Northerners are generally accustomed to weathering frigid winters and all sorts of nasty frozen precipitation (I moved South to escape all that, or so I thought). When consecutive days of winter storm warnings hit central Texas, however, everything pretty much comes to a grinding halt. Thankfully my electricity didn’t go out during this time; the only casualties I have to report are a pair of trees that succumbed to ice buildup and pretty much broke in half.

Anyway, since we had to endure several days of freezing rain, snow, and ice, I decided to take advantage of being trapped inside and have finished doing the modifications I had in mind for the site (which I warned about previously).

What’s new, you ask?

· There’s now a handy sitemap page (XML included), and another for archives. These facilitate navigation and remove unwanted sidebar clutter.

· Social bookmarking capabilities have been added to individual posts. If you see a post you like, please don’t hesitate to pass it along.

· More efficient comment quicktags have been added for easier text formatting.

· The live preview feature for commenting has returned, so you can see what your contributions look like in advance, underneath the comment form.

· Post categories have been restructured.

· Navigation through search results and archives has been made much easier.

· I’ve also made numerous visual enhancements to the layout here. Some you’ll surely notice, but the minor formatting adjustments are pretty subtle (things I had to fix that were bothering me). If you navigate through the menu up top, you’ll see some of the more obvious changes.

· The site is more accessible now for users with disabilities; my goal is to have the site WAI/WCAG 1.0 compliant eventually (on at least Level A if not Double-A) and it’s most of the way there, but I need to double-check a few things before proclaiming that’s finished.

While I checked all these tweaks in Firefox and Internet explorer, I can’t guarantee everything displays precisely as intended (browsers that stubbornly deviate from W3C standards *cough, IE* make achieving uniformity a bit of a pain). If you’d like to offer praise or criticism, please feel free — and, do add a comment below if you come across a feature that isn’t working properly. Just let me know what you’re using to view the site so I can squash any gremlins.

Hope you enjoy.

This phenomenal shot of Saturn was released by the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) back on October 11th, 2006. The mosaic consists of 165 images from Cassini’s Wide Angle Camera, assembled from a three-hour observing stint on September 15th when Saturn shielded the spacecraft from the Sun’s brilliance. Visit this page to view larger resolution versions and a pair of enhanced photos which really show off the ring plane in all its glory; they’re truly magnificent.

If you haven’t stopped by the CICLOPS page lately, you might want to surf over and enjoy some of the site’s new features. They’ve of course maintained a comprehensive imaging diary for the last few years, which is already great for killing many hours feasting upon absolutely stunning photos. Just recently, they’ve expanded the page to include a nifty Saturnian art gallery as well as a theatre section showcasing movies and animations constructed from the spacecraft’s imaging equipment. The new expansion also includes digital and cartographic maps of Saturn’s moons.

Via Sector 6, you can now earn your status as a full-fledged Saturn groupie by registering with the site and joining the CICLOPS Alliance. Becoming a member will enable you to post comments on all the visual treasures hosted by the team and participate in future activities including volunteer opportunities (and I’m eager to see what they have in mind).

The Cassini spacecraft has already kicked off a fortuitous itinerary for 2007, which includes 17 close encounters with Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. If you’d like to stroll through highlights of its 2006 travels, take a few minutes to watch this interactive feature. Fifty bonus points if you do so while listening to Gustav Holst.