U.S. Patent Pending
Awards and Website Credits
Visit our main page for mpegs of the series.
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Web Site Credits
The following are the opinions of David Koenigsberg, the Creator & Producer of The Soul Patrol and not the opinions of the Webmaster, Sachmo Jobb of Sugoi Consulting.
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Webmaster Services When the decision was made to open this site, the first phone call went out to Sugoi Consulting of San Francisco. Sugoi helped us through every major decision to reach our goals for the server:
They guided us in the right direction and today we have a site which has been online flawlessly 99.99% of the time since our launch date: Monday, September 27, 1999. Sugoi is not primarily a web site builder. Oh sure, they'll build one for you but what they excel at is building networks for Fortune 500 companies. (Migrating from Windows NT to Linux is also a specialty.) They did my site as a favor--the simple look of which has been entirely my choice (I do my own html). -- October 2003. |
Operating System To save yourself the complete nightmare of installing Linux yourself, I heartily recommend doing it the easy way and getting it preinstalled on a new computer. You won't be sorry. -- October 2003. |
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The Machine This is my first Dell computer and it will not be the last. I have had absolutely no problems with my Optiplex GX1p. It's still running (with what was the fastest at the time) at 550k megahertz and a 10,000rpm Ultra2Wide SCSI hard drive. Surprisingly, the only mishaps have been, "outside the box." Back in 1999, Dell's online site listed peripherals which were incompatible. The 15" flat screen was the only one listed as being compatible and, in fact, wasn't. Instead I had to send it back in and get (a much better) 17" flat screen model. Additionally, the documentation which came with the mini-tower listed every single connection with which to plug in the monitor--except for (can we guess?) the right one. -- October 2003. |
Linux Distribution Red Hat 6.0 (and a few releases after that) had poor or sometimes incorrect coding, attempted to hide how Linux could read DOS diskettes, had severe security holes allowing easy hacker entry and documentation which ignored DSL and cable modem installation--to name but a few problems. (Yes, I realize that this was with a .0 release which always has some bugs but one should note that these problems were mostly made with intent. Further, these problems did not come forth from an attempt to install Red Hat on an old or incompatible system--these problems came with a brand new, factory installed, top-of-the-line Dell computer.) Red Hat accomplished the impossible; it made Windows look good. After 2 years of endless fixes we dumped it. We're now on Mandrake 8.2 and though it doesn't look as consumer orientated it seems to operate much better. As inferred, Mandrake is more for the computer geek (which I am not) so I have been hoping for a more dumbed-down consumer flavor. Since our installation of Mandrake, Dell has returned to offering Red Hat and notably IBM and Hewlett Packard have picked it up as well. Maybe one day we will too. -- October 2003. |
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UPS / Surge Protection American Power Conversion (APC) manufactures the very best Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) equipment (better known as a back-up battery in the consumer world). Their "Back-UPS Pro 650" has kicked-in during every power loss, saving my server from repeated downtime and possibly severe crashes. The surge protector (which can be even more important) seems to respond perfectly. The only problem which I have encountered was being a guinea pig for their PowerChute Linux Beta test. PowerChute is their brand of software which is suppose to shut down your computer before the battery runs out and then automatically start it up again once power has been restored. Shutting down in time is critical for saving data. Their version 4.2.x-4.5 for Unix (and Linux) failed the one time it was necessary. We're currently testing a later version (though the readme says "Version: 2.0-beta2" and the file says "2.0.1"). Regardless, APC has really listened and has been compiling their new software to be much more in sync with the open source movement. One drawback to their hardware/software architecture however, has been the inability for the computer to exactly know when the battery will run out. One must still guess (though I have been told that their Smart-UPS brand is better since it puts out a true sine wave; I will have to try one of those models next)! -- October 2003. |
Web Server Software The Apache web server has worked flawlessly ever since. Windows NT may or may not be faster but Apache doesn't crash everytime it gets a hit. -- March 2000. |
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Window System Environment & Web Stats Gnome is one of several Unix (and Linux) Window System environments and comes default with Red Hat. We had an early version of Gnome and when bundled with Red Hat it worked terrific. Today we're using a later, inferior version (1.4) which demands more navigation and fails to work as well with Mandrake. Still, Gnome seems to be the best desktop for Linux and I'm looking forward to seeing if the newer versions harken back to the simplicity of the past. (Microsoft isn't the only one screwing up their latest versions!) (I could not give credit to all of the very important components of this website without mentioning one of my favorite programs.....) Hands down the best way to keep track of the hits to your site is the Webalizer. Surprisingly, I've noticed very few sites using it. (You'd think everyone with Linux and/or Apache would be on this thing!) Netscape owns a tracking system which works a little differently and has a few options I wish the open source community would (or could?) copy but overall the Webalizer is the best. -- November 2003. |
Recording & Mixing Studios Command Post specializes in working with independent filmmakers, music videos & industrials. We were their very first Internet project and they bent over backwards for us (as they seem to do with all of their clients). Now please, don't all of you go booking time there--we still need to get in to do our shows! -- April 2000. |
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Authoring & Serving Audio Okay, I'll admit it. When this site was first conceived it was hoped that one day I could charge a fee to users to listen to the shows. Streaming the media seemed to be the best option so I went with RealNetworks' RealAudio Server. Today we can look back and laugh. It's turned out to be very difficult to successfully charge for entertainment and even more so to stream media. Streaming calls for every step in the process to work successfully every second. After 2 years of streaming I found that it only worked for about 10% of all requests. Not so with downloading files! After some tests we found that MPEG-1 Layer 3 (better known as mp3) sounded great and were small in size. And it's a free format! (No wonder everyone's using them!) Goodbye RealAudio, Darwin, Windows Media, Helix and all the rest of you! We were advised that the grip ripper and encoder was the very best for Linux (with the gnome desktop) and have we ever been pleased! It just may be the very best mp3 authoring tool period. In fact, it may be too good with options and controls that most of us non-geeks will never use. Installing it was not easy with some pertinent information lacking but there's a grip Mailing List worth searching for your problem. -- October 2003. |
