Hey everyone,

Just wanted to quickly post and let you know that we’re aware of the problems with viewing TSE’s videos. This is an issue with Blip.tv (the site where the video files are hosted), and all we know is that it’s related to a connectivity outage. I’ve been getting a lot of messages asking if people need to update video drivers and Flash, but it’s definitely on Blip’s end and will hopefully be resolved very soon. This would be a great time to sign up for TSE’s Forum, check out the written movie reviews, or have a look at the other site features you may have missed.

Thanks for your patience!

- Scarlett

Hey everyone,

Scarlett here! Just wanted to update about the missing sections of the website. The great news is that everything has been reformatted for the new site design, with the exception of the written movie reviews (I’m getting to ‘em, dammit!) So be sure to check out these TSE features:

Photo & Fan Art Gallery
Dean Talks Anime (new review added: Step Up Love Story)
Linkara vs. Dr. Insano: The Comic, Vol. 1
Linkara vs. Dr. Insano: The Comic, Vol. 2
Bent Spoon Webcomic

Also, I accidentally left the Spoony Experiment Store link off the menu (*facepalm*) and some people were asking about Spoony’s t-shirts in the comments. So go there and buy some sweet TSE themed goods. Chicks will dig ‘em, I promise. ;-)

There have been some complaints about the scrolling due to the comments all showing up on the same page. Unfortunately there’s a bug with the framework that prevents us from paginating the comments effectively, but hopefully that will be updated within the next few weeks. For now, you can quickly jump to the comment form by clicking on the “add one” link right above the first comment (”X comments… read them below or add one”).

And if you’re not a member of TSE’s Forums yet, get in here! We don’t bite … Hard.

The domain name changes appear to have propagated, so if you’re seeing this, you’re on the new server!

Major, MAJOR thanks to Mike Michaud, my webmistress Scarlett, and anyone else who had a hand in helping this transition go smoothly.

I’ve looked things over tenatively and they appear to be working properly. I say APPEAR, but there are undoubtedly some glitches. I’ve re-enabled the forum, but some data loss there was inevitable. If you created your account within the last week, you may have to re-register, and some posts in recent days may have been lost. If you spot any major errors, unusual behavior, or missing functionality, you can let me know at admin@spoonyexperiment.com

Right now we’re still using the “emergency” Wordpress template that Scarlett created to appease Dreamhost, so things aren’t in their final form yet. The written movie reviews are once again off the site because of this problem. I know it’s been more than a year since they’ve been working properly, but hopefully we’ll have a much faster way of converting them to a compatible format soon. The photo gallery is also down, I think.

Bear with us. Scarlett and I hope to be tweeking and fine-tuning the site’s appearance and functionality, and I’m still working feverishly on the new “epic review.” I probably won’t have it done by the end of the week like I hoped because of the server issues, but it’ll be done as soon as possible.

Hey everyone! This is Scarlett – also known as Spoony’s woman, TSE’s web mistress, and the whip-crackin’ fan seducer wrangler from the forums. I’ve just finished many feverish hours of damage control, and I think it’s safe to say that TSE is back up and running again … For now. [Cue thunder clap of doom.]

The written Movie Reviews, the Photo Gallery, and Dean Talks Anime will be unavailable for a while, as all of those sections require major updating (and in some cases, complete redesigning) now that TSE is running on all new coding. (Note to Dreamhost: I am going to PUNCH you in the SOUL!)

We’re going to be moving the site to a dedicated server sometime in the near future, probably starting with the forums, but we’ll let everyone know in advance of the changeover. In the event that Dreamhost hasn’t finished sodomizing TSE with Big Daddy’s drill, you may want to follow TheSpoonyOne on Twitter, just in case something happens to our hosting account before we make the switch.

Thanks to everyone for your patience, and apologies to those who were alarmed by Spoony’s last post. Looks like I really do have some skills outside of the bedroom after all! Awwwwww yeah. ;-)

The Spoony Experiment is going off the air indefinitely.

Dreamhost really jacked up the site and I don’t know if Scarlett can fix it. She’s brilliant but there might not be much she can do when some clown takes a fire axe to her templates and HTML.

