Amalgamate

[Bradster]

Gosh... maybe I ought to brush off my old Star Fleet wiki and fire it up for public use? I can't remember if I ever announced it here because I know I had been working on it in secret for a long time. I'd laid down the basic templates and created placeholder pages for most people and places, and had started fleshing out some of the articles. Even if we don't use my installation, I'll try to spend some time over the next week writing up some more content that I could transfer (assuming Crash or someone else takes the lead).

[Bradster]

Whoops! It looks like Crash posted a link to his wiki installation while I was writing that post…FWIW, I'm using MediaWiki, too, also with a custom skin.

[Shane]

Wow! Looks like you've already started the ball rolling there, Bradster. Looks very good indeed. I guess one of the main reasons for a new amalgamated Star Fleet site is to try and order all of the Star Fleet material on the net into one place as lots of Star Fleet info is currently scattered around various forums, sites and X Archive. I don't see the point in reproducing info in great detail if it already exists elsewhere such as SFXB or Big Dai X. But it would be a good opportunity to fill in gaps. The amount of text in Bradster's pages seem just about right to me, incorporate some links to further information on other sites and I think you're on to a winner.

[Crash]

Is your installation on a private server, Brad?It's lucky I installed the same program.Apparently Wikia uses it as well with some add-ons. That amount of prose is just right. Now that I have so many screenshots we can go nice and overboard with the graphics.Shoulda done this from the start. With anything non-canon we should put a reddish box at the top of it saying so.When we skin it can we have a dark background? I really don't like white backgrounds. It makes it seem too much like 'work'.

[Vanessa]

Hey guys I like the Wiki idea, very up-to-date, and just the thing IMHO to bring in "new" people.Don't see anything wrong with using the word "Wiki" though, it actually means quick or fast (can't remember which language it's from).The work so far looks very impressive! QUOTEGiven that it appears in at least two places in the show, is it possible to get the two samples and get a computer to compare the tracks and remove the differences (like the voices and sounds that interrupt it) and leave you with the common element, which is the original track?A long shot but you'd think such a program would exist.Such an audio editing system would be really cool. It must exist somewhere, but I've not come across such a program for "home" use. Nero 9 suite just isn't advanced enough to do that QUOTEThe spirit of the Imperial Master rejuvenates a dying Makara who has been left comatose inside a piece of the wreckage of her Imperial Cruiser that got totaled by the Dai X in the series. He also creates a space fairing sailing ship for her out of the wreckage of the Cruiser.Hey Shane, I'd really like to read your TROM story. Will it be available to read on the 'net eventually?Actually I'm currently writing the follow on story to my "The Rise of the Alliance" series, called "The Eternal Continuum".With my first foray into fan fics, I tried very hard not to tread on the toes of anyone else's Star Fleet story, and maybe even fit in with their plots a little. But having read your TROM snippet above, my next series "The Eternal Continuum" would clash with it. I am now wondering whether to continue writing it or scrap it.I don't want to cause any bad feelings, me being the new person on this forum...Having different fan fics that conflict may not be a good idea. Any thoughts on this?

[Crash]

Yeah, it means quick in Hawaiian or something. It really irritates me.I understand now why there are never that many images on a wiki - it takes forever to add them.You can only open one image at once and get its filename and then you have to copy that and the syntax for your thumbnail. God, it is like war and peace.I think we've got the best theme loaded now; Pixelated. I'm going to customise that quite a bit to make it better laid-out. I did a short write-up of Captain Carter's Astrofighter which is one of my pet interests in the show. http://www.xbomber.co.uk/wiki....fighterI've got tonnes more screengrabs showing it in action to put on.

[Bradster]

Looks like I'll be the voice of dissent for this round.
(Crash Override @ Feb. 10 2011,18:25)QUOTEYou're right - not gonna be an archive and I don't like the word Wiki because I think it's ugly and it's a meaningless neologism like "blog".I actually think the term "wiki" is far from useless, and its original etymology is mostly irrelevant now. "Wiki" has taken on a very specific meaning since the meteoric rise of Wikipedia, and its use indicates to visitors two simple but specific points: 1. the site is likely to be encyclopedic and referential in nature, and 2. the site is constantly evolving as people contribute to and edit it. I can't think of any term that is as concise and widely understood than "wiki" for what it is.
(Crash Override @ Feb. 10 2011,18:25)QUOTESimple is good because it helps the search engines identify it. If we called it the Thalian Zone or something in the same way they gave Memory Alpha to Star Trek, I doubt Google would get the connection.Do note, of course, that Memory Alpha's full title is "Star Trek Wiki - Memory Alpha". Even on subordinate article pages, the title is "Article Name - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki".
(Crash Override @ Feb. 11 2011,06:52)QUOTEWhen we skin it can we have a dark background? I really don't like white backgrounds. It makes it seem too much like 'work'.With very rare exceptions (none immediately come to mind, but I'll have to peruse my bookmarks after this), I'm not a big fan of sites with white-text-on-dark-background color schemes, both as an end user and as a developer. It is very difficult to build a light-on-dark layout that is attractive and legible. Without carefully balancing a depth of midtones, harsh contrasts will easily overwhelm the reader, cause eye strain, and make the pages feel uninviting.There are lots of clinical reasons why light-on-dark layouts are easier on the eyes. Backlit LCDs leak lots of light making "black" backgrounds never truly black, viewing environments are usually well-lit and create a lower contrast boundary with light display backgrounds, white-on-black display text suffers from halation, white-on-black text requires a greater number of visual fixations to read, white-on-black patterns (like rows of text) cause more focused stimulation of the rods which leads to ghosted afterimages, and so forth and so on.To put a fine point on it, dark-on-light is so incredibly commonplace simply because it's physically easier to look at.In the end, it comes down to weighing personal choices of style with practical usability. If you're really married to the idea of white-on-black, so be it.

