1997 What's New Entries

1997 What's New Entries

12/19/97 & 12/26/97 - Tom and Nan's daughter Heather came home for Christmas on the 20th. She lives aboard her 23' gaff rigged, red sailed yawl named Billiken. There is a sketch of Billiken under sail among some islands at the bottom of our lead page. .... For a holiday present macnaughtongroup.com gave itself new site development software. So will we be putting lots of sound, video, and animation on the site? Not really, it will remain mostly profusely illustrated text. What we will do is continue to try to make the designs, information, and (increasingly) the materials and hardware you need more readily available to you. .... At the request of a reader we have added the accommodations drawing and some commentary on it to the information on the Crown Jewel 36 .... Again we add the new front page of the Quoddy Tides which gives a little insight into the area every two weeks. Again let me remind everybody that the incredible real estate deals advertised in this paper won't last forever. Prices will soon start to rise fast as they have in other areas of the state. .... On our Marine Publishing page we have added another book under works from other publishers, Herreshoff's Compleat Cruiser. Everybody interested in cruising and indeed living aboard should read this for its sensible exposition the proper enjoyment of the water. .... We have added in the Yacht Design School section a rough draft of the bibliography for the course work. This may be of interest to many people interested in the small ships. If you cannot find any of these books we can usually get them for you. .... Recently we've been doing more and more custom casting of bronze hardware for our readers, although we have not yet formally put any information on the site about it. Anybody with hardware problems might want to use the feedback function to talk to us.

12/12/97 - As Hanukah and Christmas approach many of our readers will probably find themselves hesitating to buy plans or books for themselves for fear of not having enough for gifts for others. It certainly is difficult to buy them for others. However, if you have a member of your family who is asking you for suggestions for presents for you, remember the items you have looked at on our site. Many conversations with spouses or spousal equivalents over the years have indicated that buying our plans and books assures them that you are getting something that you really want. .... We've been getting email from people on how they can figure out what it will cost to have new boats built. This caused us to realize that we had a nice article from many years ago on how to do this figuring so we have added a somewhat updated reprint of this to our marine publishing section. It is called Estimating Construction Costs and should allow you to realistically appraise what it will cost you to have any particular boat built with a few hours of enjoyable figuring. .... Also again this issue we have another front page of the Quoddy Tides. There is nice news on reviving the rail line to Calais and a nice article on honors bestowed on Jim and Sandra Pottle for their tree farming work.

12/05/97 - This week we have lightly edited the information in our project logs on the Oscar Tybring. This interesting Colin Archer designed and built 1895 sailing rescue craft is well worth reading about. There is a short history on the page about her. .... Since we were working with the Tybring page we also, at a reader's request added some pictures to the page on Eric, which is a smaller version of the Oscar Tybring designed by William Atkin. We'd love to build an Eric in our shop. She'd be a great project and is a wonderful boat to sail.

11/28/97 - Again this week we have a new Quoddy Tides front page. A very important story being that the small textile mill that closed has been acquired by the City and will be leased to Creative Apparel a provider of military protective clothing. .... Our thanks to a reader for pointing out that there were no links on the catalog contents page to go back to previous navigation pages. The problem being that someone clicking in from a search engine wouldn't have a clear path back to the site's navigation bar screens. .... Twice in the last week people who have been referred to our site because they had been told it had lots of material on subjects they were interested in emailed that they couldn't find such material easily. This is what the search function on the navigation bar is for. This will allow searching by any word or phrase you wish. Be sure to try all varients such as "living aboard", "live aboard" or "living afloat", etc. We hope all our readers had a happy Thanksgiving.

