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5MV Update History maintained by Zeke | |
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JANUARY 2005 | |
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January 1 Happy New Year! Turned out I didn't have time to do up that post I was talking about, but I should be able to do it when I get back in Waterloo tomorrow. I could wait and make that the January 1 update, but now that I'm finally back on a next-day update schedule, I don't want to lose it right away, so that'll be tomorrow's update instead. See you then. |
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January 2 I threatened to use it last year, and this year I did! Here's the promised post about 2004 and 2005 at 5MV, titled 2005: A Clarke Analogy. [Comments] |
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January 4 I'd just like to take a moment here to congratulate my Net connection on picking exactly the most ironic day to go on the fritz. Kudos! Anyway, since I missed yesterday, you get two links today. These are two resources we at 5MV have been using of late. First, over at Dan Carlson's Star Trek Minutiae, Literature 329 has the scripts for every episode of TNG and DS9! (Also included are the ten Trek films and a few VOY and ENT episodes.) Second, Kira recently discovered a similar archive, The Voyager Transcripts, which covers almost every episode of VOY. These ones are apparently done by hand, making them even more impressive. Of course, they're no substitute for Jim Wright's synopses, but they're arguably more useful for the early episodes (Jim wasn't as wordy back then). Incidentally, there turned out to be an odd coincidence about the 2005 article. Over at TripHammered (which I mislinked in the article -- it's fixed now), on December 31, evay included me in a list of New Year's resolutions for the ENT cast. What's odd is that this wasn't the advice I was referring to in the article. I actually meant an email she sent me months ago with a similar recommendation about the daily updates. Well, either way, it's good advice. |
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January 5 Today we have a link that Kira recommended: The Edge's World Question Centre. Every year, a group called the Edge Foundation poses a question and then archives some of the better-known respondents' answers, generally from scientists and other members of publisher John Brockman's "third culture." This year's question is a good one: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" I don't usually do comment threads for link days, but I think it might be interesting to see what sort of answers 5MV's readers give for this question. (I'm certainly as interested in hearing from you guys as I am in hearing from this third culture thing.) [Comments] |
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January 6 Check it out! Over at TrekToday's Episode Guide, a ton of our Trek fivers are not only linked but actually mirrored! (I was supposed to be the one stuck with that work, but Christian had some spare time and decided to take care of some of it. Soon the fiver-uploading program will be made available to me so I can fill in the gaps.) So those of you who have done Trek fivers may now find that your work appears on two popular sites. Considering the egos we keep around here, this can only be good. |
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January 7 Today I've brought the staff stats pages in the About section up to date. (Well, all but mine. That one's long and I need to get to bed.) A couple of them have been... tweaked. |
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January 8 I've now brought my stats page up to date as well. Hey, I broke 200! (Even after revising my count to exclude Five-Minute Doom from the totals... if you haven't read that one, click to see why it shouldn't count.) An interesting coincidence: my Top 10 list count exactly doubled with this update, from 23 to 46. If that seems high to you, maybe you haven't found the election event Easter egg yet.... (From the Credit Where Credit is Due department, Kira brought her stats page up to date about a month ago, so I didn't have much to do there.) |
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January 9 Day 7 of Voyager Week is proceeding apace, but it's not ready yet. Hence, link day. I stand by my opinion that Bonus Stage is the funniest Flash series online, but the funniest one-shot Flash I've seen so far is the short but oh-so-sweet Dad's Home. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll have "Reefer Man" stuck in your head all day. |
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January 10 The news in Trekdom isn't encouraging this week -- according to these TrekToday reports, the plans for an eleventh Trek film are on hold. This season of ENT is continuing to rock the house, however, with yet another fan favourite Trek concept slated to be re-explored. Fans of the Reeves-Stevens' novels will see their hand in this immediately. |
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January 11 Hang onto your facial hair, kids. Banning beards: it's not just for my mom anymore. Oh, want a preview from Day 7? (ZAP) |
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January 12 Hey, there's some new stuff over at Enterprise Oddities. Let's see if we can kill their server again! |
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January 13 Got an assignment due tomorrow, so I just have time for a quick link. To... um... Robotbox and Cactus. |
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January 14 In what will -- I hope and intend -- be the last in this string of link days, here's the comic PIXEL. This is another of those "minimalist" offerings I'm so fond of like Triangle & Robert and Death to the Extremist, but this comic owes less to other webcomics than it does to Abbott's Flatland. Like that classic novel, PIXEL makes very clever uses of its apparently-limiting premise. Okay, time to get this show on the road again. See you tomorrow. |
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January 15 Not done yet, but Fuyu Ginga pointed out something yesterday which actually makes Sunday a better day for the update. OR DOES IT? No, really, it does. Stay tuned. |
