Hurin

Well, I was horrified at first. I now have volume two and I was praying that Hikaru's voice would "mature" and he would stop sounding like an adult trying to sound like a 16-year-old wide-eyed teenager. But, I stand corrected, I'm now listening to the commentary on Volume 2 and the voice actor for Hikaru actually sounds like that. So. . . he's not trying to sound like anything. He's just using his own natural voice. If you ever want to get over the voices and the "Muh-Cross" pronunciation, my only advice is to put it on in the background while doing something else. After a while, the voices don't grate as much. . . though, I still cringe at times and I'll never get quite used to "Muh-cross." I'll always prefer the original Japanese, but, having had the english voices in my living room for a couple hours, they're not quite as bad as I originally thought. Though, everyone (especially Exedol and some other Zentraedi) seem a lot more excitable and emotive than they were in the original Japanese. Best, H

Cool. I agree that #4 is the best so far. Let's see if anyone has any feedback and I'll continue to post revisions on MN. Though, again, in my humble opinion, #4 is clearly the strongest set. All its colors work together very well. Best, H

I think I have this now as Proposed Theme #4 on MN. Not to nit-pick, but just to avoid confusion, I think you mean #3 there, right? Happy to help! And thanks for the kind words.

I tried to post a full legend according to what I think you intended. But, I was hindered by the board limiting the number of images per post to 10. So, I posted several schemes over at the Nexus. So, those who are interested can take a peek at the three proposed schemes there, then come back here and comment. JsArclight, which of the three most closely matches your original vision for the icons? Best, H

Yeah, contrary to what a lot of people believe, a battroid towers over an average sized Zentraedi. Just because they were built to fight them, doesn't meant they had to make them exactly the same height.

Dude, those rule! Nice job. So, you're done? If so, major congrats are in order. That was a lot of work. H

I think you're being too hard on them. They're actually quite nice. And I'm quite picky about this sort of stuff. Actually, I've always been of the opinion that just replacing the icons that had "IPB" actually written on them was enough. I found in my own experimenting with our boards that replacing the (actually rather clean and intuitive) "inner folder" icons rarely turned out the way I intended and only created confusion. So, even being a guy that doesn't necessarily think that those icons should be changed (from the original board defaults), I think those are good! So that's saying something! Maybe you've been staring at these so long that you need to take a few hours and return to them after a break. I know that when I'm trying to do something aesthetic, I quickly lose objectivity and my ability to see it through the eyes of someone who didn't create the darn thing(s)! The ones currently up on the main index page are very good too, by the way. Best, H

Yeah, sorry if I didn't seem to be taking the perils of shrinking them into account. When making our little kite symbol (), it was hell trying to get it to look decent at 27x27. You often need to go in there and manually alter pixels to "suggest" familiar shapes. . . and the viewer's mind does the rest. Assuming of course, the image is familiar to the viewer! Though, if you haven't already, try various resampling methods. I've had better results with trilinear rather than bicubic resizing in a few cases. Though, in Photoshop, "bicubic smoother" seems to work out best the majority of the time. But what am I saying. . . from the looks of things, you are much better at this stuff than I am! But maybe other budding Photoshoppers out there will benefit from my rambling. Best, H

Those are very nice! And, yeah, I think things were getting a bit over-done with all the different symbols. Symbols should really convey something (through color,shape, or actual labeling) rather than just being arbitrary. If a "key" is actually necessary to understand the vast majority of them, then something as gone a bit wayward. But, since so many people like the idea of a skull and crossbones being used for locked topics. . . what about super-imposing a that symbol over the kite symbol you've created? Anyways, again, very nice! H