Internet Service Provider But since starting this site we've gone through 4 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) without ever changing our service! They just keep on imploding no matter how much we warn them! It's been quite amazing actually; here's a capsule review! Pacific Bell SBC SBC Yahoo! DSL The suit, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Diego, Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding No. 4151, concerned former and current customers who, "...purchased DSL service as a result of Defendants' representations regarding the speed, reliability, connectivity, accessibility to the Internet, including accessibility to UseNet newsgroups..." Did I forget to mention? For years, Pacific Bell and SBC claimed or gave the representation (or neglected to reveal their lack) of having IRC servers for UseNet newsgroups. (I gave up trying years ago and have been using html versions.) AT&T Why the concern? Because (are you ready for this?) Pacific Bell/SBC/Yahoo has not been all that bad. There are much worse companies. And though Pacific Bell's service started out spotty at best it certainly improved and continued doing so under SBC and Yahoo. (Though Yahoo still doesn't know what Unix is and so just forget about talking to them about Linux!) For the record, when we were streaming audio we were using a 1.5Mbps - 6Mbps/384 Kbps ADSL line. Today, for merely providing downloads, we're using a slower (and cheaper) 384Kbps - 1.5Mbps/128Kbps ADSL line. It also helps that the server is so close to a major switching center and that we seem to be the only one using their Unix router. (All of our ISP companies have been telling others that they can't handle Unix!) -- January 2006. |
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Cloud Tiles We've collected a number of nice images over the years from sites which have fallen off the face of the Earth or mutated into horrible, horrible creatures. However, there is one site, BackgroundsArchive.com which is pretty darn good! There, you will find some nice cloud tiles and spectacular nature images like the one which graces our main page. (I flopped and turned that one 180 degrees to make a continuous checkerboard image!) All of the images shown here have been reduced in size; to see them in their full glory (and how they work with text) just click-on the image to see the tile in action on our site. You could download the image from there but we have one request concerning... Stealing Bandwidth To punish Bandwidth Pirates we periodically switch the file name of the cloud with a pornographic image. A number of christian websites which were stealing bandwidth from us were "caught with their pants down." Don't you be one of them! -- February 2007. |
Test Pattern Tiles |
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Credit Tiles (These tiles are shown in their full size so you could download them directly to your computer.) This design reminded me of the turn-of-the-century (19th/20th century) filligree that "theatre people" chose to associate with. That's why I'm using these tiles with any pages (including this one) which deal with the cast, individual actors or Credits. And like the Test Pattern tiles above, these tiles were originally available for free download at Webpagedesign.com. -- November 2003. |
Paintings The painting on our Irish broadcast page is by Thomas Blackshear. Visit his site to buy merchandise and reproductions of some of his paintings (unfortunately, other paintings are now completely in private hands)! -- September 2006. |
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Behind The Scenes Photos ALL of the photos of the cast & crew at work were taken with Kodak single use cameras (mostly with the model called "Versatility"). These cameras are incredibly simple to use and with Kodak processing you can end up with film negatives, prints and a CD-ROM. With the negatives and a CD you'll have 2 very different formats to preserve your images. Negatives can fade and get scratched, CDs can oxidize and become unreadable; get both! (Digital images can always be blown away by deletion or unrecoverable hard drive crashes.) We'd leave a bunch of cameras out for the cast & crew to take shots of one another but the ball really didn't start rolling until we promised to some of the people that we wouldn't post a photo of them without their permission. After that, the film flew freely! -- October 2004. |
Animated Rollovers "Major Domo" is the name of the mailing list program which comes bundled with the Apache web server but we thought it might also make a swell name for our mascot. -- May 2005. |
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"The Soul Patrol" Font You can't have a website nor an entertainment series nowadays without creating your own special, unique and very applicable font! A good font should help to set the mood for the public's experience. (And it also makes it easier to protect trademarked merchandise!) With this series and website, I wanted to give the feeling of the stifling bureacracy, rules and regulations faced by the patrol. The font should be holy and uncompromisingly inflexible! I accidentally found a perfect example of what I wanted when visiting the Los Angeles City Hall in the 1980's to file a DBA for "The Cosmic Forces." The City Hall was in disarray in all manners, including fonts, because it never had a major rehab since opening in 1928. Of the many fonts used in the building, one stood out which served as the inspiration for what I would later christen, "DK Civic." Initially I used the program for such endeavors, Macromedia's Fontographer (and in this case, Version 4.1 for Power Macs). The program had some limitations, number one of which was the inability to accurately document the construction of a character. (You would find yourself asking, "How did I arrive at establishing that curve in the "S"?) And so one would need to graph that out on a sheet of paper; hence the accompanying image. But once you understand how GIMP works, you realize that all one needs is a Photoshop-like program to create a typeface. (Programs like Fontographer have the unnecessary additional burden of exporting.) Using what had been established in Fontographer, I recreated the characters in GIMP along with building new characters. (But you still have to keep track of how you formed each character!) -- January 2006. |
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Radios Our collection of radios (one for each episode) comes from Don Adamson's Antique Radio Page! And what a collection, everything from crystal sets to plastic transistor portables! I just wish he'd continue on with later models and foreign brands (Sony!) but that perhaps is for a different page. (The radios shown below are not to scale to one another.) -- October 2003.
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