If you've come to Airlock Alpha long enough, then you know that we're really not like many other sites out there. And if you really do think that, then that's good, because that's what we're always aiming for.

Thursday night, I was trying to get some sleep, so I do like anyone else would do when the sheep aren't hopping the fence quick enough. I Googled myself.

I don't do it as often as I should, as I'm usually afraid to see what some people say about me (there are a few out there who can be real cruel). But one blog posted a comment about how we write interviews we've conducted, and that made me realize that it's time for a "Why Do You Do That?" column, touching on some of the eccentricities of Airlock Alpha.

Whenever you write up an interview, why do you always say "told Airlock Alpha's Michael Hinman" or "told Airlock Alpha's Alan Stanley Blair" when they are the author of the story?
Yes, the whole tradition of us referring to ourselves in the third person. That's the question that popped up in the blog I mentioned, and one I've heard on occasion before.

Basically, if we end up interviewing someone directly, we'll add that tag in the first quote in our story. Even if I wrote the story where I share my interview with, say, Dick Cheney or someone like that, I will add, "Cheney told Airlock Alpha's Michael Hinman" after the first quote.

Part of the reason we do that is because we want to make it easier for readers to identify what are original stories by our writers, and what was picked up by other sources. But there is a bigger catalyst.

Even though it's actually against our copyrights, some readers have a tendency to copy and paste entire stories from Airlock Alpha into message boards and other places. Many times they remember to link back to us, but sometimes they don't. Since I feel everyone should get credit when credit is due, we add that line to the first part of the quote so that even if the reader failed to post a link or credit to the story they're reposting, hopefully those finding it there will know where it came from.

Kind of silly, especially since we don't really need to put the writer's name in there. But our writers are all volunteer, so why not do something to help boost their name recognition a little.

Oh, and if you're wondering why Cheney is in a sci-fi article, all I have to say is two words: Darth Vader.

Is Airlock Alpha a blog or not? I can never get a straight answer.
Well here is your straight answer: No, we are not a blog. Not that we have anything against blogs -- I visit them all the time, and know of some amazing ones like The TV Addict and the redesigned Sci-Fi Pulse. But Airlock Alpha, in its previous forms and names, actually predates blogs. Hell, we actually predate Google, believe it or not. And we don't feel that the way we distribute our news could be considered blog-like.

Plus we work very hard to make sure opinion pieces and full-fledged news pieces are kept separate. Not that all blogs are opinionated, but many of them are, and we like to keep that separation that our readers have trusted for more than a decade.

If Airlock Alpha is so good, why aren't you at more conventions?
I get asked to conventions all the time, but I attend very few of them. The biggest reason is time: I just don't have much of it. And my weekends are about the only time I get to really relax and realize I have a cat and a better half.

Also, while I joke about this a lot, I am a bit demophobic, meaning I don't do well with crowds. That's why I might spend more time with conventions that are local to me and traditionally smaller like Oasis in Orlando and Necronomicon in St. Petersburg.

Beginning last year, I did start going to Comic-Con in San Diego, which is insanely huge. But that makes sense from a journalistic standpoint as a lot of news comes out of there. So I should be there ... and thanks to our assistant news editor Bryant Griffin, I'll have much more help this year in covering stories.

Are you a millionaire?
Far from it. I work by day at a business newspaper, and live in a nice small condominium hidden deep inside the Tampa Bay area.

I do drive a much nicer car than I used to, but you can thank NBC for that.

You predicted "Dollhouse" would get renewed more than a month before anyone believed you, during a time when every single other person said it didn't have a chance in hell. Where on Earth do you get your sources?
I can't say exactly where I get them, because then my competitors would know. But I learned a long time ago that the last people to know if a show is going to be canceled or renewed are the cast and crew. The first people are studio execs, so that's where you need to have sources.

What exactly is the Stability Index Rating, and why do you use it?
The Stability Index Rating is something I developed a couple years back to try and track how stable audiences to television shows were. Anyone who knows how to find Zap2it online can get overnight ratings for network shows, but I wanted a way to take that data and use it for something that provides some effective information that no one else has.

In my years studying Nielsen ratings, I know that something that could hurt a show, even with good ratings, is if the audience is not stable. Networks tend to sell shows based on a specific audience, and if they only get that audience part of the time, they may find themselves having to give over free advertising time to sponsors to make up for the smaller-than-anticipated audiences.

The SIR simply compares a show's highest rating with its average, and the number is then inverted to create an index rating. If you study that sentence long enough, you likely would be able to figure out the formula. It's not really a secret.

And no, despite what some interpreted us saying in the past, the networks do not use SIR. Only we do in discussion of the fate of different shows. It's simply one of many tools we use to tell how well a show is really doing, and not just relying simply on the numbers themselves.

When is Inside Blip going to launch? And when are all the other bells and whistles going to come out for the BlipNetwork?
I can tell you that our chief technology officer Nick Chase and our community engineer Shane Churchman are working day and night to get everything going. Right now they are building a behind-the-scenes framework for Airlock Alpha that was recently instituted for our horror site, Rabid Doll. When that framework is done, you will see a slight aesthetic change at Airlock Alpha, and then Shane and Nick will finish the work on Inside Blip to get it launched this June.

There is a whole community element that Shane will implement across all three sites, and that likely will happen soon after Inside Blip is launched. It'll be cool, I promise!

What really happened with the Syfy brand? Are you honestly happy with how NBCU is going to use it?
NBC Universal bought the name outright, fair and square. While some have hit NBCU for not disclosing who they were when they bought the name, I don't hold it against them, because I would've approached it the same way as a businessman. Plus, the amount they paid was very fair, and we're happy with it.

I really do support the renaming of SciFi Channel to Syfy. I think they should capitalize the "F," but their reasoning for doing it (branding and all) makes perfect sense, and it really does need its own name, even if it's just a homonym of their old name.

There are some good shows on-slate for Syfy including "Warehouse 13," "Caprica" and another season of "Sanctuary" and "Eureka." I haven't seen any of them yet, so my opinion might change, but I am looking forward to it.

How can I write for Airlock Alpha?
Well, that's not as easy as it sounds. We get a lot of people who want to write for us, and we only pick a select few. But we're always looking, especially those who might be interested in writing for our up-and-coming horror entertainment news site Rabid Doll.

If you are interested in writing, send me an e-mail with who you are, something about you, and some writing samples (even if they are something you just wrote up right now to demonstrate your skills) and send them to me at mhinman@airlockalpha.com.

Our writers are volunteers, and tend to put in just a few hours a week. But they get to write about the things they love (for the most part), get their name out there on a popular site visited by thousands of people each day, and get to take part in other cool things that we don't even talk about publicly.

And if you indicate you would be interested in helping out the Rabid Doll team, you have a better chance of hearing back from me. So e-mail me some info about you today!