Sandopolis Updates





"What do you _mean_, 'OUT OF CHEESE ERROR. RE-BOOT UNIVERSE AND RE-INSTALL'? Saaalllyyyy!!! This stupid thing's on the fritz again!"

Hi, and welcome to my deranged little updates page. Here you can find out about everything new that happens at Sandopolis--whether it's an addition, a correction, or just a change, as soon as it happens--more or less. I used to update a little bit every other day or so; now, I try to work on the site all week and then ANNOUNCE everything I just did on Monday, all at once. Saves me from messing with this page all the time!
Oh, and in case you're just a little towheaded hatchling tyke whose oldest memories of music involve things like the Spice Girls and Marilyn Manson, the music you hear playing is NOT a Sonic song in any way shape or form, it is Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough." (You can download a copy from my pop music midi page.)

May 18, 2002
More of a rant than an update. STUPID Tripod _said_ they were giving me 50 megs, and I believed them...now they say it's only _20_! But, you see, my "space left" thingie kept telling me I had over twenty megs LEFT, it didn't say I was under, so how was _I_ to know? Heh. Turns out the "50 megs" dealie is ONLY for PAYING customers....but...WHY DIDN'T THEY _TELL_ US THAT?!! For a _non_-paying customer, it should have said that I had only 20 megs maximum available, but they told me I had 50...in order to _lure_ me into paying, I guess. JERKS!!!! And they didn't tell me I had gone over until I had gone WAY over, at which point I had to delete tons of _beloved_ files. Things I really really really did NOT want to delete. JERKS!! If they had told me ahead of time, _I never would have uploaded them here in the first place_.
Well, I had to get rid of ALLLLLLL my artwork that is not Sonic, including my precious Discworld stuff, and I also deleted almost all the midis that are not from Sega. The Anime Tunes and Pop Music sections are GONE, entirely. As you can guess, I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS!
And even after all that, I'm still BARELY under the wire. In fact, I'm probably gonna get complaining notes from Tripod just for being too close. And I certainly can't ADD anything new.
Well, I want my artwork up--some of this is stuff I've been DYING to share with the web for _years_--and I want my music back. So needless to say, I guess I'm...gonna have to move. AGAIN!! It feels like I just barely did it! Yeah, so it was technically months ago, but spending FOURTEEN HOURS SOLID on a WEEKEND day to tediously, laboriously copy files over _one by one_, kinda tends to stick in your mind. It took me a month, and every day I worked on it was a day I worked on nothing else and had absolutely no fun. You can see why I'm not in a big hurry to repeat the experience.
But I need room to grow, I need room for art and music, and most of all, I WANT TO CUT OUT ON TRIPOD'S WORTHLESS ARSES AS QUICKLY AS I CAN, TO SHOW THEM WHAT I THINK OF THEM!!
So I _have_ to move. It won't be anytime soon, I'm afraid, but it will happen. But where, oh, WHERE, in the multiverse, can I find a free service that gives you lots of space and MEANS IT, has the type of file manager/editing system I like, an easy uploading system, and which--most importantly--KEEPS their promises and doesn't suck you in with something that sounds good and then CHANGE it after you're firmly there? WHERE?! IS there such a hosting service? Probably not. :(
Don't EVEN suggest paying for my site. I am connected to the 'net itself with a cable modem and that costs FIFTY BUCKS A MONTH. I can _barely_ afford it, and, in fact, soon I might not be able to. :( So there is NO FLIPPING WAY I'm going to pay for anything else _on_ the net, monthly. No. Way.
Sigh....why does life have to suck so bad?

April 7, 2002

--Just a small update this time: I added eight new pictures to my miscellaneous art page, and changed the midi on the front page again. Sorry, but I've been working on other projects a lot lately.

March 28, 2002

--Oy, the so-called "Monday update" took until Thursday! But it ain't my fault...Tripod wouldn't even let me into the File Manager until just recently. Anyway. Here is what we have for you this week:
--Added 11 new midis and a whole new _section_, to the Music Shack. Anime music! We don't have much there now, but I hope to add more in time.
--Eight new artwork pieces from moi: Seven of them at the Miscellaneous Art page, and 1 on the Other Video Games' Art page, this last one from Phantasy Star III on the Sega Genesis.
--Have also given each picture its own small HTML page; this allows me to center them and give them each a black background so that they look nicer; it also will allow me to post pictures on messageboards DESPITE Tripod's stupid little blocks! A HA HA HA HA HA gods I'm clever. ;) This is what took most of the time, considering I had to make a whole ton of pages _seperately_, one by one.
--Changed the music on the front page, as usual.

March 18, 2002

--Happy St. Patrick's Day!--okay, so I'm a little late, but I always update on Mondays...I thought about putting up some decorations on the index page, ya know, shamrocks and such, but then thought that would be silly when by the time I got around to doing it, it would be the day AFTER the holiday, what? Anyway, we have new stuff--new songs, mainly--in these areas:
--The 3D Blast music page.
--The Other Game Music page (LOT of new files!)
And, no big deal or anything, but I changed the picture on the "Death" page of the Unidragon Choose Your Own Adventure to something I realised was absolutely PERFECT...
--The music on the index page has been changed to the Kingdom of Zeal music from Chrono Trigger. Yay and stuff.

