Information - Updates

» 24Dec05

Not an update (sorry)--just a couple of things.

The guestbook's been hit lately by a lot of spam, so I disabled the submit form. I don't have time to deal with making it work right now, so if you'd like, just contact me directly instead until I can figure something out. ;P

Also, regarding the BitTorrent files...Zindryr's (who's hosting the tracker files) server randomly changed IP addresses, which caused everybody downloading or seeding to get bumped. Since then, downloads have been slow, and a few people actually can't even access the torrents. I'm still unable to use any BitTorrent client on my laptop, so I can't work on this problem at all. If you're trying to get the episodes, I'd appreciate if you could let me know if you're doing so successfully/slowly/not at all.

Another alternative is a link I've posted to the right--myspleen.com has a link to a torrent file of all 21 hi-res episodes, so it's a single download (a plus) which is 4 gigs (a minus). Give that a try as well.

It's strange that Christmas Eve has just snuck up and is suddenly here (they definitely do Christmas in Japan, but pretty much just the commercial aspect)...anyway, happy holidays to you all. :o) Stay warm and safe!

 

» 23Nov05

Whew! Long time no see; how've you all been? :o) Life in Japan's going fairly well...my area has a really close-knit JET community and I've met some wonderful people among the other teachers and in my town. I've gotten to travel around a bit, my family's coming next month, and I'm finally (slowly) getting the hang of teaching. If you're applying for JET, totally feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

I have a lot of little updates (Portuguese added to the international info page; text changes to site info, credits, FAQ, interact, and contact; fixed the faulty Unexplored and Fan Registry forms; added info to movies about finding the hi-res episodes via IRC; added new merchandise info (Halloween costume); updated links).

I also have one big update: the episode 3 slideshow (images courtesy of Kooshmeister) is finally up. I have another big update that's slowly coming together as well.

I'm slowly going to begin an overhaul of this site, to implement proper CSS/XHTML and semantic code, and just to clean it up a lot. The overall design should generally stay the same. I'm also going to make it less wordy wherever I can--it's a lot to wade through sometimes! Sorry about that.

I'm heading to India in 2 weeks and my family's coming here for the holidays, so I may not get to do a big update again this year. (I'm also behind on my e-mails--sorry, Ratna and Evan!) Please bear with me! The pace will probably continue to be this slow for the duration of my stay in Japan. Thanks so much for your understanding!

 

» 18Sep05

Not an update (still no internet access because I'm really lazy)...but recently a few people have posted messages in various places saying that David Kirschner is interested in picking the Pirates of Dark Water project back up. This is a completely unsubstantiated rumor. I've searched and found nothing to back this up. These people have either e-mailed me or posted to different places, and when I've e-mailed them asking if they can give me links to articles, they haven't responded, and as much as I want to trust them, I'm not going to believe anything until I see proof. That being said, if you do know of some source citing that he's picking PoDW back up and remaking/continuing it, please do let me know!

Also, right now, if you have problems with the BT episodes, e-mailing me isn't going to do you any good because there isn't anything I can do, since I still have no internet access from my apartment and can't seed the episodes. I'm really sorry! (And please DON'T e-mail me asking me to send you any of the episodes. No internet access means no internet access, meaning I have no way to upload or mail any episodes...plus, if you're e-mailing me from an AOL or Hotmail address, you really should know better than to ask anybody to send you something that huge. It won't go through.)

 

» 29Aug05

I'm in Japan! (And I turn 24 today, whee...one more year till the Quarter-Century Mark.) My internet access is still pretty limited, but I'm working on getting DSL set up. I've been here (in Tokushima prefecture, in southern Japan) for a little over a month and it's been incredible...the hardest thing has been the language barrier, but my town and the people here are so warm and welcoming. If anyone reading this is interested in Japan or the JET Programme, feel free to check out my Japan journal; it's going to have the most regular updates of any of my sites over the next year.

(To the JET person who signed my guestbook but didn't leave a name or contact info--who are you? :o) Did we meet at Atlanta pre-departure or Tokyo orientation? Please do send me an e-mail or something!)

On a much more sober note, I wanted to report that Brock Peters, the actor behind the prominent voice of PoDW's pirate lord Bloth, passed away last Tuesday from pancreatic cancer at the age of 78. He was far more well-known for his cinematic roles, namely Tom Robinson in the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird (one of my favorite films), and on the Broadway stage, but he had a varied voice acting career as well.

