The 29th October saw the 17th anniversary of Transformers At The Moon. Yes you read that correctly, this website was launched on the 29th October 1999 as a way for us to share photographs of our collection. Whilst work on the website has pretty much stopped over recent years due to work and other project as are planning on revamping the website in 2017 with our main Transformers focus at the moment being the releasing of the unheard audio recordings from Generation One.  So far we have released the missing audio from More Than Meets The Eye parts 1-3 but we shall be releasing additional audio from other episodes over the coming weeks.

Once again we find ourselves in the position of needing to appologise for the lack of website updates both in terms of news stories as well as our continued lack of updated galleries and articles.  Whilst it is true that our time spent within and around the Transformers brand has significantly decreased over the last few years due to work, real life and other interests (such as www.thevisionaries.net) we do plan still plan on revamping this website, getting back to bringing you the latest news stories every day as well as regular content updates including the photographing of the rest of our Transformers collection as well as re-photographing many of the figures.

We have been clearing up after the floods here within the UK which have meant that we have been unable to spend any time on the website, or indeed within the general fan community over the last two weeks.  We expect to have everything back to normal by the end of the weekend. We know that we have missed out on reporting the Toy Fair news from the US and we are sorry for that however flood prevention measures were more important to us.

Steve

Co-founder

Transformers At The Moon

You mave have noticed a lack of news updates in recent days, well unfortunately this is likely to continue to be the theme for a while, with sporadic updates as we Transformers At The Moon has been directly affected by the UK Flooding with water levels in this area expected to rise further over the coming weeks so access to the internet is going to continue to be limited purely by where we are and helping the local community.

Once again I would like to apologise for the continued lack of updates to the website with the exception of news stories.  This is due to real-life depends limitingthe amount of time either of us have to work on the website.  We hope to get back to updating and adding new toy galleries in the coming months but we shall continue to post news stories as and when we can during this busy time.

As you may have noticed we have been hit by periods of downtime recently. This has been caused by the server being bombarded by requests which have locked up the resources.  Whilst we work out the costs behind a solution you will have to bear with us whilst we fix the issues as and when they occur.

As you are all probably aware by now I have spent the last 10 months buying a house.  It took 6 months to get to the completion and another 4 months of repairs, decorating and moving, but now I'm 80% unpacked and so I thought I would share a preview of the new dedicated Transformers display room (which has also been dubbed "The Transformers Museum") with you all.

Now, I am still unpacking some of the toys and so the layout in the cabinets it not yet finalised (and there is another cabinet still to do) but you'll get the idea of how things are going to be displayed.  Once everything is out and in the correct place I will take create a full image gallery of "the Transformers museum" as well as the other figures that I also have out on display as well as putting together a video tour, oh yes, it needs a tour ;), but that is another day.  For now you will find one preview image attached to this news story, another preview image on our Facebook page and the third preview image on our Google Plus page, so you'll need to click around a few places to see them all.

Hello!! After almost a month of not having access to the Internet at home, having recently moved, I am glad to announced that as of this afternoon my new home finally has working internet connectivity.  I am truely sorry for the lack of updates on every front over the last few months.  I finalised the deal on my house at the end of January but the renovations that were required to install the central heating, fix the drains, generally sort out the property, pack everything and move has taken some time to come together.  Indeed I am still unpacking figures into their new display cases which will probably go on for another 2-3 weeks.  I also still need to move comics and any other figures I've forgotten about, so the final displays may not be in place until late June or even July.  As you can no doubt imagine this has meant that I've been even busier than my professional life normally keeps me as has my brother, but how that internet access is back working again I will slowly start to catch up with content again.  Moving has given me the chance to look at many of the figures I had forgotten about which has made me even more determined to get back to photographing and reviewing everything to share with the rest of the Transformers fandom.  I've also dug out more original paperwork from the Sunbow production meetings which I will slowly create articles from to share several pieces of information which will probably be new to you all.

Once again I am sorry for the delay and whilst things may be a little slow still whilst I get back upto speed, I hope that I will be able to bring new, fresh and focused content and updates for you all to enjoy. Whilst the website has taken a back seat in my life over the lasy 5-6 years it still plays an important part of who I am as I have met many good friends through this site either directly or indirectly since starting it back in October 1999 and that is something that I am always extremely grateful for.

So please, raise a glass, I'm back on the web and that means Transformers will be back on The Moon!!