11/21/97 - This week we have added a rather fascinating opportunity to get a limited edition copy of a book that will come out in early 2000 through W.W. Norton. Written by Lucia Knight and our own Dan MacNaughton, this book is the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Yacht Designers. It covers the work of all known yacht designers, in all materials, past and present. This limited edition will be boxed, individually signed and numbered, and have a tipped in limitation leaf. .... Last week we mentioned that in order to free up more time for designing, special projects, engineering work, etc. we might be willing to sell our hauling and storage operation. The price we came up with at which we'd be willing to part with it is $295,000. More information is available under future plans in the investments section. .... The Yacht Design School drafting and surveying tools list is now posted in the school section and an order form will be available shortly.

11/14/97 - Anybody interested in owning a boat yard should read our updated section on our future plans. Basically we would be willing to spin off the boat yard and boat repair facility to separate ownership to allow us concentrate more on our yacht design, engineering, testing, technical writing and prototype work. We'll have a price set by next weekend, we think. .... A friend of this web site told us that we should remind visitors that there are no animations, no sound clips, no video and no frames on this web site. In fact we have done nothing here to be "awesome". This means you can have a lot more fun with the extensive reading material by easily printing it out to read lying in bed or take with you on a trip, etc. This is OK with us as long as you aren't supplying copies to others. This is all copyrighted stuff after all. Will we ever use any of the above extras? Of course we will if they really will provide you with more information. For instance we've had so many questions about caulking I'd like to do a video clip or animation of the process that I could tell people to look at. It is information that's the key decision component here. .... In the Investments section we have added a brief page on the Victorian brick bank building for sale in downtown Eastport. We'd buy it ourselves if we had the money. .... We have also added a Voyager 30 accommodations plan and profile to our catalog in the design section. .... This is also a week for a new Quoddy Tides front page. If you're interested in a wonderful place to live with very low prices for housing and business buildings you really ought to subscribe and read the real estate ads!

11/07/97 - Alright I admit it, sometimes these update dates are pure fantasy. We update every week sometime on Friday .... theoretically. Actually it is pretty variable. Sorry. Those of you who have asked for prices for Bufflehead hulls and decks will find the Bufflehead page updated with this information. In light these calculations I have also updated the estimated cost of the idea design Hero for those who are interested in freighter houseboats.

10/31/97 - A very nice gentleman with many kind things to say about our web site emailed us from New Zealand. However, he did point out that we were difficult to find on the search engines and gave the search criteria he was using. This was boat designers this caused us to review the site for common possible search criteria that we hadn't included. We ended up adding about six or eight hidden comment terms to make it easier for people to find us. This brings up a good point. If you have been looking for us or conducting searches where you would expect us to come up, and we didn't, for heaven's sake let us know what terms we have neglected to put in that would make it easy to find us. There have been a few minor corrections and expansions on the publishing page. We also spent a good deal of time sending out more press releases to the boating related magazines. Since there are about 270 magazines that we know of in the world this is taking a lot of time. This should help us build more and more support for this site. We're sorry we haven't actually added a lot of new material this week but it is a busy time for us with the fall haulout season still going on. Especially trying is a severe shortage in this area of really skilled workers. If anybody out there is a skilled boat builder who wants to live in Eastport, Maine we need at least one or two more people this winter.

10/24/97 - Again, a new Quoddy Tides front page. To this we have added (at the bottom) the ability to send email to the editors on any subject. At the request of a reader we have started putting links in this What's New page so that you can go directly to the new material. Our only concern is that you really need to go down through everything or you'll miss a lot of stuff. As a matter of fact if there's anything you're interested in that you're not sure is on the site use the search function. It may well be there. Do let us know what you need. After 30 years of yacht designing, years of boat yard work and a life time of sailing we'll probably be able to help you with about anything to do with boats.

10/17/97 - This week, at the request of a customer, we added a quick page in the publishing section with some of the contents that will be in our upcoming Yacht Design Elements book. Anyone wishing to be notified by email when this book is ready should drop us a line expressing interest in the book. We have also added a page linked to the Marine Publishing page on Marks' Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers. This book has been one of the most astoundingly useful books on all phases of engineering for the last seventy some years. It is available through us on special order and has been added to our publishing order form. We have also added an additional book to the list of those we are working on. This is Professional Wooden Boat Repair Techniques.

