As a person who isn’t much of a celebrater of things, it’s been an awfully long time between organising celebrations for me.   These days I am hopeless with remembering other peoples birthdays and have only recently gotten around to getting a birthday calendar organised for friends and family.    Whilst I heartily attend other peoples parties, I haven’t thrown myself one in MANY years, usually avoiding celebration on my birthday entirely.

Last time I threw myself a party it was a going away party for when I left England and returned to Australia.  The party itself was Awesome!  But I was highly biased.  It started off at a lovely little English pub, where I was plyed with drink after drink until I was drinking 4 parts bourbon and 1 part Coke out of a pint glass as people were either buying me a straight bourbon to add to my bourbon and Coke, or were buying me double bourbon and Cokes.  The party then moved to a little resturant that I had hired for the night exclusivly, allowing us to continue drinking as well as get a great feed, and also keep going until the wee hours of the morning.  I remember waking up the next day still drunk, still feeling great…  And then I got on a plane and left England.  The party was a raving success as all of the people from the job I had in Enland as well as friends I had met in the two years I was living there all turned up to help see that I had a good night.

I have never really been game to attempt to repeat such a great party, as I didn’t want the memory of that nigt to disapear into obscurity.  However since reconnecting with a few of the people from when I was in England I have wanted to live those fun times again.  So in late Feb or early March there may actually be something that is very rare happening…  I may actually throw a party.  Stay tuned.

It’s a weird world we live in…  full of weird traditions.  I remember Christmas differently as a kid than I do now and I’m not sure if this is because Christmas has changed for my family, or because I’m just seeing it from a different perspective.

As a child, I remember the putting up of the christmas tree really meant something.  The tree was a magical thing with decorations that would come out each year and be something to play with army men on or drive matchbox cars along it’s branches.  Each year I would be a little taller and able to play a little higher in the branches.  Each year there would be the old favourite decorations that I remembered from last year, and maybe a new one that I or my sisters had made at school.  We would wake up early on Christmas day, and excitedly await our parents waking up so that we could open our presents.   Some years we would have family drop in on us, other years we would go visiting other reletives or friends, dropping off presents, maybe getting some.  Admittedly when my folks split up, it was a boon for us kids, as we would then have 2 Christmases…  But I think thats when the whole degredation of Christmas started.  There were some great christmases, and some crappy ones in there.  I was introduced to the concept of gift value and slowly the mystique started wearing off.  The larger family started laying down gift giving rules so that they would feel better.  The Secret Santa concept was introduced to limit people to only buying a gift for one adult and funnelling their money into buying for the kids.  Personally I think all this does is teach the kids more that Christmas is all about getting presents.

Personally I’m a little over Christmas these days…  I’m over the commercialisation of it…  I’m over the keeping up with the Jones’ of it…  I’m over all of the stress and arguements it causes in families simply because of those previous two. Maybe I saw things differently as a kid, and missed the stress buildup in my parents?  Maybe it was there and Christmases haven’t changed all that much, it’s just my perspective that has changed…  I don’t really know.  This Christmas was nicer than most, as whilst there was the whole extended family thing with the stress and the Secret Santa thing, there was also a nice immediate family get together on Christmas Morning.  It was wonderful and it was almost what I remember about Christmas.

Christmas started off as I believe, a Pagan celebration of the middle of Winter, and the coming of spring.  A celebration of a new year and a new chance to make life better.  The gift giving should be small and purely a token of love and friendship, the feasting should be provided by all as a community/family effort rather than provided by a small few.  Organise everyone prior to the event rather than just have a couple of people preparing a feast on the day.  Bring back the fun of Christmas I say, instead of the stressful controlled and planned Christmas’ that I’m seeing and not really enjoying over the last few years.  Bring back the small immediate family get together on Christmas morning.

Maybe I will start enjoying Christmases again.

• is tinkering with the idea of selling his pewter work on Etsy -> http://syridian.etsy.com #

I have just posted an article about creating a pewter drinking vessel to the Casting forum of the Lochac Network.  For those of you who follow my Pewter casting, you can check it out by click on the picture.

