Archived Site History Logs for mermeliz.com

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Historical entries for: 2023 | 2022 |2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2012 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000
This page is a historical record of events from the year 2000 until now.
Therefore many of the links on this page are sadly now dead links and are of historical value only!

2023	2023
February	..7th ..Added a commandline program called AVBuster to the Comic Chat related Programs Page. This program extracts the images from both an .AVB file and a .BGB file. There is an exisitng program called Diet_AVB that extracts the images from the older Comic Chat 2.1 version, but this new AVBuster extracts the images from the newer 2.5 version! ..5th ..Added the upgraded HexEdit version 5.0 to the 'Cool Programs' page. Along with a special instructions page on how to install it since it does not come with an installion package. ..1st ..Added registry edit files to create 5 or 6 panels in Comic Chat. Files were created by Mermaid Elizabeth. Wide screen monitors leave room for more panels. So this is a help to fill the other helf your empty wide screen. 6 Panels :-) Yee Hahh!
January	..31st ..Many .AVBs that were downloading from mermeliz.com have been, or are being, moved to the Nexus website. That's what the Nexus is for. A grand central hub (nexus) for Comic Chat files.

2022	2022
December	..24th ..Happy Christmas Eve! Today Mermy worked to relocate the Phoenix On-line Foundation's 'Comic Chat Nexus' website. All Phoenix On-line Nexus Comic Chat material has a new web address. phoenix-online-nexus.com ! All .avb and .bgb files on the Phoenix site have been recoded to auto-download from the new address.
November	..9th ..Got an eMail from [ Hacker of: no-reply@cezaryjeziorski.com belongs to a guy named 'Cezary Jeziorski' in Poland. Prolly a spoofed addy!] .. Says 'he/she/it' stole my data bases and will ruin mermeliz.com if I don't pay him $3k in bitcoins. FINE! go ahead and RUIN the site, a$$hole! Firstly, I don't have any data bases on any of my sites! This isn't a business, Dumbflock! Mermeliz.com has had a good run! ..Been Up since 2000. So ehhhh, bring her down. I'll keep my money!
April	..5th ..Updated the MermElectrics page to include trouble shooting and repair instructions when one discovers a portion of the outlets in one's house have stopped working yet no circuit breakers are tripped!
March	..4th ..Restored two more 'lost' character web pages: 'Giligan's Microsoft Comic Chat Characters' and 'Hoboman's Characters for Comic Chat'. ..5th ..Restored #JoeJoesPlace Character Page as well as Merakli's New Character Site. ..6th ..Restored Mask's MS Chat Characters Page.
January	..1st ..Neujahrswünsche! Maybe this year we will finally get to see Avatar 2. Every year, for the past ten + years, James Cameron has postponed it till the next year. Perhaps we will get lucky and finally get to see it (16 December 2022 now)! At this point, it better have been worth the bloody wait! ..26th ..Chatting in a comic strip has always been a lot of fun. You can choose your own comic character and have fun chatting. What really makes it even more fun is that you can even make your own charactrers if you want a character that has not yet been created. Many folks use phtotos of their favorite stars, whether they be movie or sports celebrities. Mermaid Elizabeth doesn't even use a fancy graphics program for making any of her graphics! Whether they be for web graphics or for making 'Comic Chat' characters, she just uses 'Microsoft Paint' and a freeware program called 'Irfanview'. Sine MS Paint is terrible on file conversions, Mermy uses Irfanview for that purpose. Paint will distort and destroy a graphic if one tries to use it to save into a different file format. However, if one stays with creating in 24 bit .BMP, it is a terrific program and comes free with Windoze! Irfanview is also good with resizing graphics for use in creating a 'Comic Chat' character.

2021	2021
December	..25th ..Happy Christmas everyone! Today Mermy stayed safely at home for Christmas and updated the HTML code on each of the 'main' website pages. Updating the 'restored' site pages will have to come one-at-a-time. So after updating the pages, Mermy discoverd that the browser now displays the pages as 'https' pages. Although the certificate was there on the host server for a while, it took updating the HTML code to make the pages automagically display as 'https'. Something Mermy was not aware of. Mermy realizes that updating the HTML code on the Japanese pages will be a challenge at this point in time. She is researching it to find the proper entry to tell the browser that the language is Japanese not english. (The older HTML 4 designation doesn't seem to work in the HTML 5 format). ..While updating the HTML code on the Phoenix-Online site, Mermy discovered that none of the contact email addresses for Fran aka MetaJoy work anymore. They were removed and replaced with Mermy's email address. She also discovered that the eMail address of her long-time friend, Bud-O, is also no longer working. . The email address was also removed since it is now considered a dead link. ..20th ..Restored content, (about 61 sites), that was taken down earlier this year. There was a plan to relocate the restored characters all to the Phoenix-Online Nexus. Nexus was originally formed to be a haven for lost 'Comic Chat' characters. After removing the web pages and content, the project stalled. So the web pages were re-uploaded today.
August	..8th ..Observation/Comment ..The 'Wayback Machine', (https://archive.org/), harvests one's copyrighted material and republishes it on their site, but in the process, they imprint their own copyright onto it! This to Mermy, is some sort of internet content theft! However, Mermy is up in the air about it because by accessing their site, she has been able to recover lost pages from older site versions. (Material that was lost due to a computer crash). So if anyone has ideas as to why they can take one's content and replace copyright info with their own, please let her know. (Mermy's material has always been up-to-date and copyrighted since 1999)!
April	..4th ..Happy Easter! Back in the day, before Microsoft management began to discourage their programmers from doing it (2002), the programmers would hide an Easter egg in the program. This is the case with Comic Chat 2.5. It has an Easter egg! Wanna see it? OK! Get your Easter basket and Happy Easter Egg hunting! Tom.K posted it on YouTube, so if you don't have Comic Chat installed, you can see the Easter Egg Here! (Back in the day, (late 90's), when everyone's CPU's were a lot slower, (150 - 200 MHz), the characters in the Comic Chat Easter Egg danced a lot slower. Now that we all have blistering Giga-Hz CPU's, the characters rip through their dance routine so fast one can barely see it! It's still fun to watch and read all of the names associated with the program. ..Want more fun? Here are some Free Easter Printables. Although her website seems to have disappeared, Nyanna created 12 deliciously artful Easter eggs. Mermaid gathered them into a basket back in April of 2000 and created an "Easter Egg .AVB" file for Comic Chat. Enjoy! . . In updating Redfern's Chat Character Page today, Mermaid discovered that there is a site similar to the Wayback Machine site that has saved older geocities sites. Called "www.Oocities.org". Have a Look see.
March	..24th ..Discovered that 'angelfire.com' has implemented "sitelok" protection which blocks the ChatCheck program from seaching the webpages for .AVB files. Created a mask page for ChatCheck to search off and away from angelfire sites so that the Character avb files can be found. We tested the AVB files them selves and they can still be fetched by Comic Chat program. (Just the web pages are protected by "Sitelok", not the file resources)! . . In the process of working on the angelfire sites, Mermy decided to preserve Botender's website by moving it to mermeliz.com. Bo passed away in early 2017 so her site is basically on "auto-pilot" till angelfire notices it is not being maintained anymore. Her site on anglefire still works as well as the character files for now! ..3rd ..Added instructions on the "Cool Progs" page under the "Text Editing" section in the "RogSoft NotePad+" box, how to select your own HTML editor when right clicking on a page and selecting "View Page Source". These instructions will work for Firefox and SeaMonkey. Mermy has not tested other browsers since both Chrome and Edge are being used as advertisers information harvesting tools! Even the HTML5 and CSS3 are being used to track peoples machine addresses and therefore browsing habits. ..3rd ..(Continued) With the Covid19 crisis in effect, a lot of Comic Chatters have stopped even chatting online. #Bambamsden has become a ghost town. The #Crypt, however, still has chatters that can be found from time-to-time. There are a lot of other IRC servers that one can connect to using "Comic Chat", however most are not "Comic Mode" friendly and one should use the "Text Mode" while visitng these other servers! (and in the "View/Options/Settings" tab select the box "Don't send Microsoft Chat specific information"). This will prevent the chat program from adding the "character information" to your chat text line and confusing the non comic chat program users.

