Redbubble for art by andorianlad (Ian McLean)

I finally set up a Redbubble page to host my art on various stationery, clothing and drinkware products - even clocks and phone covers!

Click www.redbubble.com/people/andorianlad/ and scroll down to see themed categories and the full range of products! Service seems to be very efficient!

Homework for Tristan!

On Monday night, I will be attending the fifth and final night of "Build Your Online Profile", a course presented by author/filmmaker Tristan Bancks, at the Sydney Writers' Centre in Milson's Point.

And we have homework! We are to present "a plan for our online future", by answering three key questions in five minutes.

1. Where do you want your online profile to be? Show us the kind of profile that you want to establish and why. If you like you can show us examples of people/companies who are already there now.

2. How will you get there? Priorities? And when?

3. How have your plans changed or developed since the beginning of the course?








An evolution of my web presence.

My strengths/interests are teacher-librarianship and TV historian. Both present opportunities for imparting knowledge and skills to others, but my current online presence is fragmented across many small sites. My recent 365 Photos project reminded me of the importance of established routines for blogging, to keep things current and fresh, and to bring browsers in for return visits. Site Meter indicates that Google Images searches of photographic material on the World Wide Web continues to be an important drawcard to blogs.

However, since starting this course, I have already:

* Bought a domain name, www.number96.tv.

* Revitalized my Twitter page - and added "Facebook" and "Twitter" buttons to my blog.

* Designed an "umbrella" webpage that will unite all my random web presences.

* Finally signed up as a channel owner on Youtube.

* Created a user profile for Creative Commons music at ccMixter.

* Created my first book trailer on Keynote, added a soundtrack from a Creative Commons site, exported it as a video podcast via iWeb, uploaded it to MobileMe and promoted it on Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, two teacher-librarian listservs and the NSW DET book rap being held to celebrate Book Week 2010.

I still need to:

* Create and upload the umbrella webpage for www.number96.tv. (Time frame: immediately.)

But, as a result of this course, I will also...

* Brainstorm with Andrew Mercado(?) and begin to create a series of podcast fan commentaries for episodes of "Number 96" which could be hosted on iTunes? (Time frame: next twelve months?)

* Create more book trailers to export as video podcasts. Students to be involved in the productions. Closer ties with a range of children's writers and illustrators. A renewed focus for collaborative teaching and learning with Web 2.0 in our (almost completed) school library. (Time frame: next twelve months?)

* Complete new, unrelated, picture book project - which is currently needing to transfer from my brain to paper. Exploit the online possibilities that will arise with publication and promotion of book. (Time frame: ASAP.)


"Mr Chicken goes to Paris" book trailer

The resurrection of Geocities

This silly page of mine "Twisted Playtrek Theatre" page has been down since Geocities disappeared, so I restored it today:

CAPTAIN THERIN'S MOMENT OF TERROR!

By the way, did you realise that someone has dredged up "Oocities", a resurrection of Geocities' files? Any site you wanted to find from the good ol' days, just replace "Geo" with "Oo" in the URL - and you should be able to find the old pages.

For example, my old page, complete with typos and broken links is shown at:
Oocities.com/therinofandor/ (formerly Reocities, for a time).
even though the site now exists as a new blog format at:
andorfiles.blogspot.com/

(Artwork by Lana Pennington-Brown)

Mere seconds to midnight! Again.

Mere seconds to midnight!



My Andorian teddy - from the now-defunct "Star Trek: The Experience" attraction (that was in Las Vegas). I've been transferring my old Geocities' "The Andor Files" website, and many, many images of Andorians, across to a blog format and my Flickr account. An exhausting job, quietly observed by this furry little blue guy sitting behind the laptop.

See my efforts at:

The Andor Files. Still so much to do before Geocities closes, forever, in a few more weeks. I think I have everything archived to my hard drive now, but uploading fresh versions that people can see, and finding all the places on the "Net that link to my old site URL, can be very time consuming... and tricky!

From the archives

I spent today archiving my old free Geocities website, "The Andor Files". First uploaded 23 December 1997, and home to my "Star Trek" action figure customising project, and related Andorian research and trivia, Geocities is closing its virtual doors to free web hosting in a few weeks.



I guess most of the pics and (revamped) text will find their way here, or onto this blog at some point.

