Troy Spiral

*peeks around for someone named JRoss*

Welcome to the place. Hopefully we will see you around often.

To echo or elaborate on many of the above points: Many (read most) online forums have more stict rules about signature size, if its built in to the software this never even really becomes an issue to begin with. The majority of your larger websites have much "cleaner" looking forums. Not that it is a desire of mine to have DGN look like a spartan urinal, but Diarrhea of the Signature can be a problem on many fronts. Rarely, if ever is the problem "omg I cant post a huge sig? I don't want to read that message board." The problem is in the opposite direction. Or rather there can be a problem if the mods don't keep it under control. The reason you don't currently see the super-huge signatures that really make things look like crap aren't around. In terms of turning signatures off....New people would have no clue about any "turn them off" feature and the new people are what keeps a place alive. Also people do like to read signatures, having to turn them ALL off due to a few monstrosity sized signatures isn't particularly great either. The vast majority of joe-posters won't really care if there is a sig size limit. But if there is no signature limit the new (or never) members might just look and think (as some have mentioned above, and more have mentioned who don't post at all) "damn that website is spammed up with huge sigs." NVM. There will be a few complainers once a hard-coded signature size is in place, but they will be very few and only because the limit hadn't been there in the first place. On the old board there weren't any signatures at all, and I'm not sure I ever remember hearing a peep about it. Even though I personally wanted them, among a 100 other features we didn't have. *ponders*

Hiya! Welcome to the place. Hopefully you'll find it interesting / welcoming and we can trick you into... er... I mean convince you to stick around. Hey who slacked off and didn't spam the welcome questions? *shakes angry fist at the universe* *drum roll*

I'd ad ... "especially for newer people." Which, general DGN should be biased toward the new people a bit. You don't get "long term posters" if the new people never convert into more seasoned posters. That has been the general suggestion for a long time. Unfortunately its difficult to enforce. The board software itself is supposed to have a built-in sig size limit but it doesn't actually work, not really. And so with the billions of sigs, its hard to moderate each and every one unless they are REALLY big. (and there have been several people who have either had their sig removed or have been asked to have it removed.) I personally think there are many sigs that are too large, but for the vast majority of the board sig size isn't much of an issue. (I try to think about DGN in terms of what is better for the whole, rather than what is just better for me. Even if what I like personally ends up not getting addressed.) Its something we still try to keep some sort of a handle on, its just not something that many people complain about. When the next version of IPB comes out, this probably will be a moot point as there will be a hard-limit to the dimensions and file size that sigs can be.

I tend to just focus on one, as our piddly little computers can't get much done split between multiple users. I've had a long term problem with my computer, that is affecting many programs I try to run, including Bionic. Which I think will need a re-install to fix. But, its a headache as there is a problem with the hard drive that needs to be fixed and I keep putting it off. (Actually banged my head against it for an hour just a few days ago with no satisfaction.) More than 45 minutes of that kind of crap drives me bonkers these days. I'll get back on the wagon at some point here.

National Volent Crimes In 1973 : 875,910 National Violent Crime in 2007: 1,408,337 (2008 numbers are still not solidified) I'm usually interested in percentages rates of change. For instance if i hear "1000 new cases of X disease" is that a lot? Is that an increase? What total amount of a population is that? Sometimes the raw numbers "feel" meaningful or meaningless without some sort of context. The NCVS (National Crime Victim Survey, I remember it since its "CVS" with an N in front) gets reported somewhat regularly on the news. Often it is quoted as just "the voilent crime rate" or just "national violent crime" but this is usually what they are refering to. It has its critics, but seems to be the most widely accepted data about such things. National Volent Crimes in 1973 : 875,910 National Violent Crime in 2007: 1,408,337 Sounds like an increase right? It could be accurately reported as "an increase" but that is misleading as hell. Overall violent crime is actually down quite a bit since they first started this survey in the early 70s (and way down since the peak in the early 90s). To get a more acurate understanding it needs to be looked at as a percentage of the population. The numbers are naturally going to tend to increase as the population increases, so just the raw numbers aren't of much value. Source: http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/glance/tables/viortrdtab.htm Plenty more surveys show similar trends, this is just the most often quoted source.

