Bike Resources

 
Just to keep you up to date with what's what in terms of the background resources PS and I have been working on to enhance / extend your enjoyment of the series (and act as an aide-memoire to past events), here's what we have lined up for you:

Current Resources:

Bike Archive	Episode Summaries	Location Map	And in the future?	EAFOAB Wiki
Resource Link	Resource Link	Resource Link		Resource Link

(More info after the break...)

 
Bike Archive
 
First up, the Bike Archive (originally conceived by Holly H. Hart with Angharad's permission, currently maintained by PS). All Bikeisodes up to the last multiple of 50 can be found there, arranged in searchable 50 chapter chunks. These are not only a great way to catch up if you're just starting to read the series, but (via the search facility) a useful way of reminding yourself when you last saw a particular character / place.

 
Episode Summaries
 
Secondly, there's the Episode Summaries (created by me, routinely updated by PS and I). Originally conceived as just that, they've grown to include a lot of other useful stuff:

• It should open up on an intro page, which provides a brief synopsis, a tally count of the number of episodes summarised to date, and a few useful links (e.g. to dormouse related articles).
• If you look at the bottom of the spreadsheet, you'll see lots of tabs. These are where the main content hides.
• First up, three tabs worth of characters: Family, major characters and minor characters. Each time you'll find their full name, any other names by which they are (or were) known, who they are, and in which episode they first featured. For family, if we've been given their date of birth or any other information to indicate when their birthday is, you'll find it in the character sheet.
• Then the summaries themselves, in 100 chapter blocks. For each episode, you'll find the episode number, the date of publication, the summary itself, any particularly interesting quotes, any significant events occurring, and the episode title (both the ongoing ones - e.g. "Daily Dormouse", "Wuthering Dormice", and one-off specials e.g. "Kilobike").

 
Location Map
 
Finally, PS has created a Google Map of significant locations within the story. Generally speaking, the markers for public (factual) locations (e.g. universities, hospitals) are accurately placed, but for other (fictional) locations (e.g. Tom's home, the Southsea hotel) the placement is more subjective, based on the best available evidence of where they could be if they existed in real life.

As far as I'm aware, the summaries should be editable by anyone with the link, and the map should be editable by anyone with a Google account (GMail, YouTube, Picasa, Blogger etc.)

 
And in the future?
 
Although the summaries are fairly up to date, there's always potential for improvement. So if you've read an early episode and spotted what you think is a classic quote, but neither PS nor I have seen fit to include it, feel free to go ahead and add it in the relevant column yourself. I do take regular off-line backups of the sheet, so you don't need to worry about potentially mucking anything up. Just grovel to me or PS if you accidentally overwrite anything, and one of us will sort it out when we next log into the site.

Having said all that, if by any remote chance you think we've missed an opportunity and there's something you're sure would make a great additional resource for the series, let us know! Just don't expect us to draw fan-art of the characters... :)

 
EAFOAB Wiki
 
Although the summary spreadsheet is a great way to store data, it isn't very user friendly - especially when it comes to editing. So I've now started converting the data in it to a wiki in the hope that (a) more people look at it, (b) more people edit it. At the time of writing (3rd Jan 2012) the character lists are up, together with the first 200 summaries. I'll make a formal announcement once I've eventually converted the lot, but if you want to take a peek and perhaps edit or tidy up what's there or add some new stuff, here's the link: EAFOAB Wiki.