WHAT'S NEW ON KIBO'S SITE

March 31, 2004

Only about two years late, deployed some internal changes which will eventually lead to the whole site being reworked from scratch (yeah, right.) Nothing visible to the naked eye so far, except that the entry tunnel page looks a little different.

Why are you even reading this? Isn't it even more boring than the rest of my rotten old site?

March 1, 2004

Forgot to mention here that I put up the Christmas 2003 Spot story back in December.

Also realized it had been up for three months so I then removed any mention of it from the main page. So there.

September 30, 2003

Some changes to the entry tunnel to give more specific greetings to people following links from the most important and best-loved site on the Internet, whatever that may be.

You know, if you're reading this page, you'll probably read anything. But if I'm writing this page, does that mean I can write anything? Let me try: "I love Jennifer Lopez because..." Nope, sorry, I couldn't write the rest of that sentence. Ha! I have disproved my own insane theory about being able to write stuff here where nobody will ever read it!

August 17, 2003

Another incredibly inconsequential configuration change that I'm recording here just to annoy those of you who are checking this page every day to see if I ever bother changing anything. But sorry, it's just another invisible tweak designed to deal with a stupid robot who probably isn't you.

August 11, 2003

Minor internal change just to break two particularly ineptly-programmed robots that keep trying to retrieve files that have never existed on my site (apparently at least two programmers are stupid enough to think that all Web sites have the same domain name.)

Fixed some copyright dates that didn't reflect the current year (because I think I touched the site at least once this year.)

July 28, 2003

CNN reports that Bob Hope is dead, and this time it might be real, unlike the last three times he was reported dead. However, all the graphics I had read to post when he died -- such as "BOB HOPE 1903-1996: WE WARNED YOU!" -- are not only sadly out of date, but are stored on a computer which died two computers ago, and I don't think the late Mr. Hope will care if I'm too lazy to dig up the old graphics I made to commemorate his imminent passing. (That old stuff is stored offline several miles from where I am.)

I turned off my stupid fake ad banners, partly because I didn't want to dig up the replacement for the one with the Bob Hope detector in it, and partly because I was sick of how lame and annoying they were.

July 17, 2003

Found two more lost episodes of "The Special Show!" I'd forgotten to post. One has Potsie. And the other has something better: No Potsie!

May 26, 2003

Found an old episode of "The Special Show!" I'd forgotten to put up (the one about anthrax), and wrote a new episode (the one about pickles.) Now you can read them both. (But you'd have to be crazy to read them both at the same time.)

Fixed some copyright dates. Thrilling, no?

May 19, 2003

More internal changes which should be invisible. The pieces are gradually falling into place for something I've been working on for a long time.

March 16, 2003

Cleaned up some old stuff that shouldn't be here, and tightened security by .00003 percent. These changes are not worth mentioning here, therefore, I am wasting everyone's time by saying this.

February 21, 2003

Been too distracted by other projects lately to work on revamping the Web site, or write wacky stuff, etc. But today I did fix one typo (which was discovered in the course of testing a log analysis program I was going to install on someone else's site.)

December 24, 2002

Einstein's Medieval Christmas is the Christmas 2002 story. And remember, NO REFUNDS.

A few more minor invisible changes to the visible parts of the site. Don't ask.

November 5, 2002

Minor internal changes to the site's backend to support future expansion. Plus some pointless changes here and there to fool people into thinking I might be working on new stuff.

Hid a photo of underpants somewhere, if you can guess the URL.

Fixed some error-reporting stuff, the error-reporting thingie had an error and so it couldn't tell me it was broken. Now it's happy.

December 24, 2001

Einstein Saves Christmas is the Christmas 2001 story.

The winner of the Orange Conetest has finally been announced to those of you who aren't in the secret Cone Cabal.

December 10, 2001

Kibo's Imaginary Supermarket unveils its corporate logo.