Also, do continue to seed the BitTorrent episode files if you can...I've gotten a few e-mails/messages (belatedly so--sorry, folks) about not being able to access the torrent files. Thanks for all your help. :o)

 

» 06Jul05

Episodes 14 and 15 are up on the movies page.

However, so is something else--BitTorrent files of the hi-res PoDW episodes. (Yes, the same episodes I've been offering to send out via AIM!) I have 3 batch files of the episodes available--one of episodes 1-5 (the original miniseries), one of episodes 6-13 (PoDW part 1), and one of episodes 14-21 (PoDW part 2). Each of these are quite large, but they seem to be the most efficient way of getting the episodes out. I apologize to those of you who previously asked about sharing the episodes out via BitTorrent--I'm just an idiot and didn't read the documentation properly the first time. :P

If you're not sure what BitTorrent is, please visit the official site to get an idea of what it is.

If you do download these torrents, PLEASE, PLEASE SEED THEM! (e.g. leave the BT window open after you finish downloading.) The more people that seed it, the faster the downloads go for everyone.

If you can't/don't want to install BT or if you don't have enough space to download such huge batch files, I'm going to continue rotating these low-res episodes until I leave for Japan. Also, feel free to e-mail or IM me--Mneonix has kindly offered to host the hi-res files on his webspace, but seeing as how BT saves a ton of bandwidth, I don't want to post his link publicly and zap his resources.

Thank you so, so much to Nenko and Justin for tracking down these files, Zindryr for offering the use of his tracker and helping me set these torrent files up, and Mneonix for his webspace. PoDW fans are such awesome, generous people. :D

» 30Jun05

Episodes 12 and 13 are up for rotation! (I didn't get home till 11 PM , so I missed Wednesday by 45 minutes--sorry, guys. To be all dorky and quote the show, "Don't judge me too harshly...a [web designer] must make a living!") And I had the Spanish title of the show written incorrectly; it's actually Los Piratas de las Aguas Negras. (Thanks, Santiago!)

 

» 25Jun05

I'm really sorry, guys...I screwed up with this week's rotations and ended up not properly linking to the episodes till late Wednesday/early Thursday. As a result, I'm pushing back the rotations to Wednesdays for the next few weeks, so I'll put up the next couple on June 29th. This means that unless I screw up again somehow, I'll be stopping rotations on Wednesday, July 20th.

I'm hoping to set up DSL from Japan (?) and resume them from there, but I won't be able to offer the episodes via AIM anymore. I'm leaving 4 weeks from today (!!), so try to find me online before then. I've also posted my screen names for Yahoo!, MSN, and ICQ on the contact page (I NEVER use them, which is why I didn't bother posting them)--I'll try to sign onto those occasionally. Please drop me an e-mail if you rely on one of those as your primary messaging service, so I know to sign onto those more often.

Thank you so much for your understanding! I'm updating today because I'm going to be busy all day tomorrow with Japan preparations...I can't believe I'm leaving in less than a month! I'll be in Tokyo exactly a month from now for orientation, and heading off to my contracting city (in Tokushima-ken--it's even warmer there than it is here in Atlanta, whew) from there. I'm pretty sure that updates are going to grind to a halt for the next 1-2 months, but I promised Kooshmeister I'd caption his awesome episode 3 screencaps and get that slideshow up before I leave, so I'll definitely try to do that, at least.

 

» 19Jun05

Episodes 10 and 11 are in rotation, with episode 11 in 2 formats. I've been too busy with work and freaking out over leaving in 5 weeks to do much else--sorry!

If you missed last week's update, please take a second to read this, with regards to the episode rotations.

And, once again, PLEASE DON'T DIRECTLY LINK TO THE IMAGES. With the exception of linking to images in blog posts (since it'll fall off the front page eventually), put them up on your own space first, especially if you're using them on your website or as a forum avatar. And if you don't have a website, set up an account with photobucket.com and host them there. I know I keep whining about bandwidth, but seriously--I now use over 1 gig daily thanks to the episodes, and I'm going to be really close to my monthly limit this time...I have no bandwidth to spare. Thank you for your understanding!

