CALL FOR HELP: organizing the site’s content

Do you have a few minutes? I’d love your help with a little activity.

This is an exercise called card sorting. I’ve created separate cards for the individual sections of this site, and I’d like to ask you to sort them in a way that you think makes sense to you.

There are NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS. Repeat: NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS. This is all about your opinion on what’s important and what’s not, and this will help me organize the site’s info in a way that makes sense for you all. If you have thoughts on content that’s not important to you, that’d be helpful, too!

Once again, you can access the card sorting activity right here.

If you have any questions or comments, you can comment here, or email me if you prefer to do so privately.

THANK YOU!

♥,
Smitha

What I’ve been working on…

(Thank goodness for Illustrator’s pencil tool, to let me “sketch” these straight into vectors…so much easier than carving out every little detail with the pen tool!)

screenshot-dwcoins-wip

It feels like these images have held a lot of sway for a number of fans. I’ve seen people reference them in various ways over the years and marvel at the meanings behind the symbols. (These are the background “sigils”/”seals”/”coins” in the end credits of episodes 1-5.) So it seems only right to make vector files of these, so people can use and remix them as they see fit.

I’m definitely working away at a bare-bones redesign of the site (content/layout/interactions first, styles and graphics later), to use as a portfolio piece. My intention is to post the vector files of the logo and these 5 “coin” images there under a Creative Commons license. (SVG should do it, right? Would you all need any other file formats?)

Do you have any other images or symbols you’d like to see vectorized? (The Compass and the Treasures of Rule come to mind, but beyond that I don’t know.) Let me know!

World Book character sheets ARE ALL ONLINE. (plus other goodies.)

It’s only taken me…what, 10 years now? But–it’s true–after major fan demand, ALL THE WORLD BOOK CHARACTER SHEETS HAVE BEEN SCANNED AND ARE ONLINE.

They’re up as individual images for the moment. I need to transcribe the last ~45 and will start to…okay, eventually…put the images and text into a document/PDF. (I was going to say that I had done this with the World Book, but the PDF version actually does not have any images in it. Something else to add to the to-do list!)

For those who have been asking me (for YEARS now), I am truly sorry for the delay. Just…you know…life and stuff. I hope that these have been worth the wait!

Well, in other news…hello! Stuff is definitely in the works. It’ll be quite a while yet but a redesign/update of the site is in progress, to finally dust it off, clean it up, and bring it into this decade of web design.

A few things of note, sent in by some awesome people over the months:

Alexandre has captured the Sega Genesis PoDW soundtrack and converted it to mp3s for our listening pleasure. ** will host these files on this site once I update **

Neike has edited and uploaded an incredible collection of screenshots of locations and creatures, the Treasures of Rule, and more.
** will host these files on this site once I update **

Brittany contacted me about a doll she spotted on eBay a while ago. It’s a doll of Ren that I’ve never seen before, and even the original listing has no real information on it beyond “Made in Korea.” Do any of you know know anything about this? See below…

ren-doll-ebay-unknown

Jakub, and possibly some others, have been working on building out a wikia.com wiki for PoDW.

Sony/”Konway” has uploaded a few choice videos: the end credits of Dark Water, the Dishonor cut scene* with Roddy McDowall vs. Frank Welker

Want a hi-res scan of the background image behind episodes 1-13? Doug pointed out that the original painting was up for auction at Heritage Auctions a while back but the image is still there.

And deviantART user DanFelix has been maintaining Dark-Water-Pirates, a collection of fanart from across the website. People have created some really interesting, clever, and fun pieces lately.

*I refer to this as “cut,” though some people were fortunate enough to see the show on TV with this clip included. Different stations made subtly different cuts to the show.

That’s it for all, but hopefully not for long. Cheers! Thank you so much for your support and kind words–I never say it enough, but I deeply appreciate your encouragement and enthusiasm over all these years.

Music and merchandise finds

Happy spring, Northern Hemisphere citizens! Time to share a couple of recent PoDW Twitter finds:

For those of you familiar with the Sega Genesis PoDW game, somebody put together a great clip of himself performing the Sega game’s Janda Town theme music. The layering of the different sounds and lines is really great and spot-on. Check it out!

Also, Ian has set up a RedBubble site with apparel with the PoDW logo on it! The only thing: he’s using a version of the video game logo that may be a little blurry/artifacted when it’s enlarged. But it still looks great, and RedBubble provides some pretty cool options: varieties of shirt types, colors, and sizes, to fit your taste. At SF conventions I attended in the past, I always made it a point to wear a PoDW shirt and/or bring the up in panel discussions, to get it back on people’s radar one way or another. The more people who do stuff like that, the better the odds are that eventually enough people interested in a reboot of the show will get noticed. So…you never know. 🙂

And if I haven’t linked to this yet, Nate has done in a few months what I haven’t gotten around to in many years, and ripped a few video clips of the Dark Water miniseries–specifically, 2 clips with Roddy McDowall voicing Niddler (something I know a lot of you have been really curious about), as well as the miniseries opening.