July 12, 2000

Fixed some incorrect descriptions of Special Show Episode #6 and Special Show Episode #7 so that they will show up correctly in search engines when people search for "giant diapers". (#6 seems to attract infantilists for some reason. Maybe it's because it's all about grownups wearing diapers.)

Added a link to Kibo's rants on The-Election.com from the front page to hint that I have been contracted to supply content to another wonderful Web site, and you should go read it but not before you finish reading all of this site.

July 5, 2000

No visible changes today, sigh. More work on the infrastructure.

I added a stack of secret programs that will alert me by mail if something breaks. (No, it won't send me thousands of messages if you try to generate thousands of 404 errors. Basically it has a throttle so that it sends me mail if it's seen the first 403 or 404 error in a while, but if there are a lot of them it saves them up and sends me a periodic summary.) Now hopefully if I break my Web site while working on it, it'll tell me.

Of course, this doesn't apply to my (antique) links to other peoples' Web sites, but that's because the whole "Links" section is effectively being ignored until I can replace it with the fancier, far more automated thing I've been working on, which will also alert me when links go stale.

May 13, 2000

Started reworking the Exegesis section. The one long page is gradually breaking up into separate pages. Also, by popular request, I added an entry for "Panty Cat".

Now when you use a search engine to find an old link to a Raw Data file that has been moved, the the Error 404 page will attempt to correct you. (Unless you're using one of those versions of Internet Explorer for Windows that refuses to show my "404" and just shows its own crummy generic "404".)

May 1, 2000

Reorganized the Raw Data section because the list of files was getting too long. Someday I'll upload the articles from 1991 through 1998.

Redesigned the Error 404 page to have more explanation and less text in all cases, I hope. (There are actually four different 404 pages depending on what type of nonexistent page you're looking for.)

Made the 404 page figure out where you need to go when following a link to where a Raw Data file used to be.

Some minor internal fixes, like changing the copyright dates to the current year.

January 3, 'OO00oooooo

Oh, great. Last year it took me six months to learn to write "99" instead of "98" after the "19__" on my checks, and now I've gotta learn to write "00" there. In honor of the digitary change, I have revised the Raw Data archive to be less Y2K-ready. Hooray!

The Orange Conetest is now technically closed to new submissions, but I won't have time to judge & post results for a few days. Sorry.

December 25, '99

Posted two Christmas stories and an archive of all episodes of "The Special Show!" in the fiction library.

Some internal automatic changes.

November 19, '99 (P.M.)

Published a new issue of The Kibonia Times. Find out why no issues were published this summer!

Rewrote some of the pompous windbaggery on the "About" page. Yay! Now it's lightly-edited pompous windbaggery!

Some more internal changes, which don't concern you. Pay no attention to the robots behind the curtain.

November 18, '99 (A.M.)

I apologize for not having had time to update my site much lately, but I've been busy with other less exciting matters.

(Yeah, I know the Orange Conetest was supposed to end a couple months ago. Consider it still open until Y2K Day.)

I've started changing my mailing address on most pages from kibo@world.std.com (my "real" address) to webmaster@kibo.com (which goes to the same place, but it lets me figure out what messages are coming from Web visitors.) Just don't combine the two and say "webmaster@world.std.com" because then people other than me might laugh at you.

Didn't have time to weed out the dead links but I did move the links pages to a sub-directory in preparation for testing a secret new link-deadening process.

Redesigned the front page just to show off how much I like "The Time Tunnel".

I got off my butt and wrote the next segment of the Endless Adventure.

Grand opening of the Mezzanine. Stuff that used to be on the front page has been moved to the Mezzanine (creating a David Siegel-style "Entry Tunnel" up front, woo) and there are four new options in the Mezzanine.

Now some of the text on the index and main pages changes once in a while. The site's now slightly friendlier to search engines. A whole lot of other little design changes and under-the-hood stuff you don't want to know about.

