5M.net on LJ (original) (raw)

			5M.net on LJ — LiveJournalnot to be confused with 5MV on LDS

			04:01 pm April 1st, 2018

	5mvcommodore_zeke		Five-Minute Anbar! Big news! Today is the launch of our biggest subsite yet! Like, literally biggest. Huge! Bigger than the void between galaxies!A while ago, Excelsior told the story of the starship Anbar, which was lost for 59 years outside the Galactic Barrier. As a joke, they framed the relevant episode ("Sunset") as Season 59, Episode 12 of an actual Anbar series. This has confused and intrigued fans who didn't get the joke ever since (much like April Fool's jokes often have for 5MV's readers in the past, though I'm not sure why that comparison came to mind). But now the Anbar series is real! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! I have painstakingly reconstructed all 708 episodes, then reduced them to fivers in my usual style! Behold Five-Minute Anbar!Subsite code: 5M0, because they're in the Big Empty and fighting aliens called the Zero, and anyway I've always wanted an excuse to use that one. Subsite colour: dark! Very very dark! Almost too dark to see! Because there's nothing outside the galaxy! Nothing to do! Nothing to explore! Except alien parasites that want to kill you! Taste the excitement!(For any further questions, please refer to the FAQ.)- ZTags: 5m0, april fool's

			11:32 pm January 1st, 2016

	5mvcommodore_zeke		MARVEL COMICS #1 in 30 Seconds Oo! Speaking of things that are done but unpublished, I just discovered something perfect to kick off the new year. Back in '07, I posted FLASH: Chain Lightning in 30 Seconds, my entry in a contest at Chris's Invincible Super-Blog. (Full details can be found in the update thread.) My entry was a bit late and didn't get mentioned in Chris's offical wrapup post, but it got some good traffic through the comments, and still does through links on a couple of Flash sites. All told, a success.But that wasn't the last year Chris held the contest. I participated again in 2010, this time getting in just under the wire and securing a proper link. But it seems I relaxed a bit too hard afterwards and never got around to mentioning it here at 5MV! I was probably planning to polish it up first, adding more colour and such. I may still do that later, but it's fine now and I've waited too long to share it. Here is MARVEL COMICS #1 in 30 Seconds -- my take on the 1939 comic that introduced the first Human Torch. Happy New Year!- ZTags: 5mc, comics

			05:36 am December 27th, 2015

	5mvcommodore_zeke		Five-Minute "The Best of Both Girls, Part 2" Merry Christmas! Hope you all had, and are having, a good one (remember, it's twelve days long).I've got many things on the go, but nothing was quite ready to make an update out of. Then my good friend Jim Wright did me a favour: he got sick! Illness at Christmastime is a rotten break, so I pondered whether I could do anything for him -- and suddenly remembered I had something specifically for him that I'd forgotten to post. Jim, for those who don't know, runs the greatest Voyager site ever, Delta Blues. It's been largely dormant since the show ended, but back in the day it was the place to be (and its forum was the cradle in which 5MV was born). Along with his famously wordy synopses and reviews, Jim also wrote some fanfic, most notably an epic what-if story called The Best of Both Girls. He started writing this during the "Scorpion" season break as one possible direction the Borg storyline might go from there. It got bigger than he expected and took him a few years to finish -- by which time he'd actually seen his central premise appear on the show, though in a very different form. Anyway, it's a great story, and back when Jim got married I fived the first chapter of it as a present. The VOY subsite has had a "Season B" ever since, but I never got around to doing more... until I recently noticed it had been ten years since the first one. High time that changed! Be on the lookout for cross-fiver references, since this chapter of BoBG intersects with several canon episodes.Here's Five-Minute "The Best of Both Girls, Part 2", Jim. Feel better!(Note: If you haven't checked out the Facebook page, you really should. Really. As in this isn't just casual shilling, there's actually something there that's not here.)- ZTags: 5mv, bobg

			08:10 pm December 17th, 2015

	5mvcommodore_zeke		5MV Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, once said "A late game can eventually be good, but a bad game is bad forever." I've always had the same philosophy with this site -- I'd rather take ridiculous amounts of time than settle for lousy results. But darn it, today's my birthday, and for once I'm giving myself a break. Here are two things I've been waiting for a big event to unveil.First is our new Facebook page. Because why not? It's pretty plain right now, but all the updates will be posted there and maybe other little stuff too.Second... oh man. You're gonna love this.You can call the site 5MV again.See, a few months ago I had a revelation. I've never been happy with "5M.net", but I couldn't think of a better option. I joked in the T100 list about buying a Venezuelan domain (and there's now a top-level .voyage domain, which would be even better), but all the Vs are either geographically restricted or too expensive.And then it hit me. I don't have to change the name or address of the site to change the abbreviation for it! I live in a world where SAT doesn't officially stand for anything and SHIELD keeps changing what it stands for and RWBY is pronounced "ruby"! I can have a site called FiveMinute.net and abbreviate it 5MV if I want! Am I sultan or am I sultan?A kind of peace came upon me with this decision. I feel really good about it. In fact, I've already been calling the site 5MV again at the forums, in PMs, and such. It rolls right off the fingers just like it used to.The time has come to share this peace with you. FiveMinute.net is officially 5MV for short.But make no mistake: it's 5MV, not FMV. I will _hunt you down._- ZTags: 5mv