Direct link to Lochac.net

It worked out great, and I look forward to making more.

• http://bit.ly/4F6Rwq #
• is mumbling over multiple multi-media micro-blogs. #

• is installing GuildWars again after a break of 3 year not playing it… #
• is installing GuildWar again… #
• is preparing a plan to paint a picture of the potentially promissing procrastination promise. #
• is tinkering with Tweety the Twit-bot. #

Whilst reading an explaination posted on one of the few mailing lists I’m still on, a thought occured to me which I must admit I have yet to research. I have oft heard complaint that “The Crown is only open to tournement fighters” from non combatants and combat archers, and this thought if put into action would stop that being an issue at all.

This is not a formal proposal for anything but an open discussion, and I believe those who know me well enough, know that I am always promoting discussion of any kind. So this is just really sticking it out there to see what bounces.

So, the idea? What, (apart from current society law) would restrict a couple from appointing a Champion to fight Crown on their behalf? Realistically at the moment it is not possible, but would it be worth concidering a proposal to make this change? After all, to take on this monumental task this Champion would need to have total faith in the couple, believing that the couple are worth fighting for, and believing that they are worth putting their own reputation on the line for. The Crown would still need to accept this Champion as well as the Couple they fight for as a valid entry into The Crown Tourney, as I believe currently takes place.

If you really think about this, there are already so many checks in place to ensure that The Crown are capable of completeing their reign that I can see nothing but benefits for this suggestion. Was this not a valid period practice? Would this also not be quite honourable and chivalrous, as I believe it would be on the fighters honour as well as those they stand for to forfill the honour of the fighter?

Personally looking at the laws, though very breifly, I believe this would be a very simple change that would not only allow for a much more exciting Crown Tourney, as well as opening up the potential for some amasing new Crown couples who were previously denied entry simply due to lack of fighting ability (Can you imagine Rowan as Queen? I can, as this would make that possible).

Anyway.. As previously stated, this is really just putting forth an idea… I believe it’s a good one, I believe there is more potential good in it than the potential harm it could do. However I am also aware that 40 odd years of tradition is one hell of a big boulder moving downhill hill at incredible pace. Luckily for us, the right brains on side, some thought, and with some of the right type of muscle it is possible to divert that big a boulder.

I’m not trying to change the way it’s currently done, I just believe that this could be a better way.

{Google Wave removed}

I have been getting more and more frustrated by mailing lists of late, in particular The Shambles. There is a reason it is called The Shambles, as it only takes 4 or 5 posts before the subject of any dicussion twists off in all directions, frequently missing the original posters point entirely and starting huge debates on topics slightly left or right of what what said to start it.

However this frustration is with the whole concept of Mailing-Lists used for Discussion of particular topics, so to relieve myself I have unsubscribed from every mailing list that I don’t need to be on. No more Shambles, no more lists that generate branching discussions on the same topic that just go on and on. Maybe that will also mean Less SCA involvement, but lets face it… I have been loosing interest in the SCA for a while now, maybe this is the break that I need to take.

I’ll still look after The Lochac Network forums… still keep adding to them occationall, hoping that others will join me and hoping that they start to take off.

Yes… it’s a subject that I just can’t let go, and tonight I have found a perfect example of why I prefer Forums over Mailing-lists for discussions. Below is a picture of my inbox with 4 highlighted topics… the problem is, all of these are part of the same topic, yet you need to know that there are multiple subject lines now to follow each of these threads.

From Screen Captures

Even if the topic of discussion in the thread has changed slightly, it’s still all part of the same conversation, yet if you wanted to follow this conversation in the archives, assuming you knew how to get into them, you would have a hard time.  You would need to read down each of these branches then go back and find where the thread split, then follow that down another branch… Think of that happening multiple times in each thread, and you’ll begin to understand the madness of it all.

