mikekn

Howdy - are any locals heading up to East Kingdom War Camp in Eisental? I've got something I need to pick up from a merchant there, but wasn't planning on attending (I'll day trip if I can't find someone to make the pickup for me).

Just a heads up to those of you interested in EK History and/or the EK Wiki. I've started a new category: Artifacts.

The first item up there is a frustrating little piece from the history collection.
http://www.eastkingdom.org/mediawiki/index.php/Chronicles_of_the_East_Kingdom

Take a look and let me know if you know to what the last two paragraphs refer.

Lots of good stuff happening on the EK wiki. A few people (notably vairavi and mollyrazor) have really gotten into adding stuff. I think I'm having way too much fun just refreshing the recent changes page :)

I need to get back to my to do page and focus on more of the structural stuff. Only real problem so far have been images that refuse to show up after being uploaded - but that turned out to be my ad blocking software (grrr - figured it out, won't happen again).

If anyone would like to have a populace page for themselves, but don't want to deal with wiki editing, just let me know and I can help put one together for you.

Just heard from Rosamund that the missing poster frame with the photos was found. We should be able to get it back at Mudthaw.

( Final 40th )

Vigil/Elevation stuff coming soon!

We are home safe and sound. Had a great time, have stories and pictures. May take a bit to get them up, but I'll be working on it.

Over the weekend complexated and I finally got back to newsletter sorting. On Sunday I managed to get through the last stack of newsletters, then as I was printing out a guide for the boxes (which titles are in which box) I notice that a whole long box was missing from the database. My first thought was that some titles got misfiled or I screwed up their location while shuffling stuff around in the database. No big deal, just going though and correct the database, 15-20 minutes tops.

Further investigation this morning shows that the entire box was never entered into the database. At some point it was used to store some sorted but un-inventoried issues and then forgotten. So tonight I get to work on them, instead of cleaning up the basement and moving all the boxes downstairs...

Is anyone going to Great North Eastern War (July 11-13). complexated and I are going to be traveling up there with the EK history display and were wondering who we might see. (We were also wondering what folks do for food and such)

After work on Friday, complexated and I hit the road to drive up to the Albany area for the King and Queen's Bardic Championship. The weather worked out to just be wet and rainy, so we made good time on the trip up.

The next morning we hit the road around 9:30 and headed up to the site. Spotted the remains of what must have been an "interesting" accident. The the police and fire folks were still working through it. Somehow a bunch of new looking cars landed on top of a bunch of other cars in this car dealer's lot. We assume a car carrier dumped them some how, but when we passed by all you could see were cars on top of other cars.

Made it to the site with no problems, and got set up. Our location was pretty good - at the intersection of the three halls leading to the gate, the performance space and the main hall. Everyone had to pass us to get anywhere. This was the third outing for the display, and each time we've improved on the last time in some way. This time we added some tags for the newspaper clippings, and a banner for the overall display. We also brought along a microphone to record stories or such, but I was slow on bringing it out and figuring out how we wanted to use it, so it didn't get used this time. We made a few more contact with promises of stories or other goodies to come our way.

We could hear some of the performances, but not as much as I would have liked (I always enjoy attending bardic and just being part of the audience). When it was time for court, we packed up the display and were able to catch the end of court. Feast was quite nice - we sat with some friendly locals, including a local historian, and chatted for a while.

Sunday we took it easy - had a late breakfast at IHOP and hit the road by noon. Made it home a little after four. Capped off the weekend with dinner at the Outback with hairness and violet_amy (who finally got her margarita ;) ).

Instead of responding to each of the comments on my first post, I'm going to try and summarize and layout my current vision. I'm going to go into some implementation details, but none of these are set in stone, so comments are welcome.

A record in the event table will have the following fields:
- Event ID
Internal reference number - used to tie additional information to the event record.

- Event Name
- Date
- Location (city, state)
As published in Pikestaff

- Hosting Group
This will be a Group ID linking to my existing group table (currently only used for the newsletter inventory) That table will be expanded to include the parent group, founding date, dissolution date (if any) and other group information. (The group database is an other project altogether though)

- RP Info (if any)
Place for King, Queen, Prince and Princess. Link to court report(s)? (may be put in additional information)

- Event Announcement
Optional. Full event announcement (may be put in additional information)

A separate table will be set up for additional event information. Right now I'm envisioning at table with three fields:
- Event ID (what event is this for)
- Info Type (link-chronicle, link-photo, link-file, summary, announcement?, court report?, comment, ???)
- Info (text field containing whatever we need).

The type field will be used to help organize the event page (putting all the photo links together, etc). This set up allows us to have an unlimited number of additional bits of information, without leaving a ton of blank fields in most event records.

---

There will be an interface for people to add comments. I am currently leaning towards having people request an access code before being able to comment. The code will be used to authenticate them and tag their comment with their SCA name. That way I could have the comments get posted immediately. I'd probably still have each comment emailed to me so that I can watch of abuse, but I wouldn't need to approve everything. I want to start by having this as simple as possible (without opening it up to spammers), and add addition restrictions as they are needed.

There is some concern that people won't bother getting an access code, and so won't comment (points to near complete lack of response to requests for stories, artifacts and photos).

---

My one worry in all this is that I'll be creating another chirurgeon database. A nice system, very useful to the folks who wanted it (in that case, Hawk, in this case, me), but not used after they move on.

One of the projects on my list is to create an on-line listing/database of all of the events ever held in the East Kingdom. The West Kingdom has something similar at: http://history.westkingdom.org/ I've not looked to see what other kingdoms have yet (probably should).

The minimal information I feel is required:
- Event Name
- Date
- Hosting Group
- Location (city, state)

Other information that might be nice to have:
- Location (site name)
Mostly useful for site research and to answer the occasional "what site was that?" question.

- RP?
Maybe with a link to the court report on the OP site.

- Autocrat
Only slightly useful on its own. More useful if it is a part of a larger database of people.

- Costs
Might be fun to see how prices have changed over the years, but with the different types, sizes and kinds of events, I'm not sure how useful it would be.

- Full announcement
The West has many of these in their listing. These would be the hardest to enter, but possibly the most useful things from a history/research stand point.

complexated suggested that once it is decided what will be in the listing, that I see if I can get hooked into the EK website's event system so that the information I want is sent right to me when events are added or updated. I'll be looking into this.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions about the what would and would not be useful to include?

On June 2nd in 1968 (AS 3), the East coast chapter of the SCA held their first event at the Cloisters in New York City. The planned tournament got rained out and rescheduled. On July 21st the first Crown Tourney took place in Cloves Lake Park, Staten Island, NY. Maragon the Artificer and Adrienne of Toldedo were appointed to sit as King and Queen and preside over the first tourney.

I'll need to check some notes and quiz msmemory for what happened next (History of the West says Bruce was knighted and crowned King that day, while the OP shows Maragon as King until October). No matter, the point is that next summer the East Kingdom will turn 40 years old.

( Plans for 2008 )