Hey guys. While I appreciate any kind, polite mentions of Macross Nexus, and promoting the site is great, I can't say that I approve of A1 actually insulting people while doing so. As for Macross Nexus being the site where you can go to be a-holes. . . please note that A1 was on his way to being banned on MN and has behaved himself (over there at least) ever since he was officially warned. I think he now feels that he doesn't need to be as nice here because he can hang out at MN? Perhaps a global Macross site ban is necessary? Late Edit: Oops, that link just takes you to the run-up to warning A1. The actual "official" warning is here. As for why Macross Nexus exists: First and foremost, MN exists for the main site where we are developing content that MW does not cover (mecha, character, and episode guides). It also strives to be an "open source" site where the community submits content (though, as I feared, few people actually follow through on doing so). The forums at MN are secondary. And they are not predicated on stealing away MW's members. Indeed, in my initial "why" post, I addressed the very issue of "splitting the community" and other worries. Now, I tried to be diplomatic whenever I mentioned ways that we hoped to improve upon certain aspects of MW. But, I wasn't always successful and others said things that were taken personally. But, for my part in all that, I largely focused on Roy. And I just want to be clear that I don't consider Roy to be synonymous with MW. . . so any comments made about him don't necessarily reflect on MW. And I would also like to apologize to Roy here since I know he now thinks that I don't think he ever does anything right. That could not be farther from the truth. He does a helluva lot of unappreciated work that goes unannounced. While other mods here may be doing things that we don't see, it's clear that Roy does things that are both visible and invisible. While I still stand by our goal of wanting to have a staff that is less acerbic and more friendly in tone than MW's, that doesn't mean that I think Roy is a terrible mod or a jerk at all times. It just means we want something different. Macross Nexus is there to serve other needs than MW. True, we added a toys section, but only because Jawjaw's toy reviews and images were available. Yes, we have forums, but we have 40 members. MW has 3000+ members. If MW ever disappears, we'll be happy to assimilate its membership for those who are still looking for their Macross forum fix. But, while MW is still here (and that may be forever), we expect to remain a tiny site, doing our own thing. As for updates or the lack thereof. . . that was where the "open source" nature of the site should really shine. In lieu of user submissions, Andy and I do plan on populating the mecha, character, and episode profiles on our own over time, please keep in mind that this is an arduous task. Creating colorful, well-worded, aesthetically pleasing profiles takes a lot of time. The VF-1 entry itself took me two days all told. Though, people working off that template (which is now available) should be able to get similar profiles done much faster. And really, that was the (overly optimistic?) goal of MN. . . to allow the Macross community to submit cool stuff! But, well, as we suspected, while initial enthusiasm runs high and everyone wants to know how to be a "site author/contributor". . . not much happens when it's time to spend a few hours writing up a profile. Finally, regarding Graham, I want to make this very explicit. . .I thought about posting this earlier, but since so many people seem to see MN and MW as direct, hostile competitors, I thought it would seem cheezy, or disingenuous. Over in that thread on our forums, some things were said (sometimes less politely or respectfully as they should have been) about Shawn and/or the staff. I would like to state unequivocally here that nothing hostile was ever said by anyone in authority over on our forums about Graham (despite allegations and fuzzy memories to the contrary). And in fact, quite the opposite was posted on our main site's news area weeks ago. Personally, I regret the atmosphere of competition and hostility that is evidentally taking place. I especially regret my roll in it and the harsh words I had for Roy. I initially attempted to try to apologize and mitigate the situation, but only succeeded in pissing Roy off further, and then I too got involved in fanning the hostility well beyond what was warranted or advisable. I think the internet is big enough for two Macross sites. Especially because we're tiny, and will in all likelihood remain so. As I've said before, Macross World is a Macross institution and we don't have any real hopes of ever matching its success. And, again, while I think it is only fitting and proper that we learn from MW's experience over the last seven years, and discuss ways in which we can improve upon some of its strenghts and weaknesses. . . I apologize that I, my partner (though I'm not speaking for him), and our members haven't always been polite or properly respectful towards MW and its staff while doing so. Best, Hurin

