Let’s see. I’ve given up (for now) all thoughts of redesigning the site so I’ll be concentrating (when I’m working here) on adding new content and updating the pages that are already here. Having decided that, now there are all kinds of things waiting in the wings to be brought onstage. They will hopefully be slowly making their appearances over the next couple of months (can’t guarantee how quickly, though).

Among the plans (not in any particular order) are:

• A section of articles about the show and/or the actors who appeared in it;
• A virtual tour of some of the locations used in the show (including photos taken in 2002 and a panoramic 180 degree shot from Pitt Town Lagoon (where Vicky and Simon stripped down to their undies to rescue a cow on their first date) to Pitt Town);
• A section for personal reminiscences and/or reviews (by anyone who would like to include their thoughts), possibly as part of a larger “fan section” (code-named “Magnolia Vale”) that would contain fan fiction and other contributions from you guys;
• Photos of some ACP memorabilia that I have (not that I have a lot of that but I’ll be uploading images and info about what I have). If anyone has some classic ACP memorabilia that you’d like to share with other fans, please let me know and I’ll put pics of them up in the Supply Room/Memorablia section;
• Some additional show and cast photos;
• The remaining cast biographies (which I had partly done but lost with the hard drive problems);
• The remaining descriptions for episodes that I actually have (the rest will obviously have to wait until someone takes pity on me and writes them up for me as the show is reaired in other countries);

Canadian World Domination

I gotta stop doing this. I keep taking a quick side trip to check out links from someone’s web site and end up staying there for ages…or worse, getting sidetracked even further by links from the side trip site…and so on and so on.

Tonight I started out checking out the top 100 April Fool’s jokes at the Museum of Hoaxes and got sidetracked by the Canadian World Domination web site. Now, the CWD site is very funny but the funniest part is the hate mail they get — way too many people on this planet seem to have no sense of humour whatsoever. Give me a break!

Way back in 1993 when the original series of ACP was winding down, one of the magazines (not sure which one) in conjunction with Channel Seven held a contest where the prize was a 16X20 signed, matted, and framed picture of the cast from the final episode. Last summer, this picture came up for auction online and I had to get it. It had been slightly damaged over the years and had a new perspex cover but the photo looks great and still has the original signed matting.

I’m looking for (a) the person who originally won the picture and (b) a copy of the advertisement for the contest (I could have sworn I had a copy of it but I think that’s one of things that’s been lost over the years since I started this site). If you can help with either of the above, let me know.

Last week (before “black Wednesday” as I like to call it, when my hard drive imploded), I was going through my ACP tape collection and decided to rewatch the one and a half hour special that aired before and after the final episode in 1993. Wow, what a nostalgic rush. Anyway, I decided to try to type up a transcript of that special, since I don’t currently have the technology to capture video clips of it. So, that is in the works right now along with other things.

A few weeks ago, my brother pointed me towards wilwheaton.net, the personal site for Wil Wheaton who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you have a shred of geek in you or you just like Wil Wheaton and/or Wesley Crusher, it’s a site to enjoy. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve happily wasted visiting some of the links off his site.

Anyway, getting to the point. I had been using Blogger to write to my various blog attempts, somewhat half-heartedly because I found it painful to (a) connect to the Blogger site and (b) get the sucker to upload to my server. Then I see that good ole Wil is using something called Movable Type for his nice looking blog. I decided to download the software and, with only a few sticky points, install it on this server. It’s so much nicer to use than Blogger and seems to give you better control over the content of the blog. Yessiree, I like it. Hopefully, I’ll write to the blog more often now that’s it’s easier to use.

It never rains but it pours.

Let’s add an “Issue #3″ to the two issues in my previous post, shall we? Last week, while I was trying to upload some updates to the site that I’d been working on for well over a week, the hard drive on my iMac became corrupted (couldn’t even read it after booting up from a CD). So, I had to reformat the hard drive and try reinstalling the OS. Unfortunately, I’m also having troubles with the OS CD so I couldn’t get the OS reinstalled until yesterday. The crux of the matter, though, is that almost all the updates that I had in the works are now gone. Poof, gone like a puff of smoke. I’m able to recover the files back to November but, other than the pages that got uploaded before the corruption occurred, that means I’ve lost almost 4 months of work.

I know. I hear you saying “But Kitty, surely you are smart enough to back up your work as you go, aren’t you?” and under ordinary circumstances that would be true. Unfortunately, I used the very last of my severance pay money to buy this iMac, leaving nothing left over for frills like CD writers or external hard drives. And iMacs don’t come with floppy drives. So, the only backups I have are those items I managed to upload (using a really bad dial up connection) to my Web servers. I’ve recovered much of my source files (and everything currently visible on the sites) but not everything I’d been working on.

So, colour me a somewhat unhappy shade of bondi blue, though right now I’m just happy to have my computer back (I was able to do some work on my Thinkpad but it wasn’t the same). I’m slowly starting to the redo the stuff that is gone but it’s going to take me awhile to replace the stuff that I’d been working on.

Dare I ask for your continued patience?