Oh! OH. I DID make an update…to the contact page. (Better than nothing, right…?) It was horribly outdated–I’ve removed my Facebook link (I deleted–not disabled, but fully deleted–my profile last summer), and added links to Twitter and my (pretty outdated) personal website. I’ve also cleaned up the language somewhat, and apologize sincerely if anything on there was a little too blunt or offputting.

That’s it for now. I’m quite busy…preparing to move this summer for the 3rd time since November (I’ve had surprisingly horrible luck with living situations during my 1.5 years in Boston), playing in a lot of orchestra/opera concerts, presenting at a conference in a few weeks, and looking forward to finding some free time in the summer for personal and/or portfolio-padding projects. (Like this site, perhaps?) Now that the sun no longer sets by 4:30pm, life is pretty wonderful again. 🙂

I hope you’re doing well, too!

Looking back and looking ahead. (Also, merchandise on Etsy!)

Firstly, thank you.

I never say this sort of thing enough. And most of you are strangers–some of you have sent me very kind e-mails (and every single one has been deeply appreciated), some of you have gone on to become social media buddies, online friends, and even close offline friends–but it’s so heartening to see how a shared childhood/young-adult memory from 15-20 years ago has inspired and encouraged people’s imaginations, and I’m really honored and grateful that your comments and energy and support have continued to feed this website along.

This, on the other hand, is something I say repeatedly, and I do mean it–this website is a culmination of the efforts of a lot of friendly, nostalgic fans (as well as former Hanna-Barbera employees!). It isn’t just me–it never has been and it never will be. You guys send in the awesomeness (whether that’s actual info/media/merchandise/etc., or even cheerful reminiscing), or post it here and there online, and it all finds it way here. (Eventually, anyway.)

Why am I waxing nostalgic like this?

This is why.

Site visitors: country breakdown

(click to enlarge.)

This is the breakdown of visitors to Always The Quest over the last three years, when I installed Google Analytics. I just viewed it in full for the first time tonight.

Over 70,000 visits.
Over 150 countries and territories. There are PoDW fans on every continent!
And this is in just the last 3 years. (This site has been online since the summer of 1996–almost 17 years! I was 15 then, and I’m 31 now. Holy moly.)

(The color is the relative number of visitors from each country. The US was the source of over 40,000 of those visitors, hence how dark the shading is. BUT STILL!)

These days the site averages 40-50 visits a day. Not bad, considering the obscurity of the material. Definitely lower than its peak average of 100+ a day, during my undergrad days. I’m not desperate for thousands of views, but I would like to improve the searchability of the site. Nearly 40,000 of the visits were via searches. There were only a handful of searches that didn’t relate to the show, but I still see where I can improve from skimming people’s search terms. (Among the more interesting: “action poses” and “poop deck.” Ha! Also, there were 4 searches for “pirates of dark water tickling.” I don’t think I want to know what that’s about…)

ANYWAY.

This is still pretty tremendous. At least, it is to me. Though our community isn’t nearly as cohesive as those that have more content to talk about, I’m so glad it’s still around. And I’m especially excited to see where it goes next.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

* * * * *

Holy fitting segues, Batman. 😉

Next up: I would love to make some big changes to the site this year. (Possibly by gutting it and then rebuilding it piece by piece. Tempting…) And this is where you all come in.

I want to give you a heads-up about this: would you be willing to take a survey for me? About the site, what you value and don’t value, what you’d like to see that isn’t here and what you’d like to have removed or modified/updated, that sort of thing. I still need to put it together. But this site is for you all–it’s a repository of info, but it can be so much more than that.

For example, people (not me, but others) have described this site’s function/purpose in a number of different ways:
– source of plentiful info
– campaigning to finish the show
– community for the fans
– a shrine/time capsule
– digging up the behind-the-scenes view of the show

And more. And some of these were actually quite a surprise to me. What do you all think? I don’t want to put stuff up that many of you really don’t care about.

Do start thinking about it. 🙂

* * * * *

And, last but not least!

Etsy seller DanielleMeetsWorld is selling two handmade PoDW wallets. They’re upcycled, using pages from PoDW comic #4, “Break-Up” (episode #3, yes, but comic #4, as episode #1 was spread out over 2 comics), and intentionally DIY. Even better: part of the price goes to benefit worthy charities. One, two.

If you’re interested in your own copy of the comics (or even the action figures), they are always, always available on eBay. 🙂

And that’s all for now! As always, thank you for reading, and for showing your support just through your visit. Much love to you all!

E-mail hijacked by a spambot

If you have e-mailed me in the past and get any erroneous or spam e-mails from me, I do apologize. At some point in the last week, a spambot got access to my PoDW site’s e-mail address and started sending out junk mails (right now I have no clue how many have gone out). I’ve changed my mail password and will see what else I can do later this week.

Thanks for your understanding!

Checking in: PoDW back on the air + contest winner

Firstly, congratulations to Rachael Thomas for winning the RPG set! (Amazingly, I still have not mailed it to her, but totally will this week. :P) I apologize for taking so long to announce the winner.