Steve

As you must have noticed the lack of updates to the website over the last 8 months has continued to increase.  This is because I am currently completing moving house into a place I bought at the end of Jan.  Due to this I have limited access to the internet outside of work and during this same period I have been promoted which has bought with it increased responsibilities and working hours.  Sadly something had to give and it has been my free time and hobbies that have taken the brunt.  I am hoping to re-address this once I complete the house move and have a working internet connection, but for now I just wanted to say please bare with me, I've not forgotten about this place, I'm just super-snowed with work and moving but ultimate both will be worth it.

Steve AKA Quartz

Welcome to Transformers At The Moon - Version 9!  Yes, I have finally completed the work I started 26 months ago which was re-writing the entire Transformers At The Moon platform from the ground up.  The only thing that is the same is the server.  I've re-engined the database, redeveloped all of the libaries, the website is entirely bespoke, re-jigged the look-and-feel of the website and have introduced a new message board.

My professional career lead to the significant delay turning what was originally a 6 month project into something that has taken over 2 years.  For that I am sorry, but these things happen.

One of the first changes you will notice is that we have moved back to using a drop-down menu for navigation.  This is to help group the content we have created since the site first launched back in late 1999 so that you all will be able to, hopefully, find the content much easier.  It also helps highlight all of the content we have to offer from News Services, through toy galleries, trademark databases, instruction sheets, concept art, character models to videos (an area that we will be expanding with a back catelogue of convention videos we have taken over the last 10 years), events and our much over looked community.

You will also find that we have introduced a "tab" system into the "introduction area" of every page.  For instance, on the home page you will notice three tabs under the welcome section.  Clicking on the tab will display the content on that tab.  These tabs come into their own within the News and Resource and Toy image gallery sections of the website.  Within those areas of the website, you will find that these tabs contain alternative ways to search for content.  Most commonly you will find a tab that lists each of the categories as well as a tag cloud and a tag index.  The tag index works just like the index of any reference book you may have read.  Simple choose the letter and all of the words starting with that letter will be displayed.  You can then click on the work to filter the section by that word.  Give it a go, the tag indexes are cached locally ensuring they performance improvements once you've clicked on a letter.

You will also find that every news article, gallery or resource article now contains the ability for logged in users to post comments as well as rate the toy / article / news story.  Those of you on Social Media sites will find shortcut icons allowing you to easily share pages and galleries with your friends.

As part of the change we have also upgrade our exclusive and popular In The News section, now called "Other Sites News" which now contains even more sources of news that have been freshly categorised and sorted into alphabetical order.

Another major overhaul is the way that the image galleries and "other sites news" stories are displayed.  Image now use a lightbox-esque feature rather than opening in a new tab or overriding the main site.  Once the image appears you can quickly browse through the rest of the images within the gallery be using the navigational arrows or using the cursor keys on your keyboard.  The images are automatically scaled but you can switch to the full size view by clicking zoom or by pressing the down key.  Pressing "up" will then re-scale the image.

There is another handy keyboard shortcut you can use whilst looking at our image galleries and that is to press the ctrl key on your keyboard and then type in the page number of the image you wish to view.  For example is you want to jump to page 2 simple press ctrl and then press 2. The page will automatically jump to page 2.  If you want page 14, just press ctrl then type in 14.  Simple!  You can test if be clicking on the images within the additional image section of this news article below.

We have also including a series of Easter Eggs into the website as well, let us know if you find how to access them.

As well as the layout changes I have also improved the performance and scalability of the website by introducing more caching which should speed up your browsing.

You will also notice that the URLs for all of the pages have been cleaned up but do not worry most of the old links will still work and will simply load the new version of the content.

New Look Message Board

We are no longer using PHPBB, which will please many of you.  PHPBB is the most popular free PHP / MySQL message board on the internet.  It's also one of the worst written and bloated message boards you will find and is often targetted back exploiters.  It also has some rather annoying interface issues which I was fed up with so we are no longer using it.

The new board is very much a work-in-progress and over time will be re-skinned so that it can be fully integrated into the main website.  All of the posts have been copied over as have the user accounts however we need to re-instate the moderates as those permissions were not carried over in the change.

Mobile / Tablet Users

I realise that the new layout of the website is not suited to a lot of modern smartphones.  Do not worry, a mobile version of the website will be launched soon that will be "thumb friendly".

So take your time to explore the new look site, I'm sure you will discover you never realised we had.

Steve - AKA Quartz

As you have no doubt notice the number of updates to this website, including news stories, has gradualy become less and less over recent weeks and so I thought I would take the time to update you all as to why this is the case.