Hi Roy, There should be a "Default Date Cutoff Display" that can be set individually for each forum. So, if you did go ahead with your plan to move them to their own section, you could set the date cut-off for that section seperately from the rest of the forums. Best, H

Dude! That's a great idea! Killing off the main character and turning the story over to a supporting character is obviously the way all stories should go! Let's explore this formula a bit further: In The Karate Kid, Daniel-san should have died and Mr. Miagi should have gone on to kick the crap out of "Cobra Kai" and then date Elizabeth Shue! In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones should have gotten chopped in half by the big dude with the sword. . . and Sallah should have gone on to discover the Ark and kick Nazi ass all on his own! In the Lord of the Rings Frodo should have died while crossing the river Anduin, and somehow it should have been arranged that it falls to Legolas to take the ring to Mount Doom. Why Legolas? Because he's so coooool! So much cooler than Frodo! And such a hottie! Luke probably should have gotten shot down over the Death Star too. Leaving one of the cooler members of Red Squadron to make the miraculous shot and stand with Han and Chewie at the end as the credits rolled. I mean, Luke was just a "whining sniveling little knob!" Personally, about halfway through The Passion of the Christ, I really started to feel bummed that Jesus was going to die. Mel Gibson really should have just wrote the story with one of the Discples getting it instead. H

You'd be correct. Internet Explorer can't currently properly render PNG-format transparencies. That'll be fixed in IE 7.0. Unfortunately, IE is still used by a lot of people, so as a web designer I normally recommend shying away from transparent PNG files in favor of some hand-blended JPGs until there's full cross-browser support for PNG format. 380607[/snapback] yeah, good advice. But oddly, when I first tried things without transparent PNG, each browser was subtely altering the color of the faux background. So on IE, things didn't match. If I adjusted for IE, Firefox wouldn't match. . . as usual. But, I found a pretty good fix for the problem here. A simple javascript put into the header for the boards that is only implemented by IE and ignored by FF. But for the main site, we're going to just avoid transparent PNG as you suggest. H

Does anybody know how to get ahold of the guy who made these? Is he a MWer? I want to use one of his VF-0 images on the Nexus. Thanks! B

Thanks for the feedback! Hmmm, I didn't realize what you meant at first. But then I tried IE and saw the flashing you're noticing. The solution. . . is to try firefox. This is like the 4th thing that has been messed up on IE but works fine in Firefox. Unfortunately, there isn't a feasible fix since the front-end is dynamically generated by the Joomla CMS system. H

Oddly, that's how Mrs. Hurin feels about it too.

Ugh! I guess a lot of us use Firefox now because nobody mentioned how craptacular the semi-transparent logo for our forums looked in IE! Apparently, IE (pre-IE7) can't handle alpha-blended transparent PNG files. So, our logo was coming up with a *really* ugly background. Anyways, was able to put in some javascript which fixes the problem. So, if anyone snuck a peak at our forums and ran away in horror because you use IE and it looked terrible, please try it again now. Thanks! H

Well, that's touching. Thanks Sundown. Well, as much as I do like to think that I have a life, my fiance knows better and assures me on a regular basis that I do not. Basically, I've been consumed with getting the Macross Nexus website backend and forums further polished (together with Mechamaniac of course!), wedding planning, and "real" work. But it's nice to know that I've been missed. . . sorta? Best, H

I think Mechamaniac got you all sorted out this morning. If not, let me know! And, of course, you can post questions on our own forums now. Best Hurin

Meh, hobbies are past-times. Everything we do is just killing time until we're food for worms. Why worry about the arbitrary labels. H

So good that I don't think any of the usual suspects will even give you crap about the "Rick" thing. H

Yahoo ad?

Check out the new "hikaru" template. I'm quickly reaching the limits of my meager Photoshopping skills.

Just updated the "kit" with a (very) slightly better layered PSD. The logo is a bit less jagged. But only very slightly so. H

Does this suck as much as I think it does?