Also, according to Twitter, PoDW is back on Boomerang as of last night (unsure of the time–check your listings!). This looks to be roughly at the same time it aired before: it seems like they’re rotating a few early-90s shows in that same time slot, which actually kind of makes sense, since nothing is stagnant this way and multiple shows get exposure a few times a year.

Also, hi! It’s been a while–I hope February was kind to you all! I am halfway through my final semester of grad school, and currently buried under thesis/school/final-semester/job-search hell right now, so updates will be scarce till I graduate in mid-May. (If you happen to actually be interested in my rather mundane life, I do post occasionally to my blog and am also on Twitter. Be warned: I geek out over stuff most people don’t care at all about. Like volcanoes.)

Contest update, and new hosting server

(If you’re seeing this, that means the domain has propagated and is pointing at my new web host. Woohoo!) Please let me know if anything’s broken or not working as it should–thanks!

RPG module contest entrants: the gentleman who sent me the RPG wanted to clarify something: the RPG has been opened and repackaged. But it’s pretty much in pristine condition and everything is intact. If that changes anything for you, please let me know–I apologize for the misinformation.

Another brief update: I installed some new image gallery viewing code across the image section. It should create a “lightbox” effect and let you move quickly through the images now, instead of clicking on each thumbnail individually.

DVD winners, Boomerang, and a bunch of links

Firstly, now that it’s finally settled: congratulations to Tony and Michelle, the TWO winners of the DVD contest!

Two, you say? It was a bit of a surprise to me, too. 🙂 It took a while to finalize everything, due to delays on WB’s side in terms of mailing me the DVD for the initial winner (Tony). When they did finally sent it, they sent me two copies. Since I already have my own, I chose another winner at random (Michelle) from among the complete entries. 🙂

A few things of note…

If you have Boomerang: PoDW is back on the air. A. Martin just wrote in yesterday (thank you!), saying that it’s listed in his cable guide as beginning TONIGHT at 10:30pm US Eastern/7:30pm US Pacific. I don’t have cable, so if you do, please do let us know if it does air!
[EDIT: 2010-11-02 10:30pm EST – it is indeed back on Boomerang. Thanks to Kaedyn for confirming the news!]

Also, Sergey has very kindly assembled torrents of both PoDW video game console music AND Russian subtitles for season 3 (episodes 14-21).

And here’s a list of torrents for the episodes in Portuguese, along with the Portuguese episode titles.

Here’s some really unique fan work: really cool 3D fanart of the Wraith by Bryan, and a custom painted PoDW-themed guitar by Tom in Wales. Excellent job, both of you–they really look great. 🙂

And Catalina has put up my scans of PoDW comic #1 on scribd.com, which actually makes them way easier to read. Great idea! (I’d put up #2-#9 myself if I had time…would anyone be up for doing it?)

Updates will be sparse for the next couple of months–it’s just that time in the semester. I’ve started up my personal blog again, so if you’re so inclined, you’re welcome to keep up with me through that. 🙂 The fall colors are vibrant and already fading here and the weather was below freezing this morning: autumn has arrived in Pittsburgh. Hope the rest of the year is pleasant for you all!

PoDW on Twitter and elsewhere online

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has had one somewhat amusing side effect: a number of Pirates of Dark Water references are showing up on Twitter.

@callingshotgun Was early 90s cartoon “Pirates of Dark Water” environmental propoganda like “Captain Planet”, but more subtle? BP fiasco makes me wonder.

@OddKnowledge if only solving the BP oil spill was simple as finding 13 treasures like on Pirates of Dark Water http://bit.ly/cRlXL2
FYI, the link is safe; it goes to the opening of the show on YouTube.

KeatonThomas The cartoon The Pirates of Dark Water was actually a misinterpreted political warning about off shore drilling…. #thedarkwaterisreal
Love the hashtag.

MagnusApollo “the Pirates of Dark water” who knew that that old cartoon would have been so prophetic. Find those crystals people.
More prophetic than we realized, since they DID try using a gem to cap the leak, in the form of a diamond saw…yeah, kind of stretching, I know.

greekgodspeed BP + Oil Spill = The Pirates of Dark Water.

theconq19 Who would’ve thought Pirates of Dark Water would turn out to be a documentary?

And so on.

(This is not meant in any way to trivialize this devastating tragedy. BP’s attempts and failures and pathetic excuses make me sad and furious all at once–sad for the loss of both human and animal/marine life and the horrible devastation of the local ecosystems (there’s a real ripple effect in play, too, affecting much more than just that), and furious with BP for letting this happen to begin with.)

Anyway, moving on.

Something else posted to Twitter: there’s a section for PoDW at Behind the Voice Actors. It’s a breakdown, with photos, of the voice actors for the main and recurring characters.

Also, in response to a request I’ve gotten several times, I pulled together a video clip of the ending credits of episodes 1-5. They’re from the Japanese VHS releases, so they have the Dark Water opening and the HB “swirl” has been replaced with a couple of screens of Japanese credits.

Next up: more RPG character page scans. I SWEAR.