2020	2020
October	..31st ..Happy Halloween, everyone! ..30th ..This is the ten-year anniversary (2010) that Mermaid Elizebeth lost her very dear and closest friend, Geri, to cancer! May she continue to rest in peace in the arms of our Lord, Jesus! Geri is still loved and sorely missed! ..9th ..Renewed the domain mermeliz.com for another 5 years. Although the Microsoft Comic Chat program is becoming more and more obsolete, being an IRC chat client, it still works just fine in the latest Windows 10 environment! Hopefully more people will re-discover the fun this program offers to online chatting!
September	..7th ..Finally completed creating Kwensa.AVS file. Added it to the MS AVS download page. This file is a black and white AVS file to be used in the "Microsoft Chat Character Editor" and can be colored anyway one chooses.
April	..18th ..Updated to the current versions of the download files of various programslisted on the "Cool Programs" page. ..15th ..Published a new page honoring our International chatters who have passed on. The page, 'Silentkeys' uses a term adopted for the 'Amatuer Radio Relay League' which is a term depicting that their code key has gone silent due to their passing. Here we are honoring our lost firends as they have gone silent to their 'keyboard' communications! ..5th ..Created a new page as part of the 'Comic Chat Family' weather page. The new Chatmap page has our most often comic chatter's location, time zone, and a link to their local 10 day weather forcast! All on one simple yet cool page! Hope you have as much fun with it as I had in creating it! ...Enjoy! :-) (Note: This project started out as a simple map for USA chatters only, but with input from Viking and from Angeleyes, it grew to include other parts of the 'Comic Chat World'. Now it includes Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Tonga, as well as the U.S.!)
March	..18th ..Restored Soft's Backgrounds for #Color_Comics on the Phoenix-Online Nexus site. Just her original 112 backgrounds are placed there. Thus restoring her true site! ..9th ..Restored Steve Howland's aka Y-Guy "Unofficial MS Chat Add-On Site" (formerly at www.dido.com). This is a MS Chat 2.1 site. It has most, but not all of the original 2.1 character .AVB files as well as the .BMP backgrounds. The advantage of the 2.1 program and characters is that they do not auto download. Anyone concerned of auto downloading undesireable characters can rest assured they wil not if using the 2.1 version of Comic Chat. The other advantage of using 2.1 characters is that they are not compressed and therefore are easily dismantled for editing using the "Diet_AVB" program. The site also contains download files of MS Chat 2.1 as well as the character editor for 2.1! Remember to refer to the help pages when installing the 16 bit character editor. ..1st ..Created a "New" Page for the newest additions to the Phoenix-Online Nexus Backgrounds section! Also reorganizing the "Holiday & Special Occasions" background page.
January & February	..1/27th ..Received word that LilJoe and Angeleyes have resumed the operation of their Comic Chat server. There they host #bambamsden! After this exciting news, links to the server and room have been placed on Mermy's 'Server - Rooms' page. They have also restored their 'Comic-Sun' website and all of their character and background files! WB, LilJoe and Angeleyes! After entering #bambamsden, Mermaid discoverd that LilJoe has found a way to make the 16-bit 'Comic Chat Character Editor' work in the Windows 10 64-bit platform. Mermaid recorded LilJoe's instructions and then using his instructions created a help page for the benefit of all! Not only will these instructions work to run the 16-bit 'Comic Chat Character Editor', these instructions will also work for anyone wanting to run any of their favoritie older 16-bit programs in todays 'Windows 10 x64' machines! Kudos and Thank You's go to LilJoe! ..You're awesome!

2019	2019
Synopsis	..Wrap-Up ..Consolodating files from smaller sites to the Phoenix-Online Nexus and removing the 'restored' web pages from mermeliz.com. Included are both character .AVB files and background .BGB files. The original intent of the creation of the 'Nexus' site was to be a stable house for the comic character files. Although the founder of the 'Phoenix-Online Foundation', Francine (aka MetaJoy), was being accused of trying to steal the comic characters, it was her earnest intent to keep the characters alive in a stable server. While most Comic Chat websites were constanly going under due to "free servers" going offline, Francine felt that the Foundation was a stable enough platform to offer continous access to one's Comic Chat files. Thus the 'Nexus' was born! Little did Francine know that the other officers of the Foundation were to eventually vote her out of the board and direct the Foundation towards a different path! This move had jeopardized the future of the Comic Chat content. It was at this point that the 'Nexus' website eventually fell into the care of Mermaid_Elizabeth. [First going to Bud-O of 'Comic Chat Central' (TM).]