 

» 12Jun05

Episode 9 is in rotation in 2 formats. I also updated a few Danish names in the international info section, and Allan very kindly let me know (after YEARS of my not realizing this) that the audio clips were labeled as being from "King Niddler" when they're from "The Little Leviathan." Heh, ooops.

No progress on the next slideshows, though Kooshmeister's finished screencapping episode 3. Maybe next week. :o)

FYI: those of you who are regulars may know that I'm going to be teaching English in Japan starting later this year. Well, as my dad says, "later is sooner than you think" (thankfully he never visits this site, or he would NEVER let me forget that I actually quoted him on here!)--I'm leaving in just under 6 weeks. (HOLY CRAP. I'm really freaking out!) I'm going to try to finish the episode rotation before I leave, but I'm approaching my limit, bandwidth-wise...I'm hoping to (get a laptop and then) set up DSL in my apartment in Japan, in which case I can continue rotating them from there. If not, I may have to end them prematurely. I apologize, and I hope you understand--it's definitely out of my control.

 

» 05Jun05

Several things this week, for a change:

- Episodes 7 and 8 are in rotation.

- Screenshots of "The Quest" are also up, and I've linked the slide shows off the episode summary page as well.

- There are new international translations of the show, in Danish, German (where the show was actually named, "The Thirteen Treasures of Rule"), and Swedish. (Unfortunately, the show's not currently available for purchase/download in any way in any of those countries, nor is it currently on TV.)

- Something completely different--there's now a Danish-language sound clip (in mp3 format) of the PoDW opening and the first couple of minutes of "The Quest." (Thanks so much to Allan for capturing this!) You hear the Danish voices of Ren, Primus, Bloth, and Jenna. (And I think Ioz, if that's who did the opening voiceover.)

 

» 30May05

I found a slideshow script with the kind of functionality I wanted, and I redid Dishonor. (I had fun with the captions. *grin*) Check it out.

 

» 29May05

It's still Sunday--I still have 15 minutes! Episode 6 is up, in 2 formats this week. I'm also working on the screencap slide shows--I found a script that gives me plenty of functionality and allows for captions. Hopefully I can get what I've done so far up soon!

 

» 22May05

Sorry, guys...I've been too busy geeking out over Star Wars this week to get any more work done on the screencap slide shows, or any other parts of the site. (It's PHENOMENAL, by the way. It's not perfect, but it's made me break down crying both all three times I've seen it. It was worth the 8 hours I camped out on Wednesday to see it. :D)

Anyway--episode 5 is up this week, in ASF and RM formats.

 

» 15May05

Just playing around with the format of the index page (god, I used to write such crappy CSS), to make it look less cluttered. :o) There's also a new Pirates of Dark Water webring, so if you have a PoDW website, or a site with a page/section devoted to PoDW, feel free to join. I've also linked to a new fansite (which is run by the creator of the webring).

Episodes 3 and 4 are in rotation this week.

And something a little different...instead of actually working on writing episode summaries (I'm such a slacker), I've started a section for slideshows of screencaps that summarize each episode. We're starting with episode 2 (screencapped by Kooshmeister, who rules), because I'm working on screencapping episode 1. Right now they're non-interactive, and you can't go forward and back and whatnot, and there are no captions--I'll get on those ASAP.

 

» 08May05

We're restarting the episode rotation this week--episodes 1 and 2 are up in ASF format. I also was recently told of a petition to release PoDW on DVD--I'll admit to being skeptical as to how effective petitiononline.com is, but it already has well over 200 signatures, and it can't hurt, right? :o)

I'll also restate my offer--I have very high-quality copies of the episodes (all 21 take up right around 4 gigs of space). I definitely can't put them into rotation, and I can't set up a webserver, so if you'd like them (and don't mind an incredibly slow transfer time), then IM me and I can try transferring them to you.

 

» 04May05

I have a question for you all--do any of you know where to find non-English versions of the show, either to purchase or to download? I had someone ask me specifically about the Russian-language version, but it's something that would benefit a lot of the non-English-speaking people that visit this site. Please contact me if you have any info--thank you so much!

 

» 01May05 (not March, haha, oops!)

