Announcements

---

Buy a Katabatak print and sponsor Hypography. :autumnleaves:Fall:autumnleaves: Hypography Benefit :painting: Art Sale :painting: http://hypography.com/forums/members/turtle-albums-kitchen-drawer-picture967-hypographyprintscan02scaled.jpg Hypography Limited Edition Print $33 :hal_jackolantern: Sale ends Halloween at Midnight :hal_jackolantern: :bounce:BONUS :bounce: Free Basic Subscription with print purchase $10 Value 11" x 17" inkjet print on 32lb paper, numbered & signed. All proceeds go to support Hypography operations. Contact C1ay by PM to place your order.

---

We have made some minor changes to the user registration routines in the forum. 1. New members must post a thread in the Introductions forum before they can post elsewhere. 2. Users must have 10 posts before they can post a link or an image in your post (a message will be displayed explaining this if you try). Hopefully this will help stop spammers, and also make those who register tell us who they are! In addition, the user thread count is now displayed along with post count. We encourage members to start new threads, not only participate in old ones. :) And features like "Member list" and "Log out" are now available in the Quick Links menu at the top navigation bar.

---

From May 7 through May 14, we are running a competition for Best Quiz in preparation of Hypography's 6th anniversary. Ten quizzes have been submitted, and vary from music theory to ultimate braintwisters. Find all the quizzes here: http://www.hypography.com/quizfront.cfm When you reach the last page of the quiz, you will be asked to rate each quiz from 1-10 (10 being the best) on the quiz topic, the quality of the questions, and the "overall tilt" (ie, how well you liked it). The winning quiz, as well as the two runner-ups, will be announced on our anniversary, May 17th. Good luck to the contestants, and feel free to post slander, rumours, small talk and behind-the-scenes squabble in our competition forum. Quiz away!

---

Due to work on the integration of our forums and our Hypography portal this weekend, there may be some instability now and then. Don't panic - things will be fixed, but you might get occasional errors.

---

There will be some downtime during the next few hours due to hardware upgrades on the server. If you can't read this message, then the downtime is in action. If you can, well, it might happen at any moment. Or it may already have happened. It's all relative, really. :hihi:

---

Happy Easter all! Enjoy your day in whatever it is your culture does best, Im going for a barbeque ;) Hope the bunny brings you some chocolate eggs :D:hihi:

---

Time for a contest! On May 17, 2006, Hypography turns 6 years, and to celebrate, we are holding a quiz contest. Write a quiz and you could win! http://www.hypography.com/newdesign/icon_quizzes.gifThe Hypography science quizzes are one of our most visited sections. But we need fresh and new quizzes, and who are better to write them than our enlightened readership? Enter your quiz before May 1st, and you could win $100 dollars, a forum subscription, and a Hypography T-shirt. Update - entry deadline has passed and we now do not accept new entries. Topic ideas for quizzes could be: History, computers, astronomy, countries, cultures, games, philosophy, famous people, inventions. Check out our current science quizzes to see how they work. The contest rules 1. You must be a member of our forums to enter the contest. This is free. Sign up today if you haven't already done so. 2. Write a quiz with no less than 10 and no more than 20 questions (15 is a good target) in a topic that is relevant for our science and technology segment. 2. Each question in the quiz must have 2-4 options, and only one of the options may be the correct answer (no multiple options) 3. Please make sure that the answers are correct! 4. Give each question a number (ie, 1-15) and each answer a letter (ie, A-D) 5. At the end of the quiz, provide us with a list of the correct replied to each question. 6. Prepare the quiz in text format (ie, write it in Notepad or Textedit or some other program that does not format it) and send it via e-mail to staff@hypography.com. The entry must include your full (real) name and address (this information is used to send the prize if you win, and will not be stored after the contest is finished). 7. Deadline for entries: Midnight on April 30, 2006, PST (Pacific Standard Time) - 9am May 1st, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). There will be no late entries, and the sooner you enter the better for us, since we need to add all the quizzes to our database manually. 8. Beginning on May 7, 2006, the contest quizzes will be made available at http://www.hypogaphy.com/quizfront.cfm for public vieweing and voting. Each quiz will have the forum nickname of the quiz maker attached to it. 9. Everyone can vote (even non-members). To vote, first finish a quiz, and at the end of the quiz voters will be asked to rate the quiz from 1-5 (5 being the best score). 10. The winner will be the quiz which receives the highest number of points. 11. You may enter more than once but each quiz must be unique. 12. The announcement will be made on May 17, 2006. Prizes First prize $100 dollars (paid via PayPal or Amazon gift card) Platinum subscription to the Hypography forums ($75 value) http://images.cafepress.com/product/14506190_240x240_F.jpg Hypography t-shirt ($16 value) Second prize Gold subscription ($50 value) Hypography T-shirt ($16 value) Third prize Silver subscription ($25 value) Hypography T-shirt ($16 value) Fine print: By entering the contest, you accept that Hypography can publish your quiz in whatever format we wish, at any site in our network. You may not withdraw the quiz after the deadline. The voters will be examined by the forum moderators, and the announced decision will be final. The amount of votes each quiz has received will be announced together with the winner announcement.

---

We have a new and revamped bookstore at the old portal, hypography.com. http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0374292884.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpgWe have had an Amazon affiliation store for ages but nobody knew about it, and it kept crashing our servers. A new version of the science bookstore has been launched and should hopefully work much better. You can search the entire Amazon product range, add products to your basket, and then check out at the end. Hypography receives commission in the form of gift cards, and in the past we've used these to give away books and other things as prizes in our quizzes and contests. So whenever you need to shop at Amazon, please consider using our bookstore! Please check it out and let me know what you think about it!

