In The Beginning...
...I was 17 years old and had a lot of time on my hands.
theLogBook.com has a longer history than many readers may realize. The
origins of this site lie in a plain text file called TNGLOGBK.TXT, a simple Star Trek: The Next Generation episode guide
in an easy-to-read format (inspired by the format of Jean-Marc Lofficier's
Doctor Who Programme Guide). It was originally created in the no-frills
text editor of the ProTERM terminal program on an Apple II computer. It went
over well in the Fort Smith, Arkansas BBS community when first introduced in
1989. Then it went national via the OGG-NET mail/file forwarding network, and
when the host BBS, Pseudocode, turned into a PC-based system called Jackalope
Junction, the LogBook was unleashed on a worldwide audience.
People actually liked this thing I originally created as a reference tool for
myself.
Updates started out monthly and then went quarterly as new guides were added
(the first episode guides to follow the Next Generation LogBook covered Blake's 7 and Classic Star Trek). The TXT file became a ZIP
file to accomodate the new guides. Deep Space
Nine, Babylon 5 and Red Dwarf LogBooks followed in 1993.
In mid-1994, I started to make plans for a printed version of the LogBook.
It was originally planned as a newsletter taking up both sides of a single sheet
of paper; news and rumors about upcoming episodes would be printed on the front,
and the latest LogBook episode guide entries would appear on the back.
It didn't quite work that way. Thanks to Fidonet, I had tons of news to
print - and very little space in which to print it. The LogBook 'zine bloated
from a single-sheeter to four sheets to six sheets, where it remained most of
the time. It was laid out on an unwieldly DOS desktop publishing program called
EnVision Publisher, which met two requirements for me: it was dirt cheap, and I
could use keyboard commands for everything (vital since my mouse was
broken). The LogBook 'zine played a major part in my gradually going
absolutely, completely, desperately broke at the age of 23.
A History In Print
Volume One, #5
(December 1994)
A brief jump to ten pages, with news of Tim Russ joining the cast of Voyager,
the infamous Siskel-and-Ebert-style review of Generations, and a
panic piece about nobody running Voyager in the Fort Smith area. (I jumped the
gun on that fact, actually...someone did show Voyager.)
Archived articles
available: Next Generation In Review
part 3, Star Trek Generations
review |
Volume One, #8
(March 1995)
Back to eight pages with pieces on VR.5, TekWar, and Blake's 7. The cover story
was a teaser for a local convention benefiting a terminally ill girl, but the
convention was later cancelled under some suspicious circumstances.
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Volume One, #9
(April 1995)
The incredibly expensive (though nice) full-color artwork cover actually had a
decent little 'zine inside. This was also the LogBook's last full-color cover.
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Volume One, #10
(May 1995)
So much for RoxCon. News of a rumored upcoming Doctor Who revival on Fox, some
series renewal/cancllation news, pieces on seaQuest and Earth 2, and Robert
Heyman's profile of the Die Hard films. At the bottom of page 1:
a little blurb about the launch of a LogBook web site on a University of
Arkansas server...
Archived articles available: Inside Them, Zordon: The Face Of Evil
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In the end - September 1995 to be exact - the LogBook 'zine was put to sleep.
The combination of astronomical printing costs and a very small subscriber base
didn't bode well for its future, and I had put myself in serious financial
jeopardy by carrying on as long as I did. But the 'zine would live on via the
net.
A History In Electrons
The old LogBook web site logo, used from 1996 to 1998, was actually a video
grab; it was a 3-D still generated by a Video Toaster on an Amiga 4000 at work.
This logo was used for a long time, and the font is still in use.
The Text File
Days
(1989-1996)
bubblegum.uark.edu/~cbray/logbook
(Fall 1995)
The original LogBook site - or "homepage" as the graphic proclaimed - borrowed
its logo and look from the 'zine, of which it was intended to be an online
archive. The main menu was a mammoth image map which -
in the day before 56k modems, DSL and T3 lines - took ages to load.
www.execpc.com/~logbook
(October 1998)
Yeeee-ikes! The image map menu on the left side of the screen was a huge
file (as was the GIF animation header). The site had been on ExecPC in
Wisconsin for about nine months at this point - but was still getting lots of
visits.
www.theLogBook.com
(Summer 1999-Spring 2001)
Once moved to its own domain, theLogBook.com went through any number of design
changes. I refer to this one as "v2.0," or "the colored block
design."
www.theLogBook.com
(Now)
Ahhhh...this is more like it. A unified design across every page of the site,
with plenty of options to differentiate between sections by background graphics
and other features.
Click here to see what the press has said
about theLogBook.com, or here for a brief history of the
site's artwork style.
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