ThereAndBackAgain.net Site News and Updates

Update - 03.09.08 - Playstation 3 and PSP themes and wallpapers

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 12:12:53 -0400

I have made PS3 and PSP Tolkien-oriented TABA themes and wallpapers for download, both in the downloads section. Send me an email if there is another TABA/Tolkien-oriented theme you are interested in for a gaming console!

Site of the Week: The Council of Elrond

This fan site has a lot to offer - an extensive illustration database, news and reviews, even member pages. One of the Tolkien sites that needs to be viewed. Visit Site

Update - 03.02.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Sun, 2 Mar 2008 20:12:53 -0500

By popular demand I rescanned many of the of the older pencil illustrations and added them to the site. In all I added about 10 pencil versions of Merry, Lúthien, Thorin, Fëanor, Vanyar Elves, Uglúk, Turin, the Watcher in the Water, and others. I will add more as I rescan some of the older pieces. There is a poll here where you can let your voice be heard on what you would like to see on the site. I also added a few of the pencil versions as downloads and updated the Download section of the site with the ability to browse all available downloads.

Site of the Week: The Council of Elrond

This fan site has a lot to offer - an extensive illustration database, news and reviews, even member pages. One of the Tolkien sites that needs to be viewed. Visit Site

Update - 02.24.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:44:14 -0500

Well it seems not all internet providers are alike, and the one in my hotel in Florida "Hot Air" was just that. Instead of the daily updates I had planned I had to resort to this - delivering the updates sequentially when I returned. We have a new Lorien illustration and download, and changes have been made to the submenus under Lore. There will be new illustrations throughout the week, that I sketched up while on my trip.

Site of the Week: John-Howe.com

Official Site of artist John Howe - one of the conceptual designers of the Lord of the Rings Films by New Line Cinema. The site offers new Paintings and sketches as well as musings by John himself. Also are listings of convention dates and appearances and links to publishings.

Update - 02.16.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:43:56 -0500

New illustration has been added for Elves | Noldor, and further changes have been made to the Lore menus.

I have also made a small site stats box for folks to see the current number of illustrations and downloads.

More illustrations will be coming on a daily basis over the next few days, so keep an eye on the site news for updates.

Update - 02.14.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:02:54 -0500

New illustration has been added for Elves | Nandor, and modifications have been made to the Links directory. I will be adding a form for folks to submit a site to the directory, and taking a page out of the Tolkienion's link database - by making a sort of site rating to point viewers to the best Tolkien sites out there.

In Gaming news, Lord of the Rings Online announces that Book 12: The Ashen Wastes is now available. Click Here.

Update - 02.12.08 - Hobbit Movie News, NewLine, Updates

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:45:52 -0500

Tolkien Estate Sues New Line Cinema

The estate of J.R.R Tolkien alleges New Line has withheld their due 7.5% of the revenues from The Lord of the Rings trilogy films which garnered over $6 billion worldwide. The estate is seeking approxiamtely $150 Million in reparations. Also being sought by the estate: "..the right to terminate any
rights New Line may have to make films based on other works by the author, including "The Hobbit" Click Here

And in other bad film news, IMDB reports New Line may be closed entirely and folded into Warner Bros, or possibly reverted into producing the low-budget films the studio produced before the Rings trilogy.

UPDATE: Links section is up but not completed just yet. Wide format users will note a few additions to the background elements and you can now drag the magnifying glass though the zoom feature isn't quite there yet.

Site of the Week: TheHobbitBlog.com

Movie news and updates on the long-awaited Hobbit film. Along with news, there is an active community of ringers, fan created photos, art, and video clips. Visit Site.

Updates - 02.10.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 02:00:35 -0500

I finished the illustration for Vána, the Ever-Young. I am still plugging away on the Links section, and should have it active Monday.

One last note - I re-established the RSS feed as well - though it will only reflect news from this year forward. Archived posts are still available in the news archive, but not in the feed.

Updates - 02.08.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 01:52:53 -0500

I finished the illustration for Vairë, and uploaded a few of the unfinished Location illustrations. The Links section should be active this weekend, as well as the Media section, and I am still plugging away on the downloadable TABA application.

