Newsletter

Some of the wider eyed people might have noticed a couple of new webrings which have recently appeared on the title page. (Hi to people who got here that way.) Anyway, if you're not familiar with webrings, take a look at them when you've finished with Dark Skies. There are a lot of interesting astronomy sites out there.

One of them, astro commlink, is my own webring. At present it's not very populated and it may or may not be so in the future. If you have your own astronomy site and you're interested in joining in, take a look at the astro commlink home page. It's something I can say I've done, and I got to design quite a nice looking logo. :-)

- Mike

I have just added a new reference socklet to the socks in space menu, which contains an annual meteor shower schedule. The Leonids are coming soon - I'd better stop talking or it'll be a false alarm. :-)

In other news, I've just chopped off another segment of the newsletter and given it it's own file. I think I have everything, but please let me know if you spot any inconsistencies or links not working.

- Mike

Okay, I admit it. Just when I had lots of work to get through I get a whole lot more. Usually large workloads provide an incentive for me to work on something completely different - like Dark Skies. Unfortunately this time it was just too big and I had to make that ultimate sacifice for a month or so. Anyway, unless I removed it there should be a warning somewhere that the growth rate of Dark Skies is completely irregular depending on my enthusiasm and situation.

You might or might not notice with this update that everything looks slightly more compressed. I added a large right margin to most of the document length pages, and I think this makes the text flow even easier to read. It also makes everything seem longer than it was before. :-)

I've been thinking of adding some background music and trialed it temporarily. I took it off very quickly though. 30 minutes of listening to the same ambient background over and over and over again is not a nice feeling, no matter how nice it sounds as a one off. I might consider it later if I can write some tidy javascript to play several random backgrounds and allow a presentable way for readers to stop it when they're getting sick. Have any ideas? Please tell me.

- Mike

Well, it's not really introducing this concept - this has been done many times before. I've never called it "reconditioning" in the past though, so I can probably get away with it. Just as good as, if not better than, the new version. :-)

Nothing new, again, although I have been through and filtered out a whole lot more yucky stuff from several of the socklets which was distracting from the actual point. Not that most people will really care about that. I've had a lot of varsity work to do lately, and this newsletter entry is mostly just to fill space so it doesn't go for too long without an update.

Getting closer to the leonids (meteor shower.) Once every 33 years and I bet it's completely overcast in mid-November. :-)

- Mike

I have just added a site map coming from the contents menu. This contains a level-by-level diagram of the layout of all the pages floating around Dark Skies. It should be updated whenever pages are added or moved around the site, but if you notice inconsistencies between what it says and what actually exists, please get in touch.

- Mike

Sorry, nothing particularly new with this newsletter entry. I don't have enough immediately required work for university to induce me to work on Dark Skies. :-)

I have just been doing some more tidying up around the site. The society page has been moved to the socks in space menu, because it's really more of a reference socklet and was cluttering up the contents. I have also completely revamped the layout of the links page, so now it's much easier to follow and read. On that note, I've added a link to the Auckland Astronomical Society's page.

- Mike

I've just been doing some long term proofreading, and having done so have completely rewritten most of the socklet about why stars won't stay still. I know I said it was bad, but I didn't realise it was that bad. :-) Anyway, now that I've reviewed it, I'm much happier with it's layout and announce it as I would a new socklet.

In other news, the newsletter has been split in two. The size of it is growing rapidly, probably due to an excess of irrelevant entries such as I'm typing right now. Whatever the cause, it was getting a bit big and inefficient to be downloaded in one go. I don't like throwing out history, so older entries have been ported over to a separate document. I will continue to do this in the future. The pages containing older newsletter entries can be accessed directly from the contents page.

Finally, the About Dark Skies page has been redesigned. It should now be much more structured and informative.

- Mike

It's about time. There's a new socklet available on the socklet menu for those of you who haven't already worked that out from reading the headline. This socklet is all about effective meteor observing. Suddenly there are as many beginners socklets as there are tips, which in a delightful sort of way is something I never saw coming. :-)

Several other things have changed aswell. For one thing, all the words in the astronomical dictionary have been changed to lower case. This is just a standard I've set so there's less chance of it looking like an inconsistent layout.

Oh yeah - Dark Skies has joined a webring. Hi to everyone who got here by travelling on the scientific expidition of the rail, which can currently be found at the end of the title page. Don't forget to go here and bookmark the page in your browser. I might put this and possibly other webrings on a dedicated page in the future if they get in the way. I don't really want too much junk cluttering up the title page.

In other news, we're now in to spring - maybe the nights will start to get a bit warmer again. Unless you're in the northern hemisphere, in which case you will have just entered antispring. Wherever you are, have a happy evening.

- Mike