[Bradster]

(Vanessa @ Feb. 11 2011,19:07)QUOTESuch an audio editing system would be really cool. It must exist somewhere, but I've not come across such a program for "home" use.Audacity is a fairly capable multi-track audio editor, and it's free, too.Crash, if you know what other episodes this "Orion chase music" track appears in, I'd pull them from my DVDs and take a shot at manually mixing them together. It won't be perfect, but it might be better than nothing.
(Vanessa @ Feb. 11 2011,19:07)QUOTEActually I'm currently writing the follow on story to my "The Rise of the Alliance" series, called "The Eternal Continuum".With my first foray into fan fics, I tried very hard not to tread on the toes of anyone else's Star Fleet story, and maybe even fit in with their plots a little. But having read your TROM snippet above, my next series "The Eternal Continuum" would clash with it. I am now wondering whether to continue writing it or scrap it.I don't want to cause any bad feelings, me being the new person on this forum...Having different fan fics that conflict may not be a good idea. Any thoughts on this?Are you kidding? The more the merrier! It's not like we're competing with each other here. There are tons of written works for other sci-fi series like Star Wars and Star Trek, and nobody gets too worked up that they may contradict each other (or the canon source material).

[Vanessa]

Hey Bradster, you certainly know your stuff!I will check out Audacity, thank you.I'm glad I established early on that I'm not that tech-savvy when it comes to computers/web stuff. That way I can say daft things and get away with it I agree with Brad about the term "Wiki", it might not sound that nice, syntax-wise, but it does conjure up the right meaning for such an on-line reference works. And less-techy folks like me can relate to it quite well.The background colour versus text colour is a moot point. On the one hand, dark text on a light background is easier to read, I will certainly agree with that. But it's not that "cool" though, and can look rather dry. But as to which is used for Star Fleet Wiki, I don't know...Maybe I should be less self-conscious about writing. I'm qiuite a cautious person though, and it took me a long while to take the plunge and join this forum, and another few months before I plucked up courage to post something. Whilst I love SF, I did wonder whether I'd have anything useful to bring to this forum.I have a very meticulous approach to writing, and I studied the Canon material very closely for a long time, and also read and re-read all of the fan-fic stuff that was available. Being an Engineer, I can't help but be precise and meticulous. And I noticed that the SF web community appeared to be a close-knit one, and also that all the fan-fics thus far written seemed to be respectful of each other, and even follow-on from one another to some extent, making a fascinacting SF world to peruse if one was so inclined. Hence I carefully structured my story to fit in with this as much as possible.That's whay I was worried about treadung on other's toes. It's also why I wrote a prequel, as no-one else had done that (I checked with Andy first).I have lots of other SF story lines to develop, like a mini-series featuring a young Captain Halley as he grows up, as the skull follows Makara's ship as it heads towards earth, tracking Lamia's capsule trace. He tries to thwart her progress and prevent her and Orion from causing too much devastation of other worlds that they encounter on their way to earth.OOps! Wall of text time, sorry.

[Crash]

I made a mistake with my config file last night. I substituted the theme pixeled with pixelated.Anyway, that theme was originally done for Wordpress and so it wasn't quite wide enough to accomodate the menus at the side (which are quite useless because they're replicated at the bottom anyway). So I widened that and changed its backdrop.There don't seem to be that many themes for Wikia and the default ones are ... maybe even worse than Coppermine's. But the good thing is users can opt individually between the ones installed.So I'm going to mod this one until it reaches a visual accord with the show. I might use courier font to make it bit more 1980s.That track also shows about 7 minutes into episode 7. If you listen to the soundtrack suite from that episode, it sounds as though it's about to break into it but the track just loops on itself and then ends.