August 10, '99

Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour has opened another gallery (which has six wings devoted to one special subject - this history of orange cones in America), and there's a contest attached to the end of it.

June 11, '99

Rest in peace, Dr. Abian! (The late Alexander Abian was the guy who wanted to blow up the Moon for reasons nobody quite understood.)

June 11, '99

Rest in peace, Dr. McCoy!

May 2, '99

Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour has just opened a new gallery (which will grow into a whole wing soon) because I wanted to get the photos of "Star Wars" toys up before they all get bought by crazed consumers who mistake them for "Star Wars: Episode I" toys. Remember, kids, the first movie is number 4. The first movie was always number 4. The third movie was never titled "Revenge of the Jedi".

(I still regret not having gotten photos of the "Battlestar Galactica" action figures that appeared a couple years ago, during the last abortive attempts to make a "Galactica" movie. Believe it or not, Universal is planning to make the "Galactica" movie this year. Gosh, there's never been a "Battlestar Galactica" movie before. Unless you count "Battlestar Galactica: The Movie" which was just a TV rerun you had to pay several bucks to see. I'm also not counting "Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack", which you had to pay several Canadian dollars to see, or "Conquest of the Earth", which was a "movie" made from reruns of "Galactica 1980".)

I apologize for still not having gotten around to updating the junk food pages, the Spot story, etc., but that'll happen soon. I've got a big collection of food reviews here, being prepped to be many pages' worth of revulsion.

And slightly later the same night, I added two more galleries of dumb action figures to Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour. So there.

April 27, '99

Just found out a certain someone we all know and love had a space station module named after him. Two links: Press release and Spacenews article

March 31, '99

Wrote and posted HappyWeb '99.

Also fixed a few really minor typos this month. Don't worry about them. (Hopefully HappyWeb '99 doesn't have too many -- I wrote it in a hurry overnight.)

March 3, '99

Whoops -- the links to "Bad Signs: Huh?" galleries #1 and #2 on Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour both pointed to gallery #1. Sorry, I've fixed that link so that now you can see the second "Huh?" gallery. (I clicked on all the links to make sure they worked when I created those pages, but I didn't notice that two of the links were the same...)

February 27, '99

Wow! A spectacular new addition!

For those of you who have complained that there is too much text on my site and reading is hard, I've uploaded about a hundred big pictures to Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour. It's like a reality tour only it glows in the dark.

February 23, '99

Some stuff actually changed today!

Hey! Hey! Hey! That second story of Spot & Einstein's Endless Adventure that you voted on is here!

And if you forgot to vote, well, I won't be your friend any more! Unless you've got candy. You got candy? I like candy.

The Kibonia Times (linked from the "Site Map" button on the Front Door page) has resumed operations. Read the latest news about whatever the heck it's about. Don't ask me.

What's Old? The exact opposite of this page, only interactive. A mutli-cyber-tastical inter-tain-tive edu-tronic funfestiflop!

Work behind the scenes continues on the big stuff I can't talk about.

February 8, '99

John_-_Winston has informed the Internet of the sad news that Yogi, The Telepathic Dog, has passed away at age 13. My sincerest condolonces to Mr. Winston.

February 4, '99

Finally figured out what circumstances cause a Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4 bug to make text on the front door look all smeary and worked around it. Alerted the Netscape corporation so they can choose not to fix it in the next three versions.

February 3, '99

Behind-the-scenes work on the (mumble) and the (mumble) which I can't mention yet. The new mezzanine is undergoing testing, as are a couple of other new features.

Hey! Remember how the banners were supposed to change once a week or so? Well, I rotated them for a few months until the false reports of Bob Hope's death last year, and I left the "BOB HOPE IS... ALIVE" banner up from them on with my finger on the button that would change it to a slightly different one, but he had the nerve not to die. Anyway, I finally bit the bullet and told the banners to rotate themselves (more or less daily) even though I'm attached to the "BOB HOPE IS... ALIVE" one. The upshot is that you should see different banners on this page and the main index once in a while (your browser may not realize the've changed unless you hit the "Reload" or "Refresh" button, but that's because I didn't want to disable your browser's cache. Don't worry if they don't look different every day, they're all stupid anyhow.