2018	2018
December	..16th ..Corrected typo errors in the ChatCheck control file which in turn removed the errors in the search result list. ..Another Comic Chat Character download site has closed it's doors. Alas it appears that the owners of the "Comic-Sun" website has chosen to not renew their domain name, thus closing the website! ..8th ..Progress on providing resources to the older/original 2.1 characters and backgrounds has ground to a halt. Mainly since there doesn't seem to be any interest to this website nor to the Comic Chat program anymore. After having provided a link to the BGB maker, no one has ever contacted me to aquire it in the past 2 years! Eventually I will continue with this Comic Chat resource project, but for now it has been set aside until perhaps next year. Note: When the project is restarted, the 2.1 version characters and backgrounds will be posted on the Phoenix On-line Foundation website pages! Happy Christmas, everyone!
September	..7th ..Updating these pages stopped earlier this year due to a discovery that my very awesome "High Def" LED monitor was frying my eyeballs. 9 solid weeks of 14 to 16 hour days while updating these webpages in front of my high def LED monitor was making me go blind. So I searched for an answer and found that the blue light from LED light burns the retina of ones' eyes! After completeing priliminary research, I posted a warning page for others: LED - Blue Light Warning! (Please follow the included links for a better understanding of the dangers!) The effects were making it difficult for my eyes to focus on anything! I have since replaced most of my new LED light bulbs in the house back to CFL's and Incandescents. Also purchased a used CRT monitor in an "Estate Sale" and will be replacing my LED monitor back to the CRT. I will not be going LED again until the LED manufacturing community has addressed the ill effects of one using LED lighting from ANY source! Unfortunately, I still have a LED TV that I am continuing to fry my eyeballs with!
April	..15th ..AnneSeeker's Characters are now back to auto-downloading. She had more characters on her site than she had on her pages. My guess is that she just ran out of time to update her pages. So there is a third page that was added to accomodate the surplus that was not visibly there while her site (anneseeker.net) was in service. ..14th ..Seven Seas Comic Circus Characters have been restored. As with all newly added sites, one can find the links to them on the first character page 'cchars.htm'. After about a month or two, they will be relocated to the second page which is 'Restored Sites' link page. ..13th ..Let's take a break and talk founding history of this site: Mermaid learned HTML in a Comic Chat room caled '#Freetoys'. The room host, 'Dillinger', was teaching HTML in the room. So if you want to blame anyone for this website, you can blame Dillinger for teaching Mermaid HTML! When Mermaid felt it was time to use her HTML for something, she decided to create a link page to all of the different Comic Chat characters. Using 'WordPad' and looking inside each character that would auto download into her ComicArt folder, she would follow that url back to its source and look for others. She was already creating a list for herself, but then decided to share it. Well, what you see now is what the single page has grown into! When sites that had really good artistic characters started disappearing, Mermaid decided to start saving the remaing sites for historical value. It was a shame to see such good art going to the recycle bin. Saving only the character download pages and characters, she now has quite a data base to rival the 'Wayback Machine'. (Wayback doesn't save the download files. You get some kind of HTML file when you try to download a file from 'Wayback'). Some earlier sites are really gone forever from before the time Mermaid started saving the pages. OK, so now Mermaid has decided to create a page with everyone's link buttons. Kind of a nostalgic page since some of those link buttons are a work of art as well. The Wayback Machine does have a lot of them saved. ..Mermaid doesn't like the new HTML 5 and CSS 3. It is a 'calling home' code that allows the CSS folks a tag to every persons' address whenever they open a CSS 3 coded page. A terrific marketing ploy! This is what happens when marketing people take over the code. They can just sit back and gather data as foolish coders use their 'new code' to encode sniffing data into their webpages. It goes against Mermaid's ethics! So Mermaid will not be using CSS 3 for as long as she can before it is mandatory! (Earlier CSS is all local/safe code, but CSS 3 calls back to the CSS3 folks website). ..For all you Windoz 10 people, what do you think Microsoft's 'cloud' is? Another tagging method for marketing purposes! A server records the address to every connection made to it regardless of what is being accessed. Those addresses become valuable sellable marketing fodder for the marketeers in the world! ..8th ..After using yahoo as the contact email account for mermeliz since the beginning, we finally have an email account set up through mermeliz.com. From now on contact Mermaid Elizabeth using mermeliz@mermeliz.com. ..In the past week, the nav buttons were once again changed on the Home page of mermeliz.com to accomodate cell phone and iPad visitors. The buttons were enlarged and spaced a bit further apart for tiny screens. This was all done after having the webpage html scanned and reviewed by an outside source. Suggestions were heeded to improve the page's navigation. ..The Phoenix On-Line Foundation pages are currently undergoing a face lift. New buttons as well as a different navigation path has been extablished. The naviagation path is actually being put back the way it used to be back in 2001. A link to the Phoenix pages has also been added to the pop-out navigation menu on each page. ..4th ..Kii Kun's Comic Character Page has not be viewed since 1999. English translation was added and then, after restoring his 4 characters, it was uploaded to mermeliz.com. After restoring Kii Kun's page, DarkEye's Character Page was updated by adding 33 more of her characters. A second page was added to accomodate the increase. ..3nd ..Iori's cute and wonderful characters took all day to restore, but they are now available for all to use once again! Kewpie had restored them once before, (CA 2003), but then the characters were once again lost when Kewpie closed her website. ..2nd ..Otoka's webpage and characters were restored as well as adding English translations to the Japanese text. Mermaid's own character have never-ever had a download page. This was resolved to day as well! ..1st ..Beanz download page was restored which gives Comic Chatters 18 more characters to choose from.
March	..30th ..ChatCheck 'search' control file update project has finally been completed. The next big task its to update the 'replacement' control file! With a ComicArt folder of 12,509 .AVB files, this task is borderline insane! ..27th ..Added the Freeware graphic program 'GIMP' to the 'Cool Programs' download page. Don't know why it wasn't there already! It is a powerful 'Photoshop-like' program without the high cost. Free is better! :-) ..Updated the HTML tid-bits page with information regarding HTML5 and CSS3. ..With the help of the 'Wayback Machine', an archival website, Mermy was able to include lost data from the year 2000 regarding mermeliz.com history. ..25th ..After a battle with the "going out of business" web host, mermeliz.com is back online with a new host! Former host of 8 good dependable years was 'ixwebhosting', they were recently bought out by a very incompetant and very unskilled, untrained staffed company called 'site5.com'. Mermeliz.com was offline for 4 days due to their incompetance. They just couldn't figure out what they were doing wrong! So Mermy fixed it by moving on to a better and much faster hosting service, 'inmotionhosting'! ..Mermy warns to stay away from site5.com. Their staff all appear to be a bunch of buffoons! ..mermeliz.com is undergoing a face lift. Additional new title graphics have been uploaded this afternoon. Including the new title graphic for this archive page. (The last face lift was in December of 2004). Mermy is using the 'Rainbow Font' program to create the title graphics. It is available on the 'Cool Programs' page. (Make out your text in 'Rainbow Font', then use your 'Snipping Tool' to grab the text graphic from the 'preview' window in 'Rainbow Font'! Muahaha!) ..The new format excludes the side menu bar, which has been replaced with a pop-up java script menu. ..A Lite version of Kewpie's Character Realm is currently being restored. Since her site was massive, only the 'comic' characters will be restored. The photo characters will be left "unrestored".
February	..27th ..All restored material that was posted on the now closed 'mermeliz.net' has been successfully relocated here on 'mermeliz.com'! The restored pages and downloads can be found on the 'Characters Page 2', cchars_p2! ..Completed redesigning the web pages here on mermeliz.com to make them lighter to accomodate cell phone viewing. ..15th ..Added a Dominoes game as well as a WinArcade game to the Fun & Games page! ..These past two weeks, 44 restored comic character download sites that were on mermeliz.net when it was closed have been reposted here on mermeliz.com! All .AVBs were repaired to reflect the move from .net to .com and then re-uploaded. Also 3 background .BGB sites have also been restored! ..As the Japanese web pages were being prepared to be reposted, Mermy took the time to use "Google Translate" to translate the Japanese pages. So now we can see what the pages authors were saying! :-) ..The 'Bravheart Memorial' page has been updated and then reposted with additional comments from comic chatters that sent email messages after Brav passed away. If anyone knows his "real" name, Mermy would like to include it on the memorial page. Abby of 'perfxion.com' has a great story on how Brav got his 'Brav the Bloo' name! Although QDKathy was not part of Soft's Room, she too is missed! She passed November 23rd of 2005. Cause unknown! The memorial page that was for QDK dissappeared when 'comic-chat.com' went offline.
January	..31th ..Good News for Linux Ubantu users! Long time fellow Comic Chat addict, Ryan Sawyer, has discovered a method to get "Microsoft Comic Chat" to Successfully Install and operate on Ubuntu Linux via Wine 3.0! Visit HERE for his details!