			08:11 pm November 10th, 2015

	5mvcommodore_zeke		Five-Minute "The Ring 2" Ladies.Gentlemen.Welcome to an update ten years in the making.In 2003 we had a Hallowe'en event. My contribution to it was Five-Minute The Ring, written in an effort to make myself less terrified of that brilliant film. (It didn't work, but the fiver's been popular, so I'll take it.) Two years later, we had a partial followup event, and by then The Ring 2 had come out. I had managed to watch it (tip: turning the volume way down makes cheap scare chords less effective), and I got a few scenes into the fiver, but then dried up. I wound up doing the between-movies DVD extra, Rings, and saving the sequel for a later date.Every Hallowe'en since then, I've tried to finish that fiver and post it. It's become a ritual. Sometimes I watch the movie again (I don't even have to turn the volume down anymore!). Sometimes, when I get really confident, I do some silly buildup like pretending to catch the Ring Virus in newsposts. But this year was special for two reasons.One: This year is the tenth anniversary of when I started working on it.Two: I finished it last year.Yep. I got on a roll, but wasn't done till a month after Hallowe'en, so I decided to save it. It's been a long wait -- not to brag, but this is a really good one. And now, after due buildup (you noticed the static background, right?), here it is.Five-Minute The Ring 2. DRINK THE TEA.(Note: Apparently some readers find the static headache-inducing, so here's a version without it. The static on other pages is gone now. Why? Because I've passed on the curse.)Tags: 5mo, 5mring, the ring, the ring 2

			05:49 pm June 12th, 2015

	5mvcommodore_zeke		TJI Brief #8: Nimoy announces results of Search Four months ago, we lost one of the greats: Leonard Nimoy passed away at the age of 83. You probably noticed the memorial banner I made for the site and forums, but I had something else in mind too, and it's now finished. Hot off the presses, here's This Just In Brief #8: Nimoy announces results of Search.This is a significant month here at FiveMinute.net -- old-timers should know why -- so stay tuned.(Side note: You may notice a couple of things in that TJI. One is that I've changed the look slightly: there's now a gray outline that should make the text easier to read against the unevenly-coloured background. Been meaning to do that for ages.)- ZTags: nimoy, tji

			09:06 am November 27th, 2014

			01:42 am October 15th, 2014

	5mvcommodore_zeke		Features: Five-Minute "Eleven Is Prime" For all its virtues, Wowbagger's "Eleven is Prime" is definitely long. No surprise, really -- the man is infinitely prolonged. If only there were a site out there that condensed Trek-related things for the reader on the go!...Hmm?Oh, right, that's me. Then I guess it's time for Five-Minute "Eleven Is Prime"! It concentrates on the points of difference between XIP (as I call it) and canon, and you don't have to read Wowbagger's whole dissertation to enjoy it. (Of course, if you find bits in the fiver that intrigue or puzzle you and want to understand them, welllll...)That's my little tribute to Wowbagger's magnum opus. A few other followups:We have a comment thread going, in which I posted the commentary I promised last update. All are welcome to participate. (By the way, if you've tried to register at the forum recently and found it impossible, that was a temporary thing. You should be able now, and if not, email me.)There's also an XIP discussion going on at The Daystrom Institute, Reddit's "scholarly" Star Trek board, a very interesting place to visit. By the way, if you weren't aware of this, Reddit's boards are called "subreddits". I'm still waiting for my royalty check.After Wowbagger watched Star Trek: Into Darkness (I haven't decided yet if I'm willing to write it without the colon), the first thing he did was assure me that Twelve Is Prime. As a mathematician, I knew that already (base 5), but let that be the answer to anyone saying the new movie has fatally damaged this thought experiment. He's not claiming there aren't contradictions, of course; he's saying XIP's methods are equally applicable to them. Quite frankly, I hope the next movie makes his job harder. I'd love to see an XIIIP that had to justify stuff like Species 8472 showing up and Chekov getting a sex change.By the way, we have a Trek quote game going on. What does that have to do with anything? Eh, we need more players, and if we let Wowbagger in he'll just prove that every quote was really said by Morn between episodes.Tags: 5mxip, features

			07:28 am September 26th, 2014

	5mvcommodore_zeke		Features: Eleven Is Prime Hey! Been a while (okay, a year, not counting the April Fool's gag), but I've got a real treat for you today. Wowbagger needs no introduction, mostly because the last update was all about his fan series. What you may not know, however, is that he is also a master of the time-honoured Trekkie art of rationalization. (Call it "fanwanking" if you absolutely must.) For instance, I've made fun of the four-day trip to Qo'noS in "Broken Bow" many times, but any fan worth his salt can come up with an explanation for it. The bigger the contradiction, the more elaborate the explanation has to be -- but there's no upper limit.Some time ago, I discovered a long piece of writing Wowbagger had done at the Trek BBS a while after the reboot movie came out. I knew within a few paragraphs that I had to have it for this site. It is the Great Pyramid of rationalization, the towering work that will stand for millennia as a testament to what is possible. (It also has a title no number theorist could resist.)What is it? A completely reasonable explanation that the 2009 movie is not a reboot. No changed history, no alternate universe. It's all one timeline.I have lots more to say about this thing, but I'll save it for the comment thread. Without further ado, here's Wowbagger with Eleven Is Prime.- ZTags: 5mst, features

