Spacer X Stories: Website Updates

Publication of the revised early parts of Six Times a Day has begun. If all works as planned, two new parts will be released each week until the 15 new files in this batch of revisions -- many parts were split -- have all been published.

The planned schedule is to release one revised part at midnight (00:00) Orange County time (which is GMT-07:00) on Susan’s special Tuesdays and the following Saturdays. That puts the scheduled release of the last revised part of this group, Part 10b, at 00:00 PDT on 3 July.

The following statistics will give you a sense of where these early parts were before this massive revision:


and of where they are as of 15 May: (UPDATED 19 May)


Additional images are being colorized almost daily, mostly by YamiBoy. Yay Yami! Thus the percentage of colorized images will continue to increase until, and perhaps even after, each of these revised parts is published.

On 14 May, Spacer posted:
“I should warn that you may not see THAT much change in Part 1, or even Part 2, except for the improved and colorized pics. But by Part 3, there are lots of additions, and from then on there are so many that nearly all of the parts needed to be split in two.”

We hope you enjoy these revised parts and that you will share your thoughts on them in the forum. Here is the thread where you can leave your thoughts, including any comments and appreciation: Comments and appreciation posts .

Here is the thread where you can report any typos or problems that you encounter: Typo and problem reports . Note that forward links to parts that have not yet been published will not work until those parts are published. Please do not report such apparently broken links as a problem; it is merely a consequence of the incremental publication of the revisions.

Bad news!

This website is in danger of going away, and I want to take action before that happens. The problem is that all of the back-end stuff has been done by one person, the admin Dark Severance, and he has been missing for months. He resurfaced once a couple of months ago, with no mention of his absence, to say that he would work on fixing things on the site that evening. But he didn't, and he hasn't been heard of since.

A couple of days ago the website went down, returning a message that the site was being suspended for non-payment. That was true of both six.clubetchi.com and the parent website that hosts it, which Dark Severance apparently also ran. Mysteriously, both websites started running again after a few hours. However, I am no longer able to FTP files to the site, as my password no longer works. That means that we can't post anything new to the site.

So it seems as if the website is on its last legs -- it could disappear at any time. I've tried contacting Dark Severance about this latest crisis, but he hasn't responded. He may reappear, but it's risky to count on that. There could be another non-payment message tomorrow, and that would be the end. I wouldn't even know who to contact about that.

Even before his disappearance, the time Dark Severance spent on the site had gone down steadily, resulting in a growing list of problems that needed to be fixed. It looks like it's time to set up a mirror site, so if the current website disappears, the forum with all its historical posts will not be lost. We are considering transferring to an all new site over time. If I can't get FTP access again, then there really will be no choice but to move to a new site, and soon. For instance, there's no way to post the revised STD early parts, which are within days of publication.

If something goes wrong for long at the site, I will post about it at http://storiesonline...log.php?id=4073, which is my blog at StoriesOnline.

Also, proofreader Sam.I.am has set up an e-mail account that will generate an auto-response with information on what has happened. It will also give the location of the new website if/when that is set up. So if the current site goes down for more than a few hours, e-mail that reflector at mailto:six.times.a.day@isp.com to get an auto-generated reply e-mail with news of what is being done.

I'd like to turn to you all for advice and help. Dark Severance did all the back-end stuff, allowing me to deal solely with the content. I am very appreciative of all his help, but one unfortunate result is that I have no clue about how to go about starting or running a new site. How much would it cost to start and maintain?

We have someone who has volunteered to provide financial support for such a site, if the annual cost is not too high. Would anyone have a new home we could move to? Could anyone with IT skills help run it? Could anyone else help pay for it? Is there any way to find out who paid for the site to stay running a couple of days ago (if indeed that's what happened), and get in contact with that person?

I think it will be very sad if this website has to disappear completely without any replacement. So please, let's put our heads together and stop that from happening!

It was pointed out that somehow Part 83 never got announced in this announcement thread. Had it been, it might have been buried by the subsequent announcements, but at least it would have been somewhere in the list presented when people click on the forum's News/Updates button. Sorry about the oversight.

I'll take on the task of making these announcements from now on, since Spacer usually waits a few days after posting before announcing a new part (if he remembers at all), apparently because he believes that delay brings STD closer to perfection. Those of us with an engineering background know that perfection is a chimera, an impossible or foolish fantasy, an unachievable goal. In this case, as in so many, "better" is the enemy of "good enough".

I read on a mobile device and found the webpages would lose my place, so I download the latest mobile version with wget and convert to a single epub with Calibre. I will try to update as each new version comes out with the a new link.

[UPDATED v.2] In case you haven't noticed, the set of drop-down lists on the forum header has been restructured. 6 Times a Day is now offered in three different versions:

• "6TaD grayscale": a grayscale version, now extended through the last published part with decolorized versions of recent parts. In other respects this version is identical to the the next-described version.
• "6TaD mobile": a version linked to avoid generation of the stock forum headers, which require a lot of display horsepower. This version is suitable for handheld devices with lesser compute and memory capability, and where download bandwidth is limited or expensive. It is otherwise identical to the next-described version.
• "6 Times a Day": the most up-to-date version, with all published text revisions and all available colorized illustrations. As chapters are revised and republished, or typos are fixed, those changes will be found here and in the "6TaD mobile" version.

The forum header buttons were reallocated to accommodate this change. Background material that previously had dedicated buttons on the left side of the forum header can now be found under an initial "Introduction" item on each of the first three drop-down lists. Each such introduction also includes a brief indication of how that version differs from the others.

The "6TaD grayscale" and "6TaD mobile" versions are generated by a script from the "6 Times a Day" version, so should always track the latter closely.

If you detect any problems with this new structure , or have any issues or compaints or suggestions , you can contact me by e-mail, either directly (by clicking on my name below) or by clicking on my name in the upper left corner of this post and using the forum's own privacy-preserving method of sending messages between forum participants. Or if you have a topic that you deem worthy of general discussion, and not just a problem report, then feel free to post it in this thread.

Sam.I.am

The published versions of STD, both the regular pages for computer browsers and the new mobile pages for handhelds, now have HTML chapter tags on all their CHAPTER NN heading lines, using the syntax #chapter_n or #chapter_nn. That makes it possible to reference a specific chapter in a URI.

For example, to see Christine's fantasy in Part 82 of being drilled by Alan while she's in the Wonder Woman costume that Kat just gave her, go to http://six.clubetchi...2.htm#chapter_4 and then page down a few screens.

The backstory also has tags, organized by year using the syntax #Ynnnn, so http://six.clubetchi...story.htm#Y2001 will get you to the entries for 2001.

If you specify a chapter or year that is not in the file, the file location won't change.