To round off the series, episodes 20 and 21 are up for download, in ASF and WMV formats. I'll be restarting the series next week. :o) (And I do apologize that these files are so small and blurry...if you have a fast connection, an instant messaging program, and ~4 gigs of space to spare, then feel free to IM me--I'd be happy to try transferring the really high-quality versions I have, though my DSL provider has a pretty crappy upload rate.) There are also new shirt photos (thanks, Samuel!) in the Merchandise section, and I added the RPG module to the merchandise list.

 

» 28Apr05

Not an update--just a "LMAO!" moment. :D So I had this photo taken of me at Star Wars Celebration (Episode 3 stuff, but not a spoiler--and that looks really creepy and seance-ish in retrospect, but I'm fascinated by volcanoes, so yeah)...well--one of my friends took it and quickly Photoshopped it into this. HAH!

 

» 24-25Apr05

I just got back from Star Wars Celebration several hours ago...it was one of the best weekends of my entire life. Such an amazing experience--meeting so many awesome people from this forum, getting to actually see George Lucas talk, spending a weekend completely geeking out over Star Wars with other hard-core fans...so amazing. I can't wait for May 19th!

Episodes 18 and 19 are up, in ASF format.

 

» 17Apr05

Episode 17, The Game Players of Undaar, is up for download, in RealVideo and ASF formats. I'll be attending Star Wars Celebration this week (wooo! :D), so I'll be out of town until Sunday evening, but I'll try to get the next episode up as soon as I can.

 

» 10Apr05

Episode 16, The Dagron Master, is up for download, just in RealVideo format this week. (One of my favorite episodes--it's one of those "life lessons" moral episodes that's effective and cool at the same time. ;o)) And the RPG module's World Book is available in PDF format, with no images (I'll try to work them in, but it'll probably really increase the file size). Thanks to Brian for mentioning it!

 

» 03Apr05

There's a new Unexplored entry (I took the spamblock stuff down because it wasn't working...I'm on the lookout for something that will, though; those online gambling sites are desperate for my attention), a few new links, some new French terms under show information, and episodes 14 and 15 are up for download. (This 2-episodes-a-week thing has worked out well, but I have 2 versions of the next 2 episodes, so it'll have to go back to one a week for at least a little while.) Oh--and Kooshmeister's screenshots are FINALLY up; I'd updated the page but forgotten to put the images themselves up. :P

And I have some news--a personal-life issue, but one that'll affect all my online projects.

I found out this past Thursday that I've been accepted to teach English in Japan for a year starting this July, as part of the JET Program. I'm incredibly excited about this! This is such an amazing opportunity, and I really had no idea what my chances were of getting accepted--but I'm in, and I just can't believe it. :D I'll be buying a laptop so I can keep in touch with everyone at home, store my photos, and hopefully keep up a journal.

However, there's a big chance I'll have very little time to spend online. So starting in late July, there may not be any major updates to this site for the better part of a year. I won't know for sure until I'm there...I'll definitely try to update every now and then, and maybe I'll get a couple of my friends to make occasional updates in my absence (in return for me sending them electronic goodies from Akihabara, mwahaha O:o)). We'll just see what happens. Thank you so much for your understanding. :o)

 

» 27Mar05

(Sorry the front page is so huge--I'll fix the update blurbs later. We have really bad weather moving through and I need to get this up before I have to unplug my computer.)

Episodes 12 and 13 are up for download (with 13 in 2 formats). There's also a bit of new fanart (one new piece by me, and I finally fixed all my broken links), and a crosslisted piece of fanart/download (the "desktop downloads" section has been renamed to accommodate this)--Myrmior's made a really gorgeous fan DVD cover. And there are new images by Kooshmeister--11 new villain screencaps, a collage of images from the opening under "misc screencaps," 4 SNES game screencaps (under "merchandise"), and a new animated .gif.

And now I must run--I'll format this better and respond to e-mails later. (I HATE TORNADIC WEATHER. AUGH.)

 

» 20Mar05

Episodes 10 and 11 (King Niddler, The Collection) are up for download (with 2 versions of episode 11), and I have a new image section up, with animated .gifs I've created from throughout the series.

I also want to announce--there are very high-quality versions of the episodes on Kazaa and eMule/eDonkey! Each episode is around 200MB, and the sound and image quality are awesome. Because the files are so big, I can't share them out on the site, and I currently am not able to set up a webserver to share them via BitTorrent...if you have a webserver that's up fairly often, and would be interested/willing in sharing these, please contact me. Thanks so much!