10/10/97 - In the investment section we have finally put in a section on our future plans this may make interesting reading for those wondering where we may be headed. For those interested in investing in the marine industry it gives you some idea of what we may need for capital. However anybody thinking in terms of investment should seriously read the legal information at the bottom of the investment opportunities navigation page. This week we've sent some more press releases to magazines and other web sites. Again, if you have any desire to spread the word, please do so. The latest Quoddy Tides front page is in the products section. Remember the Quoddy Tides is the way to keep up on Eastport.

10/03/97 - This week we have added brief descriptions of our completed publications in the marine publishing section. These should make it easier to see if these books and articles will serve your purposes. Remember, if you order any of these and find you don't want them we can always take them back and refund your money so it's pretty low risk. We are also continuing to send out our press release on the web site to every new publication we can find and to every site on a related subject. However we have very limited time to spend on this. We only spend an hour a week at most. This means that our best bet for making our site useful to the largest number of people is if those who use the site recommend it to others on their own pages and suggest it as a link to other page producers.

09/26/97 - Again this week there's a new Quoddy Tides front page under the products section. Remember, the real estate ads in this paper can get you a really nice house at a price you won't believe. This is still an area where anyone who can read and write can get an entry level job and buy themselves a home in a couple of years. Two people have noted that we hadn't provided an online form for enrolling in our Yacht Design School that has been corrected. See the school section. We have also added the lesson contents for lesson three to the material on our Yacht Design School. We have noticed that people don't seem to be using the discussion section yet. In an attempt to make this easier to use we have modified the instructions. If anyone out there has any suggestions to make this more active let me know. So far most people with questions or comments seem more oriented toward private email.

09/19/97 - This week we've added an accommodations plan to the Hero idea design. We've also extensively re-worked the accompanying text as well. Most of the rest of our web activity has been promotional as we try to make more people aware of our site. We have revised our order forms slightly to make it easier to either order over the Internet, or print the form and mail it to us if you prefer.

09/12/97 - Those of you who looked at the Hero pages under the idea designs page in the design section may want to look at them again. I have modified the text a little and added a rough estimate of the cost to have us weld up a hull, deck, and wheelhouse for her. At some point I'm going to add an interior plan view so look for a note here to that effect. Under Eastport Economic Development Forum in the investments section we finally have all the notes from the July 30 meeting typed in. When we have committee reports in hand we will be holding another large meeting. We will try to get committee reports on here before the meeting is scheduled. Also this week there is another front page from the Quoddy Tides. The link is in the Eastport Products and Service section. We're trending into fall here at the boat yard. A new sign should be going up on the front of our yard office shortly. Maybe we'll put a picture of it on this site sometime.

09/05/97 - In the idea designs section, reachable from the design button on the navigation bar, we've added a hull and deck profile for the Lochlann 46 and also an accommodations drawing. If you like the Northern European canoe sterned types, this may be for you. Under the yard section on the navigation bar you will come to a link to a page for Merle B. Grindle Agency, which if your vessel is registered in Maine, or your documented vessel has a Maine hailport is a great oufit to have insure your vessel. This week we have put a comment line on the page we did for them to allow the search engines to find them more easily.

08/29/97 - This week I've added Hero a 33' live aboard freighter to the idea designs section. It's a fun concept. Nannette really wants one! In the brokerage section we've added links on the Amphibicon to information on the class, on the designers and on the specific one we are brokering at the moment. In the idea designs section there is some "teaser" text on our Lochlann 46 preliminaries which I intended to add today but will have to wait until September 5th.