For those of you who do not know this website was set-up and run by some twins 12 years ago.  In fact the site first launched on the 29th October 1999.  However, for the last few years, as we have gotten older, both of our professional careers have taken up more and more of our free time.  Its fairly common for both of us to work 12-16 hour days and personally I have worked 37 hours straight only a few months ago.  Because of this the time we get to maintain the website code, add new galleries and launch new features has dwindled.  The last year has been especially difficult for us as my brother, who you may know as Moonbug, no longer lives in the same town as myself and he use to maintain a lot of the content whilst I was working on the code.  During this time, and indeed the year prior, I have been re-writing the whole website from the ground up.  What was suppose to have been a 6-8 month project has slipped to 2 years.   I was hoping to launch the website this month as a part of ther 12th year anniversary celebrations, however as of last night my the motherboard on my main computer has died.  The machine has been on its last legs for a while with both the graphics card and soundcard failing and finally the fan on the northbridge has once again packed in causing the board to overheat and fry.

The good news is that when the issues stared all of the data was backed up onto an external hard disk so I have, at most, lost about a few days worth of coding and 2 months worth of emails to an old email address.

I will continue to update the news from work, when I can as well as from home via my phone or this extremely low powered netbook whilst I order and re-build a new computer.

My brother is currently out of the country on holiday but once he is back I am sure that he will try to update the site as much as he can whilst I am unable to add new galleries, yes this netbook is that low powered it can't handle high res image editing.

I will continue to try to complete the last 3% of the website re-write as well as things are so close to launch but I wanted to let you all know that if things seem quiet around here for the next week or so it is not because the website has stopped, on the contrary, we have a lot of unique content that we have been preparing to add to the website from hard copies and testshots through cartoon models and behind the scenes Sunbow documents as well as general toy galleries.

What it does mean though, is the big celebration I was hoping to have to commemorate the 12th aniversary of the website will be delayed, perhaps to the 12th anniversary of the official launch of the site which was the 11th November 1999.

Thanks,

Steve AKA Quartz

I thought I would bring you a quick round-up on some of our recent website updates that you may have missed relating to Instruction Sheets and USPTO Trademark status'.

First up, we have recently added 11 new instruction sheets to the website. You can find links to the instruction sheets below.

1. Transformers DOTM Sideswipe 29707 Instructions
2. Transformers Chopsaw 28579 Instructions
3. Marvel Super Hero ABC and 123 Spanish Instructions
4. Transforemrs DOTM Track Battle Roadbuster 36341 Instructions
5. Transformers Activators Megatron 98470 Instructions
6. Transformers DOTM Comettor 32095 Instructions
7. Transformers DOTM Comettor 32095 Instructions
8. Transformers DOTM Crankcase 28744 Instructions
9. Transformers DOTM Decepticon Hatchet 29684 Instructions
10. Transformers DOTM Ironhide 32138 Instructions
11. Transformers DOTM Lunarfire Optimus Prime 35808 Instructions

On t he trademark side, Hasbro have not filed for a new application since the 14th April, but some of their applications have been updated recently.

1. THRUST - The USPTO are currently processing the 8 year extension for this mark
2. SCAVENGER - As of August 10th, 2011 this mark was renewed under the 10 year renewal (meaning it has been 10 years since it was registered)
   
3. ELITA-1 - As of the 5th August 2011, this mark was suspended.  Hasbro have been notified of this in writing and will need to appeal against the decision if they wish to register it again.
   
4. TRANSFORMERS PRIME - This mark was extended on the 3rd August 2011
5. SPEED STARS - August 3rd, 2011
6. TRANSFORMERS ONE - August 3rd, 2011
7. MECHTECH - August 1st, 2011

I thought I would take a moment to explain about the lack of updates to the website.  For the last month I have been extremely busy with my job which has had a massive impact on the time I spend maintaining my websites.  This was then followed by Auto Assembly, for which I was on the committee, and led to the lack of updates to the website since Thursday.  Since being back from AA, which has only been a day, I've been busy putting things back that I had to get out or move around in order to take to the event.  Do not worry though, I will be getting back to the site and updating both the news and resource sections very shortly.  I do apologise for the lack of updates this year which has primarily been caused by the change in responsibilities at my work, but I will strive to find more of a balance and so you should start to see the results very soon.

Thanks

Steve AKA Quartz

Today, the 7th July 2011, marks not only the 6th anniversary of the infamous 7/7 terrorist attacks on London but it is also the 5th year anniversary of the passing of a good friend to this website Brett Reynolds who was better known on our forums as Toughboot.  Our thoughts go out to all of those who lost family and friends on the 7th July 2005 as well as to Brett's family.  I remember both events quite clearly myself and I still find myself often wondering what Brett would make of the state of Transformers today.

Gone but never forgotten my friend.

Steve