March 11, 2002

An actual weekly update, I think my heart just might stop. :P Anyway, I have added 13 new midis to the site! 11 to the Sonic Adventure (1) section, and 2 to the Sonic 3-D Blast section. In the weeks to come, be on the lookout for lots of new midis from other games--including the Phantasy Star series--anime tunes, and, hopefully, some more original artwork by moi.
--Changed the tune on the front page, as is traditional for Sandopolis on Mondays; if you wanna know what it is now, go there and find out!

March 4, 2002

Wow, has it ever been FOREVER since I last updated! I really can't do anything more about it than say I'm sorry, you see, I got a new job last year, and it made me so that when I got home and turned on the computer, I wanted to use it for fun. Running a website, however, is WORK. So it became less and less appetizing, and I just let things slide by, day after day, week after week, month after month...you see how it works.
But we got a BIG update for you TONIGHT, ladies and gentlebeings! That's right, today Sandopolis finished its move to its new location. Which is actually it's OLD location, ironically enough. Um...how to explain this...
Okay, first of all, Sandpolis started off in a much smaller, experimental format at this address, http://emperor_cartagia.tripod.com. (Only back then, it was https://members.tripod.com/~emperor_cartagia--I like the new version better, don't you?) Tripod started up a new rule which I really hated and so, I went in search of a website that DIDN'T have that rule. I found Freeservers, where I got a simply AWESOME address, which, as you all know, was http://chaotix.freeservers.com.
But an awesome address isn't everything. It also needs to be a decent _site_, and to MAKE a decent site, the webmaster/mistress needs a decent site-hosting _service_. And Freeservers had problems from day one. For example, it is SLOW AS MOLASSES IN JANUARY when you're trying to edit anything--if you get done with a page, save it, and then try to get back to the File Manager, you might as well make a snack or go to the lavatory or whatever right then, because it is going to be _forever_ before you can edit another file.
But, the "breaking point" was when Freeservers, suddenly and without warning, cut the amount of free space they were giving me BACK to only TWELVE megs, when it was supposed to be TWENTY!! I swear, no warning at all, just one day I wander in to do some updating and find out that I'm suddenly OVER my limit by about four megs, when I shoulda been under, and therefore in the clear! (I was using about 16 megs.)
So I said, "SCREW this, Freeservers, I'm outta here, GOODBYE!" and went looking for somewhere else to be.
This was no easy task. First of all, I wanted something that would give me a suitable amount of webspace--I was thinkin' 25 megs or more, wanted some room to grow ya know--which had an upload utility that I could use, and which had a plain free-form HTML editor program. Ya see, just about EVERYBODY nowadays forces you to use these stupid generic, pre-formatted, pick-things-off-a-template style "Automatic Page-Makers". Nobody seems to have confidence in their customers' abilities to write their OWN code! Well, I don't want no darn format, I want Sandopolis to look like its own self! Not generic! But so many sites nowadays use the "Page-Maker" dealies, I had a very hard time finding a free web-hosting service that didn't, that would shut up and let me program.
One day I went back to my old, old, ancient Tripod account--which I had kept as a bit of spare space and never quite deleted 'cos, hey, why not? Why get rid of something that I've already signed up for?--and found out, to my amazement, that they had suddenly, while I wasn't looking, upgraded the amount of space I was allowed from merely twelve megs to a whopping FIFTY!!
Then it occurred to me:

1. I already know how to work with Tripod, I'm comfortable with it.
2. They already know me, I won't have to sign up again, and give my personal information out to another set of total strangers.
3. They have the type of free-form editor I like!
4. The thing that I was originally mad at them about, EVERYBODY does now, so it's not as if they're worse than anybody else, now. All about the same.
4. FIFTY MEGS! Wow, what I couldn't do with...FIFTY MEGS!
So, that decided me. My new address was gonna be....my OLD address! Ironic, innit?

SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW AROUND SANDOPOLIS?

Not much. It took me all this time just to move over all the files, one by one, and change all the links! Tripod unfortunately doesn't have an automatic site-copier the way Freeservers does...
There are some improvements in general, though. THERE ARE NO BROKEN LINKS. Not if I can help it! All the pictures work, all the links actually lead to what they're supposed to lead to. I was linking to some of the pictures on other websites, but now with 50 megs available, I downloaded them and now every picture you see here is part of Sandopolis's own directory itself. The music is working again!
--New stuff! I have added a TON new pictures to my Art Gallery and have divided the Gallery into three pages, by category: Sonic Artwork, Art Inspired by Other Video Games, and Miscellaneous Art. Be sure to check it out!
--And, I have a TON of new midis uploaded...I'll be putting links to them on the music pages (so that YOU can see them and download them) over the next few weeks, rather than do it all at once. The song currently playing on the front page, the one from "Oh My Goddess!" is one of those new songs. Oh, I'm going to be adding an anime music section to the Pop Music page, while I'm at it. I don't know where else to put it, and I don't think I have enough anime songs to warrant them getting their OWN seperate page...
Until later, Echidna Fans! That's all for now. But...it's a pretty darn BIG all! Took lots and lots of work! Phew, are my fingers ever tired! :P

425 curious tourists wanted to read about "whazzup" at Sandopolis since May 31, 1999. Of course, those who bugged the Webmistress too much met with horrible fates...