08/22/97 - Under the idea designs section in the MacNaughton Associates Designs section we have put in a page on the Lynx 40, a passenger carrying catamaran. The new Quoddy Tides page is in this week. As always it brings you a least a peek at what is going on in our area. The print edition has Dan's every-other-issue column View from the Water. Non-subscribers will have to wait until he does a "collection" of these columns.

08/08/97 - Just to make a token addition to the Yacht Design School material this week we have added the lesson contents page for lesson 2, Preliminary Design. We have typed in the notes from the flip pad of the July 30th meeting of the Eastport Economic Development Forum. Again we recommend this section, under Investments or Products, to everyone interested in the Eastport area. There will be more information added by the 15th on this meeting. Shortly thereafter there should be information on the next meeting. We have added more information on Passagemaker plans pricing to the description of the design and to the stock plans order form. At a reader's request I have added particulars and a brief word on construction to the Crown Jewel page. We have also added an isometric of the Sovereign lines to the stock plans in the catalog, which is accessible from MacNaughton Associates Designs. This is also one of two weeks each month when the latest Quoddy Tides newspaper comes out. You will find the link to their front page under Eastport Products & Services or products on the navigation bar.

07/25/97 - Take a look at the new Quoddy Tides front page this week. The link is in the Products section. Checking this regularly will give you a good idea of what's going on in our area. This page violates our rule of keeping under 20 seconds loading time .... and trying to keep to 15 seconds. This actually takes 32 seconds to load but it is the closest thing you can get to the front page of the Quoddy Tides without subscribing. We do recommend subscribing. There are a lot of fascinating articles and the low prices in the real estate ads are real eye openers for those looking for a great sailing area to live in and also for those who can envision living here and working on computers over the phone lines. New on Harbor Gallery Page this week. Nannette has added two new images with her paintings Ferry Landing and Boynton & Water Streets. She has also included information about where you can go this summer to view her originals, now on display in four galleries in southern Maine. She proudly announces the sale of two original works (Ship at Breakwater and 209 Water St) to corporate buyer MBNA (worlds 2nd largest lender through credit cards). These two works were sold through McGrath Dunham Gallery in Castine, Maine where Nannette has transparancies on file. As the rush of summer season placement of her work is settling down now, she is back at the "painting board" and happily working on her painting of The Brother's an offshore island hereabouts. She reminds her viewers that she has not forgotten her promise to get the Diary of a Painting going.

07/18/97 - This week under the Area Products & Services section or products on the navigation bar, we've added a link to a page we will create and maintain for The Quoddy Tides newspaper. This is the very best way for people interested in the Eastport Area to find out about what's going on and how low the real estate asking prices are, etc. Every two weeks, when the Tides comes out, we will put the whole front page, pictures and text, into this page. There is also subscription information as well. The direct link address is http://www.macnaughtongroup.com/tides.htm

07/11/97 - This week in the catalog, which can be found through the yard or design sections, we've added profile views of almost all the remaining stock designs. The Passagemaker 28, Simplicity 25, andTwilight 12 foot sailing pram have profiles now. To the Voyager 30 voyaging yacht information we have added both a profile view and a perspective view. We really should scale these down slightly as they load slowly. However the reproduction is pretty good. Juliette is on the stock plans list as a profile. However this is again a pieced together scan of a large pencil drawing reduced down. This is the best we can do at present without photographic reductions. The MacNaughton 48 profile is in, sans rig. We never did more than rough rig drawings for this vessel. Everybody seems to want something different for a rig in this size range. We now also have profiles for the Miss Congeniality 19 foot motorsailor and the Miss Congeniality 38 foot lobster boat type. This is our adaptation of the lobster boat hull. It is designed to run flatter, throw less wake, and use less fuel than is normal in this type without sacrificing seakeeping ability. As a matter of fact the only stock plan that doesn't have at least a profile on there is the Firedrake 60 foot clipper bowed steam yacht. Next we will try to make sure that every design with which it is appropriate has an accommodations plan as well. In the "Early Summer" edition of Cruising the Maine Coast Magazine there is a review of our website. The magazine itself has a website at http://www.by-the-sea.com/cruising.html which you might like to look at. While we're on the subject of reviews: We've gotten some very nice comments from people who've visited this site. Some people have taken the time to suggest enhancements to the site most of which we have already incorporated so do let us know what you'd like to see.