So, fair warning. This ship is sinking. Scarlett will probably be taking the site offline as soon as tonight, and I don’t know when it’ll be back. If there are any forum posts you want to save, back them up yourself. I have no idea how this is going to turn out.

Edit: I know many of you are frustrated with what seems like bait-and-switching. There’s a lot going on in my life that you don’t know about, and because it all came up so suddenly, I decided to drop everything– Ripper, Terror TRAX, SWAT– and finish a special review. Then all of this crap with Dreamhost came up, and now I have to scramble to fix this particular disaster. This isn’t some stunt, and it’s not another example of classic procrastinating Spoony. This is a legitimate shitstorm, and I’m doing my best to weather it. My site is falling apart, and I’m not sure if I can fix it.

Even if I do move to a new server, it’ll probably end up being a $320/month dedicated server, and I seriously can’t afford it at this juncture. This site just does not produce that kind of revenue.

As if I needed something else to stress me out right now.

Apparently the website crashed today, and it crashed so hard it took out the entire Dreamhost machine. The on-call admin took drastic measures and wiped out most of the site functionality like the gallery and the commenting features. He seems to think that one of the Wordpress plugins caused the crash.

Until we figure it out, expect a ton of error messages.

I’m sorry that I’ve been so quiet lately. It’s been a rough month with technical problems, but also a very uplifting one with the amazing show of generosity and support from the fans. It’s been a struggle, but I think I’m making some progress getting back to status quo.

Something big has come up, and I’ve decided to drop everything and write a very special review– probably one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done from a technical standpoint. But I think it’ll be a fitting sendoff to mark the end of an era. I’ll have to remain mysterious for now, but rest assured, things will never be the same again.

The Spoony One’s final battle with the underworld is coming soon. Prepare for the last Terror TRAX game for the PC: another journey into FMV Hell along with Agent Snake Malibu and the Dragonmaster from Dragon Strike!

Remember when I said that my camera was old and might be showing its age at any moment? We might have just rocketed past that point.

I just spent all day recording the live footage for two reviews: Street Fighter 2010 and Terror TRAX, and the sound is completely unusable. It’s just gone. All you can hear is static, with my voice only barely audible, as if I were shouting through a snowstorm. It’s a complete waste, and I can’t use any of it.

Now, I’m not an idiot. The days of the old brain lapses of not turning on the lavalier pack or plugging in cables are well behind me. I do a sound check every time I set up the camera now just to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen, and I did it this time, too. But it still went wrong.

I’ll try to explain what happened. A while back, I recorded my vlog on “Drag Me To Hell” and noticed the same thing, that the sound was static despite the sound check. I did another check and found that, for some reason, the connection between my XLR microphone input and the camera had gotten fouled up, so I re-set the connections and cables and everything seemed to work properly again. But the same thing seems to have happened again today. At some point between my sound check and pressing the record button on the camera, the microphone connection went kaput. I simply had no reason to doubt that the sound was bad.

I’m not sure what to do now. I’d hate to write the camera off as a loss, but this is probably a sign that I need to start shopping around for a new one sooner rather than later. I suppose the best thing to do is to just re-record the reviews, but I don’t think I can use my high-quality microphone from now on, considering that the XLR input is acting tetchy. I’m going to be stuck using the onboard camera mic, and it’s going to sound like crap.

At any rate, I’m too tired and pissed off to try recording it all over again today. I’m really sorry about all this, but you’ll probably have to wait a little longer before I can get you the updates I promised. In light of this, I’ll start working on Ripper and SWAT 4 until I can figure out a way to reliably use my camera.

Edit: It’s definitely got something to do with the camera’s “accessory shoe.” Both the XLR accessory and the shotgun mic had a ton of interference. I played around with them both for a while when suddenly…it works again. That actually makes me more nervous about the whole thing than having it reliably fail. Don’t know what’s causing it.

It looks like I’ve been featured on TV Squad with an article entitled “Obsessed fans try to find Urkel’s house.” I have to object to how silly and nerdy the whole thing makes us look. As if we were sad and dorky enough to make a pilgrimage all the way to Chicago just to seek out the Urkel House. We were there to film an imaginary battle between Super Mecha Death Christ and Donkey Kong Jesus on a Puff of Smoke. The Urkel House was purely incidental!

Special thanks to Ytoabn for finding this particular story.