Links
B5 Related
Babylon Podcast  Weekly podcasts discussing Babylon 5.  Nicely designed and a good idea.

The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5  The oldest and most comprehensive fanbased B5 website.

B5 Technical Manual  Different strokes from different folks.

A Visit to Babylon 5  A growing technical section along with nice images, etc. decorate this growing and continually improving site.

Hyperspace  The prettiest Babylon 5 website.

Stellar Geography in the Babylon 5 Galaxy  Contains an excellent study of the locations of planets in B5, as well as commentary on the scope of events in the show.  This is my kind of work!

Earthforce Naval Inteligence  Interesting and nicely designed.

Voltayre's Encyclopedia Xenobiologica  Mirror of an old fan favorite.

Babylon 5 Scripts  The actual published scripts from JMS!

JMS News  Archived usenet posts from the man himself.

Useful Resources
Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards  Document by NASA on asteroid and comet collisions.

Nuclear Resources  Information about nuclear weapons.

Solar System Collisions  CGI-based calculator.  Fun for quick calculations concerning asteroid impacts.

MILNET Nuclear Weapons FAQ  by Carey Sublette.  Excellent source of information about nuclear weapons.

Webelements  Periodic table online.

Speedguide  Has tweaks and patches to maximize your broadband experience.

Nicky Page's Digital Solutions  The best guides to digital video processing I've ever seen.

Other SciFi
What Warriors Will Stand Homepage  Hosted here at Babtech, this is a brief introduction to an original novel, What Warriors Will Stand.  This was written by a lifelong friend of mine.  The book is very exciting and highly recommended.

The Ultimate Star Wars vs Star Trek Database  Entertaining contrast of the respective technologies.  Maintained by one of my close friends - we go way back.  One of my favorite people.  I have contributed a lot to this document.

Star Wars Technical Commentaries  The site that started it all for us "technical" fans.  I can't say enough.  You must see it!  I have known Curtis for years, and he taught me much of what I know about SciFi analysis and maintaining a website.  He is also the author of Star Wars Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross-Sections.  If you look in the credits of that book, you will find the names of most of our staff here at Babtech.  One of my favorite people in the whole world, and a good friend.

Stardestroyer.net  Another friend of mine.  Very colorful and entertaining commentaries on both Star Wars and Star Trek technologies.  Michael and I go way back, and he has also taught me much of what I know today about more than just SciFi - things about life in general too.  One of my favorite people in the whole world.

The Furry Conflict  A creative parody and critical take off of Star Trek and Star Wars.  Very nicely designed and easy on the eyes.

starshipmodeler.com  Self explanatory.  Very impressive.

Turbolaser Commentaries  The best website ever.  Under any topic.  And the author is a really, really cool, smart, handsome, sexy, wise, intelligent, fearless, dynamic, quick-witted, funny, fine young hunk of a man!  :)

Tools
Virtualdub  I love this program.  If you don't care about adding transitions, overlays, titles and things, but you want a reliable program for basic processing, this is the program for you.  It has very good capture support, you can trim clips, add or remove audio tracks, extract individual frames, inverse telecine, deinterlace, recompress, resize, crop, etc.  It has powerful frameserving capabilities.  And this is one of few programs that has a separate option to sync audio and video.  Other programs are geared toward changing your video (transitions, overlays, titles), while Virtualdub allows you to clip out scenes or frames from your video.  Or clean up and improve your video quality.  I could talk about this program a lot, but the best way to tell you is that it has become invaluable in SciFi analysis, and it is free.  If you are into video capture or processing, get it now!

Avisynth  No windows, no GUI, click on the files and nothing happens.  Avisynth is based on Virtualdub's frameserver, but has more options.  Because there is no GUI, you have to type scripts for instuctions.  But never fear, the instructions are very much in English, and take no real programming knowledge.  It can read anything that Windows Media Player can play, and frameserve it to another, more conventional application.  I find it most useful as a frontend to other programs, to open files that I normally could not.  It makes things that used to be difficult or impossible easy.  For example, I can convert a PAL video to 29.97fps with a simple script that takes no longer than this:

AviSource("filename.avi")
ConvertFPS(29.97)
save as "filename.avs" (quotes and all), and open in Virtualdub, RealProducerG2, TMPGEnc, or whatever I wish (except Quicktime).  The framerate will not only be changed, but the audio will remain in perfect sync without changing the pitch.

