What's new - Apr 2006

So Best of Both Worlds was the unsuprising winner of the best cliff-hanger. This week, what's the worst one?

Congratulations to Jason F., winner of last week's competition. This week, an image from Ent's "Harbinger".

We've change the labels on the images in the episode and film pages from captions to names and removed the links from this text. The image can still be clicked on.

We've fixed the annoying nit with the galleries where if you clicked an image to see the large version and then clicked back it took you to back to page one rather than the page you came from.

Forgot to mention, but I upgraded Archer's bio to the expanded format last week.

Several additional ships have been added, from various places.

So you aren't fond of the Starfleet Academy idea. Well tough, rumour has it that Paramount are making it anyway, concerning the young Kirk and Spock no less! I feel like I'm watching a train wreck unfold before my eyes...

This week, what's your all time favourite cliff-hanger episode finish? We've got thirty choices, sorry if your favourite is missing.

Congratulations to BikerWolf, winner of last week's competition. This week, a snap from Voyager's "Prophecy".

We've added the Sudden Death weekly and all time high scorers to the front page as a new permanent feature.

I've just put up a small update to sudden death. It should solve the occasional problem of the image not updating. It should also stop the image from the previous question flashing up large before updating with the new image.

This week, we're asking what you think of the oft-rumoured Starfleet Academy idea.

We've put the logo into the bottom left hand corner of the site. Clicking it will return you to the home page.

We've updated the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in the site guide, adding a series of banners you can use to link to the site. Feel free to use them on your sites. The FAQ can also be found by clicking the 'Mail Author' button.

Congratulations to Tiberius, winner of last week's competition. This week, a shot from DS9's "Way of the Warrior".

We've added half a dozen or so new books to the books list. Don't forget you can add your own reviews and ratings for these books. If you can't see the book you're after drop us an email.

In the last day or so there has been a problem with sudden death were it asks questions with no answers or image. This is now fixed.

We've altered the site logo used on the search page to the 'full text' version. Hope you like it.

We've improved performance on the actor bio pages and made them work for the major cast. You can now get a list of, for example, all the episodes William Shatner has appeared in.

You can now click on the name of the entries rather than just the 'checkbox' in the poll, quiz, picture quiz and sudden death.

I've re-scaled the Delta Flyer from 30 metres down to about half that. The new size is based on scaling the ship against Voyager's shuttlebay doors - previously I'd just assumed a size for the doors based on how big the back of the hull was, since I didn't have any decent diagrams of that area of the ship. The new figure will still have issues with some episodes, given the TARDIS-like nature of both the Flyer's interior and Voyager's hangar bay, but it's at least able to fit in and out of the ship this way! Thanks go to Lee Joon Nyen, who prompted me to re-examine the issue.

We've updated this competition to have a weekly high score table rather than a monthly one. The global high score table remains. For the record each week will end at midnight on Sunday, according to the time on the server. Plus we've just added a games played counter to the bottom of the pages.

We've updated the search facility to fix an anoying problem. Previously if you clicked on the result of a search to see a page and then clicked the back button you would be returned to the search selection page. Now when you click back you will be returned to the result of the your search.

So Stargate SG-1 won last week's poll. Not surprising, I love that show! This week we're asking how often you visit here.

Congratulations to Brian Phillips, winner of last week's competition. This week, an image from TNG "Deja Q".

I thought it might be instructive to give a few hints on what to do and what not to do to win the caption competition...

What to do

In-jokes referencing other sci-fi shows that I like amuse me.
Clever puns or plays on words amuse me.
Funny limericks, poems or other such that make it look like you really thought about it.
Get in early. If two people post the same (or essentially same) winning caption, the first one gets in.
Check your spelling. Typos are very likely to eliminate your entry.

What not to do...

Whilst I'm a fan of Monty Python, and found Biggus Dickus jokes amusing for quite some time, they lose their appeal somewhat after you have read about ten thousand of them. Really people, look back – when was the last time a BD joke made the short list, let alone the winner?
References and/or flattery directed at me, whilst they tickled my ego for a while, also grow stale after the first few hundred! (But hey, nobody has ever directed anything at my brother and DITL co-creator Ian and he picks half the winners you know!)
Don't make them too long. Ten lines is a paragraph, not a caption!

And lastly, remember... to every rule there are exceptions

Edited: We have now added a 'Holour Role' to the caption competition, which lists the winners and special mentions.

We've added an additional option to the search facility, allowing you to search image captions.

We've adopted a new DITL logo for the front page and search page. Hope you like it.

We've made some changes to "sudden death" over the last few days. These are as follows:

- You can no longer see the filename within the page, it will allways appear as image.php.
- The answer is no longer a 'hidden' field on the form so you wont be able to see it.
- Looking at the source, while amusing, will not help you win.
- We are now keeping an all time and a current month high score tables.
- When you get a question wrong you will be told the correct answer.

Wow! Last week's poll result was truly a first - the first time we have ever had an exact tie! By 242 votes to 242, you can't decide if torture is okay or not. Interesting.

So, we've come to the end of our ethics poll run. Hope it gave you some food for thought. This week, we're asking what your favourite non-Trek science fiction series is (or was). Lots to choose from, but a poll like this can never cover every series ever so sorry if your favourite one is missed out. Happy voting...

A new competition is launched today. It is called 'Sudden Death' and can be found on the recreation menu. It will give you one picture at a time and you have to identify it. If you get it correct you get another one and so on. If you get it wrong you end your run. Your score is the number of correct answers. The top ten scores will be maintained on a high score table. Enjoy.

Edited to add : we're having some teething troubles with this at the moment. Hopefully all will be fixed in the next hour or two at most, please bear with us.

Edited again: OK, I think this is now working OK. We have had to add anti cheating mechanisms to the system as people were using the back button on their browser to get extremely high scores. You know who you are and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Apologies to those who played by the rules and have now lost their high scores because of this. It's always one or two bad apples that spoil it for the rest of us.

Congratulations to the improbably named Praximusatrilajeyuoz, winner of last week's competition. This week, a picture from TOS "Friday's Child".