Added 1 new A* page:A digital doodle with the ol' Lasso Tool (I was frustrated with pencils last night :p):
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I got an email from my host, pair.com, saying that the A* site is being "moved to a lightning fast, new server running the latest operating system (FreeBSD 8) on the fastest platform (64-bit)" on Monday! Neat! I mean I don't think it runs slow at all now, but apparently it will get even zippier next week, so that's nice. : D They didn't mention there being any down time, so hopefully the switchover will happen in a twinkle.
Or *maybe* the new server will be so fast that time will run in reverse, and the strip will start going backwards--aw, and just when we're nearing 2000 pages! Hm well I guess we'll see what happens come Monday.
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I use Quantcast's statistical service to get information on who is reading A*--well, mostly just so I can see if I'm gaining or losing viewers day by day :o--and I got an email from them yesterday saying they just rolled out a snazzy new real-time display of who's visiting A*! It shows current viewers per city on a global map, which is pretty fascinating (for me :p) to watch. :) Yes you over there in Iceland and you in Myanmar, I can see you, hello! *waves* And YOU can see it too, right here; ooh you can even use the button at top right there to make it full screen in a dark color scheme that makes your monitor look like a control room screen at NASA mission control or something. :oo And if you want the boring old static stats with demographic breakdowns and that kind of thing, you can always find those right here.
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Looking at Quantcast's semi-interactive live map, I noticed a region in South America highlighting when I positioned the mouse over France--it's French Guiana, which is actually part of France (an "overseas region of France," as Wikipedia puts it)! And it is home to France's national spaceport, Guiana Space Center; turns out Guiana is a handy place from which to launch rockets, because (like Cape Canaveral) it's near the equator so you get a bit of an additional boost from the Earth's rotation when you launch eastward, and it has uninhabited territory to the East (aka the Atlantic Ocean), so stuff falling off those eastward-launching rockets probably won't fall on anyone. Guiana Space Center is also the European Space Agency's primary spaceport, because the French were good sports and offered to share it with them; so that's where the ESA launches their supply vehicles to the International Space Station.
And if it sounds familiar, maybe it's because I mentioned it and showed a photo of a space launch from GSC way back in 2011, when we were in the middle of episode 13! Boy how time flies.
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