2017	2017
July	..2nd ..Mermaid Elizabeth has sucessfully gotten the Comic Chat Character Editor work in Windows 7! Go to the Windows 7 Help Page for "how to" instructions and further details!

2012	2012
May	..10th ..Dead Links have been removed from both the Additional Characters and the Additional Backgrounds download pages. Also the search control file for ChatCheck has been cleaned of any dead sites that it was still trying to read. ..Upon recent site updating, we have lost a few resource sites, but most are still available. Over on the Server Page, The Crypt and Comic-Sun are *about* the only true Comic Chat servers left to chat on. The others are taken over by Mirc users who sometimes are unfriendly to Comic Chat users.
April	..26 ..OK! This website is once again editable. ..When the server that is hosting this website was attacked back in 2009, The hosts locked everything down. It took Mermy a few years to find her way back after the lock-down. The most noticable change is that we have lost all of our help sites that were for our Japanses Comic Chatters! :-( ..Mermy has been doing some extensive upgrading on the "Cool Programs" page. Have a look and get some cool freebie programs while you're there!

2009	2009
November	..21 ..Happy Thanksgiving!

2008	2008
November	..29 ..David Kurlander, (DJ) the author of the Comic Chat program, has recently retired from Microsoft. He has added a section in his web site that is very informative and useful for persons interested in the Comic Chat program: http://kurlander.net/DJ/Projects/ComicChat/resources.html. Besides having some great publications available about comic Chat, DJ also has a few videos that would help a Comic Chat beginner: http://kurlander.net/DJ/Videos/ComicChatVideo.shtml.
May	..26 ..This site has moved to a new Web Host Provider after having survived several DOS Attacks on the host server. Hopefully we will return to our regular Comic Chat Services now! :)
March	..23 ..Happy Easter!
February	..21 ..Kewpie has officially closed her Comic Chat server. However, her Comic Chat character and background webpages are still posted for your use and enjoyment. (UPDATE: Site was: http://www.kewps.com/index.htm, but closed near the end of 2009).
January	..27..Vista Help File #2 states that the Character Editor will not work in Vista. Well Mermy got an email from a dude named Andrew saying that he is using the Character Editor on his Vista machine with out any problems. He even states that he didn't have to use the appcompat program to get it to work either. This is awesome news! Mermy wants to mention it here, but will not actually change the information on her 'Vista Help Page' untill she can confirm Andrew's report. ..1..Yikes! another year has passed! This last year has seen some more changes in the comic Chat world. ..Kewpie has disappeared from Comic Chat, (although it does appear that she is still keeping her server online). :) ..MadMax, the owner of the #Crypt server split his server in order to maintain just one room on the server. The idea is that there are so few chatters online anymore that it would be nice if we all chatted in one room. (Sounds good to me). ..Angeleyes and LilJoe moved their room to the new 'Entouche' server where there seems to be a nice little gathering in #BamBamsDen. ..Many people have asked Mermy through the years why she doesn't have her own server nor chat room. To her, it takes commitment to be consistent enough to be there everyday at a specific time so that others can find her. It's like keeping a store open on regular hours. This is something mermy hasn't been able yet to accomplish. However, as an experiment, Mermy did open a room on the new Entouche server called #Mermys_Grotto. She hopes to attempt to be available on a daily basis between the pacific coast time of 5 to 7 PM. ..Fantas has written some nice scripts to manage and create Comic Chat files (.avb's and .bgb's). ..Syko_mama in the #LaffinLoft is still hanging in there and keeping her server open for anyone looking for a friend to chat with. ..Mermy discovered that the mic:// fix does still work on WinXP sp2 if one first turns off the restore feature first before merging the reg fix file. (then reboot and turn restore back on). ..Welp...Happy New Year, Everybody!