The banner-switching is all done with server-side code, meaning that unlike JavaScript it can't break your browser, it doesn't need any particular browser, you can't switch it off, and for all intents and purposes it happens instantaneously at midnight on most days.

January 31, '99

Minor fixes here and there. Work continues on new stuff which you can't see yet.

The Do What I Say club's secret mandate changes weekly (at midnight on Sunday evening Eastern time). It's automatic so you don't have to wait for me to get off my butt. Just visit once a week and do whatever I tell you to; is that so much to ask?

January 28, '99

Added the Do What I Say club's secret headquarters. This should not be confused with Club 91's secret headquarters, which are even secreter.

January 19, '99

No serious changes. The front door now displays the entire site's "last modified" date (not just the front page) for the convenience of those of you running "freshness checkers".

"Hits" on my site have been totalling between 30,000 and 35,000 per week (approx. 1.69 million per year) for about the past year (it's eerily steady), sometime when I feel ambitious I'll draw a graph. Incidentally, you folks have been transferring a whopping 165 megabytes per week, not counting the large PDF files which are on a separate server that doesn't keep track!

I'm getting a lot of hits on the "Raw Data" area, so I'm guessing a lot of you folks want to read my alt.religion.kibology articles but don't have good Usenet news feeds. Aren't you glad I care so much about every one of you?

January 4, '99

The new "Raw Data" section contains Kibo's recent A.R.K articles in case you missed something. All of them. Unedited, unsorted, in big chunks.

January 1, '99

Changed the copyright notice to say "1997 - 1999" to make this site's content a year fresher.

Most pages will now display the correct "last modified" date automatically without me having to type in the date afte each revision.

I generated a "content rating" according to the RSAC/PICS standard and labelled this site appropriately. The rating basically says there's no kinky stuff except for Spot dying and one or two instances of the word "poop". Now parents can feel safe about this site 'cause they know it's just got "poop" in it.

December 30, '98

For some reason, the 1997 "A" volume of The Best Of Alt.Religion.Kibology had a few corrupt bits in it (for instance, page 5 had a picture of Martin Landau with blue skin instead of pale pink) so I uploaded it again and you can download it again in my "Download Big Files" area. Sorry to make you download almost fourteen megabytes again, but it's worth it to have a pinker Martin Landau. Please destroy all existing copies unless Martin Landau says it's okay for you to paint him blue to match.

December 29, '98

The results of the first "What Is Kibology?" research project are available! You can see them if you agree to participate in the followup study.

December 28, '98

Hooray! I've started testing secret new technologies where you can't see 'em! This means that soon the wacky banners will start changing every day (no matter whether or not Bob Hope insists on staying alive) and the new chunks of the site will start appearing. Not yet, but I am leaving this note here to mark progress. Ah, the joy of "<!--#if -->" directives. Hopefully the new site will be public soon.

I am currently moving and/or renaming many of these pages, so you may need to update some of your bookmarks. This is to make the site easier for me to maintain (now that it's grown to so many pages) as well as to begin the transition to the new thing which I'm not supposed to tell you about yet.

Reaction to the 1997 A volume of The Best Of Alt.Religion.Kibology 1997 has been very good so far. Like it says below, it's in the "Download Big Files" section and yes, it's still thirteen megabytes. The 1997 B volume is under construction, as is 1991.

December 24, '98

The first volume (of three) of The Best Of Alt.Religion.Kibology 1997 has been posted! Go to the "Download Big Files" page to witness this miraculous new 13-megabyte Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Hey! It's Christmas! That means I had to get off my butt and write the 1998 Christmas Spot story!

Added a couple of postings to the collection of junk Kibo posted to Usenet for the heck of it.

