Channel Ten are LIARS!

Network Ten in Australia have been airing the TV series “Lie To Me” since it began. This is one of the few shows they “Fasttrack” (ie they air it 1 week after it airs in the USA).

Tonight we saw an episode called “Do No Harm“, it’s episode #6.
It originally aired in the USA on March 11th, we didn’t see it until tonight (March 24th).

At the end of the episode they announced:

“Due to a delay in the States, Lie to Me will return on April 21st”

Now, I understand that the big problem with fasttracking a TV series from the States is that if the show goes on break there, we have to wait for it here as well. Fair enough, I’d be in the same situation if I was downloading the show.

But here’s the list of episodes:

• Do No Harm (Aired March 11)
• The Best Policy (Aired March 18)
• (Break on March 25)
• Life is Priceless (Airing April 1)
• Depraved Heart (Airing April 8 )

So Australia is 2 weeks behind the USA. The States go on break for just 1 week, and Australia has to wait 4 weeks?
Here’s confirmation that Fox is airing “Life is Priceless” on April 1st:
http://www.fox.com/lietome/

The Australian schedule should be as follows:

• Do No Harm (March 24)
• The Best Policy (March 31)
• (Break on April 7)
• Life is Priceless (April 14)
• Depraved Heart (April 21)

Of course it’s entirely possible for Ten to skip the April 7th break and just show the next episode, but that will make it only 6 days after the original airdate and I’m not sure if that would cause any problems. I doubt it given that NCIS is aired 6 days after the USA, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

It’s an outright lie to say that the reason they aren’t showing it for 4 weeks because a 1 week delay in the USA.

Ironic for Ten to be lying to millions of people who have just finished watching a TV show that teaches them how to spot liars…

Social Networking…

I’m now available on both Twitter and Facebook.
http://twitter.com/bbcentral
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1544206560&ref=name

Blues Brothers Central v2.0 – 97% Finished!

I’m now about 97% finished rebuilding Blues Brothers Central (www.bluesbrotherscentral.com)

It’s a massive overhaul I began in Feb 2006. The site I’m currently running has existed since 2003, and although I’ve constantly added new content/features and redesigned it several times, it’s essentially the same framework.

The new site is a complete rebuild, everything has been changed, from the logo to the color scheme. Even the URL format has gone from the ugly:
/album.php?album_id=7
to the much more friendly:
/albums/made-in-america/

So, what’s left to do and why haven’t I finished it yet?
Well there’s a couple of incredibly boring data entry tasks I have to finish. One of them was adding all the hundreds of gigs the band has played since the 1970’s, I’ve almost finished these but there are many I won’t bother adding. On the current site people have submitted gigs with useless vague information, like “I think they played in Belgium in 1990, or it could have been 1991″. Because I obviously have the time to waste hours trying to track down when it happened…
Over time more people will submit gigs and this time they’ll be able to be more specific, so if there are any missing then they can be filled in later on anyway.

There’s a MASSIVE picture gallery containing around 1000 photos, these will need to be tagged into the correct categories, however this is something I can ask my members to help with.

I’ve got plenty of products to add to the Blues Brothers Store, and a couple of bootleg albums to add. Plenty of multimedia needs to be uploaded and tagged.

I need to also finish:

• The Blues Brothers Revival page
• Blues Brothers 25th Anniversary page
• Movie Cars (If I don’t finish this I’ll get flooded with annoying emails

I’m also working on a new section that I’m not ready to reveal, mainly because so far I’ve only done the artwork and some basic designs. The programming is only about 5% finished at this stage.

And finally there’s a secret project I’m working on to go with this site, it’s codenamed “Project B12″, it has it’s own separate website. I may launch that along with BB Central v2.0, or I may hold off until the site has stabilized.

A decision I made a while ago was that I won’t be running any banner rotations on Blues Brothers Central. The main reason was that it slowed down the pages, it was another piece of software I had to keep updated, and it wasn’t really getting enough interest. It’s a shame that I won’t be able to promote the websites of my friends and members, but in the end I have to think of the bigger picture. I’ll only be running Google Adsense and Amazon Associates advertising, along with some small promotions for other affiliates I’m involved with.

Finally, here’s some artwork I created but ultimately never ended up using, it was to promote the new site:

That’s a photo I took myself while in Chicago in 2005, I’ve just modified it heavily and added some new signs. I hated it, but it was enough to inspire me to design something 100 times better (and completely different).
Here’s the original:

Will you crazy people leave me alone?

So as you all know I built www.lcarsdeveloper.com back in 2002, when I used to be a bit of a Star Trek fan (something I lost interest in very quickly).

At the time I was teaching myself Flash, and I wanted to take on a big project to test my Flash skills and improve on them, so I started messing around with the computer interface from Star Trek, which is known as “LCARS”.

In 2005 my site merged with another site called STEngineer.com, a site that was trying to build an operating system called “LOSS” (LCARS Operating System Shell). I gave control over to the STEngineer owners, but after writing their name all over the site and redirecting their domain name to mine (as well as breaking half the pages) they left and never returned.

Eventually I closed down the forum on the site because it was being overrun by spammers and I couldn’t be bothered moderating it. I had offers from people who wanted to take over the forum, I was even prepared to give them all the posts that were made, but nobody had any serious offers (just amateurs who would have given up 2 weeks later).

In the end I just stopped touching the site, uploaded all the source code (Flash FLA files) and said “do what you want with them”.

A lot of people took me up on that offer, the best example is www.lcars.org.uk, which has essentially expanded on my work and built another site out of it. I’m glad to see there’s a decent credit in the footer of the site, although to just say “thanks for designing the menu” is a little bit of an understatement when he’s kept the original logo and all the animations too. I’m embarrassed to see he’s even posted my hideously inaccurate animation here, the one I only made as a placeholder and never got around to finish.  And these:
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_m.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_o.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_p.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_r.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_x.htm (this one he finished)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_n.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_s.htm (I hated this one)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_aas.htm (not sure if this is based on mine)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_u.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_zh.htm (From my LOSS8 demo…I think?)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_w.htm (Never finished this one)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_t.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/Enterprise.htm (The big animation half way down with the scrolling text, although he finished it)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that this guy has gotten so much out of my work, and it’s obvious from the hundreds of animations he’s made on his own that he has his own talent, he’s just used my work as a shortcut for his own. I think that’s fantastic, it’s exactly what I posted the files online for!

But I’m getting very tired of getting emails from…lets face it…morons who think I somehow stole his website.

Like this gem:

Why do you own ADGE’S lcars web site if you are not going to do anything with it.
Some of my friends wanted a new screen save of save trek. but so far there are no new changes. if you are not going to comtrubute to the star Trek then sale the web site to someone who will do something with it.

I mean come on, I don’t OWN his website! I have nothing to do with, aside from the fact that his menu system is 90% my work.
And since when did I make screensavers? I’ve NEVER made a screensaver, and I never even tried to!
If I’m not going to contribute to star trek I should sell my website to someone who will? Well I’ve already given the whole thing away for free, who would possibly want to pay for it when they can do what Adge did and click “DOWNLOAD”?

Anyway that’s my rant for the day. Stop emailing me.