One bizarre find, buried in a forgotten corner of cyberspace, was this:

"Star Trek" zapped by Aussie soap "Pacific Drive"


I ran an Australian "Star Trek" club, ASTREX, for many years. At one point "Pacific Drive" was slotted against "Star Trek" prime time reruns - and I had a tough decision to make! Christine Stephen-Daley, who played naughty Amber Kingsley in Channel Nine's cult soap opera, helped me to choose which channel to watch. And afterward (sshh!), we went back to her hotel room to share a pizza.

This pic originally appeared in a weekly national TV guide (1996).

Worth repeating: "Star Trek" in review

I caught the Sunday repeat of "The Movie Show" tonight. First nine minutes of a 27 minutes episode. Very positive. Four out of five stars each for the new "Star Trek" film - and reviewers Margaret and David rarely agree. Lots of footage, JJ Abrams and Eric ("Nero") Bana interviews, and more interview clips and text on the ABC-TV's website!

www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2547372.htm
www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2547417.htm
www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2547404.htm

Excellent!

When programs crash...

Success! For the last fortnight, I've been trying to think of sneaky ways to out-think an old, corrupted BB Edit Lite program, which is installed on my old iMac computer, because all the original files for my various fan web sites are stored on the iMac's hard drive and they need the program to open. (It didn't matter if I tried to open the file I needed to change - which used to open the program automatically - or, now, even clicking on the program itself, which used to work up until a few months ago.)

An old Internet contact had emailed a few weeks ago to ask me to remove their name from my website; their new job meant that they no longer wanted to be associated with fannish trivialities, and their name on my site was coming up as the top entry when theirr employees Googled the boss's name! Try as I might, I couldn't access the files to make the requested deletion. But I just now realised what to do: I simply duplicate and rename the .html file I need to change to a .txt file.

It worked! Now that I've come into BB Edit Lite via the back door, as it were, I can make the changes I need to make and upload the new version of my site to the Web. Be back soon!

Who needs a computer guru these days?

Note to self: "Ummmm, me?"

Dull Men's Club

This morning, on Radio MIX 106.5 FM's remix of Sammy Power & Subby Valentine's midweek breakfast show, Sammy promoted the Dull Men's Club website.



The site informs: "Many Dull Men are shy. But with the anonymity of the web, now they are free to tell others what's on their minds -- to share their experiences, strengths, and (tame) desires. If you know of safe excitement -- dull things to do, places to visit, foods, events, books, etc, -- send a message telling us about them."

Now, any time I get stuck for a blog topic, I can turn to this spectacular grey (oh, so grey) cornucopia of virtual sand collections, air sickness bag posters, grey-print-on-grey souvenir T-shirts, finicky guides to airport luggage carousels and complimentary hotel soaps, and even a local view on the current drought in Australia.

And you thought my Rogues' Gallery of Andorians was bizarre, obscure, trivial or... dull?

PURLs before swine

After starting up my blog last year, I was excited to discover that numerous friends - from various stages of my life - had blogs of their own. But sometimes I found that their online presence had been abandoned after only a few weeks or months of blogging; my messages of greeting and hopeful reunion perhaps never to be found. Sigh...

I sometimes find myself pondering what would happen to my various websites should I suddenly not be around any more.

Luckily for one of them, way back in 1999, my Number 96 Home Page was catalogued and "captured" for inclusion in the online PANDORA Archive. It was quite a thrill: my home page was selected for the first exclusive group of (three) Internet sites about Australian television programs to appear in the National Library of Australia's online public access catalogue, alongside the official websites for The Panel and the long-forgotten Good Guys, Bad Guys! In 1999, The Panel and Good Guys, Bad Guys were both current shows; my site honours an Aussie soap opera from the 1970s, and the site has been running since "the Year of '96" (wink).


NUMBER 96 HOME PAGE

PANDORA has since catalogued many other Australian TV show websites. They simply web whack* the site as it existed at time of cataloguing (ie. mine on 26 Nov, 1999), but once only, and give it a PURL (persistent URL). They also provide a hot link to the current updated site (if it continues to exist, which - so far - mine does). The Panel's URL now only links to Working Dog's production house site, and the original Good Guys, Bad Guys website has vanished completely! ("Why wasn't I told?" Dorrie would ask.)

Even if, somehow, Ian McLean, web composer, vanishes, the Number 96 Home Page shall continue forever!

* "Web whacking" is when someone downloads a copy of an entire website to their hard drive. Of course, doing that means they never get to see any future changes that are made by the web composer. But it does preserve for posterity an early version that even the website owners might not keep in their files.