VirtualVCR  Similar to Virtualdub's video capture utility, but this one is designed for WDM drivers (Windows 2000, XP).  Also maintains audio/video sync differently.  Virtualdub (above) adjusts the video framerate to match the audio (which can result in dropped frames), while VirtualVCR resamples the audio to match the video.  This is only important for long video captures, as short captures that are out of sync by a few decimal places of a second will never appear out of sync.  But a hour-long capture may work its way out of sync, because you are using one device to capture video and another (soundcard) to capture audio.  In SciFi analysis, it is most important to preserve the video frames and exact framerate than the audio, so I use VirtualVCR for nearly all long captures.  I have used it to digitize entire Babylon 5 episodes at high resolution without dropping a single frame, maintaining a perfect 29.97fps, and maintaining perfect audio/video sync.  I then use Virtualdub (above) and Divx (below) to burn high quality back-ups to CDR.  This program is free and highly recommended.

Divx  Very good video codec.  Provides high quality picture with high compression.  Very popular, and I use it a lot.

Quicktime  Very good player and compressor.  Will play a wide variety of media.  With the Pro version, you can compress video and/or audio.  Everyone needs a copy.

Realplayer  The best audio compression available for internet use.  I say this because a lot of people are still using dialup modems, and don't care to wait 20 minutes for a single MP3 file just to hear the news.  Or a single clip of info from a SciFi series.  Realplayer allows nearly instant streaming even to slow connections, and still offers decent quality.  I use RealProducerG2 to compress files in this format.  The files end up very small, which not only allows quick download, but also puts little strain on bandwidth.  For example, a 5 megabyte wave file might compress to 400 kilobytes in MP3, or 63 kilobytes in Realmedia format with comparable quality (I just tried it).  That is a lot of difference when you have a 28.8 dialup!  Just because I have a cable modem doesn't mean that our readers do.  We want everyone to be able to enjoy the internet, so almost all of our audio files are encoded in Realmedia format.  The newest player can play nearly anything, and if you look around the advertisements, you can always find a link to the free version.

Cyberlink  The only software I've used from this company is PowerDVD.  This program is very useful when making still images from DVDs.  Instead of a digitizer, which converts an analog signal to digital, this program grabs frames directly from the digital information on the disc.  This provides the highest quality images I know how to make.

Netscape  I use Composer for almost all HTML editing.  I know some basic HTML code, but when using tables, lots of images, etc., I find it much easier to go WYSIWYG.

Opera  I do most of my browsing with Opera.  It is fast, free, and has a popup blocker.

Symantec  I use Norton Systemworks, and it does a great job keeping XP running.  GoBack can get you out of a bad situation quickly and easily.  Highly recommended.

WS-FTP  Very utilitarian FTP program.

Miscellaneous
Ted Collins' homepage  Ted is one of the members of the Babtech staff.

Audio Review  Place where consumers can rate sound equipment they have owned or tried.

JBL  I love JBL speakers.  I shopped around quite a while before I decided on JBL's Studio Series speakers.  I've tried them side-by-side with other top brands, and I've never looked back.  They use a lot of the same technology and drivers in these affordable home speakers that they use in their professional equipment.  Audio equipment is debated as hotly as SciFi "versus debates," but whatever your personal preference is, JBL is the unquestioned world leader in professional audio.  You can find them in 70% of movie theaters (even higher percentage of THX theaters), most recording studios, big name concerts, all major broadcasting networks, etc.  In many Hollywood homes, you can find JBL systems costing $160,000!  JBL leads the world in professional audio equipment, and in the home they are what Bose claims to be.

Audio Heritage  History of James B. Lansing, the man who put sound into movies in 1928.  JBL, linked above, was his company.  This man is to speakers as Henry Ford is to automobiles.

The Digital Bits  DVD reviews, upcoming releases, rumors and news.

USS Alabama  Homepage of the battleship USS Alabama Memorial Park.

al.com  Alabama football news.

Casebook: Jack the Ripper  Informative commentaries on this great mystery.

DVDPlanet  I buy most of my DVDs here.  They have great customer support and an exhaustive collection.  The search feature is a bit buggy, but you can search by actors and directors in addition to titles.  The unfortunate truth is that most people don't know that they are committing a terrible sin by purchasing movies all chopped up, I mean, in the misnamed, so-called "full screen."  Until then, Wal-mart will carry that crap, and I have to buy DVDs online.

Gulf Coast Audio Video Calibrations  This is the guy who calibrated my home theater system.  You paid thousands of dollars on a fancy huge TV, and think it looks darned good?  You're wrong.  What you are looking at is pleasing to your eye, but looks little like what the movie makers intended.  Your colors are off, your focus may be off, your geometry may be off.  You aren't seeing what George Lucas saw until you have an ISF calibration.  Period.

Jamie Wood  I can tell it without breaking confidentiality rules, because the family published it on the internet.  Jamie was my patient in the hospital for about a month.  We bonded quickly and strongly.  Far more than just a former patient, she is my close friend.  Do me a personal favor, and take a look at the website.

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