2007	2007
October	..18 ..Tonight Taterin's characters were restored. She had 7 characters that many will remember once they are seen again. ..16 ..Stussy's ComichaStation character page was restored tonight on mermeliz.net! ..15 ..Big_J's Characters 4 All site was restored tonight on mermeliz.net! ..14 ..An Update to the character Download Page shows 5 sites have changed. Four were missing and one was reorganized. Among the Closed sites was our friend Haruki. Her beloved characters have already been restored this weekend onto mermeliz.net! ..The background to Noz's Site was repaired so that her page would work on visitors who are using higher resolution monitors
May	..14 ..An Email request from Markus Brückner has prompted Mermy to edit the German version of the Comic Chat .exe file to play the popular .MP3 and .WMA file formats within a Comic Chat room. The edited versions can be found on the WinXp MP3 Help Page. ..18 ..Greek version is also now available on the WinXp MP3 Help Page.
April	..1 ..As Promised Mermy posted her 'Windows Vista Help Page' HERE! Also added Joey's 'MS Chat Info' tool on the 'Cool Programs' page for download. The control panel for the 'Rainbow Font' program, also on the Cool Programs page, was all in Japanese. Therefore, Mermy edited it with a HEX editor and changed the Japanese buttons to English for easier use.
March	..27 ..Mermy recently purchased a computer with Windows Vista installed. Look for a Windows Vista help page soon to follow. For now, Comic Chat does work in Vista. The Character Editor, on the other hand, does not. Simply put, unlike WindowsXP, Vista does not have a 16 bit subsystem in it. Therefore even using Appcompat, will not get the Character Editor to function. (The Editor is 16 bit, the Comic Chat program is 32 bit). . . :-( Mermy is researching the use of Microsoft's 'Virtual PC 2007' as a 'work-around'.
January	..MP3 & WMA Sound files can be played in Comic Chat if you have Windows XP or higher. Go to the WinXP Help Page for further assistance! ..Mermy gets email messages on occasion, from some server operators requesting her to add their server link to her server/rooms page. Although she usually does, sometimes the server ends up having hostile anti-comic chat users on them. This most often happens when the server is not set up for IRCX Mode operation. If hostilities continue, then the server gets removed from her link page. As a general message, she would like Comic Chatters to know that the friendliest servers are: Kewpie's 'chat.kewps.com', MadMax's 'The Crypt', Syko Mama's 'LaffinLoft', and Jade's 'Terraformers'. ..Microsoft Vista supports the Comic Chat program, however the mic:// links will not work as hot links to the Comic Chat program. Users of Vista and WinXP will have to continue to copy and paste the server links into the Comic Chat server connection pop-up window. Microsoft's latest security updates for WinXP once again kills the mic:// as being recognized as an HTML protocol. Mermy's guess is that the security patch stops any executables from opening as an HTML protocol. (Unlike the first patch which just merely took the mic:// recognition out of the registry file). ..Joey's Cool MS Chat Information Tool can be found here: http://www.members.optushome.com.au/pret/mschat_info/

2006	2006
July	Microsoft has finally went and removed the download files of the Comic Chat program from their download server. Therefore the links to download the program on Mermy's download page have been updated to reflect sourcing from the Phoenix-Online website. Enjoy! :-)
May	Kei-Nya's much loved Comic Chat characters have been restored to auto-download status on mermeliz.net: Four other download pages have also been restored. They are: IseShima Kirou-Ran Prince Alucard MissDipsy
February	Joey of the Comic-Reach Team has created a very usefull utility for controlling the Comic Chat program settings through a control panel. He calls it 'Microsoft® Chat 2.5 Information' v 1.1. Joey also provides a link to Microsoft .net Framework 1.1 which is a requirement for his program to function properly. For more information and download, click here: http://cchattool.endofinternet.net/ Also available now on Nightwolf's site is another modified verison of the ComicChat.exe file which allows one to play MP3's and WMA sound files in Comic Chat. Work's on Win2k, WinXP, Win2k3. Installation help is same as the WinXP MP3 help page, xpmp3help.htm
January	Happy New Year! Let's all pray for world wide peace!

2005	2005
December	Merry Christmas, Everybody! WANTED: Code Geek or Geekette who can make a control panel for a 16 bit commandline program which will allow it to function in a Windows XP environment. Use email button on left of page to correspond.
November	..23rd ..QDKathy has passed away and will be sorely missed. Visit: 18 Feb 27: Link to "An Icon is Gone!" was removed because the website that it was posted on has disbanned! :(((< Was: http://www.comic-chat.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=9
July	..A Japanese version of the MP3 Comic Chat exe file was added to the WinXP MP3 help/download page. ..Kaori recently got married and has not had the time that she would like to maintain her web site. Therefore she recently contacted Mermy through Stussy, (of ComichaStation), requesting that her site be mirrored on mermeliz.net. ..Kathy from the Comic-Reach Servers recently had a lightning strike and will be down for a while. The 'Reach' Server connections are still active and online! ..Mr.Fantas Founder of the 'Toonas Servers,' closed his servers and is moving on to other real life adventures. NOTE: Toonas was connected together with 4 servers. Mr.Fantas had 2 of them which are now closed. The other 2 servers are still online and active. Therefore Toonas is still operating!
January	..Claire's (aka Clarisssa) Comic Chat characters (86) have been restored on Mermaid Elizabeth's Aqua World (mermeliz.net). ..Takobou's Comic Chat characters (54) have also been restored on mermeliz.net. ..Happy New Year! It is Mermy's wish that this is the year all of her web page visitors find Love, Peace, Joy, and the Lord in their lives! ..Moved the games that were newly added to the 'Cool Programs Page' over to the 'Fun Pages'. ..Also Added a 'Super Mario' Game to the 'Fun Pages' along with an amazing word puzzle.


