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The Real World

April 05, 2005, 01:34 PM

• This site is operated at a loss. The domain is not for sale. Links on this site are not endorsements for and not sponsorship of this site or any other in any way, nor are links to this site. This site does not accept any advertising money.

April 26, 2004, 10:51 AM

• E-mail worms and viruses have forced this site to no longer have clickable links to contact the webmaster. There are apparently many that watch what web sites you visit, harvest e-mail addresses from them, and send themselves out both to an as those addresses. Where appropriate, I've left plain text instructions on where to send e-mails regarding this site.

August 12, 2001, 5:37 PM

• There have been some minor changes here. I no longer employ hit counters on the pages as it appears that either some people or some browsers behave in an improper manner, causing the counts to become reset.
• I've cleared out some of the dead links as well. Be advised that I will require identifying references to what links are no longer valid on the page. There's more links on the site than I find I have the time to investigate.

June 18, 2000, 2:41 PM

• It has come to my attention that Netscape 6.0PR1 currently fails to support the NOSCRIPT tag according to this article. Users of this pre-release browser with Javascript off will not see the left side menu. I recommend using an earlier or later release version of Netscape's browser instead.

June 17, 2000, 11:26 PM

• I've resolved the iCab problem. Turns out it was a bug of my own making. A more detailed test for styles in IE allowed me to disambiguate it from iCab and avoid the error of trying to access style in iCab.

June 17, 2000, 10:19 PM

• I've been making some improvements to the site lately. I've been working on eliminating the last bits of invalid HTML that was present on the site (mostly percentage widths on table cells) and embracing more HTML 4.x markup.
  • The most noticeable change though would be the use of some dynamic HTML in the navigation menu. This allows for the reclaiming of some browser real-estate. To open the menu, you just click on the lower planet (Morthrai). Clicking it again closes the menu. Users without Javascript or CSS will get a pre-opened menu that cannot be closed. Some pages may look less attractive with these browser features disabled.
  • There is still an issue with the iCab Pre2.0 browser where the menu will not appear at all, but the text links at the bottom of the page will still be present. Turning off InScript in iCab will address the problem in the interim. I am working on addressing the iCab problem with that browser's authors.
  • I believe the only proprietary markup left on the site is Netscape's MULTICOL tag used in the newspaper clippings in the Radio section, and only because I haven't yet worked out the best way to achieve its effect with stylesheets.
• Some installations of Microsoft's Internet Explorer may have problems. I recommend 5.0 or newer versions only. I personally had problems runing MIE 4.5 for Macintosh wrt the new navigation menu hanging the system. If you must use the older version, disable Javascript support.
• A Flash 4 version of the navigation menu has been developed, but since transparency support only exists on a particular browser and platform combination, I don't intend to deploy it until Macromedia improves their support of non-Microsoft browser-platform combinations.

September 10, 1999 12:55 PM

• The site is changing servers. I've found I get a much better deal with ADSL service through Binary.Net than I do with Internet Nebraska. It will take some time for the DNS servers to point to the new location. If you're reading this, you have reached the site on its new server.

May 7, 1999 1:58 PM

• Users may have noticed some problems with hit counters and banner ads disappearing from the site or resetting. Changes to the site have been made to prevent this from occurring again. Note: the banner ads appearing on this site are not paid advertisement. I receive no remuneration from any party for having the site and I have no intent to change this.

May 3, 1998 10:26 PM

• The site is undergoing some improvements in performance made possible through the development of HTML 4.0 and cascading style sheets. These enhancements degrade gracefully for users of earlier browsers or browsers with stylesheets or JavaScript disabled.

April 15, 1998 12:58 AM

• The hit counters have moved to a server-side include implementation. Until the previous counter's values can be merged with the SSI hit counter's counts, two numbers will display on each counted page. This should improve performance as each page access won't access a second machine which may have less connectivity. The change is partly due to the hit counter I was using crashing when accessed too frequently.

January 12, 1997 08:42 PM

• Christmas break is over. Downloads are again accessible.

December 19, 1997 06:38 PM

• Time for Christmas break here at UNL. This means that the hit counters and many downloads will be inaccessible until about a week into the new year. Site maintenance will continue and e-mail will be read and responses will be sent.