I also keep hearing the excuse “I pay more attention to email”, yet I have explained multiple times that Forums allow subscriptions so that people are notified when changes are made to a forum, and no-one has noticed this.  Email gives you a snippet of information… unless you keep the entire conversation and your email client is fantastic at backing-up and thread management, then I will never value email for information collection and collation.  Forums keep the discussion on a website, they keep it together there for new people to register and read from start to finish if they need to. Email keeps each message seperate and usually on your local system.  If something goes wrong with your local computer, say goodbye to your history of that discussion unless you have it all backed-up. Forums are usually kept on web servers with backup facilities.

Anyway… It’s my personal opinion that relying on email for discussions that you don’t wish to repeat many times over is a very stupid thing… Yes,  if you still think Mailing-lists are better,  I am trying to change your mind… but I’m doing it on my website, and I’m not going to force you to change your mind, i’m just going to whinge about it here incessently. ;)

It occured to me just recently that I have been a bit of a hypocrit recently. The defining moment was when I was contemplating emailing a friend and asking him if he would be interested in changing his blog to be hosted on The Lochac Network rather than the generic Blog site he has started it on… I was thinking about this, and then I thought about all of the White Metal Madness posts on this blog, and how really they should be on The Lochac Network in the casting forum. So I’m hoping to mend my ways from now on, and discontinue the White Metal Madness posts here, instead adding them to the Casting forum on The Lochac Network.

If you do occationally check out the White Metal Madness section of this blog every now and then, what you will be finding from now on will be a summary and link to a full article on the Lochac Network forums.

It’s not difficult to work out that I am not a fan of mailing lists… That is to say I’m not a fan of using them to discuss issues in depth and work out real solutions. Mailing lists are good for one thing, and that is sharing information and by information I mean links, event notices, a particularly good website, someones A&S documentation. My latest post to The Shambles has taught me one thing, one thing which I have secretly known for a while, but this has just brought it to light.

Mailing lists are not so good at gauging the feelings of a general populace. I believe there are a number of reasons for this, and I shall try and explain it further below. Some of what I explain below also applies to this post, so see if you can spot where the over laps apply. Firstly some basic basis stuff which I’m sure most of you will all understand, I hope.

Firstly I believe everyone has an opinion, usually one which they defend vehmenently. I’m happy to admit that what you are reading now is one of mine. :) It’s not necessarily right, not is it necessarily mine alone, but the issue with human beings seems to be that sub-consiously we all seem to believe that our opinions are unique, even if they may only differ from others by degrees of interpretation. ie; we may have exactly the same opinion, but the way I express it leads you to believe that it differs enough that you need to express your opinion, which in my interpretation differs again… and the circle repeats. That said, even if the reader interprets the text correctly, their opinion may differ dramatically from the writers.

Firstly Linear Style Mailing lists basically just send out an email to everyone on the mailing list when someone sends an email to the mailing list software. There is no segregation of topics other than the mailing list itself. Therefore, everyone on that mailing list gets an email whether they are interested in the topic of discussion or not. What this seems to mean is that people tend to skim mailing lists for topics that interest them, ignoring or not reading fully anything that doesn’t. This isn’t good if you have some important information to disemminate. Sometimes posts may get misunderstood as the person reading is just trying to get through as many emails as possible. Other times people are too busy just trying to read all of the email that they are getting that they don’t really have the time to respond to the ones they want to respond to.

Getting superfluous topics of discussion which having been on the mailing list for a while you have seen before also has a tendancy to increase peoples frustration, however most of the time these topics are started by people who were not on the list for the first or second time around for that topic. The archives are there to fix this, but if you have ever tried to navigate through Mailman archives, then you can totally understand why people who bring up these topics again never took the time to search them.

Whilst I like call these Linear Style Mailing lists there is actually nothing linear about the flow of the conversations they generate other than time. The archive do not flow as simply there is no easy way to keep track of one conversation, conversations split and follow new threads… Conversations are not kept on track and frequently change subject lines as well as entire topics. This means of archiving mailing list threads makes it very difficult to follow the basic premise of the topic. Now this happens in normal conversations too, however usually normal conversations usually take place in one room, with each person taking their turn to make their point. mailing list conversations grow organically like a tree, spliting into many conversations. You may think this is good, as each thread can go off and come to a totally different conclusion, or morph into another conversation completely. But trying to follow that conversation later… it’s a nightmare.

