News

In the last few weeks, the site has had a few other improvements.
The media system will use the new HTML5 video and audio tags to play mp4 videos as well as audio files without people leaving the page or opening a new tab. That seems to work pretty well.

The website can also handle webp images, although it doesn't perform any server-side resizing, since this new Google format is pointless, and hopefully, it won't catch on.

There are quite a few additions to the Star Fleet area of the site:
	Publications - X-Bomber Super Manual
	Toys and Merchandise
	VHS Tapes

The Star Fleet fan work area has undergone some remodeling.
I wanted to get rid of the separation between models and artwork for artists that needed their own folder. Sometimes, artists would have done illustrations and models or sculptures and it made no sense to split those into two separate folders.
Artists with their own folder are now all grouped together therefore:
	Fan Artworks - Contributors A-Z

At the same time, the fan stories page was a useful guide to which contributors had written stories; better than sifting through individual folders.

So, the fan stories page is unchanged, and the fan artwork and fan models pages are still there to display content that's not organised into folders by artist.

There are also three new additions to the artwork folder:
 - Lee, Shiro and Hercules by _108
 - Makara by akunotsubo
 - Orion and Makara by womanimel (shown above)

Uploaded a number of new items into the Fan Artwork folder:
 - Dai-X and others by bludgeon3
 - Dai-X and Shiro by nakaR6 (shown above)
 - Dai-X by yakitetuiro
 - Lamia by watari_saburo
 - Makara by jamescorcoran78
 - Princess Keeli and Dai-X by 3D12aRfHh5pUTZV

Site Janitor Note:
I have been tidying.  Please check out the site info page for more info about site search and updates to the news subsystem.

Image Upload   [ 2021.03.09 | 16:46 ]
Behind the scenes, I added an image uploader and resizer, to make adding site updates quicker and easier and to get away from the problem of linking to content in the site's main content directories, where the file and directory paths can sometimes be subject to change.

Next Episode ...
Lastly, I finally binned my facebook account. If you'd like to contact me to make any suggestions about the site, don't hesitate. Use the link over on the right.
Alternatively, drop us a line on the SFXB Forum.

I have a mountain of new stuff to share on the site.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be tidying a few things up and trying to get those added.
Then I'll be going back to the game itself to see if we can finally get that finished.

I tidied my Star Fleet Saturday folder out a bit and made a few additions to the site...
I found some additional images of Matsukami's X-Bomber model from prinzemathieu on deviantArt:
	Matsu Kami - X-Bomber

I added two images of some nice 3D-printed models of PPA and Qonto (from Sankukai) by twitter user; gooo_yaaar:
	Fan Work - Models

I made a correction in regard to the 1993 poster that, on closer inspection, was for the Japanese laserdisc release rather than the soundtrack LP.
	Laser Disc and DVD Sets
I added the seller photos, for completeness, for that, plus the B-club magazine, that arrived a while back.
	B-Club

I tidied all Star Fleet-related artwork from pixiv into its own folder and added, amongst other things, this nice painting by Kiriho.

The contents of other Japanese artists' folders have also been expanded/updated:
	PLC and YmiscY
	U1timate
	Dacotu

Edit [ 2021.03.28 ]
The below galleries have also been updated and expanded with new images:
	grim1978
	mrpranny

Wow, I really hit the motherlode here!
Lots of copies of all 8 volumes of the US VHS tapes of Star Fleet.

I think I'm right in saying that, these are the source material for the original SFXB website, and are where all the still images and videos on the site came from, before the DVDs were released in 2009.

I did give everyone else in the group first refusal, but Andy seemed to be running short of space, so I will look after them.

I'm running a Star Fleet museum now; every DVD release, laserdiscs, endless publications from all over the world; and now VHS. 😉
I guess the site is the same in a way.
I remember years ago, that a friend of mine passed on the laserdiscs and 2004 Japanese DVDs when he went travelling.
I don't know how he got them in the days before Rinkya and FromJapan.

I will get these scanned in because the covers are a really interesting impression of the show; a bit like the French comic books.
At the moment, I have absolutely masses of material from Japan and elsewhere to scan and add to the site.

Thanks very much Andy!

So Facebook has now banned the actor who played Captain Hunt in Andromeda...

When I watched all of Andromeda right-the-way-thru at University, I realised that, despite the show itself being crazy, the answer to "Which starship captain's better; Kirk or Picard?" was actually "Hunt", because he combined all the qualities of both.

On the one hand, Hunt was the inspirational leader and swashbuckling, womanising starship captain.
On the other, he was the disciplined military strategist, diplomat and idealist.

At the same time, he could also be very sarcastic and flippant; almost to the point of being arrogant, which oddly made him even more likeable.

Nobody could've been cast better in the role.

Migration Away from Facebook
I've been busy migrating all the content that I put on facebook onto the website.
This has taken me about a fortnight but the process is now finished.

The website's hosting has also just been renewed for another 3 years (and 6 months for free).

Doctoku's AI Upscaling Project
On the SFXB Forum, user Doctoku has created a 720p AI-upscaled version of the first episode of the original X Bomber Japanese version of Star Fleet:
	SFXB Forum thread
	Google Drive direct link

SFXB Forum Issues
At the same time, I learned that newly-registered users on the SFXB Forum were having problems accessing the forum.
This problem in the forum's database has been fixed with a bit of SQL trickery, but it means that we had trouble with spam users who registered over the past months who were then able to disrupt the forum with spam messages as well.

I've pruned all spam users from the forum, along with any of their messages.
I've also tightened up the registration requirements and added a number of spam mail domains to the blocklist.

Lastly, after a recent upgrade, there were problems with the 'breadcrumb' navigation. That's now been fixed.

Fan Artwork
I added a much cleaner and better version of Japanese artist Shiina's Star Fleet illustration to the Fan Artworks section of the site.

Captain Pepe is taking no prisoners ...