Gary Gygax Dies aged 69

 

Gary Gygax, 'Father of D&D,' Dies at 69 The Underwire from Wired.com

While I was never a great fan of Dungeons and Dragons as a game I did play a lot of RPG's including a few sessions of AD&D.

 

D&D is probably one of the best know RPG's ever and its thanks to that that I made a lot of friends over the years. Its been referenced in more movies and TV shows than i can keep track of, has spawned hundreds of novels and numerous computer games.

I am sure that his passing will be felt through the industry as well as the fans of his games.

Photography and a new toy

Many years ago when I was at school I was lucky enough to be able to study photography. One of the teachers was passionate about the subject and arranged for a darkroom to be installed and for camera's to be bought.
I spent two years studying the art form and acquired my first SLR camera, prior to that I had had a 110 format point and press cartridge film camera. As schools are always under funded we mainly worked in black and white. The film and chemicals are much cheaper and the students could run off more pictures. I must admit that I really enjoyed working in black and white. We looked at many aspects of photography from formal portraits, through still life and to landscapes. One of my personal favourites back then was studio portraits. I loved trying different effects with light and shadow.












Once I left school I had to give up a bit. There are all the usual reasons, like I didn't have time etc. but one of the main reasons was financial. I didn't earn much and the cost of getting film processed made it prohibitive. I still took pictures but only on days out or at special occasions.
When digital cameras became affordable I bought a Fujifilm 2 megapixel point and press type.


I still had my trusty old Praktica but it was an old model and getting anything for it aside from film was very hard, plus there is the instant gratification of digital. I switched to mainly taking digital pictures but still dug the SLR out from time to time.
When I could afford to get back into 35mm photography it was near impossible to buy lenses and other add-ons for my old SLR so I did some searching around and bought a second hand Canon EOS5.

After having used a completely manual SLR the features on the EOS5 where wonderful. having the unit autofocus, adjust the shutter speed, auto wind etc meant that I could take almost fool proof photos. I still had the option to go completely manual and at times I did but generally I let the camera do most of the hard work.
I started taking more photos and often I would get them developed either straight to disc or to normal prints with a digital copy, I also used the Fujifilm a lot as it was simply easier to carry around.
One day the Fujifilm got dropped one too many times, the battery cover cracked and the camera had been chewing through batteries more quickly anyway. So off I went to get a replacement for it. After searching around I got a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S600.










This is a great little camera. It's small enough to carry in a pocket and takes great pictures and can do basic video footage. I still used the EOS 5 but having moved countries I was finding the cost of developing film to be getting expensive again. As I regularly brought cameras to my partner’s family events I started getting asked to take photos at birthdays and weddings. A good friend of my partners has a Nikon D40

This allowed me to run off literally hundreds of pictures at an event. With a laptop and card reader in tow, I could download the pictures and keep right on shooting, sorting through the pictures I had taken to delete any that were not any good. The EOS 5 still came out now and then but more and more I was taking Digital pictures.
Early this year I was again asked to be the photographer at the wedding of a niece of my partner. Unfortunately, the owner of the Nikon was away on holiday so I couldn't borrow her camera. I found all this out while camped in Taupo and with 4 days to go until the wedding.
Now I had been looking at replacing the EOS 5 with a digital equivalent for a few years. When I first started looking I decided that I wanted to stay Cannon so I could reuse lenses and my flashgun. I had done a fair amount of research and talked to some other photographers whose opinion I trusted. I settled on the upper end of the Canon Digital range without getting into the 1D or 5D as these are really aimed, in my estimation, at the pro photographer and have a price tag to match. The current version of the range I was looking at is the EOS 40D














This camera has all the functions of my old EOS5 plus all the fun effects you'd expect of digital. I spent a couple of days playing with it before the wedding and then ha a field day at the wedding itself. I think I took just over 1000 pictures on that day and I must say I am pretty pleased with them. There are still a lot of functions I want to play with to really understand what the camera is capable of, and given the easy manipulation of the images, I really want to get back into what I enjoyed when studying, black and white photography.
Currently, I have the last 2 weddings up on my website. I have also added a whole set of photos I took at Christmas of a very nice sunset over the ocean. There is also a category for random wanderings where I plan on loading copies of pictures I take that I am especially pleased with.
Feel free to check them out in the Gallery at www.shadownet.org.uk

Websites - Time for a new look

I have owned my domain, www.shadownet.org.uk since about 1999. Originally I put up a couple of simple pages built in straight HTML and that was pretty cool. Then I learnt about things like css and JavaScript and I did some work on a couple of sites using the things I had learnt. Time went on and I learnt about asp and php. People started creating systems that were driven form databases and had dynamic content, Flash and Shockwave came on the scene. From time to time I got to work with some of these new things, but often to actually host them was fairly expensive.

After a while the cost of hosting sites that could use these technologies came down. There are many hosting providers that off all sorts of deals at all sorts of different prices. Personally I use www.Servage.net. For around $6 Australian a month I get my domain registered, the ability to host multiple domains, 510Gb of data space, unlimited email accounts plus php and mySql support.