 

(the following is a VCD review I've been meaning to write for a few weeks.)

..............................

I recently acquired a set of VCDs of the PoDW series from TransformersCDs (he's having host issues, so this is a temp link his site is accessible at), and was asked to write a brief review and post it to my site. I know that there have been a couple of scam artists out there, so I'd like to do my part to show that there are still plenty of legitimate sellers as well. (Then again, there's no guarantee I'm telling the truth, but I like to think that if you can trust the info on my site, you can trust me, too. ;o))

Anyway, this is a 7-CD set, with 3 episodes per CD. I wanted to wait till I'd gotten to watch them all the way through, but it could be months before that happens, with my current schedule. :P These VCDs are captures of old videotapes, and he makes no secret of that or, subsequently, the less-than-perfect quality of the episodes. And the image and sound quality are noticeably not very sharp/clear, but once you watch for a few minutes, you begin to get past that, because it's so nice to watch the series on a TV again, instead of craning your neck to watch some tiny, distorted version on your computer monitor. Another neat feature is that he taped at least some of these during one of Cartoon Network's airings of the Pirates of Dark Water Marathon Quest, so these also include the trivia questions shown during the commercial breaks.

The VCDs themselves come in paper sleeves and have custom labels with PoDW images and the episode titles on them. The webmaster himself was very friendly and courteous, and always quick to respond to e-mails. He offers dozens of other titles, too, and a friend from high school is picking up the original He-Man and Thundercats series from him. He's very forthright and professional, but quite approachable at the same time, and his site accurately describes the contents and quality of all his products. I'd definitely consider doing business with him again, and I'd recommend him to anybody who asked.

 

» 13Mar05

"Panacea," episode 9, is up for download, and some more international info is up, this time from Bulgaria. :o)

(And I have a review of a set of VCDs that I promised someone I would post several weeks ago, but we have some really bad weather moving this way, so I have to go shut my computer off now. Argh. :( )

 

» 06Mar05

Episode 8, The Beast And The Bell, is up at the movies page. I've also added blurbs for a kite and a Russian-language video to the merchandise section, and I've updated the "site information" section--it's just titled "information" now, because I'd like to include more info on the show as well there.

And speaking of which, there's now a section for info on international releases of the show. I have some basic info in several languages, mainly European (thank you to all the incredibly helpful people so far!). Have you seen the show in any other country/language? If so, could you please contact me and send me any info you have on the show's title and the names of people/places/objects? And if you've seen the English-language version as well, could you comment on any interesting translations in your version? (And feel free to correct any incorrect information I may have up, too--of the languages there, I'm only familiar with Spanish and Japanese.) Thank you so much!

And a very random aside: I'll be attending the Star Wars Celebration 3 in Indianapolis in mid-to-late April. Will you be there? I'll be hanging out with a bunch of folks from this forum, but I love meeting PoDW fans whenever I travel anywhere. Let me know! :o)

 

» 27Feb05

It's still Sunday here! I still have 10 minutes! (I got distracted by the Oscars. Rock on, The Incredibles, for being this year's Best Animated Film!)

Episode 7, "A Drop of Darkness," is up (just in super-tiny, super-crappy .asf format, though--if you have the episodes in any other formats, please let me know), as are some new link banners (and I removed almost all the old ones because they really sucked). A few people have asked me for a 468x60 banner with images of all the characters--sorry it took me so long, but it's finally up. :o)

EDIT: I took down a rant I had up here last night, because in my annoyed state, I missed the fact that it'd probably leave quite a few people feeling pretty put off. If you saw it and were insulted, I'm really, really sorry. It's just that when I receive really rude, sycophant-ish IMs like, "so how was work / what it measurable to the fights that Ren has partakin / your work night was an easy one resembling a battle between yourself and Konk / where do you work / do you think you could send me all the Episodes" from particularly stupid people...I can only tolerate so much. I want to spread the love and get the copies of the episodes that I have to as many people as possible--I love reuniting people with the show and lending a hand in bringing back their childhood memories. But if you're considering sending me (or anybody) a message like the above...please reconsider, because it's quite insulting. That's all.