Lets take the network of mailing lists currently for the SCA in Lochac. There are seperate mailing lists for groups, guilds and positions, if you want access to a specific topic, you need to sign up for that mailing list, specially if you ever want to post to it. So thinking of a member of the Rowany populace who has a vehicle and is willing to travel, in order for them to find out what’s goingon in a 3 hour driving distance from their home, they need to sign up for the Rowanites, Adorans, Stowe, Mords and Agaricus, as well as possibly 3 colleges mailing lists plus what ever interest mailing lists they have such as the fighers list, the archers list… Currently on the Lochac website there are 49 mailing lists listed, spread across 3 services. Wouldn’t it be so much better if there was one place to go? One login and then you have the ability to brouse through an organised structure of topics? There is such a thing, and it’s called a forum.

I’m a fan of forums simply because they are organised, the conversations flow, and if they morph into a new topic that conversation can be split from the main tree and followed linearly. The main topic can be edited by a moderator to be easy to understand, and forums can be seperated into subforums and topics, allowing one place for the discussion of a huge variety of topics. The Lochac Network forum is such a place, designed as an alternative to all of the seperate mailing lists and giving you one place for all of your discussion needs. At the moment the Lochac network forum is rather empty, having alot of organised forums to start discussions in, but not being full of as much useful information as it could be. It’s still young, and needs people to contribute by adding their own experiences and information. It will grow, and become a useful collection of discussions and collected information. It’s already fairly useful containing links to most local groups websites.

I hope to see you in there soon. ;)
http://lochac.net

• is wasting time before a medieval event this evening. #
• just did a search on "medieval pewtercraft" in google and was amazed by the results. #
• is away enjoying a time long ago, where mobiles didn't exist. ;) #
• enjoyed watching a friend and his Baroness get elevated to the Order of the Pelican. #
• is off to bed… #
• is back to looking for work. #

Finally!  it’ been a while since I posted a pewter project post, but I have now got a few projects on the go so there will be a number of them coming in the next month or two.

This weeks project has been a personal token for an SCA member to give to those they favour.   It is a simple medallion with initials on one side, and a raised representation of a logo/device on the other side.

Usually my medallions are carved into one side of the mould for depth and then the other side is smoothed and has the detail carved into that.  For this particular token I wanted to attempt a fully symmetrical moulding process by carving half the depth into each side of the mould.  I did this for two reasons, firstly, the one sided method I used previously whilst it makes for a nicer edge, usually needs alot more work to clean up.  Secondly it allowed me practice in aligning the two halves of the mould, whilst the old method allowed for misalignment, it meant that the main image was not centred on the finished token, and it would look kind of wrong.

After some experimentation in attempting to get a good quality pour each time (see last post),  I managed to find the best combination of temperature and mould tapping that resulted in a great amount of detail showing.  This further experimentation also made me realise the importance of the mould tapping and the continuation of it until the entire button* has solidified.  It seems that during the freezing process pewter can sill move past other parts that have frozen solid.  I suspect this would be similar to the crystals of ice that form in water, they allow water to pass around them, but still hold their shape.

Interestingly this also brings to my attention the creation of another type of artefact on an improperly cast item.  This artefact is caused if the mould moves during this crystallising phase of the freeze, and creates a texture like the one in the picture to the left.  It is rather a fine texture, however given the choice of all three of the artefacts described here and in the last post, I would rather this one, as the detail of the casting is almost perfect.  To reduce or even eliminate this artefact I would suggest the use of either wiring the mould together tightly, or using mechanical clamps to stop the mould from moving during the tapping and pouring process.  I may even attempt to make some sort of mechanical tapping/shaking jig so as to reduce stresses on the soapstone mould as well as the chances of the mould moving.

