Top Thrill Dragster Pictures, RCT2 Downloads
May 29, 2003I got the Top Thrill Dragster Pictures online. Overall, I can live with the results, but I’m glad I’ll be back in Sandusky later this season. I’ll get some stuff together that’s a lot tighter. I also have another (much better) pic of our Raptor wallpaper in use at the Point. I still think that’s about the coolest thing in the world. I’m going to try to get the Busch Gardens Williamsburg pictures up (finally) before we head out again late this weekend. I also updated a few other pages (schedule, feedback) and added some new RCT2 files. An enthusiast’s work is never done…
Raptor Picture at Cedar Point, Top Thrill Dragster Video
May 27, 2003Back from Cedar Point and back with some updates. Let’s just start at the top. First, Top Thrill Dragster still had 3 to 4 hour waits over Memorial Day weekend. I don’t wait four hours for anything, so we’ll be heading back later this summer when things should have died down a bit. Secondly, my Raptor wallpaper (the very one you can download from this site) is indeed being used at the Raptor photo booth this year at Cedar Point. I wanted to verify it with my own eyes before I passed the word along. I think this may make coasterimage.com the first coaster site on the internet to have their work seen daily at a major amusement park. Basically, if an on-ride photo on Raptor cannot be shown (inapropriate poses, technical difficulty, etc), then the park shows a “default” image. This year that image is the Raptor wallpaper from our site. The only difference is the coasterimage logo is understandably replaced with a Cedar Point logo. Just another step in keeping our title of “best damn coaster photo site on the internet”. (It’s an unrecognized title we defend mostly in steel cage matches if you’re wondering) Check out this little vidcap I snagged while at the park showing the image in use. Then head over to our desktop area and download this wallpaper for yourself. Special thanks to Mark at Innovative Systems Inc for making this happen.
Finally, and most importantly, the Top Thrill Dragster Video is now online and available for download. Enjoy it. As always take the larger one if possible - the smaller one loses a lot of nice detail. I’ll have TTD pics online in a day or two. I also wanted to thank those of you buying coasterimage.com merchandise. This weekend we had a bump in sales and your support will help keep things like the Top Thrill Dragster video available to all. Pass the word along if you like what you find here!
Crazy Trip, Ruined Negatives
May 23, 2003Not an update in the sense of “Hey! Look! I added sumpin’”, just keeping everyone up to date. (I’m cool like that) I know I promised BGW pics this weekend but things have changed. We’re now making an insane weekend trip to Cedar Point. So no scanning pics until we get back. What does this mean for you? Well, if everything cooperates, it means a Top Thrill Dragster video early next week with an updated CP gallery to follow shortly after. Then the BGW pics should roll in next weekend - even though my developer ruined one set of negatives (the nicest set of pics even, I see what I can do with the prints - ugh) Then we’re off to get more photos. June 1st sees us heading south for some hot, uncensored Carowinds action, a return to SFOG and a side trip to Lake Winnie. But that’s looking too far ahead for now. I also finished doing minor updates (technical crap, photo text/descriptions, etc) so I guess things are theoretically updated. Check back next Tuesday for the new stuff, then keep coming back because it’s going to be an update extravaganza.
Pacific Park Pictures
May 15, 2003A bunch of minor “technical updates”, most notably this very page your looking at. The update page was getting huge, so I broke it off. The older updates can be found with the link at the bottom of this page. This was originally intented to be a boring list of updates but over the last few months has turned into some weird variation of a blog. A random stream of coaster consciousness if you will. Also some other little updates around the site, but nothing major. Next gallery update is coming in about a week with Busch Gardens Williamsburg being added. Oh yeah, I also added a little Pacific Park Mini-Gallery.
Six Flags Magic Mountain Pictures
May 10, 2003The Six Flags Magic Mountain Photo Gallery is now online. Like I said before a few of the pictures are less than perfect. I waited until late in the day to get pics and some are very dark looking. Overall I’m happy with what I got and you should be too.
Also you may have noticed ads appearing on the site over the last few days. I know, I know - don’t say it. Here’s the deal: You guys took my bandwidth, chewed it up, spit it out, peed on it, kicked it twice, mocked it, threw it back in my face and stomped off like king of the world. I’m not complaining, the stuff is here for the taking. The whole point of this site is to share. One of the things I’m most proud to share and make available are the videos. They’re also the bane of many sites. Most sites that aren’t on a school server or similar unlimited free service get eaten alive or are pay to play. I want to avoid both and will. I have some ideas for the future but they aren’t ready to be implimented yet so the ads are a quick band-aid to remedy the problem. Don’t worry, they’ll always be free - in fact if things go as planned, I’ll be able to offer a lot more at a time in the future. But that is later. Right now I’m looking at a ton of visitors grabbing these videos. Let me throw some numbers out at you. I put the Superman video online on April 18th. Here we are less than one month later and it’s been downloaded more than 2000 times! Do the math - 11MB x more than 2000 downloads = mucho bandwidth consumption. That doesn’t include the smaller version of that video or either version of the other 4 videos currently available. To put it bluntly about 75 to 80 gigs of bandwidth was used in the last 3 weeks. That sort of thing happens for free very rarely without something having to be done to compensate. The site costs money. The more popular it gets, the more money it costs. Sadly it’s the way life works. If the ads are that great of an annoyance (I’ve done everything possible to reduce that annoyance) then I apologize but if you want the videos, the ads will have to stay for now. I got to recoup something. So for the summer, bear with this little “fix” and keep enjoying those videos (and the photos, of course - but they don’t comsume nearly as much of the site’s resources and get viewed way more) because we got plenty more coming. Look for the Busch Gardens Williamsburg photo gallery to go online next, with Six Flags America and Knoebel’s shortly behind.
