Featured PagesNews |  | August 15, 2008 | New Logo |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| | I made a new logo with a bad ass futuristic font and two vault boy images from fallout to spice it up a bit. It is a lot taller, but a lot better looking as well, in my opinion. For now, you can only see it in the new version of this website, but I am planning to replace this index page this weekend with a new sexy design. Over the past few days, I have been adding some awesome videos, about 40, which you can see in the video section. Some of my favorites are Jimi Hendrix shredding his way through Voodoo Chile, footage of the Soviet Army taking Berlin, and some great newsreels, including one about Howard Hughes crashing his airplane in Hollywood. | |
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| | August 09, 2008 | More Features |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| I have made some more code changes, adding the ability to browse the media gallery by file type (video, sound, etc.) and also adding some error checking so users can't add files with wrong extensions (ex. accidentally adding a sound with the .mp3 extension as an image). I managed to scrounge up twenty-five videos to expand our selection, which you can view HERE. I have also included the full list here for your viewing pleasure. :D My goal is not to make a second youtube, but I think it is good for the site to have important videos with historic or entertainment value. For example, it is cool to read an article about a World War 2 battle and then watch some newsreel footage about it to get the full experience.
| Name | Category | | 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests | History | | Aldrin, Buzz: Punching Out Conspiracy Nut | History | | All Your Base Are Belong To Us | Memes | | Apollo 11 Moon Landing (1969) | History | | Birds of Paradise | Animals | | Bubb Rubb and Lil Sis | Memes | | Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster | History | | Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt meet in Yalta | History | | Clinton, Bill: I Did Not Have Sexual Relations | History | | Dramatic Lemur | Memes | | Dramatic Prairie Dog | Memes | | Gates, Bill: Pie Thrown in Face | History | | Hindenburg Disaster | History | | Hydrogen Bomb Test | History | | I Like Turtles | Memes | | Kennedy, John F.: Assassination | History | | Morello, Tom: Guitar Techniques | Music | | Munich 1972 Olympics Massacre | History | | Nixon, Richard: I'm Not A Crook | History | | Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (Live) | Music | | Quayle, Dan: Potatoe and Other Mistakes | History | | Reagan, Ronald: Berlin Address | History | | Savio, Mario: Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964 | History | | Star Wars Kid | Memes | | Tacoma Bridge Collapse | History |
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| | August 05, 2008 | Size Handling |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| Due to the tremendous growth of the new part of the website, I just implemented some changes that spread categories across multiple pages. The history section of the media gallery was up to 633 items and was taking a long time to load, so I implemented a dynamic script that will only show 200 results per page and display a link index at the bottom of the page. I will expand this functionality to the articles area as well, since the biographies section is almost over 200. Check it out here!
In other news, there are now 305 articles and 1763 media items in the new website system. I have also noticed some more IE-related rendering problems that I will try to fix in the near future. I hope to get started on the community features soon as well. | |
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| | July 21, 2008 | New Articles |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| | July 14, 2008 | Nukes |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| I wrote a bio of Louis Slotin, a physicist who died in a experiment accident during the Manhattan Project. I also added an article about the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki and an article about the Software Engineering Process. So far 112 articles and 1232 media items are in the new system.
I have also modified the new site design so that it has a compatibility mode for Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is necessary since IE is crap software does not render CSS 2.1 according to standards. Hopefully they will fix this with IE 8.0. Firefox and other browsers that render CSS according to the standards will still see the original design. | |
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| | July 08, 2008 | Syd Barrett and Miniaturization |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| | Today I added two new articles, one is a bio of Syd Barrett, the original guitarist for Pink Floyd, and the other is about the plausibility of miniaturization. I spent several hours last night transferring articles over and now there are 55 articles and 968 media items in the new database. | |
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| | July 07, 2008 | Arthur Collins Bio |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| Today I wrote a bio of Arthur Collins, the man who founded Collins Radio, which is now Rockwell Collins. I work for Rockwell and the company's history is pretty interesting. Read the article here. Note that this article is under the new system! I have 36 articles in the new database and I am working diligently on transferring more over. There are also now over 900 media items in the new system. By the end of the month I hope to have most, if not all, of the things moved and a new index page. It is taking a bit longer than I expected because I have been revising the articles as I go, fixing spelling and grammatical mistakes, as well as adding more pictures and things.
Explore the prototype website:
Article Index
Media Index
I have also noticed that IE doesn't follow standards properly and there are some rendering differences that I will try to fix, but for now Mozilla Firefox is recommended for the best browsing experience. Microsoft Internet Explorer SUCKS! | |
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| | July 01, 2008 | Redesign Progress |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| A lot of progress has been made and now most of the core scripts are implemented. The change is dramatic and I am very pleased with how it has turned out so far. I am planning to officially push out the system soon and have it run alongside the legacy system until most of the traffic has transferred over and people are used to it. Eventually I hope to completely discard the legacy system.
Some cool things that I have added include a nice collection of abandonware (old PC games), more PDF e-books, and some other miscellaneous files. I have also been getting rid of things that I consider useless. So far about 20% of the media has been added to the system, but most of the remaining stuff is schematics, midi files, and ROMs. I am not going to wait to push the release until everything is transferred over, since the old website files will still be accessible and I want this system deployed as soon as it is all working. Incremental updates to the scripts and content will likely continue over the remainder of this year.
The new site is XHTML 1.0 strict and uses CSS for formatting, so it should be easier to maintain the layout. It still uses PHP and mySQL for its scripting and database. I am planning to start the official transition by the end of July, so stay tuned. There is a lot of work going on in the background here and soon everyone will get to see and use the new site. | |
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| | June 24, 2008 | FIS Redesign In Progress |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| I am pleased to announce that this website is finally undergoing a complete redesign to increase its organization, automation, and ease of navigation. I am simplifying the entire website using a new database design and scripting system that includes automatic article and media organization using tags, as well as a media management system that is completely modular. I don't know how long it will take, but I will reveal the new website as soon as it is ready. Hopefully I can improve on the website's appearance and layout as well. I have learned a lot from making MuseumSyndicate.com, and I hope to apply the lessons here. Some new features I hope to add are:
-New Community System with Article Commenting and Editing Capabilities
-New Media Management System, with embedded video and sound capability
-New Article Management System with automated organization of articles based on category and sub-category
-New unified layout throughout the website
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| | March 23, 2008 | In The Shadow Of The Moon |
| Posted by: Jonathan Dunder
Site Admin |
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| | I had to post a review after seeing one of the best documentaries of all time, In The Shadow of the Moon (2007). This excellent film documents US space exploration, specifically the Apollo missions. It features new footage recovered from NASA's vaults, including footage of moon orbiting, landing, exploration using the lunar rover, and departure. The footage is simply stunning and the interviews with the astronauts provide a glimpse into what they were thinking and how they continue to feel about their impressive achievement. | |
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