07/04/97 - A pretty foggy morning here today. The parade was great with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Shriners, Bagpipe Bands, the Navy ship in, etc. This week in the stock plans section of our catalog, under yard or design, we have added a profile view of the Merganser 40 commercial tug. We've also added a profile and an accommodations plan for the Silver Gull 28 as well. We also updated the text a little bit to tell more about the unique and very simple construction inherent in this type. The Surprise 18 Pinky schooner has her profile in the catalog now as well, as does the Surprise 24, the Surprise 36 and Surprise 48. If you've always wanted a pinky schooner or sloop this is where to find them. All of these are a little fuzzy since they were scanned in directly from large pencil drawings at considerable reduction to get them on the page. If we had reduced them first and then scanned them they would be sharper.

06/27/97 - You will note that in the Harbor Gallery Page Nannette has added some notes. Her summer season of lining up shows is in full swing. This has prevented her from developing the Diary of a Painting page. Please check in with her about mid-August to find out more about the current painting. This is the last week until the first of August that we are likely to be putting on information about the Eastport Economic Development Forum. (See the Investment section) This week we are adding the agenda for the June 30th meeting and a generalized version of the Letter of Invitation to the July 30th all day meeting. If you have an interest in Eastport you are welcome to attend. We've updated the yard rate sheet for the July 1997 to June 1998 season. There has been a small rise in the labor rate of slightly over 6%. There have been no other rises. We remain the lowest priced full service operation in the area. Under the stock plans section in our catalog under design or yard we have mentioned under our Bufflehead 22 tug design that we are working on supplying kits with steel hulls. Email us for more information. Again in this same area we have added a rather murky reduction of our Evening Hush 32 houseboat barge drawings to the page on this design.

06/20/97 - A local airport enthusiast has pointed out that I was wrong on the exact runway length of the Eastport Airport and offered more exact measurements which I have incorporated into the information on the airport page under the Investments section. I hope that the airport section of this site will continue to expand. Again under the Eastport Economic Development Forum pages you will find the latest information. This is the Discussion Paper to be considered at the June 24th meeting of the forum. This is the best up to the minute psychological profile of the City of Eastport and its thoughts about what the City is and where it should be headed. This is very valuable information if you intend to visit, retire or invest here. In the boat yard most owners are getting their boats launched on time despite a lot of rainy days this spring which has made working outside difficult. We are just finishing up major upgrades to a small workboat and will be spending most of July and August on major structural upgrades to three boats in the 30 foot plus range.

06/13/97 - Happy 27th wedding anniversary to Tom & Nan, today. There is more information added this week under the Eastport Economic Development Forum. You will find there the complete draft to date of the Discussion Paper to be presented to the June 24th general meeting. There is a final meeting to edit this draft on the 18th. In the boat yard: We are really working hard on a number of projects simultaneously. These include major structural upgrades to a small workboat, new tanks, stern decks and other items for a trawler yacht, a new stern, stern framing and topsides repairs to a 30' Chris Craft, and continuing work on Bastet. We have enough people right at the moment to make reasonable progress on all projects. We have a reasonable hope of a moderate amount of restoration work right through the summer. We'll hopefully be adding more to our catalog illustrations next so keep checking in for more "stuff".

05/06/97 - This week we have posted the beginning of the organization of the Eastport Economic Development Forum notes into a Discussion Paper. This is your chance to see a small city (1,818 people) in action determining it's future. You can find this through links in the Products section and the Investments section. We have also increased the font size on the home page at the request of a reader with a non-Explorer browser that doesn't treat the smaller font well. It comes out too fine. I hope this helps. Work at the yard continues to be brisk enough to be a problem keeping everything going fast enough. Nevertheless we have just enough people to make some progress on each project though schedules are slipping a bit. We pretty much try to guarantee price and quality. To hold the line on both of these sometimes time has to slip.