December 16, '98

No actual visible changes to report at the moment, but I'm gonna log all the minor stuff anyway because I know you like to read this page.

Banners really need to be rotated (I have 13 different banners) but that bastard Bob Hope just won't die!!!

Fixed some minor typos nobody noticed in a full year, including a missing parenthesis on the main page. Also tried to fix a typo someone else reported, but it wasn't there. What Web browser are you people using, and does it come in capsule form?

Made some invisible changes to the parts of the site you can't see yet. Don't worry about it right now. XSSIs are fun.

Warmed up an empty space for this year's Christmas story, the topic of which is still secret (and the story itself won't be written for a week and a half.)

I still need to fix the WebTV page to make it less likely to not crash computers. The revisions I made to it last time made it more stable, unfortunately -- it turns out that adding the gigantic MPEG of Bob Hope's head injury has the result that most people don't wait for the full thing to download, and thus must Web browsers don't show the background animating, etc., so when I fix the page by removing the giant Bob Hope movie it'll load faster and crash more non-WebTV computers. Plus I've learned some new tricks. I'll fix it soon.

September 8, '98

Sorry the latest update has been taking so long to prepare, but the project's been growing in scope. So you should see a completely reworked site appear out of thin air in a few weeks. All sorts of new gadgets and goodies.

Fixed some HTML stupidity on my "Useful Links" page. I didn't fix the links to other people's pages that have curled up and died because, hey, if other people can't keep your Web pages up for more than a week (or use the appropriate "Page has moved." redirects) that's not my fault. Somday I'll redo all the links and put up a new set, but I've got a lot of other things I need to do to my site before I'll have a chance to work on the links to other people's silly little sites.

And hey, I've got a PDF lying around here that someday I need to get off my butt and post! You'll see.

Again, sorry for the lack of recent updates, but I've been making big changes to my off-line copy of the site, and all the changes will show up at once sometime soon.

July 10, '98

Started making little tweaks to the site in preparation for the big update which will start this weekend. Various pages have been modified in ways too disinteresting to report here. Fixed a typo or two.

Removed the front-page link to Harry & Lisa's wedding photos now that they've been married a month.

Stay tuned. NOTE: If you have links to any of my pages other than the main one (http://www.kibo.com), be warned that I will be moving a lot of files around, so some of your links may break soon.

June 11, '98

Made a pointless change just so I could make this list longer. I also drew some new animated banners which will show up in the rotation when circumstances warrant. Oh, and I fixed a typo on the special WebTV-enhanced page.

So what did you think of last week's wacky Internet report that Bob Hope was dead? That rumor was vectored thusly: WIRE SERVICE -> INTERNET -> CONGRESS -> OTHER WIRE SERVICE -> YOU, THE HAPPY PUBLIC. Now, I am not claiming any involvement here, but I am not denying anything without a lawyer present.

P.S. You'll notice I didn't put weepy tributes to the late Bob Hope all over my Web site when the obviously bogus rumors went around.

June 7, '98

Haven't had time to update the site lately because I've been busy with other big projects, but believe me, I've been collecting "assets" (such as notes on how "ice cream for dogs" tastes to humans) for a forthcoming update.

The scientific survey on the nature of Kibology is yielding some very exciting results, which will be posted soon with a full analysis.

Today I attended the wedding of two friends, Harry Mandel and Lisa Sunshine.

Apr. 2, '98

After a hard day involving paying $35 to wear a polyester monk's robe, I wrote the latest chapter (#6) for our continuing pseudo-interactive story.

No, really, it was a polyester monk's robe. The sandals cost $2 extra. I already had the gas mask.

Apr. 1, '98

Added the 1998 HappyNet Manifesto's text to the "Usenet Posts By Kibo" page.

Added the 1998 HappyNet propaganda posters (printable and desktoppable versions) to the "Download Big Files" page.

Mar. 30, '98

Added news of a Major Scientific Discovery just in time for the first day of the month that follows March.