2004	2004
December	..Message Board has been restored! ..WindowsXP issues are addressed in a new WindowsXP Help Section. Topics currently covered are: 1. Playing MP3 files in Comic Chat. 2. How to restore the mic:// prefix as an HTML Protocol after WinXP Service Pack 2. 3. How to install and use the Comic Chat Character Editor with WindowsXP. ..Phoenix-Online web site was moved to mermeliz.net as per Francine's, ( MetaJoy ), request. All content now auto downloads from the new host site! ..18 New Christmas backgrounds can be downloaded from Phoenix's Holiday Background Page. ..Mermy has used her time at home recovering from surgery to complete re-coloring mermeliz.com page theme. She owes thanks to the freeware program DeKnop for making all of the new gradient graphics possible! ..ChatCheck's web page also got a face lift thanks a freeware BOX making program called Scott's Box Shot Maker ( Although Mermy doesn't care for the LAME! icon for the program so she replaced it on her desktop with her own selected 'box' icon ). ..Cool Programs Page has 6 new freeware programs available for downloading. Some of the new programs include an awesome CD/DVD burner program, a calender making program, and a couple of games. Mermy also added a download library for the Visual Basic RunTime Libraries! ..12th ..Updated the color and graphics scheme to this web site! ..Added 5 new programs to download from the Cool Programs Page. ..A VB Driver download section was also added to the Cool Programs Page. ..Phoenix-Online web site was moved to mermeliz.net as per Francine's, (MetaJoy), request
June	..5th ..Updated the comic Characters Link Page as well as 'Chat Check's' search control file. ..Added 2 new links to the Character Download Page. ..Added a link to Sniffle's FAQ page to mermeliz.com main page.
May	..2nd ..Updated the comic Characters Link Page as well as 'Chat Check's' search control file. ..Once again the best website for downloading Comic Chat characters and backgrounds, (Phoenix On-Line Foundation's Character Nexus), has gone off line. For now the status of this loss is unknown :-( ...The last time they were offline on 4 Feb 04, it was due to a server error.
March	..22nd ..Added a freeware archiver program that handles all the major formats. Called 'Power Archiver 6.11', this program can be downloaded on the 'Cool Programs' page. ..Deleted the link to WinZip on the 'Cool Programs' page after adding the free 'Power Archiver' program. ..14th ..ChatCheck's control file update was completed this last weekend. It will once again skip over the dead web sites and go to good downloading sites for comic chat characters.
February	..29th ..Unipeg's characters are restored and now available on mermeliz.net ..Chibi_Lee's characters were also restored there. (Check the character link page here on this site for the links). ..20th ..MissBanji's new web site has been added to the Character's Link Page ..12th ..PizzaCat from Japan, has sent Mermy the last missing character that she needed to fully restore Momomo's Mirrored Site. The missing character was 2Chcat.avb. Upon receiving it, Mermy posted it on the mirror site on mermeliz.net. This makes the site complete. -- Thank you, PizzaCat! -- ..10th ..Phoenix-Online Foundation's website discovered they had a server error and are back online with their domain name. The good news out of this is that the characters that once auto downloaded from there will once again work. The bad news is that as Mermy was restoring the characters, she found 286 of the 633 that download from their web pages, do not auto download within the Comic Chat program. They were all 100% repaired under the new address, but since it is all now back to the 'pre-domain-loss' status, they once again will not auto download. :-((( ..4th ..Found the Phoenix-Online Foundation's new web url. It appears as if they lost the domain name for the moment. Although the web content is still available, the Comic Chat characters will not auto download unless they reactivate their domain name. This also includes all of the .BGB backgrounds. Phoenix's old url was http://www.phoenix-online.org/ It is now http://www.qouest.net/~phoenix/#characters until otherwise discovered. ..1st ..Restored the 'original' Comic Chat color replacement .AVB's. The 'restoration' includes a working auto-download url as well as restoration of the 'author' and 'copyright' information. All 22 characters can be found HERE:
January	..15th ..Completed posting the download pages for Whiteswan's restored characters. All 90 of the restored comic characters are now accessable on Mermeliz.net. ..11th ..Whiteswan's Characters have been restored on Mermeliz.net. 90 of her 145 characters are posted on these pages. Currently only 12 of them are accessable via a webpage download. More pages will be added as Mermy finishes creating them. ..4th ..Happy New Year, everyone! ..Added HTML code for creating gradient backgrounds using HTML code alone on the HTML Tidbits Page.


2003	2003
December	..21st ..Momomo's character download site has been 'mirrored' onto Mermeliz.net. All Momomo character lovers can get repaired/working characters from this mirrored resource. Momomo has emailed Mermaid Elizabeth and states that he is buried in school studies and has not been able to repair his own site. Mermaid is missing 1 of his characters in order to make it a total mirrored site. The missing character is: 2chcat.AVB. If anyone has this character, please email it to Mermy so she can complete the website. Thank you! (We were missing 5 characters, originally, but our Aussie friend, Joey, sent Mermy '2Chcat2' and '2Chcat3'. Kewpie sent Lineage_Prince_Man and Dettin, so we're down to 1 left to find. Thanks Joey and Kewpie both! :)
September	..13th ..Added a freeware file splitting program, FineSplit, and a better Microsoft Agent .ACS file previewer, AgAnims, to the 'Cool Programs' page. ..7th ..Updated 'Sounds Link Page' as well as the 'Character's Link Page'. ..Added 'DarkEyes' Restored Download Page to ChatCheck as well as an updated page for 'Nifty's CharaCHAT' characters. (CharaCHAT's .AVB files have not auto downloaded for years. Mermy hexed them to update the autodownload url in them). ..For Those of you who do not know, The APCOMPAT.EXE program posted on the Character Editor/WinXP page can be used on any program that will not otherwise work in WinXP ..Just follow the same procedure as outlined on the Editor/WinXP Help Page. Use the navagational buttons located in the left hand column. ..Mermy recently read a review of her website where the author was giving her the credit for creating the mermaid character, 'MMD.AVB,' that she uses in Comic Chat. This character was originally created by a Japanese artist named 'ToyPoodle' in November of 1997. Mermy has adopted her since her creation, but does not claim any ownership of the .AVB file. See more of ToyPoodle's characters on mermeliz.net.
August	..9th ..Updated ChatCheck's main control file to find more character .AVB files. ..2nd ..Added Syko Mama's new server for Comic Chat to the Server/Rooms page.
July	..20th ..Wowsers! Sniffles has created a very comprehensive Help Page for using the Character Editor in creating your own Comic Chat Characters. Find the link to her new pages on the 'MS Chat Help Page'! (See the navagation buttons on the left). ..15th ..Added a link to a brand new server to the 'Server/Rooms Page' that just opened up this last weekend called 'Socket'. Go on in and say Howdy to 'Roshi' the host! ..12th ..Added a link to DanCCer's and Evil Steve's new room to the Server/Rooms Link Page! ..2nd ..Soft's All BGB's was suddenly closed down when her web host server was taken over by another company. She is moving to http://www.bmp2bgb.com/
June	..29th ..Updated the Character Links Page as well as the Servers/Rooms Link Page ..1st ..Updated the Column Navigation Buttons which are on the left side of this page. ..Also moved the site history logs prior to 2003 onto a 'Site History Archives' page.
April	..5th ..The links for downloading the actual Microsoft Comic Chat program and the Character Editor are repaired and working again. If in the event one has future problems downloading from Mermy's links, downloaders can get the Microsoft Comic Chat and the Character Editor programs on the Phoenix On-Line Foundation web site.
February	..17th ..Updated the 'Cool Programs' page and added a freeware Hard Drive copying utility called HDCopy created by Kurt Zimmermann.
January	..5th ..Warmest Wishes for your New Year! Let's hope that we all remain safe! Has been restored! On 'Aqua World', you will find restored Comic Chat Characters.