 

» 20Feb05

Episode 6, "Andorus," is up for download in 2 formats this week. I also moved the FAQ "up one level," so it's available from the main navigation menu and not as a submenu anymore, and updated the disclaimer and rearranged the menu links.

I've been trying to play with a more show-themed motif for some aspects of the site (like, creating an old map to serve as a background for the navigation links)...and the individual elements work, but they look really funny when I put them together. Anyway, we'll see what happens. :o) I just want to work towards a look that identifies more with the show, and this does, but I'd like to experiment a bit. We'll see what happens.

 

» 13Feb05

First day of work at my new job tomorrow! My 2-month "vacation" is now over (and I'm sorry that I suck at keeping my promises and got no work done on the RPG), but it'll be nice to have income again. (And my interview for the JET Program is Thursday...even though it means that I won't regularly update from July 2005-06 because I'll be teaching English in Japan, please wish me luck anyway. :D)

Anyway! There's a new Unexplored entry (to the guy who submitted one saying that instead of Ren/Tula or Ioz/Tula, he'd love to see Ren/Ioz/Tula with Niddler thrown in on the weekends--nice try, but no), and "Victory," episode 5, is now up for download, in TWO formats.

 

» 09Feb05

Not an update, but I need to announce something.

I've said many times that any image on the site is free for anybody to use. And that's true--with the exception of one image: the header image at the top of every page on this site.

I created the header image. It took me several hours to digitally paint 3 screencaps and the logo together into one seamless image for the express purpose of using it as the header for this site, so it's not a standard screencap--it's almost a piece of fan art, if you will. Quite a few people have been snagging that image and using it on their sites or fan-made DVD sets without letting me know, and I'm going to start cracking down on that, because I'd like to be credited for it.

If you want to use the header image, please ask me first AND credit me as its creator. I'll most likely say yes, but I want to make people aware of that. And as for the rest of the images, actually in the image section, feel free to do so without asking, but I really would appreciate a link back or some acknowledgement of where you got it from.

If you've got any questions, please let me know. Thanks for your understanding. :o)

 

» 06Feb05

PoDW's been taken off Boomerang, so it's now officially off US cable TV again. (Updated the "news" page accordingly.)

Nearly all the site is now standards-compliant, except for the comics and merchandise sections. This entire site now completely validates in HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS. I also did a quick color job of the line-art images on the profiles--the colors are more or less right.

I'm also currently uploading episode 4, Betrayal. Typical rules apply: right-click and save if you can, don't direct-link.

Edit [8:30 PM EST]: (yes, I'm updating this during the Super Bowl, why do you ask? :P) ToonGeek finished his rotation of his copy of the episodes yesterday, so since Mike of Mer's still having host issues, my site's currently the only one with the episodes. Thank you for putting forth the effort to remaster and host them!

 

» 30Jan05

Break-Up (episode 3) is up. Please right-click and save it to your hard drive if at all possible. And I'm sorry the image quality on these episodes is so crappy--I have bigger RealMedia files of 7 episodes and will be including those in the rotation this time.

New PHP-driven guestbook, too. (Go sign and say hi. :D)

By the way, those of you with Boomerang--are they still airing PoDW? It isn't showing up in the weekly schedule... :( And international fans--if it's on TV where you are, please let me know what channel and time it comes on, if you could--thank you!

 

» 16Jan05

I'm starting to rotate the episodes again, and since I can't remember where I left off before, I'm starting from the beginning. "The Quest" is up at the downloads/movies section. This time, though, I've got the .asf files DarkWaterFan captured, but I've also gotten some .rm files from Flyin765, and am trying to snag a few more off eDonkey (in all its spyware-riddled glory) to share with you all.

Keep watching this space; there will hopefully be more updates by the end of the day. :o)

 

» 15Jan05

Moderately-sized update, and I'm not even done yet. ;o)

- images/cels - new Van Eaton full-color group cel
- images/concept - conceptual lineup of all the main characters, from Heidi Bosch
- unexplored - new entry
- Mike of Mer's episodes are temporarily down, and I hope to start rotating the episode files I have again by the end of the weekend
- merchandise - new images/info about the laserdisc and cups, and new images under posters and action figures
- downloads/movies - new "sampler" movie clip of scenes from the Sega Genesis game

And I've got to go. More soon, hopefully!