As I had moved hosting providers my website had disappeared into the cyber-ether and anyone visiting my site was greeted with a friendly message that the domain was registered but nothing had been done with it. And it stayed that way for about a year. So I had this domain name, I had more space than I knew what to do with, I still had the original site on disk somewhere but I hadn't uploaded it. So in the 9 years I had owned the domain I really hadn't achieved more than half a dozen static pages.

Finally this month I decided to do something about it. I looked at the offerings from my hoster and found that they had a number of packages that could be auto installed on their systems. there were Blogs, Wiki's, Forums, Group calendars, image gallery's, guest books, polls and content management systems.

Now most people that know me know I like to have pet projects and that I really learn by doing. There is really very little point in giving me a book and saying 'learn this' if I am not applying what I am learning as I go. So I thought a good way to learn about some of these things, given we do a sizable amount of web development at work, would be to attempt to build up a new website and start using some of the things that are available directly from my hosting provider as well as some custom stuff.

I had a play with the various options provided and finally settled on have a Content Management system called e107 as the platform for the bulk of my site. As I take a lot of photos, especially at family events, and want to be able to share them I choose Coppermine as an online gallery. Some digging around got me some scripts and walk through's of how to integrate the 2 packages so they seamlessly merge.

Next I decided on the basics of what I wanted on the site.

I have opted for having news articles, the gallery for my photos, the ability for people to become members of the site, a forum with areas open to everyone and some that are limited to members or specific sub-groups of members, calendar functionality and the ability to have a downloads area (most likely so I can upload higher res images for the photos).

At the moment I am using an out of the box theme but I intend to redesign it, once I have decided what I want the site to look like visually. I am tempted to put up an area that pages homage to the original site I built.

I am sure as I think of things, or as people suggest ideas to me I'll find more stuff to add. It's likely to take a while as I don't get to work on it anywhere near often enough but hopefully over time it will grow and become something I'll be proud to look at and say 'I made that'.

Feel free to check it out, if you want to you can join up or make some suggestions about improvements and enhancements to help give me ideas, and if anyone what's to come up with a theme idea for the site get in touch as for a graphical point of view I am not that good.

Great Lakes Medieval Tournament and Festival 2008

Well for the last 10 days I have been camped in Spa Park in Taupo New Zealand work on this year’s event. On Sunday the 20th Jan a team of 9 adults and 4 children left various parts of Auckland and headed south. Arriving at Spa Park we quickly set up what would become our initial base camp and quickly emptied the truck that was heavily packed. after clearing the truck a small group of us piled in and head off to collect the hay bales that had been ordered for the event, by this time it was getting dark and the bales were helpfully scattered over a field, they were also bone dry so working in the confines of the back of the truck stacking them was not the worlds most pleasant experience. 3 trips later all the hay was on-site and we gratefully passed out.

Monday brought us rain; however we were on a tight time frame so while the girls tried to sort out the camp and entertain the children most of the guys piled into the truck to start laying out the security fence. Nic and Matt also took the time to start marking out the locations of the various arenas that would be built and nominal positions for the various camps.

After dinner we headed down to the river where a hot spring feeds into the main river to have a good soak.

Tuesday brought even more rain, however the fence line still needed to be finished and the first of the medieval tents had to go up as we needed to store gear in them so the work tent had enough space for us to work in. As well as the security fencing that was going up we also had to fence off various areas around the site and we have some hard standing fences that were to be erected. Blue the fencing contractor arrive around mid morning and was taken through all the requirements and promptly got on with setting out the fences we wanted him to build, a task that would see him on site each day for the rest of the week. Despite the rain I managed to get sun-burnt feet as I was working barefoot while my boots dried out from the previous day.

Wednesday brought the first of the re-enactor groups to the site, it also brought the sun. Each had to be located in the correct place so there was a fair amount of running around helping people put up tents. The international jousting teams and the horses also arrived around mid afternoon and started to get themselves sorted out. The site was starting to come together slowly.

Thursday arrived and so did more groups. The site was really starting to take shape now. As Blue had finished the hard fencing in the battle arena we started setting the inner rope fence that was our safety line. The riders and horses started various activities to get them all accustomed to each other.

Friday and the mad rush started. The last day of setup and lots of little jobs to do. More groups arrived plus the traders needed to be sited correctly. PA systems were going in place. Blue kept on the fencing; he finally finished up about 9pm I think. Porta-loos arrived and had to be hidden away so as not to spoil the medieval feel of the sight, Fire-pits were dug the dinning marquee arrived and had to be put up, the hay bales were relocated to were they would be needed. Final timetables were set. In the joust arena we were putting together the Skill at Arms run. The riders were getting practice in on the targets that were new to them and general chaos appeared to prevail. However by the time everyone finally called it a day and headed to river for a soak the site was 99% complete.

Saturday and the event opened. There was a bit of running around putting up the last of the rope fences and the Romans were busy setting up for the morning’s crucification. The pubic started arriving and everyone started having fun. The some of the team that had been onsite since the Sunday were still busy running around in the background filling water points, clearing rubbish bins, organising latecomers etc.