			08:04 am September 25th, 2013

			09:21 pm November 27th, 2012

	5mvcommodore_zeke		November 26 One more link day! Tomorrow there's stuff. Anyway, here's an interesting resource for writers that I stumbled on recently: Writing Injuries. As the name suggests, it's a list of various wounds, lacerations, traumas, contusions, freezings, burnings, shootings, and otherwise tormentings, and how they actually affect people. By consulting this site, you can avoid embarrassing mistakes like having a high-school cheerleader get impaled on a rebar and basically walk it off, while a grown man in another of your stories dies instantly from impalement. Or having a strong guy "save" someone who's falling from the upper atmosphere by leaping up and catching him. Or having the villain get a single bruise from having a car thrown at his head offscreen. Or -- look, I just think Joss Whedon could benefit from this site, okay?- ZTags: links, nanupomo

			07:15 pm November 26th, 2012

			06:09 pm November 25th, 2012

	5mvcommodore_zeke		November 24 Today's link post didn't get long. It's just a link to one of my favourite programming jokes (or rather, infinite families of programming jokes), "now they have two problems". This blog post will introduce you. For more, consult here and here. The latter is a user-submitted site, so some of them suck, but there are some good ones not found elsewhere. Put "1" in the URL and keep clicking Next to read them all.(Me, I've got five problems, but a minute ain't one.)- ZTags: links, nanupomo

			07:23 pm November 24th, 2012

			05:49 pm November 23rd, 2012

	5mvcommodore_zeke		November 22 At this point I hardly need to inform anyone about Cracked.com -- after all, it's been America's only humor site since 1958. (FiveMinute.net actually goes back to 19_3_8, but we're from Canada.) It's a comedy extravaganza with neat history and science facts thrown in for good measure, and it's the most dangerous timesuck on the net, up to and including TV Tropes. What's more, there's often pretty good stuff in the comments, as today's link will demonstrate.On Wednesday, Cracked posted 8 Cheap Ways to Fake Being a Pro Chef. This was the debut article of Tim Ferriss, a name you may have heard (or may not); he's a motivational efficiency-coach type, and this article was a glorified ad for his new book, The 4-Hour Chef. It's disappointing to see Cracked do this, but understandable -- this sort of thing must be worth more in sponsorship money then simple ad banners. Regardless, Ferriss has been eaten alive in the comments, and there's one in particular I want to call your attention to. Click the Votes link and scroll down to the comment by "bradyyy" (fourth highest-ranked as I write this). He didn't just take Ferriss down a peg, he wrote a better article and posted it for free. I love the internet.- ZTags: links, nanupomo

			09:03 am November 22nd, 2012

			08:22 am November 21st, 2012

	5mvcommodore_zeke		November 20 Today's link is another of my deviantArt finds. Take a look at this picture. Looks like a pretty good photo, eh? Now look at it again, this time knowing that it's drawn with ballpoint pen.What you're seeing is the unique art of Samuel Silva, a.k.a. VianaArts. He reproduces photos with what must be a million colours of ballpoint pen, and he does it astonishingly well. (For my money, the animal pictures are the best.) The latest one is NSFW, but otherwise go nuts.- ZTags: links, nanupomo

			07:37 pm November 20th, 2012

	5mvcommodore_zeke		November 19 Party hats! This is the tenth update of NaNuPoMo 2012, which means I've officially done better than last year (when I vanished after the ninth one). Time to take a step back.So what did happen last year, anyway? You may recall that I was being taken over by Samara from The Ring (and I'm tempted to just say she killed me for a year or something). This was meant to build up to the long-delayed publication of Five-Minute The Ring 2, which I've been trying to do for Hallowe'en every year since '05. But I just couldn't seem to finish the damn thing, and once again I'd newsposted myself into a corner. I'm not yet immune to being embarrassed about backing out of an event, but there are only so many times I can interrupt a newspost with [kssh], so I stopped, intending to come back spectacularly with the fiver done. Guess how that went!Anyway, we're back to normal now. Several of the regular forumgoers have shown up, so hopefully we can get some interesting discussions going. (We also have an RSS feed now, if you missed that update.) I've got plenty of good updates in progress -- schoolwork permitting, as always.And I've almost stopped seeing Samara's reflection in stuff and coughing up electric centipedes. Turns out the Ring Virus is much less dangerous if you stay away from video cassettes. It's been hard, but somehow I've managed...- ZTags: 5mo, nanupomo

			06:47 am November 19th, 2012

			07:46 am November 18th, 2012