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January 16 Wow -- it sure didn't take me long to break the new "stop specifying dates, you moron" policy, did it? And I couldn't come up with a better example of why that policy is a good idea if I tried. The assignment I had to get done for tomorrow took far, far longer than I expected it to. Lesson learned: I hereby renew my commitment to not promising stuff I may not be able to deliver. Except the Day 7 update. Because 5MV is effectively frozen until that's done, and come Gre'thor or high water I will not let Voyager Week pass the one-month mark. That gives me two days to finish. Fortunately, my next assignment's not due for a while, so I intend to come through on this. To explain yesterday's newspost, the reason today would have been the perfect day to wrap up VW is that it's the tenth anniversary of VOY's premiere. I'm severely annoyed about missing it, but it's too late to change that now. I'll have to settle for ten years plus a day or two. |
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January 18 Now that we're on the threshold of Voyager Week's end, it seems logical for this link day to fit the theme. Here, then, are three of my all-time favourite VOY parodies. First is Cureboy's Voyager Coronary, a long-running and truly hilarious series currently hosted at Dan Carlson's Star Trek Minutiae. And as a bonus since I missed yesterday, two of the best one-shot VOY parodies out there: The Borgification of Voyager by Matthew Sharpe and Threshold: A Parody by Scott Martin. |
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January 20 Damn! I tried as hard as I could -- just ask Sa'ar or Nan -- but I couldn't get the Day 7 update done in time to miss that one-month point. I did get a lot done, though, so I won't miss it by much. Please be patient just a little longer. (And remember, as soon as Day 7 is done, we're "unfrozen," so a lot of stuff that's been waiting can be posted.) As for today's linkage, a lot of important news has been appearing at TrekToday this week. While Manny Coto is reasonably confident that ENT will be renewed, and Dominic Keating is hopeful, the comments from Viacom co-president Les Moonves are less encouraging. But if ENT does end before its time, at least it's going out with a bang -- the news about the rest of S4 just gets cooler and cooler. For example, here's more word on the upcoming episode I mentioned in January 10's update (apparently to be a two-parter). Finally, Rick Berman insists that Trek XI has not been shelved as previously reported, and he says it'll be the most ambitious Trek film to date. Let's hope he does get to make it. |
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January 21 This was not a good day, folks. But you know what cheers me up after a day like this? Pictures of baby skunks, that's what! (From Wikipedia by way of Tarn-Vedra.) |
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January 24 This is just a "not dead" update -- I can't think of a link and I've got to get back to my assignments. Better stuff in a couple of days, I'm hoping. |
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January 26 Okay, if nothing else, I can at least give you guys another preview. It should be pretty easy to tell which fiver I'm previewing now....
Doc: Let me explain the situation. Four years ago and seventy thousand lightyears away... a hero was born. A program so flawless that --
Chakotay: No word from the Doctor so far. Unless he's saying "I'm a doctor, not a" again. We've got that blocked. Also, here's a very cool link IJD GAF pointed out to me. Save Enterprise recently posted some exclusive photos from an upcoming ENT episode, relating to the upcoming storyline I've expressed eagerness about on this page. The photos were stunning; I won't spoil the plotline in question, but let's just say TOS fans will be very pleased. Unfortunately, Paramount asked Save Enterprise to take the photos down -- but apparently TrekToday doesn't know that yet, so two of them can still be seen in this article. Check them out while they last! |
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January 27 Today's link is for videogame fans. The Metroid series, an obsession of IJD's and mine, currently consists of five 2D games and two and a half 3D games (one's a demo). These games are very popular with speed runners -- that is, players who go for the lowest possible completion time. As the speed runners discover more tricks, they're able to achieve more and more impressive times; eventually four of the five 2D games were found to be beatable in less than an hour (measured by the in-game clock, that is). But Metroid II: The Return of Samus, the Metroid series' highly underrated Game Boy installment, resisted the speed runners' efforts -- until this month. After coming painfully close in several runs, carlmmii successfully beat Metroid II with an end time of 59:49. (Can't cut it much closer than that!) You can download his run at the Speed Demos Archive's Metroid II page. You'll also find his single-segment run (i.e. no saving) with an impressive 1:09. A third run by carlmmii, in some ways the most impressive, is his nearly complete 3-item run. Three items is the bare minimum required to beat the game, and this run is a sort of technical demonstration that it is possible with just those three. Incidentally, I'm a fairly competent Metroid speed runner myself. I can't beat the 2D Metroids in less than an hour, but I can beat them in less than two, and my Metroid II record is particularly good (1:24). And please note that when I talk about speed running, I'm not talking about using an emulator and going frame by frame to get a lower time than real humans can achieve. That practice (called "emu-rape" in speed running circles) bears as much resemblance to legitimate speed running as war3z d00dz bear to real hackers. Or Andromeda bears to Enterprise. BURN! |
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January 28 After that update a few days ago where I couldn't think of a link, evay sent me a metric whackload of them, so I'll use one of them today. Intuitor's Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics site is all about, well, insultingly stupid movie physics. And anyone who took physics in high school knows just how much of that is out there. evay particularly recommends the review of "The Core." |
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January 29 Woo! ENT has recovered from its huge ratings stumble last week with a strong performance this week. Since "Babel One" is the start of a three-episode arc -- and a thrilling start, at that -- hopefully some of those viewers will stick around to see what happens. Speaking of which, I'm going to take a chance and bend my self-imposed rule a bit... no guarantees, but I strongly recommend keeping an eye on 5MV in the next 24 hours. |
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January 30 Sorry, make that 48. And have a link. IJD found this BBS thread with some impressive designs for a hypothetical new Animated Series -- check it out. |
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