In a happy coincidence when I was checking the email to confirm that I had gotten the commission done as requested, I noticed that I was missing a vital part of the Dragons.  So the above information about the tapping/shaking process was only discovered after the wings were added, and the entire batch recast.  I’m sure my customer will be much happier with the better detailed casts than he might have been with the previous batch, specially as his Dragons are now actually dragons and not Lizards. ;)

* The “Button” is the larger opening in the mould where you pour the molten pewter.  It usually gets cut off and recycled.

It’s about time I got back to some real Pewter casting and the reporting of, so here’s my latest.  I have recently been working on a token commission and actually paid attention to the detail of the results of the castings this time, so I thought I would write about it in an effort to further muddle it through in my mind as well as help the one or two of you out there.

When casting there are two main problems that cause artefacts on the cast item.  The first is air pockets, and the second is pewter shrinkage due to the freezing process.  Unfortunately in period soapstone casting, the solution to one of these problems is also what causes the other, and a balancing act needs to take place to minimise both effects.

Air pockets can be caused by two reasons that I have been able to work out, though I believe the second is another issue which can be fixed separately*. The first is a lack of air escaping the mould before the molten pewter freezes, either by air flow dynamics causing restrictions in air flow out of the mould as the molten pewter enters, or the pewter freezing before it gets a chance to fill all of the detail.  This can be minimised by using a hot mould that allows the pewter to run into all detailed parts of the mould before it freezes, you may need to still play with the air flow dynamics on some moulds to ensure that the pressure of the liquid pewter entering the mould isn’t causing an air pocket in the mould to be trapped.

The secondary artefacts created when the molten pewter freezes and shrinks is a little harder to control, as the easiest way to control that is to have a cold mold and a quick pour of the molten pewter into the mould.  The cold mold freezes a skin of pewter allowing the detail to remain.  Freezing the pewter from the outside just a touch faster than it would with a hot mould this allow a harder skin to retain the detail whilst the pewter freezes and shrinks.  Another way to stop the shrinking from effecting your finished casting is to have a large enough sprue connecting the pouring button with the cast product so that there is enough room for the shrinking pewter to pull down more molten pewter from the button, however this is not always easily possible, as this sprue needs to large enough to allow the sides to freeze before the centre.

Another method of minimising the effect of shrinking on the casting is to rapidly tap the mould on a wooden surface as you are pouring the pewter.  This has the effect of increasing the pressure in the mould and effectively hammering the molten pewter into the details.  It needs to be done as you are pouring, and you need to be very careful as you don’t want to move the mould parts, or splatter molten pewter.

These details leave me with the conclusion that in order to get a perfect casting each time from a gravity fed, non-pressurised soapstone mould casting there needs to be a very delicate balance between the temperature of the soapstone mould and the temperature of the molten pewter.  If I were more serious about this process I would attempt to investigate this further with more period techniques for estimating the temperature of both mould and metal, however I believe that knowing that the balance exists and some means of minimising it’s effects are enough for me to continue.  The art of getting a perfect casting from each pour is one that whilst very rewarding, is not necessary with the ease of turning out pewter castings it is often better to do the best you can, and recast the ones that don’t work.  Of course, if it’s the techniques that are causing the artefacts in the first place, then these techniques do need to be addressed.

*The second cause is moisture in the soapstone turning into steam when contacting molten pewter.  This is easily identifiable as it looks like shiny inverted bubbles on the surface of the pewter casting.  It is also easy to avoid by pre-warming your mould before casting in an oven, however I find the easiest method is to just heat the mould over the heat source for melting your pewter, and then just keep casting in quick succession until it stops.

Just watched a program on National Geographic channel about Geothermal Power generation and at no point did they mention the effect that it would have on cooling the earths core.

Now, I’m no geologist, and I’m sure that there have been scientists that have looked into these effects and detirmined that the amount of cooling that Geothermal Power Generation would cool the core would be so small as to be one one millionth of a percent of the temp.  My concern is that the earths mantal has no means of re-generating any temp loss, and that it’s been theorised that the earths mantal is cooling each year and that if it cools below a certain point the earths magnetic field could disapear.