Sunday arrived and we continued to entertain in the blazing sun. 2 of the riders did an open joust pass as part of the day’s battle. This lead to the un-horsing of Jezz which seamed to be a fairly popular event with the public. The day ended with a banquet for both the re-enactors and the public. After the banquet there was much dancing thanks to Twisty Willow. I finally called it a night at about 4am, knowing that I had to be up in 4 hours to get on with Mondays joust.

Monday brought many bleary eyed re-enactors out of bed, a fair few had been up till the early hours and some hadn't bothered going to bed at all. The day went smoothly and finished with the prize giving. Each competition that had run over the weekend need to have its winners awarded. As well as this were some special prizes. One was given to a particularly mad foot man that let the jousters bash his shield with lances, right up to the point where one of them managed to drive a lance right through, nice shot Graham.

There was also a special show of appreciation of Nic and Istar. They had organised the event and effective put life on hold for a number of months to see it happened. The re-enactors all felt that this was one of the best events in NZ and wanted to show their appreciation and put together a goody bag of stuff. On the whole they gave personal kit which, to me as well as to Nic and Istar, meant far more than most anything else over the weekend.

Tuesday, and with the event over people started breaking camp and heading off. By nightfall only 8 adults and 1 child remained. We decided to order pizza and enjoy our selves, unfortunately the pizza appeared to be a bit to rich on stomachs that hadn't been fed often and with people suffering with heat and physical exhaustion and Wednesday morning had about half the group being ill. However we had to be off site by the end of Wednesday so we all pulled together to get the last of the gear down. Around 10am the last of the jousters headed off with the horses, bound for Auckland. That left just 4 adults, 1 of whom was still suffering from the Pizza and heat, and 1 child. We beavered away until finally at about 5pm the site was clear of everything except the hard fencing, Blue was due to start taking it down later in the week, and 1 fire pit that a Bobcat was going to fill in for us. We climbed wearily into the car and the truck and headed home. Thankfully Matt was able to drive my car home as I was ion now fit state to drive, I was the one suffering from pizza and heat related uselessness all day.

Recent Medieval Projects

With the show season back on us, I decided it's time to get on with some projects that I have been ignoring all winter. For anyone in re-enactment, this is a fairly normal state of affairs. Decide on a bunch of things to do for the next season and then just as the season arrives run around like a headless chicken trying to do them.
While there is the usual run of clothing that needs to be sorted out I have decided that some of the 'extra' bits of kit needed attention.
First up is one of the wooden chests I use to store my kit in.
I actually have 3 wooden boxes at the moment for kit. 2 of them needed no special attention, just a clean.
The last is an off the shelf pine tongue and groove storage box. The main problem with it is that tongue and groove paneling didn't exist in the 14th and 15th centuries. To resolve this I filled all the grooves in and then sanded everything smooth. then I decided to paint it up. I am about 2/3rds of the way through right now but this should give you a general idea of what it will look like.

I also decided to do some more leather work. In the past, i have stuck to fairly basic things like knife sheaves and simple pouches. I have been thinking of making up some gaming boards for chess, backgammon, Tablero and Hnefatafl, so I decided to make a case to hold the boards and pieces. I saw some designs for Scriveners Case's and decided that they would be ideal for the job I had at hand. This was the fist time I tried sowing a tube and insert ends and I am very pleased with the out come.


Next up is a dice cup. I have the leather cut out for it so I just need to sow it up.

The final piece I have been working on is a new helm. I have always had a very nice open face bascinet but I have always wanted a hounskull or pig-faced one. Recently one of the members of the group decided to off load hers so I bought it. unfortunately, it had a large amount of impact foam glued into it so I have been steadily cleaning it all out,

Not an easy job. The final thing to do is add some more mail to the aventail, but as the current mail is all riveted I need to invest in some more riveted links and carefully stitch it together.
 Once I get some in it should be a straight forward job to add it on.

Great Lakes Tourney

For me the main event in the Re-enactment world here in NZ is the Great Lakes Tourney. Hosted by The Company of the Lance, to which I belong, the event takes place at the end of January.

This year we are working hard to make this an extra special event. In previous years the main event has been an individual horseman's competition. To make things more interesting this year we are running the main event as a Teams Tourney. This means that individual Orders, made up of 3 riders, enter as a team. Each rider will compete in each of the 3 mounted disciplines, Melee, Skills at Arms and Tilt. The combined total of the team will be used to determine the overall winners.

Coupled to this we are running a number of other competitions, including, foot combat, archery and living history. We are also trying to organize battle style displays of massed combat.

While the overall scale of the event is small compared to the UK events such as Teweksbury and Berkeley, we are aiming to make it one of the premier events for New Zealand.

This means there's a lot of work to do but at the end of the day a good event makes it all worth while.

 

For information on the event take a look at http://www.taupojoust.com/default.aspx

Movember Update

One week into Movemeber and the team is still going at it. The 'rules' state that for the growth to be considered a Mo it must not join to the sideburns as this makes it a beard and it must not join at the chin as this makes it a Goatee. So I have opted to go for a 'trucker' look, think Paul Snr from American Chopper.
























A number of the guys have opted for this look, although Duncan's looks very Goatee-ish he did point out that there is a gap




Look closely and you may see it
 
Finally here is the whole gang