shot of how the site looks on my laptop (since it's where I do all my updating from) - which is a windows machine running firefox. It is a representation of how I intend this site to look. If you are seeing something drastically different, my sad and outdated web design skillz are very sad for you indeed.
When css, html, and browsers play nice despite my ineptitude, it's a beautiful thing! - In the appearance section, I made a few additions and redesigned things a bit since the javascript running the pagination decided to not work anyway. There is so much more to be added to the Dictionary and the Appearance guide, but for now, this smallish update will do!
- I finished linking all the scripts to the Fan Episode Guide.
- The FAQ was updated with correct/updated info. I also fixed some html errors that was causing some linking issues.
- The thing that took this update forever to unveil was the total revamp of the image gallery. I wanted to ditch coppermine as a management system for the pics, and coded in a straight up html format instead. This was enormously tedious and took the better part of a month to do the code for thousands of images. I also did the gallery for the 2011 show at the same time.
- Speaking of the 2011 show, I did skip ahead to that show's episode guide to fix a huge script error that was making that guide unreadable. It will be combed over more thoroughly for other errors later, but yeah - now you can at least read the guide. Sheesh.
June 23, 2020
Aaaand eight years later, I pop back in to say hi!
So, what has the old (literally) web mistress been up to? Well, first I was working a lot. Then I went back to college AND still working a lot. I've got one degree and I'm on a bit of a break between that and starting a clinical rotation for my new career. I also happen to be working just part time at the moment and thought...why not knock the cobwebs off the old fan site?
Yes, I have been checking the main email here over the years. I have received some kind words and I'm glad the site is still a handy resource for fans. It's one of the reasons I have ultimately decided to keep paying the bills for this web space instead of letting this place fade into the astral plane. I've also received some awesome donations of new content and I hate to make lofty promises, but if I don't get too frustrated with fumbling around with html again (sidenote: look! I learned a new caption tag! See: the Jaga image above), I will surely add the new content.
That said, here are some things I've been asked about during the site's long derth of updates that won't be happening:
Re: bigger, better, more awesome scans of things/improved files or formats. Unless you want to be one of the generous donating angels, you are stuck with the 20 year old shitty scans/files. Sorry. Definitely don't have that kind of time or even the updated software/equipment for that. Hell, for this little message here, I had to download ftp and html software again as it wasn't even installed on this current laptop that I've had for a couple years. I sure as heck won't try to install ancient software for my ancient scanner (cobwebs here, but I'm pretty sure the spiders have claimed that dusty scanner as their own and there may be a mutitny if I dare to decide otherwise).
Along those lines, queries about was I going to cover this, or did I know about that, or hey this thing or that thing is broken so fix it, were met with baffled bemusement because a site that clearly before this hadn't been updated since October of 2012 was probably not going to stay current with any ThunderCats news or the like. Did the silence not speak for itself or did you all think the crickets would upkeep the site?
What will happen in the near future: While there are no plans for a huge overhaul of the site (I converted my Voltron site to mostly a WordPress format a while back and haven't quite finished that either, so I do not have time or interest in opening that kind of can of worms here), I'm going to do some major housekeeping. Which means I'll probably get rid of outdated stuff (LJ icons...really??? :lol:) and perhaps get rid of the coppermine galleries in favor of static pages for images since interactivity in fan pages isn't so much a thing anymore. Not to mention the draw scripts of that sort have on my site resources or the vulnerability they leave to hackers. Oh yeah, and scripts require staying current on updates and well...I can't make any promises about how stoked I'll remain for tinkering around here. At the very least, when my clinicals start in late fall I'm going to let the crickets take over again for a spell. Same will likely be true of the fic archive - back to basic, back to static and calling that a day. Otherwise, it'll be the usual fixing broken stuff, broken links, and so on.
Strange to think that this site has almost been around 20 years now. If you remember when it first launched, congratulations! You are also old. And still here. Why are you still here? I ask myself the same thing ;)
2011 Update Log
2010 Update Log
2009 Update Log
2008 Update Log
2007 Update Log
2006 Update Log
2005 Update Log
2004 Update Log
2003 Update Log