A victim of success

The CultTVman Ramblings blog page has been a success.   Given the ease of use, the ability to cross link and index material, and many other advantages, I'm integrating this blog into the overhaul of the main CultTVman website.    You can check it out at http://CultTVman.com/main

And so it goes...

Change is coming again.....

It's already the middle of January.  Atlanta was hit with bitter cold and snow and I'm ready for a little bit of warmth. 

We've been busy shipping Vulcan Shuttles in the Hobbyshop.  The reissued kit is pretty nice with newly added details, great decals, and magnets to hold the shuttle to the sled.  You can do the kit as either a Vulcan style or Federation style shuttle.    

The Jupiter 2 kits continue to fly out the door.   This is truly the best kit of 2009, which was an incredible year for genre models with great kits from Moebius, Pegasus and Round 2.  

With all the kits coming out, and lots of great aftermarket products,  the Hobbyshop has really dominated the activity on the CultTVman websites.   It's been hard to keep up with anything else.   The main site has especially suffered from lack of material posted.  Its not that I don't have the material.  I have plenty of stuff to repost and new stuff to add.  I just have not had the time to do it.  

A few months ago, the main CultTVman.com shut down unexpectedly.   The host told me it was my fault and the site was a major drain and the server could not handle it.   Now this was the old part of the site that had never migrated to the CultTVman site.   It was 2000-3000 pages that had been operating just fine, untouched or unupdated for years.    After a couple days of dealing with morons in the tech support department, I said screw it and moved the site to a new host.   At that time, I didn't really bother to repost those old pages.  There was some great stuff there, but I needed to post it properly on the CultTVman2 domain.

As you know, the main site was revamped a couple years ago, using DotNetNuke as a framework. This was the part of the site that was hosted on CultTVman2.com.  As a content management system, DNN had a lot of great features to offer, and it allowed me the opportunity to keep the site up to date a lot easier.   Compared to the old NetObjects software, DNN was a big step forward for ease of use and features.    It was now a lot easier to update the site and maintain it as well.   Unfortunately, DNN has a few unanticipated drawbacks.   First, its not that easy to maintain.  You need a specialized host and that costs a bit of money.    Second, the software was constantly being updated and each update seemed to introduce incompatibilities and bugs, making upgrading a bit of a chore.   Add to that, the modules that you bought through other vendors also needed constant upgrades.  I'm not much of a software or systems engineer, so this was not something I could manage.     About a year ago, I ended up spending a small fortune to upgrade the site to the latest software.   And now I'm at the point where the software was going to need another major upgrade.    Do you see the writing on the wall?  

A few months ago, I started playing around with Blogspot as a tool to handle hobby news.   I found it to be a very easy tool to use and very easy to update.  And I got a lot of positive feedback about it.   Unfortunately, Blogspot is really just for blogging, but it still got me thinking.   

The CultTVman website has been around now for almost 14 years.  It started out as a simple two page HTML design using some quick and dirty AOL software.   And we thought it was really really cool.   That simple two page site started something that grew way beyond anything I ever dreamed or intended.   Soon we had a few people getting together for online model chats.   People were sending photos of their models and the site started to grow.   First it outgrew AOL.  Then GeoCities where it first became CultTVman.com.  Then Simplenet, which was gobbled up by Yahoo.   CultTVman's Ultimate Modeling Guide to the Jupiter 2 was published.    We started a forum and a hobby shop.   The forum has been through at least 4 software platforms and the shop is on it's fifth.   Change is inevitable....

So now the question yet again becomes... "what do I do with the main CultTVman website?"  Stay tuned....

Magical Mystery Machine Tour revisited

I've reposted the Magical Mystery Machine Tour photos on the Cult site.  The page has been down for a few months after I changed webhosts.  I'd almost forgot about it until someone asked about it this past week.

This was a great little project that started back in 2001 as a fun project for the guys on the Polar Lights message board.   The Mystery Machine had just come out and the idea was to ship the kit around the country and around the world and have it's picture taken everywhere it went.  Lisa Greco from Playing Mantis was able to get a kit for the project.

As usual with this sort of thing, it was a great idea when it started, but somewhere along the way it petered out.   We had a few problems when someone would hang onto the kit for an extended period of time, or if someone could not figure out where it was supposed to go next.   A few people lost interest, and pretty soon the project faded away.    

Occasionally, someone would make a post asking about the status of the kit, wondering who had it, where it ended up, and no one seem to have an answer.   Thankfully, nothing really disappears on the internet.   On a whim, I decided to try and find the kit.   Most of the answers were in the Hobbytalk archives.   I was able to track down the kit, which had ended up in storage somewhere.   I rounded up the list of participants and got the project going again.   In the months since the project had withered, our good friend Lisa had lost her job at Playing Mantis, the company had been sold, and Polar Lights had been virtually shut down.   A lot of people had moved on and no longer wished to participate.  

We shipped the kit around for another couple years, trying to get it to as many of the original participants as we could.   I sensed that interest was waning again and figured we had to bring the project to an end before the kit disappeared again.  There was a big discussion on Hobbytalk as to what would be the most appropriate way to conclude the adventure.   We decided that it should ultimately be given back to Lisa Greco.   Lisa was known as "The Queen of Styrene" to many of us and was the heart and soul of the Polar Lights board.   She had fostered the little community of modelers that really grew to become a force in the hobby.   Without Lisa, there never would have been a Polar Lights forum, what became The Clubhouse may never have happened.  CultTVman may never have became what it is today.   

So in May of 2005, the Mystery Machine made it's final appearance at Wonderfest and was presented to Lisa.   The plastic container that it was packed in was signed by all the people that participated in the project.   The web page with all the photos is the final record of the event and journey.  It is a small monument to the people that made the Polar Lights forum a special place in this hobby.  

Check out all the photos on The Magical Mystery Machine Tour page.

Looking back and moving forward.

CultTVman was launched a lifetime ago (or so it seems) with a couple model photos posted on an AOL website. Back then, the internet was a pretty small place and I couldn't find anything relating to science fiction models.

Since those early days, the site expanded into a showcase of science fiction and monster models featuring thousands of photos from hundreds of contributors. Along the way, the site has grown to include a message forum, weekly chats, a couple books, an online Hobbyshop, news pages, the Retro Rockets newsletter, a couple books, and so on.

With growth of the site and the internet has come change. CultTVman has always evolved, looking for better ways to do things, offering more service, and building our "fantastic modeling" niche in the hobby community. Today, in 2009, the hobby is very different from what it was in 1995. There are more online "hobby pockets" - subgroups and mini-communitties. Some of those groups thrive, while others blossom and wither away. Regardless, the internet has helped maintain interest in the hobby.

For me, one of the most important things about CultTVman has been communication. This includes sharing hobby news, participating in discussion, and promoting the hobby. So what is the best way to do this in 2009? The rules and tools keep changing! As forums have grown, email lists have waned. As personal websites have faded, blogging has shined. Social networking is now big with Facebook being hot, yet My Space is cooling. And what about Twitter? Everyone has a cell phone or blackberry. PC's have been replaced by laptops and even iphones.

For now, I've decided to consolodate my flashes of news, observations of the hobby, and even site updates here on this Blogger page. I like the interface. I think I can utilize it to get information out faster to the community at large. At least, we'll give it a shot!

Steve