December 2, 1997 07:38 PM

• From approximately noon to 7:30 PM today the server which hosts the pages for this site was not responding to page requests for no explained reason, and was inaccessible. UNL was unresponsive to requests for information or explanations. Options for alternate servers are being investigated.
• Note: most large binaries will be inaccessible through the last days of December and into January. I am investigating possible locations to relocate these pages which will become imperative as summer approaches and I lose this space to graduation. I hope to have a solution before the holiday break.

November 10, 1997 02:13 PM

• Added much information to the index pages for each of the areas listed in the table of contents. Also added links to various movie files on the downloads pages, some previously available elsewhere on the site, some recently made available. Again updated the choices for the Sci-Fi Channel ScheduleBot (normally I won't mention this). The games area is now dedicated to the memory of Norton Drake.

October 27, 1997 11:14 AM

• Nebraska has been hit by a rather intense snowfall. Power comes and goes and the website goes up and down. Apparently the primary host can't mount the user directories automatically when power comes on so you may have gotten error messages about directories not existing.
• My apologies to everyone for not getting the alert out that "The Night That Panicked America" was again reshown on the Sci-Fi Channel on October 24th.

September 8, 1997 09:04 AM

• Further investigation showed that the problems weren't due to a failure but rather an administrative configuration which blocked all access in and out of residence halls at UNL. This may have been a misconfiguration or maybe the Internet Services department here has realized that what they did was a Really Bad Move. Access appears to be restored as of this morning.

September 7, 1997 11:41 PM

• Due to a local network failure preventing all access in and out of the residence halls at UNL, some files are temporarily inaccessible. This includes all the hit counters. Repairs aren't expected until tomorrow, possibly much much later. If not repaired by tomorrow, I'll take steps to counteract the problem any way I can.

August 29, 1997 10:12 PM

• I return to a dedicated connection. Expect to see the return of some previously off-lined files and the addition of more content and treats on the site.
• Added new The Downloads section to site which will have links to War of the Worlds-related downloadable items. This area is still under development.
• Modified the look of some pages, adding new original graphic text and added hit counters on each page which will help me determine the popularity of areas of the site and what parts could use further development. The front page counter is resuming from the original count from May; the new counters are starting at zero.

May 9, 1997 10:50 PM

• The machine hosting all the sound files and movie files for the pages was taken down for the summer. I am making arrangements for an alternative host to supply these files over summer. In the meantime, the related links are no longer on the pages. An announcement will be made here upon their return. I plan to make further developments of the pages through summer, including finishing some long-delayed additions.
• The hit counter will not be counting hits on the front page for all summer unless I can find someone willing to host the CGI for it with my custom digits. If you have an offer to host it (please be a fast, stable, low traffic site), send e-mail to gberigan@cse.unl.edu.

March 30, 1997 03:24 PM

• QuickTime^TM movies and sound samples are now back online and available for viewing and listening. In general, those files will be offline when the hit counter changes to a light blue color (indicating that it is "frozen") and come back when it turns back to green. Another period of inaccessibility is expected to begin corresponding to the end of the Spring semester at UN-L and the start of the Summer session. As of this date, no alternative site is available for hosting these files, particularly the QuickTime^TM movies, during that time, until the start of the Fall semester.

March 20, 1997 01:38 PM

• All QuickTime^TM movies and sound samples will be unavailable for a week starting Friday evening, March 21st, and will return Sunday evening, March 30th, due to Spring Break here at UN-L.

March 13, 1997 12:48 AM

• A new page for the latest news regarding War of the Worlds is created on this website, as well as for announcements related to this website.
• Due to massive, repeated, and continued abuse after notification by two users, I have taken the random image generator offline indefinitely. The individual images will be redistributed to different areas of the website, such as the Episode Guide and some pages about the movies, or there will be an "image of the month/week/day", I haven't decided. It also came to my attention that some versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (such as 3.0 for Macs) did not implement support for the Location: header for images, so those users will no longer get a broken image icon.
• I have ceased using Microsoft's Personal Web Server for the Mac to serve some of the files on these pages. I found that it will on occasion serve the files one user requested to another user and vice versa if those requests come in concurrently. I have reported the bug to Microsoft. The constant reloading activity mentioned above likely exascerbated this problem for others.