Here's a couple of stories you should get a kick out of.
Many many years ago I saw the movie 2010. Then a while later I watched 2001. That's just the way they played on my local channel. I noted that the Discovery looked quite a bit different. As many have noted the interior of the ship was changed up quite a bit in both movies. But I swear the exterior of the ship was drastically redesigned. I went to the Wikipedia articles and movie mistakes sites to see if anybody else had noted it. Nothing. I thought maybe I had caught something no one else had. There were a couple of other movies I had caught mistakes in that no one else had. Running away with that high, I decide to tell the world about the mistake made in a movie from over 25 years ago.
But first the research.
Boy did I ever save myself from a ton of stupidity. I took screen shot of the Discovery from both movie and compared them. Identical. I don't really know why I thought they were different. My best guess is that I originally watched 2010 and 2001 on a sixteen inch floor model TV on a analog broadcast signal. The quality left a lot to be desired. My research was done with DVDs on a 23 inch LCD flatscreen. (You should see the spelling suggestions for flatscreen. “Disgruntled?" Oddly appropriate.)
The next boo-boo was about a minute away from happening when I stopped myself. I used to have a navigation menu at the bottom of each page for Season 2011. To update it I had to open each page and paste in the new link. A major pain in the ass when doing it 10, 20, and 30 pages at a time. How could I make a single change to one file that updates them all? I eventually came upon the iframe tag. It displays the menu and I could update on the new page and it changes all the other pages. I go and add this in to all the current pages for Season 2011. With one minute to go before the big update, I finally test to see if the links still work and discover the horrible mistake I was about to make. It opened up the new page inside of the iframe. Not change the whole page like I expected. Panic set in. What do I do, I really wanted this menu, but not piss off the reader anymore than I already do. So It's gone, No more menu.
I've looked into other ways, but most wind up with the same effect. Javascripting is a way, but is extremely difficult for me to get right. Plus with java blockers in most browsers it won't show up. I know because I used to have used Google Analytics and it showed me nothing while my web host was much more forthcoming. Flash would solve it, except the time it takes to update the flash file it just about as long as it is to update 50 pages with copy/paste. And again with most people flash is blocked and doesn't work with iPhones and iPads.
Once again looking at the stats, no one bothers with the menu anyway. Most just look at the home page. The occasional victim...er... potential fan that finds a page through Google looks at what he finds, goes back and forth, then leaves.
This mistake slipped by for six months. Those button that I have on top of the home page and each page of Season 2011? Two were messed up. I never checked them. The one for 2011 was supposed to go to the first page of 2011. Instead it went to the home page. The button for Season 18 didn't work. I only found out because when I was copy/pasting the table over to a new page, the images got jostled. In order to get them realigned I had to look directly at the code. I saw that there was no link associated with the image to Season 18. So I had to go through over twenty pages to fix it. It was a few weeks later when I found the link was wrong for 2011. Went through the same process again
I tell these stories not just for laughs. I tell them as teachable moments. Learn from my mistakes. Don't make them again. A simple five minute fact check can save you from sticking your foot in your mouth. And athlete's tongue is no joke.
(Addendum a day late: Should have taken an extra five minutes to re-read this before it was posted, because spell check doesn't catch gamma.)
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