Saw it at IMAX. Was good, really enjoyed it. When I left the house the internet said there was 50 some tickets left, when we got there it said sold out. As observed above the place was packed out when we were leaving. This aspect of it is usually meaningless to me but its "fun" for a few of the more nerd-centric films. IMAX really is the way to see effects / scenery heavy movies. The large size and wrap-around "arc" of the screen really add a lot to the experience. (Similar to the oldschool Cinemascope film tech) Almost like a 3D effect without the glasses. Some might say better than 3D effect as it gives a "in the movie" feel. Don't sit in the back, get there early and sit somewhere in the center/front. The effect is lost quite a bit (maybe even totally) if you sit on the sides or in the back. I'm still trying to figure a way to get some money I don't have (one of the two key reasons I didn't go to Oblivion this weekend), to go see how they work this at the IMAX Dome at the DSC. (I currently wouldn't suggest going there as I'm skeptical of how a traditionally filmed IMAX movie is going to work on an IMAX[R] screen. Seems like it would look pretty odd. IMAX[R] is probably the ultimate way to see a movie currently, but feature films are not filmed for this format, only special documentaries and such get the proper treatment as far as I'm aware. They did an interesting thing to escape the wrath of us ST lovers with the time travel aspect of it. J. J. Abrams has long stated that he wasn't a star trek fan to begin with, and thus the ST faithful were skeptical of this interloper for a long time. The folk that look down their noses at us ST enthusiasts won't care either way, but too bad, deal. Regardless, he delivered the goods. The "current" time of the star trek series will have to be set as this movie. With huge changes to the star trek story, two of them being the lack of the planets Vulcan and Romulus(home of the Vulcans and Romulans, bizzare how that works huh?) Which are major staples of the Star Trek storyline and have been for 40 years. Now in the new time line they both are destroyed, with both vulcans and romulans being endangered species. Won't have to worry too much about them evil romulans anymore I wouldn't think. No appearance from either of the two most liked "bad" races (Klingons and Borg) was interesting. This alternate timeline allows a loophole for a few of the major changes to the backstory they threw in in the movie to slide by as they can be considered part of the oft-mentioned (but never explained) "Temporal Distortion", in this case a huge one. Ok /geekmode off. Easy to watch for most everyone as noted by the reviews. Its in line with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ("The one with the Whales") in that aspect. Both pretty much universally liked.

With the most common screen resolution (1024 X 768) and the standard monitor size these days 17=19 inch +, the text size is larger than newsprint / novel text. Having the opportunity to check the board on multiple computers fairly regularly (and many different browsers) It should be ok for the majority of users. But as mentioned above, you can resize it with browser settings if it seems to small or too large. On my main home computer i have the resolution set much higher and the text size is still roughly about the size of magazine print (probably a slight bit larger). Its always going to be relative based on various settings though.

Already taken care of in person but:

Ugh. I just found out its being shown at the Detroit Science Center's IMAX Dome theater (first feature length film ever to be shown there.) And I already bought the damn tickets for the IMAX at Henry Ford (with my nonexistent money). The IMAX[R] dome theater is really neat. Rather than the traditional big screen of the regular IMAX, it is a skyline of sorts that covers almost your entire vision. The films are in a "hemisphere" shape. The number of seats per showing is pretty small as the seating is "up in" the dome (sort of a higher-tech planetarium.) Its a much more personal in-your-face type thing. You sit in a sort of reclined fashion looking up at the screen. I'm not sure how ST will work there as the movies that are usually shown there need very special cameras (not "regular" IMAX cameras). Would make a good package as they also have a Star Trek exhibit at the science center. Wonder if I can get a refund on net tickets without a big hassle. *ponders* http://www.detroitsciencecenter.org/ And no, typically I don't really care about "when" I see a movie, although this has probably developed due to economic factors. 99.99999% of my movie watching is on DVD, with horrible video and sound pirated off the net.

With a subject like this the stats get skewed unfortunately. The people that care will click yes, the ones that don't wont even bother to vote. So you'll end up with like a 20 to 2 vote in the end probably on any given pet subject as very few people actually care about the "structure" of a website consciously. Did these sort of things a lot in the ancient times on the old board, and have read a lot about the structure of forums on the admin websites and such. Not that there is anything wrong with the idea, just a straight vote will be flawed as it doesn't take into account all the other factors involved in keeping a place active. The main problem with adding any new section is that the existing sections aren't all that active (save Other Stuff and "The DGN forum"). Another forum would just be that much less active. I personally would like several new forums about pet subjects I like, but they'd be ghost towns. A well known problem with online communities is having too many sections and no one bothers to check them as they have so little activity. If we had a consultant come look at the board professionally they would probably suggest cutting DGN down to like 10 sections or less until the activity was higher. You'll see a lot of forums on the internet with tons of sections but only any actual activity in a few of them. The best way to do it is to stare at what actually gets posted in "other stuff" (or wherever) and try to figure out what is the most common subject(s) that get smoothed together in there, and then have a nomination or some such based on actual activity. I've actually thought about consolidating a few forums. The overall board activity would have to pick up to justify splitting' the party any more. Once there was say 1000+ posts a day it would make sense to split out certain subjects that now might fall under existing ones. (currently we range between 300-500) Nothing stopping anyone from making posts about whatever subject they like. Does raise the question something like "what subject is currently talked about a lot that should have its own forum rather than being lumped in with other subjects." as an open question. Which would hopefully include research into what actually is talked about, rather than just the loudest voices about say "Troy's Favorite Subject."

I've got zombies 1 & 2 and the appropriate bags o' zombies. Seems a bit tiresome, after the "wow neat! zombies!" thing wears off. Maybe the other zombies addons make it more involving, which I've not gotten to yet. I'd recommend: Heroscape (Can play this one forever) Settlers Magic: the gathering (Basicly never need another game.) Warhammer 40k (this is for the AP class only.) for more simpleton fun that you can play with people that don't really like "in depth" games: Purto Rico Apples To Apples Fact or Crap Great website for games (beware fellow nerds you'll be reading for hours) http://www.funagain.com/control/main