First thing first, I am still beside myself with the passing of Martin. It hasn't fully sunk in quite yet. Martin's drive and passion towards weather and technology, especially at his young age was nothing short of exceptional. It makes me extremely sad to hear of such a young energetic person leaving us.
Second, Martin kept me in charge of maintaining the back-end of TWCToday, while the Forum admin's and moderators kept everything sane on the front-end. To that extent, I do have the keys to the kingdom, but NOT the deed to it (if you follow me). When the forum was having its hosting hiccup a few weeks ago, I discussed this with him, and he advised me that everything should be in good shape. Unfortunately, I did not push for him to relay any of the billing back-end info to me just in-case (as we all knew he was a busy person).
What does this mean for us forum-dwellers? The forum and content wont be lost (still off-loading and backing it up at the moment), but we will need to find a new domain that will carry the torch forward. Never at any point are we to forget about the roots of this particular site and the meaning of it.
As myself, a supporter of the intermediate TWC time spanning 1994 through 2003, whom the 'core TWC audience' watched and welcomed into their homes. I believe a name that covers the scope of the channel, the weather, the forecasting, the people that made not only all of this possible, but also inspired people, like Martin, to fall in love with, where without TWC, he may have been otherwise been involved with something else (probably less interesting) in life.
As a member of the TWC community, I know what it feels like to be knocked around and beat up as a fan, especially over the last few years since the NBC acquisition. Fortunately for us, I believe they the head-execs have heard our outcry and are re-aligning the channel to us.
In closing, I would like to open a discussion with the other Admins here on the forum and discuss what would be a suitable domain name to keep us together and strong, despite this hard time. Once a name has been determined, we will have this published and this site will point to there until the hosting on this domain expires.
Brian