05/30/97 - Things have been really hopping at the boat yard this week. We're writing this quickly as we have to get down to the shop this afternoon and fix a Honda outboard as everybody else is too busy. This week we have added the raw notes from the meeting of the Eastport Economic Development Forum. While this is on here to make it as accessible as possible to Eastport residents, anyone interested in the area will find it an interesting collection of ideas about what the community's ideals, problems and proposed directions are.

05/23/97 - Under idea designs this week we've added a 44' profile to the DL100 idea design series. We've also made some changes in the accompanying text. Hopefully sometime soon we'll get to do up some lines for this type. Then we can include some nice perspective views. Under the project logs in the Eastport Boat Yard & Supply section we've added a nice pen & ink drawing of the Oscar Tybring and some additional information and history on her remarkable career. We'll try to add a little history of the repairs we did to her to help get her back to Norway. Suddenly we seem to be in the busy season at the yard with a definite shortage of good craftsmen in relation to the work for the first time in awhile. We have a lot of material waiting to be added to this site but be sure to let us know anything you need that we aren't supplying.

05/16/97 - Those of you who look in on the DL100 series this week in our Idea Designs section will find we've added a little more on rig thoughts on the DL100-44 page. We've also refined the displacement estimates and cost estimates a little on the various sizes. They are now a little heavier and a little more money. Also we've added three more boats to the idea designs list. One is the Lynx 40 catamaran which we have done up preliminaries for and will put some drawings on shortly. The second is the Flying Fisherman, which is a radical departure from the current crop of sportsfishermen which have "evolved" themselves into something of a deadend. The third idea design is another one of our tugs the Osprey 26 which has a link to a page with a profile view. Under stock designs we've added a slightly fuzzy profile of the Crown Jewel 36 and under the general descriptive material Tugs, Barges & Freighters have led off with a drawing of the Bufflehead 22 done by our daughter Heather. On the Bantam 18 tug page we have put four photos of the tugs in action rather than drawings because we happen to have some really good pictures of this design. On the Evening Song 25 page we've added a profile and an accommodations plan for the vessel, which will give you some idea what a "houseboat barge" seems to want to look like. We've added a Bufflehead 22 profile, accommodations plan, and an isometric of her lines. In the Silver Gull series we've added profile and top views of the Silver Gull 14 pulling boat. We keep finding situations in which our linking isn't adequate or correct. Please report any frustrations via "feedback" on the navigation bar. We intend the site to be very easy to get around in. We've also performed several other small updates to make the site work better. We have been emailing boating magazines in the United States with our press releases today. Hopefully this will, later in the year, provide more people with the knowledge of how to get to our site. However a lot more magazines haven't been contacted than have. We've already heard from Cruising the Maine Coast Magazine that our press release will be in their next issue.

05/09/97 - For some reason we seem to have been adding drawings to the Idea Designs section first. We've added a profile sketch of the Freya 12' keel catboat and a little bit of commentary. We have some rough lines on computer for this design and will try to remember to put them on this coming week. We have also added the profile and a little commentary on our 60' version of the DL100 concept. Sometime when I get a little time we will rough out some lines for this vessel and put some perspective views of them in this section. We've started putting in the catalog illustrations for the stock plans. These are scrounged from old bits and pieces of promotional work and so some are pretty poor reproductions. We'll try to keep improving appearances. So far we've put in profiles of the Farthing, Shilling, Penny, Sovereign, Silver Gull 40 and Puffin. We've also put in a sketch in the Coin Collection header. We'll make these better looking as we can. We were caught a little off guard by the volume of Marine Publishing orders and are scrambling a little to get so we can get them out quicker. I think we will be all caught up by tomorrow and hopefully won't get behind again. We've included a link in the Eastport Products & Services section to the web page of the boat building and marine mechanics school across the street from us. If you want to learn boat building you can get a grounding in it there. We hire graduates to work for us. Everybody who graduates can get a nice job in boat building. It's a two year course and you can be pretty darn sure somebody will offer you a job at the end of it. They don't have an email address yet. You can email them care of us and we'll run it across the road to them. Nannette reports that sales of her fine art prints are way up. Check in with her in the Harbor Gallery section. The boat yard is picking up some spring work and some more restoration work. We've gotten several significant work orders recently.