2002	2002
December	..7th ..Christmas is once again approaching us. This year Mermaid would like to place a link HERE for those who wish to Holitize their Desktop. This site has some very nice free Christmas themes. Some with matching screensavers and WinAmp skins. Happy holidays!
November	..3rd ..IF WinXP users are getting a warning message while attempting to visit this site in regards to the old and dead 'Sokets de Trois' Trojan, then please READ THIS, then GO HERE! ..1st ..Friends, don't put their friends email address in their Windows address book!
October	..23rd ..Added, A new server, Comics Clubhouse to the Server/Rooms Page. Their Premier Grand Opening will be Friday, October 24th. Come on over and meet *Samson* and *Delilah. ..20th ..Added,* a second REGISTRY file to the 'Server/Rooms' page for adding the IRCX-City Chat server group to your Comic Chat connection registry. ..Updated some of the graphics on the 'Comic Chat' program download page as well as the 'Character Editor' download page. ..Added a page to address the 'Windows XP' issues that one discovers when they try to install and use the Comic Chat Character Editor on a 'Windows XP' machine. A download file is attached to the new page who's creation was aided by the expertise of KellieZ. Many thanks to KellieZ for her much needed help! ..Updated a few of the links on the 'Comic Characters' Link Page. ..Consolidated the 'Cool Stuff' page and the 'Programs' page to one single page called 'Cool Programs' ..Updated the format for the 'Link Button' page as well as the 'Microsoft Character Editor .AVS' download page. ..Changed the layout of the 'Backgrounds' download page and updated the data on the page. ..4th ..Stussy, my dear friend from Japan who's web site is 'Comi-Cha Station' has created a link button for others to use on their web pages to create a link to this site, (mermeliz.com). Here is Stussy's wonderful work: It is 153 x 53 pixels and is 2k in size!
September	..25th ..Big C is putting together a 'Comic Chat History' site, all contributions would be greatly appreciated. If you wish to help, please email your info to: smooth_criminal@ntlworld.com
July	..25th ..Updated ChatCheck control file. Added many new character sites to it. ..Updated the Character Links Page.
May	..25th ..Thanks to her dear friend, Snap2, Mermaid, has discovered the fun world of 'Peer-To-Peer', (p2p), file sharing! Here is a link where you can also find hours of fun when you can't find any of your friends in Comic Chat: Update 10 April 2020: Sorry KaZaA site no longer exists! ..Updated Character download links page. We lost Agness' site, which apparently was closed. ..To Date, Mermaid has 157 character .AVB files posted on her FTP site that were restored to auto downloading status since she has opened this web domain 2 years ago. Although these files are there, she has never posted any download page for 'at site' public access. For now, she has decided to post a list for 'copy and paste' downloading. (You have to 'copy and paste' the url address into your web browser in order to download the character)! The list is here: Restored2Auto ..12th ..Soft has redone her background site as well as completed restoring all of the 'original' backgrounds from her former 'xoom/nbci' site. You can find the link to her pages on Merm's 'Backgrounds' page.
April	..6th ..Phoenix On-Line Foundations Web Site updating efforts have finally been completed! They are back on a faster and larger server. See the Character Links Page for a link to their Web Site. ..Updated Character Links Page
March	..18th ..Updated ChatCheck's control file and corrected some of the parameters that were causing errors. ..Restored LiL^Sugar's characters and her download page. Then added them to the 'Characters Link Page'. ..If anyone is searching for the Phoenix On-Line Foundations' Comic Character Pages, rest assured, they will be returning shortly. Fran, the founder, is in the process of upgrading their server. ..6th ..Added a link to the 'MS Chat Help' page. Bud-O's famous tutorials on how to create a Comic Chat character were restored to the Phoenix On-Line Tutorial pages. As well as a new area for advanced Comic Chat artists being developed called 'The Academy of Comic Chat Artists'. ..5th ..Updated the links on the Backgrounds Page once again. Bud-O has restored many old time favorites back to the 'Phoenix On-Line Foundations' Comic Chat background pages. One can also find many new backgrounds added to the pages as well. Bud-O has also reinforced his copyright claims to the backgrounds that are of his own creation. (see background pages 3 & 4 on that site).
February	..20th ..Updated the links on the Backgrounds Page. Soft has added new backgrounds for download on her site. Also, Kewpie has added some more 'restored' backgrounds to hers. ..18th ..Added a Registry file for download on the Server/Rooms Page which, if installed, will add the server group IrcComicChat.Net to Comic Chat's Connection Table as a Group. ..17th ..Updated the 'Programs' and the 'Cool Stuff' pages. Started updating the 'Characters Link Page' on the 9th of this month.