So yeah, my concerns may be unfounded as I don’t have all of the facts and figures, but there are still some facts that lead me to be slightly concerned given that this program was trying to sell Geothermal power as the best green solution for Power generation.  One thing I do need to explain is that there are two types of Geotermal power, the type that comes to the surface naturally, and the type they drill for.  My concern is for the type they drill for which is artificially allowing steam to escape and taking heat out of the mantal.  Facts below.

• Allowing pressurised steam to escape into the atmosphere removes heat from where it was previously trapped.
• The earth is basically cooling since it’s creation, and does really have a way to generate it’s own heat from what I remember (Thopugh I may be wrong here)
• Scientists believe the earths magnetic feild is created by the molten core moving around, and that if the core freezes the magnetic field may disapate.

Now sure…  like I said…  I don’t have all the fact, but my concern is that none of these factors were mentioned, and it was spouted as the end of fossil fuels if they can work out how to do it on a large scale, in area’s that it is currently not possible to do.  In otherwords, they are talking about opening the area that these potential core cooling plants can operate in from 10% of the worlds surface to almost 50%.  Anyway…  In theory I like the technology, but would need to see that these factors have been thought about.

Well, it seems that today I sold my first Pewter badge on Ebay.  That would be great if it hadn’t taken about 2 years at roughly $15/month to do it. ;)  Stupidly this is totally my fault for not actually doing anything with the Ebay store, just leaving it there each month paying the fee.  I guess what I should do is actually use the Camera I bought specifically to increase the stock in my ebay store to take photo’s of other things, and add them to the store.  This I should do now that I have some time…  In fact this I should have been doing since I was made unemployed as that was the only pathetic excuse I had back then.  Feel free to hassle me into getting stuff on the Ebay store!

So what have I been doing in my unemployment instead of doing sensible things like selling stuff on Ebay?  I have been getting armour and stuff ready very slowly in an attempt to start fighting heavy.  It’s another one of those things that I have been procrastinating about for ages, so I have been doing bits here and there to get prepared for it.  Today I spend an hour or two modifying the faceplate of my helm so that I can get the legal 1″ apart bars welded in place.  I have also needed to change the way the helm and faceplate meet, so it shall signifficantly change the look of the helm.  Last week I made a Boss for my shield, and once I manage to find my acrylics I shall paint the shield and finish off the edging.

Like always I think there is always a better way to do something and I experiment with everything.  When my helm was originally made I used boot polish to prevent it from rusting as I’m not a fan of the shiny helm look or the look of painted metal but I do enjoy the look of bear rough metal.  This provided a happy compromise, giving the metal a dull grey, but still metallic look.  It has lasted really well only showing sings of rust where friction had rubbed the polish down to metal from the canvas in my armour bag..   My latest experiment is to make a shield edge that lasts longer than the normal shield edges I have seen…  Now I must admit to start with that my experience of shield edges is very limited, so I won’t confess to knowing whether this has been tried before or not.  The shield edges I have seen are either aluminimum channel then hosepipe then tape, or just the channeling with leather edging over the top.  What I’m going to try is to silicon on a rope around the outside of the aluminimum edging.  I’m hoping that this will provide enough of a buffer between the blow on the edge and the wood to stop the wood from starting to split.  It should also increase the life of the leather going around the edge as the leather will no lnger be hitting directly onto metal.  Anyway..  that’s the theory. ;)  Time will tell, and there’s also the fact that being a newbie fighter, my head is likely to be taking most of the blows, not the shield edge.

That it from me tonight, but remember feel free to hasle me about either looking for work, or getting the Ebay store working better.

Well…  Work has finally started progressing on one of my pet projects, the Lochac Network Event posting bot, which is planned to be an event stewards one stop shop for advertising events in Lochac.  By filling out the one web form, the event steward or bookings officer can post an event notification to not only their own local list as well as the Lochac Network forums, their formatted event notification will automatically go to local groups within their area as well as the Lochac Announce list.  The form will ensure that all of the important information is filled in before it allows the send button to be pressed hopefully helping to remind the people sending it that there is information that needs to be provided.