Thanks to everyone who has written, for your kind words on the new site design. I really appreciate it.

New illustrations coming next: Lorien, Estë, and Vána.

One last note - I disabled the RSS feed until I figure out why it is so fubar.

Updates - 02.06.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 01:48:26 -0500

Some more changes to the site - this time to the illustrations. I adjusted the compression on the images to make the loads faster, and to hopefully cut down on some bandwidth that was eagerly being sucked up by the large files. Just a note for all flash-folk: swfs are better than pngs every day of the week and twice on Sundays!

My next chore to tackle will be the daunting task of uploading/revising the links section. It seems Tolkien sites come and go, and the old TABA had over 500 linked sites, of which only a meager 1/4 are still active today. I will be thining the lists and adding some amazing newcomers to the site.

Also -please note that the Site of the Week will be back up and running - with a revamped look and feel. We will showcase and feature on the front page, a new site each week pertaining to all manner of Tolkien-inspired material.

Site of the Week: TolkienGateway.net

A Tolkien wikipedia with a fairly robust archive of artwork and entries from around the web. The entries are complete and well researched with various themes and as all true wikis - the ability for anyone to edit the content!

Updates - 01.30.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:42:59 -0500

A few changes have been made to the site today - I added the archived news items going back to 2001, and adjusted many of the old posts to accommodate selectable text. Kind of a novelty really, but It's nice to see where we've been.

Other modifications: I added an ink pool on the left of the page for high-end users (drag your mouse around it for a nice ripple effect. There is also a magnifying glass on the far right of the page - also for high-end users. I am also looking into adding by-lines to pages - similar to what we had on the old site, but this will be a modification made to the site at a later date.

Site Relaunch! - 01.28.08

saulone@thereandbackagain.net — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:37:17 -0500

It's been a long time coming but the redesign is finally on the live site!

After a long overdue hiatus from TABA, I and the other site developers have returned to do some serious art and writing on the site. I would like to thank everyone who sent in emails to let us all know just what TABA meant to you. Your emails are really what made this redesign happen. Many of the elements you wrote about - some that you loved, and some that you hated - we took all that you said and considered things from a technical and artistic standpoint. We got rid of some portions of the site we did poorly and brought back the things we did well. We embelished on a few of TABA's real strengths, and added some bells and whistles to make scrolling through TABA the experience we always wanted it to be. Technically we've made many advancements, partially with an increased know-how and partially with advancements in software and hardware.

Some new features will be added over the next couple of months - as we get a bit of time in our personal lives that is. Just a few of the planned/already present features:

Larger Format! We upgraded TABA to take advantage of larger screen real estate.

Colour Images! That's right - along with the facelift comes colour images and much larger versions.

Selectable Text! A long time coming - you can now select and copy to your clipboard.

More Image Downloads! This was the biggest request people made. Hands down - you all want to be able to save images, so I figure they have been out there forever and you all are hawks, and tend to send me emails when people are abusing my work - until things go bad and folks start abusing things I will allow downloads on images I deem worthy of a hi-res still.

Enhaced Menus! The menus have been revamped and restructerd to break items down further than simply the books they were written in. When you click lore you can drill down further to find the specifc entry you are looking for.

Pages That Turn! Thanks to those amazing cats at page-flip.com (2advanced.net), TABA can reach a new level in interactivity. Just click and drag the corners of the section you are in or just click on the corners themselves to turn the pages. (News does not work this way.)

Taba Blog! What better way to keep up-to-date with the latest chhanges to TABA and general Tolkien-related news, than the TABA rss feed.

Coming - Downloadble TABA Lore Program. Even cooler still - this is something I have been wanting to do for some time, and have been working on the logistics of it for a while now. This will take me a little longer to complete (it is in the testing phase now), my goal is to have this available for both MAC's and PC's. Right now I can get one to work well then the other doesn't! I should have the bugs worked out soon enough.

Coming - Search. There will soon be a search field which will take you to a specific section of the LORE pages, and allow you to find what you are looking for by name.