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:

New Atari Ghost Busters Video Game Trailer. Shipping in June 2009. Featuring the voices of Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and more. Best trailer so far!

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Ghostbusters Logo

Source

“This is big, Peter, this is very big. There is definitely something here.”

Master Replicas is pleased to announce its forthcoming line of prop replicas based on Columbia Pictures’ hugely popular film franchise, Ghostbusters.

“We are extremely excited to be able to enter the Ghostbusters paranormal world”, explains CEO Michael Cookson “If you’ve always dreamed owning an officially licensed “unlicensed nuclear accelerator” or are just looking for innovative collectibles that will remind you of the legendary antics of Ray, Egon, Peter and Winston, the Master Replicas range will offer a wealth of choices.”

Working closely with Sony Pictures Consumer Products, Master Replicas will work its magic to ensure authenticity and accuracy. Master Replicas initial Ghostbusters product range will include authentic limited edition prop replicas as well as a few “surprises” just in time for the 25th anniversary of this pop-culture property.

The “keymaster” and “gatekeeper” are conspiring to release the first wave of products in May 2009. For a complete listing of products and a few “sneak peek” images, please visit us at http://www.masterreplicas.com/ on Halloween (October 31st) 2008.

Visit http://www.masterreplicas.com/ or http://www.5552368.com/ for further information and updates.

The Ectomobile (ECTO-1) from the movie Ghostbusters was falling apart. Years of damage, rain, rust and tourists had taken it’s toll on the car. This is how it looked a few years back at the Sony Backlot:

More photos – http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/reference/18/

Last year both the ECTO-1 and ECTO-1A were sent to an auto-restoration company, pulled apart and restored from the ground up:

More photos – http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/reference/30/

The restoration is now complete! The car looks even better than it did back in the 1980’s:

See more photos of the finished car here – http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/reference/31/

And finally here is a video of the car in action:

More videos here – http://www.gbfans.com/fans/aj-quick/videos/

Source: GBFans

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Mark Hamill, of Star Wars fame, spoke to a crowd about Barack Obama at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA

Today was my last day of a 5 day training course at work to learn the new computer software…very boring!

I was just about to go home when I checked my emails and saw that my server was having a fit. One of the MySQL tables decided to crash itself, so as soon as I got home I contacted my hosting company and they saved it for me. Just as well, I really didn’t want to lose 4 weeks of forum posts!

Luckily this server is almost about to be turned off, it’s been thrashed over the last 2 years and I’ve got a new one now. Most of my sites have been migrated across, and they run great, but there’s still a handful left on the old server. I’ve disabled the forum and I’m in the process of getting everything put onto the new server, just planning out my strategy to make sure it goes well.

Tonight saw Channel 10 launch their brand new series “Friday Night Download”, from the “genius” creators of the “masterpiece” show called “Big Brother”… If you haven’t guessed, I’m being sarcastic. If you watched the show and enjoyed it, then I seriously doubt you know what sarcasm means, let me translate for you.
“Sarcasm like means like that you say something, but you really don’t like mean what you’re like saying, you know?”
I’ll finish that statement by saying “I hate you”.
It’s basically just an hour-long show of three F-List celebrities watching Youtube clips that we all saw 6 months ago. And it’s not like they used the time to track down a high-resolution version, they actually play the tiny blurry videos fullscreen! At least that’s what I got from the commercials. If I watched the show then I’d be too ashamed to show my face in public.

Anyway instead of watching that gigantic pile of trash tonight, I watched 2 hilarious episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (slowly working my way through the whole 16 disc boxed set!). Then I finally got around to watching “Ocean’s 13″, I hadn’t seen it at the movies but recently bought the DVD.
Now for the record I thought “Ocean’s 11″ was fantastic. I enjoyed “Ocean’s 12″, the story may have been a little confusing and at times far-fetched, but the music, the locations, and the characters were amazing! Most of the reviews I read for “Ocean’s 13″ said it was “not as good as 11 but better than 12″. I have to agree in this case, I really enjoyed this movie.
The opening was a little confusing as the plot was setup, and at times you wondered what they were doing, but it all makes sense (just like the first 2 movies). The music, again, worked well (I loved David Holmes’ usage of parts of the score from “Ocean’s 11″). The cast work great together, and you actually care what happens to them, plus they have a great humour about themselves. There was really only a few moments where I thought “that’s impossible!”, and I cringed when they mentioned “Artificial Intelligence” (although seeing the computer in action was much more believable). But just like a James Bond film, I went in knowing what to expect and enjoyed what I got.

Ocean’s 14? Bring it on!

Still feel like downloading illegal movies? Watch this…

Here we go…a tribute to Captain Kirk himself.

Enjoy!

William Shatner – Rocketman

Shatner singing to George Lucas

Commodore Vic 20 Commercial

Till Nowak (http://framebox.de/) created this masterpiece named “Salad”.

Amazing pictures & behind the scenes .pdf

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This is possibly one of the worst ideas ever devised for television.

Get ready to cringe, because it’s the awesomely terrible…

Star Wars Holiday Special