The part of the project I’m doing at the moment involves collecting as many Local Group mailing lists as possible, as they seem to be scattered across 3 main servers (The SCAA server, the SCANZ server and Yahoogroups).  I currently have a basic form working that allows emails to be sent as well as posts to the relevent Forum on the Lochac Network, once I have a few security measures in place and have subscribed the bots email address to the relevant groups (which gives control of recieving the Bot’s emails firmly into the hands of the List Administrators), I can start looking into automating the form so that the sender only has a few options to select in order to advertise an event, rather than the current 30 odd lists to select from.

For those IT professionals out there who may freak at a form being created to send to that many lists, you need not worry, the form prevents header insertion, and the POST information is free of email addresses as all of the email addresses are stored elsewhere.  Once I manage to work out the authentication on the forum, users wishing to utilise this form will be required to be registered on the Lochac Network forums and their connected IP details will be recorded as well as added to the bottom of any email sent to a list.  However, as I am not actually a programmer and am just working through this with the help of friends who are and the resourses of the Net, please feel free to contact me to ask to see the source code if you are worried about this connecting to your server/list.

It’s amasing what you find when you have loads of time to troll the internet for jobs and entertainment.  The Ledgend of Neil is a silly internet production that is quite entertaining if you don’t mind some crass references and swear words every now and then.

Check it out, and then abuse me later for making you watch it and getting you addicted to seeing what comes next. ;)

Today the hunt for a new job has finally started, there’s been a fair bit of procrastination going on…  as well as plain old out right denial of the need to start looking right away.  I guess I was needing to relax a little bit so that the stress/tiredness of the previous job had some time to dissapate.  So I still haven’t really decided what I’m going to do, whether it be continue in the IT industry and try and get a Gov web-publishing job, or see what’s available in electronics…  The other alternative is to just see what comes up taking any job that comes along.  this can be good or it can be bad….   After all the first 9 months of my previous job were fantastic.

In more fun-er* news…  I discovered that my original blogger site for Bleep, Dots and Nonsense is still hosted at http://bleep-dots.blogspot.com/.  Which of course is well…  wrong..  obviously, so I had to write a post on it just to point people back to the real site here. ;)  I shall include the post below so that you needn’t follow the above link and look at all the old crap I wrote years ago (which is actually on here somewhere if you look for it).

What’s this still doing here?

If you are here… looking at this then you shouldn’t be… it’s wrong, wrong I tellz ya!!

You should be looking at http://syridian.id.au or… http://sveinn.id.au or even http://syridian.com… But here?

No.. no, you should not be here… here is the wrong place for you to be looking… close your eye’s, look away… go to one of the other sites… just don’t look here.

Here has been a desolate wasteland of blog posts for a long time, here is the past, passed over for a brighter sunnier place to be… here is just here.. and has been lurking left, forgotten and alone for many many months. Here has forgotten the sweet caress of digital textual pleasure, the warm flow of thoughts, desires and dreams cascading down the now dark and lifeless page.

Oh the humanity…

Here needs to be desperately put out of it’s misery and lonelyness… A swift single shot to the head, and here becomes just another part of the past, but no… here remains longer.. lingering in the disuse of tomorrow, a bleached white skeleton pointing the way to the future of Bleep, Dots and Nonsense…

Anyway..  Have fun, and I shall get back to the job hunting, saving you all from my insane writings, which as I now have more time available to me, might actually become more frequent.

* Yes I know it’s not a word, and if I was to use english properly there are a large number of better words I could use there…  but you know what…  i don’t wanna! ;)

Due to my rushed attempts at getting everything all changed over last week I missed changing a couple of the records in my Domain Zone for syridian.id.au which means that for a few more hours that domain name is offline.  However you can still access the website through http://syridian.net or http://sveinn.id.au.

In other news, I have been looking into other ways of getting information into the Lochac.net forums so that it can be revived without the need for constant updating and trolling for information.  Keep an eye out. ;)