05/02/97 - This week in the Harbor Gallery section Nannette has fine tuned the mat colors and background colors a bit. She is still learning how to do all of this and she reports that it seems to be developing brain cells that were very weak for this type of work. In the MacNaughton Associates Designs section Tom has added links on the stock plans order form at the bottom to get back to the list of stock plans. This should make navigation a little easier. On the Custom Design Quotation Form Tom has added a fun little sketch and title block at the top. On the Idea Designs page Tom has added a rough sketch of the "Maddy" to illustrate the concept. There are now links on this page to individual illustrated pages on various idea designs. All the designs on the idea page will eventually have their own pages with sketches and commentary. This brings up the point that we will be adding illustrations of various types everywhere as rapidly as we can but in a somewhat haphazard fashion until everything is illustrated fully with either sketches, design drawings, or photographs. In the Marine Publishing section we have modified the wording a bit to make clear that the MacNaughton Associates Scantlings Rule Book contains all the other individually available scantlings rules. By the way these books are your best source of reliable scantlings rules that we know of. In other general news: We have written up a press release which we initially sent to every email address we have accumulated. It turned out that we had 169 addresses. Of these 153 turned out to be still valid. We have already had responses from some of you who have tried the site and found it useful. Thank you for your kind words and suggestions. Next step in this area is to send the press release to local newspapers and to the boating magazines. When we researched the number of boating magazines on the web we were startled to come up with a list of 270 publications worldwide with their contact information! So it does look like we can promote this site widely, to say the least. Of course a major source of new contacts has got to be the major search engines. This past week we registered with the 10 major search engines. However, we have been told that it can take until the first of June for their spiders to get to our site and index it. Therefore we don't expect too many people to find us for awhile. YOU can help. Please give our address to friends, in person or on-line, if you think our site will be useful or fun for them. Orders are coming in! We have already made enough to cover our first month and a half's costs. The more we make the more content we can afford the time to provide for you so this is good news for all of us. Our order system seems to be working well. For the next week or so we will confirm every order by email until we are sure there are unlikely to be glitches. So if you order something and don't hear from us send us an email query. Feel free to email us with any questions. If you think there is any possibility they might be of general interest use the discussion groups so others will be able to read your query and our reply. Have fun. - Tom, Nan, & Dan

04/25/97-- Welcome. Everything’s new this week! If this is the message displayed when you got to this screen you are among the first to find our new site. For this first week anything you find can be assumed to be new and most of the headings will be self explanatory. It should be obvious which links will work from the color and underlining. We are adding material as fast as we can and the rest of the links should come up over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately a lot of the areas which need illustrations badly still don't have them. We particularly draw your attention to the ability to email us about anything using "feedback" in the navigation bar. In the "search" section you will find not only search capabilities but also a table of contents with links to all pages on the domain. The discussion groups are, of course, empty at this point. Only you can make them active and useful. We do sell things here, you should be able to get to three separate request or order forms in this first week. However, this site is primarily intended to be informative and helpful. You won’t find a lot of sound, video or animation, just helpful and hopefully entertaining information. Also there are no "cookies" or other items being loaded on your machine. This site won't pass anything to your computer that you haven't specifically requested. Please let us know how we can make this site more useful for you.

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