Mar. 29, '98

Minor bug fixes: mentioned, in the Exegesis, where Dr. Gilbert Amelio went. And someone pointed out that there were two copies of "Spot Buys A CD-i®" on the stories page, so I nuked one.

Mar. 27, '98

Added four pictures you can put on your computer's desktop to make your officemates think you're insane. See the "Download Big Files" section.

Mar. 26, '98

Added a new research project to determine, through the scientific method mixed with wackiness, just "What Is Kibology?"

Added three new entries to alt.religion.kibology's exegesis.

Mar. 24, '98

Finalizing the new site (www.kibo.com).

There should be new animated banners on several pages. They change every few days.

There's a new "entry tunnel", i.e. some activities before you get to the main page. Of particular interest: a text-only version, a new site map, and the very special page for WebTV people.

Added two new link icons for you to use on your pages, on my site's "About" page. If you have a link to www.kibology.com, please change the link to www.kibo.com because I'm a control freak.

Mar. 19, '98

Added part 5 of Spot's endless adventure.

Mar. 14, '98

Added some stories to Kibo's fiction library and some writings to Kibo's Usenet posts.

Mar. 1, '98

Removed the "Grand Opening" sign at long last, and improved the exploding Spot animation. Still working on the redesign. You'll see.

Feb. 25, '98

Because some weenie complained I hadn't updated the story in two and a half weeks, I wrote Chapter 4 of Spot's endless adventure.

I've just started another grand reorganization of the whole site; stuff is going to move around and there will be more things to see & do. But not for a week or so. Hang on, stuff is coming.

Feb. 24, '98

Beginning reorganization in preparation for a complete overhaul. New stuff soon.

Feb. 8, '98

I just wrote the third installment of Spot's endless adventure, and as long as the other two combined... Keep those votes coming! You don't want to let all those people who are stupider than you control it, do you?

I've been too distracted by my new job to do much lately. Nonetheless, a major update and redesign of www.kibology.com is in the works, and will appear in a few weeks. Major content additions and a new look! (Well, it's high time I got around to taking down the "Grand Opening" banner.) And you should see the stack of bad food I've been working on reviewing. Oy. Do you know how many brands of Potted Meat Food Product there are? Stay tuned for new stuff.

Dec. 25, '97

Added a new Christmas story, "It's A Wonderful Death!"

Some more confusing terms further obfuscated on the exegesis.

Dec. 22, '97

Changed inaccurate and slanderous information about Orbitz being a laxative. Added true stories about it making you barf. Added a review of Citroma, The Sparkling Laxative, which I had previously confused with Citrucel.

Dec. 20, '97

Added all the Spot Christmas stories!
Plus "Spot Rides The Subway... Or Does He?"

New segment of Spot's endless adventure!

Added a set of good Usenet postings by Kibo!

Added some beverages to the junk food page.
Also look for the new photos of my durian!

Added my Fake Dr Pepper Roundup to the junk food page.

Added a disclaimer to the description of my wonderful ISP.

Total revamp of the main index (now in COLOR.) Let me know if it makes your Mac more likely or less likely to crash.

Fixed various bugs you don't care about in CGI handling, etc.

Took the seizure animation from Japan off the index page (it's shown below).

Pikachu the Pokémon says HELLO!!HELLO!!HELLO!!HELLO!!

Dec. 18, '97

Slapped in the Pocket Monster flashing-eye GIF in a real hurry before anyone else thought of making one. (I made the blinking part myself.)

Fixed the "rn Killfile FAQ" and "Gravity" links in the Usenet-related links area.

Major revisions to the site coming in a few days! A prettier, more compatible home page! More stories! Another Spot chapter! Last chance to vote!

Nov. 14, '97

Added the "Kibo's stories" section.

Added some more PDFs to the "Download Big Files" section.

Nov. 13, '97

Site first put on-line. Some stuff is still missing. I'll fix it.