2001	2001
December	..A list of all .AVBs and .BGBs located in Mermaid_Elizabeth's Comicart folder has been added to this site. It can be downloaded Here for anyone wishing to view it who may be looking for a specific character or background! (Update Dec. 8 2018: This list was removed since now there are 1,378 BGB's and 12,607 AVB's. Too many to list for now!) ..Racer has discontinued his domain name 'racernet.net'. Therefore Soft's main web site is also lost. Soft is closing her AOL account which means all her AOL content is also going to stop auto downloading. In light of all of this, we have moved all of her most recent 'AOL' content [auto downloading .BGB backgrounds] to a new domain. One must go to this new domain and download the 'restored' backgrounds from there in order to continue to have the most recent auto downloading backgrounds. Soft's older backgrounds which were on the xoom/nbci servers will also be restored here as well. (as time permits). The new address for Soft's restored backgrounds is here: http://www.allbgbs.net/index.htm
November	..27th..Added 'The Cajun Chat Networks' server to the server/rooms page. ..25th..Updated Character Link Page (added 4 new sites). ..Also..Updated Sounds link Page (added 9 new sites). ..Because of the discontinuation of the nbci.com free web hosting service, many of Soft's auto-downloading .BGB backgrounds have become dead non-autoing backgrounds. A restoration of these backgrounds is underway and will be relocated to http://allbgbs.net/
October	..14th..ChatCheck web search file has been updated to reflect all the new web site changes. ..Added Kewpie's new 'Restored Backgrounds Page' link to the backgrounds page.
September	..8th..Updated Character Link page ..added 3 new sites. Some NBCI/XOOM sites still seem to work after NBCI's close down. Mermaid's guess is it's because they are probably on NBCI servers that the NBCI webmasters haven't gotten around to editing yet. ..ChatCheck, the Comic Chat Character Search program, has been updated to version 2.5f by Sqiz, the author. This new version will now function properly within the new Windows ME operating system. Read more about it and download it here!.
July	..30th..Added a Perl Script page that allows anyone to add their link to it for all to use! Come add your link Here! (20.Feb.02 ..Sorry had to remove this feature on account of some visitors were abusing it)! ..7th..NBCI is rattling their sword about closing their services to free web site hosting. They are reporting that they will be closing July 15th. This will effect many many Comic Chat sites that have taken residence there. What this means for us is that there will be a time that some links on the Character link page will not work till all sites have relocated to new homes. Best wishes to all those effected!
June	..9th..Links on the Characters page have been updated.
April	..29th..Web Masters! You'll be happy to know a link to the 'must have' ..'WebGraphics Optimizer' has been added to the Programs page. ..24th..Added links to nine new sites on the 'Characters' page. Added link on the Sounds page to 'Eaglet's Favorite Midi Sounds'. ..15th..Happy Easter everyone! The Character page has been edited! The control files for ChatCheck have also been updated! ..11th..Added a commentary ..'Crossing The Fence'
March	..12th..Character page has been updated! See sites with 12.03.01 date for new characters! ..MS Agent users should visit Cool Stuff page! Added .ARC extraction to WinZip Shell extensions on Programs page! ChatCheck Tip ..In order for a web page to be scanned by ChatCheck, it must have only one link per comic character on a page! The name of the character cannot have the .AVB in the name. It should only be in the actual link to the character!
February	..28th..AS of 21 February 2001, MSN has closed their services to the Microsoft Comic Chat Servers ..No worries..There are plenty of other servers that support the Comic Chat client. Many of us have moved HERE! ..You can also find other servers and chat rooms by clicking the Servers/Rooms button in the left hand column! ..26th..Added MacGyver's #Modern_Color Character Pages to the Character Download page! ..25th..Added link button in column to Fun Pages! ..Also the Cool Stuff page has been updated! ..23th..Phoenix/Nexus site has added 12 new backgrounds see the background page for the link to the site! ..22th..Restored ChatCheck to full operational status. Download the updated version HERE ..20th..Reposted the Microsoft .AVS files, for use in the Character Editor, for downloading.
January	..Greetings! - Welcome to Mermaid Elizabeth's new server and new page set-up! ..28th ..Updated 'Character Page links' ..fortunecity.com has joined the ranks of free web site host servers that no longer support .AVB (Comic Chat Character Files)!


2000	2000
December	..29th ..Webb.Net Operators have informed me that as of January 31, 2001, they will no longer be in business! Therefore all web content that is on the Webb.Net servers will cease to exist at that time! Many of my own pages are posted there and will be restored here! ..28th ..5 new character sites were added to the Character Link Page! Also the Jong Chat server was added to the Server/Rooms page! ..17th ..Many sites that had mostly photo AVB's for downloading were removed from this link service site! The reason was due in most part to 'association' to violations of copyright infringment issues! For more understanding of internet copyright issues, please visit these sites that are dedicated to the subject: Tamrof's Copyright Links \| The Copyright Website Association for the Protection of Internet Copyrights
October	..25th ..Mermeliz.com is born! Prior to the domain 'mermeliz.com', Mermaid's web content was scattered across several AOL screen name webspace. At the time, AOL allowed an account holder to have 4 different screen names. Each screen name was allowed 2 Meg of web space. So Mermaid took up 3 of her 4 screen names and two of of her sister-in-laws extra screen name space. [AOL sites were: lanilaura, joesdojo, chatpacks, softscomics (bgbs), & softscomix (bgbs)]. Mermaid cancelled her AOL dial-up account on 1 May 2000 after having upgraded her internet service to (screaming fiberoptic speed) FIOS. She moved her web content to webb.net [www.webb.net/sites/mermeliz/ and www.webb.net/sites/merm/] and then when webb.net closed, she moved to xoom.com [members.xoom.com/out2c/ and members.xoom.com/C_urchin/] The name "Mermeliz" is a made-up name from a conjunction of "Mermaid Elizabeth"! At the time, the name did not exist anywhere else on the internet, but as of the year 2018, there is a gal in Costa Rica using the name for her facebook account. And a company in Mexico selling Strawberry Preserves also using the name. Mermaid does not know these people and wonders how they came up with their name. It is fun to see others from around the world coming up with the same name! Cool, huh?