---

The moving of the science forums to the new server is complete, but there is likely to be some intermittent problems while the DNS servers around the world get updated. If you experience very slow reaction at the forums (not from our members but from the server ;) ) it is because you are still getting the files from the old server but the data from the new server. Thus things take extra time. Note: It's a good idea to NOT upload images or attachments this weekend, as they may end up on the wrong server. This should fix itself within 24 hours. Please post any bugs you experience. You do NOT need to post about getting a "database error" page, because those pages send me an e-mail with detailed error information.

---

On the night between March 24 and 25 we will be moving the forums to a new, dedicated server. The forums will be turned off during the entire move, and will remain closed until everything is working again. The move will occur at night for most of our members, so take this opportunity to get a good night's sleep. ;) Those who have e-mail addresses @scienceforums.com need do nothing at the moment - I will send information about the transfer of the e-mail accounts next week. Hopefully the server move will go smoothly so that we'll be online again Saturday morning.

---

WOOT! Happy St. Patty's day to everybody! :xparty: :xparty: on a Friday no less. I wonder if the Irish are going to be drinking tonight??? :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:>>> :note: :note2: :note: :note2: :thumbs_up :note: :note2:>>> :friday: :friday: Anyone know about the origins and evolution of St. Patricks Day?? Heres an Old Irish Toast to you boys, Irish or not: "May you be in heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you're dead!" :cocktail:

---

Hey there fellow thinker of that which is now. Hope your birthday was amazing and came full of new insight and peace. Best wishes, and Cheers!! :cocktail: :xparty: :xparty: :xparty: :Whistle: :gift:

---

___Happy Birthday Dude!:xparty: :xparty: A palindrome no less.:lol: All out for the turtle dance. :circle: :circle: :wave: & :circle:

---

Our dev team leader turns 21 today! Hope your day turns out great! Too bad the drinking age in Canada is 18 or it would have been even greater! ;) Enjoy your day old friend. :xparty: :xparty: :xparty: :wave: :circle:

---

I am halfway through our server move, but some things remain and *might* cause some downtime and e-mail problems. Our old portal http://www.hypography.com/ has been moved to a new, dedicated server. The next step is to move the mail accounts. This is *only* relevant for those of you who have "hypography.com" e-mails, not scienceforums.com (yet). If you have problems with Hypography e-mail, please report it here and I'll take care of it ASAP. Hopefully everything will go smoothly but I wanted to give the involved a small heads-up.

---

Our forums are growing to a point where we are going to need a new hosting solution soon. We would like your input and possibly, your help. Did you just receive 6 newsletters from us? It's a symptom of the times. We are currently hosted on a shared plan at a reputable host. We are, however, experiencing technical difficulties and need to look at new options with more room to grow. We can choose VPS (virtual private server) hosting, or a dedicated server. Killean, our dev team leader, and I need your input on what we should do. We also need to know if you have any experience in Linux administration and would be interested in helping out. If you have recommendations for a host, please post them here, with links to the plan. If you'd like to help out, feel free to PM me. We are only looking for one or two more people (we already have a dev team who will be in charge of running this server, but we want to strengthen the team if we can). Keep in mind that our hosting budget is not huge. We currently pay $25. We could stretch it to, say, $60 - but the point here is really to find out what options we have and then see how much money we need to be prepared to spend. Since our forums is a community I feel it is important to hear what people here have to say! Please provide your feedback and thoughts. :)

---

Please note: Due to server maintenance our forums will be down most of the night starting about 1:00 am January 6 (Eastern Standard Time). The forum software and database will be upgraded. There will be no major changes immediately, except the addition of Skype support in the user profiles. However, hopefully we can squash a lot of the bugs that have popped up lately.

---

Our favorite tortoise, our very own Turtle, celebrates his birthday today! http://hypography.com/gallery/files/7/9/6/mllg_thumb.jpgAlthough he has become famous for his birthday dance (ie, having a birthday every 17 days or so), he has admitted that January 1st is his *real* birthday! So - Happy Birthday to our most loved forum member! :) You can even join in and guess at what time of day he was born. And don't miss all of Turtle's great photos and artwork in our gallery.

---

Our great forum administrator C1ay is celebrating today!!! Thanks for your excellent work here at Hypography. :) May your day be great! And as a birthday gift...go nuts in our brand new arcade section!

---

I get a lot of requests via e-mail about science fair projects, so I put together a Hypography feature on the topic. http://www.hypography.com/ktmlpro/images/uploads/hypographies/science_fair_project.gifI really hope this is useful for someone. If you find a link that should be there, let me know. For those of you not familiar with the "hypography feature" concept, it could be interesting to know that these features were the reason this site was started back in 1999. :) There has been so much other stuff to do, and due to all the upgrades and server moves etc I had to rewrite a lot of the code. But the hypographies will continue as a regular feature, and if you have ideas for one, let me know. Find it here: Hypography: Science Fair Projects

---

Dont miss our 4th instalment of our Christmas Science hypography! http://www.hypography.com/bilder/christmasscience.gifSanta Claus, reindeer, snowflakes and trees - what does it all have to do with history, mathematics, physics and chaos theory? Find out at... Christmas Science - Hypography - Science for everyone And please let me know about dead links - and suggest new ones!