I have just upgraded the WordPress software to version 2.8.4 which will allow me to more easily keep the software up to date, and it’s also alot nicer to use. Still need to theme the site better, however I am liking the basic classic style theme at the moment and my just edit it slightly to incorporate some graphics, but not too much. I may even go simple on the Forum theme as well, in an attempt to speed it up, however as I really like the look of the current forum theme that may be a while.
In other news… I’m still hoping that more people start wanting to use the service, but I guess that just means I need to promote it more. As some of you may have noticed, I have removed the Kingdom Device logo and replaced it with a slightly modified Populace Device logo. Originally when His Grace Alfar was King I discussed the use of the Kingdom Device with him and was told that it would be fine for me to use, however further thought, and a suggestion from someone has indicated that the Populace Device would be the more appropriate device to use. My further thoughts on this were that The Lochac Network is for the Populace, and is unofficial anyway, so the correct device/logo to be using is the populace badge logo.
We are still looking for regular writers for for Blog posts about what’s happening in the forum, as well as Forum posts. Though at the moment forum posts would be more worth while. Just to explain to any one new to the Lochac Network, the network functions in a two part publishing model. We have the Lochac Network Forums which is an open forum for people to publish their own articles or discuss any topics that they find they need to discuss. Then there’s this Blog, which is a closed publication designed to report what’s going on in the forums, keeping you our readers up to date and giving you a reason to stick your head in and have a look at the forums, where you might deside to participate.
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.
Greetings and Welcome,
It has been far too long since I have posted on this publication as it seems that there is very little support for it and frankly I don’t have the time to be doing this all myself. Thats not to say that I am giving up, only that I will attempt to do what I want to do here in smaller more manageable steps. I’m also still looking for people willing to contribute in you own special way. Generally the idea of this website is to gather information about goings on and present it in an easy to read single location so that everyone can find it.
If you collect information about a specific aspect of Lochac, whether it be Guild news that you wish to share with the public, or any other news that is relevent to the Lochac wide audence, and that might provide a means for others to read and follow links to where more information can be found, then we want to hear from you, even if you just email me with a rough outline of goings on, I can turn that into a story.
Also, If you are interested in jounalism and would like a place to tinker, then please feel free to contact me and I can show you how to share your stories with a greater audience. I’m looking for Writers to provide stories here for all of Lochac to read. Informative, or scandal… The Lochac Network will publish it if you can provide us with even the smallest hint of a story.
Merchants… Having a Sale? Let us know about it, if you have a forum you could even run a fairly informal auction or trade session, letting people know what you have available and what is sold. If you want help setting this up, let me know and I’ll help you through it.
As for future plans… I’m hoping to get something together in the not too distant future that will allow Event Notices to be entered once on this website, and then forwarded to the relevent local groups. This will allow you to advertise in regions, selecting only the groups that are close by as well as the Lochac Announce and hopefully also placing the relevent information in a post on our forums.
If you believe in the future of this site, then I hope that you will stick around and help it grow into the great resource I believe it can be.
It’s been a busy month and Lochac has prospered. Whilst Spring War was a wet war with Odin showing us his anger a fair few times, there was still much merriment and fun. Always a great event even for the non-fighters, though I must admit I missed Bathazar’s coffee shop this year. With Spring War over and all of Octobers events also finished with, we now have November to look forward to.
November’s calendar for Lochac also seems rather busy, and my pick for the big event is of course the big event that we are all interested in, November Crown Tourney. Though there are a fair few on Lochac calendar This month. Starting with one of my favourite groups.
Nov 1 – Tourney of the Yellow Rose – Rowany’s western reach.
Radburne have proven themselves a capable group, and continue to show their worth to the rest of Lochac as they provide wonderful public displays of Fighting. The Tourney of the Yellow rose is another annual event that is run by Radburne and sponsored by Rowany.
Nov 1 – A Salubrious Soirees * Harvest Feast – Krae Glas
I have not been to Krae Glass, but have heard many good things about their Salubrious Soirees. One day I certainly hope to make my way down to celebrate with them.
7 Nov – November Crown and Pilgrims’ Feast – Innilgard
What more could one ask for than a Crown Tourney in the city of Churches? And a feast fit to feed many a hungry Pilgrim who has traveled far to witness the making of a Prince and Princess.
Nov 16+ – Summer Twilight Tourney Series III – Krae Glas
Here starts Krae Glas’ Summer Twilight Tourney Series, take advantage of the cooler time of the day to witness giant shadows fight with great vigor along side warriors of flesh and bone.
Nov 22 – Baronial Investiture – River Haven
Come and join River Haven in a time of both sadness and joy as they see off their current Baron and Baroness and welcome the New Baron and Baroness.
Nov 23 – Lyos Memorial Picnic – Cairn Fell
Nov 29 – Special Heraldic Symposium – Southron Gaard
Come and learn from some of Lochac’s great heralds as they gather to provide personal meetings and teachings at The Hermitage.
Greetings Fellow Lochac Networkians, and welcome to this weeks What’s on in Lochac where we let you know about the events that we know about in Lochac. If we don’t have your event shown, then please tell us about it, and we shall add it to our growing list.
In this weeks edition we will let you know about…
Oct 18 – Combined Guild day – Stowe on the Wold.
Oct 18 – Battle of Bottony Cross! – St Florian de la Riviere
And then the week following there will be…
Oct 25 – St Crispin’s Feast – Mordenvale
Oct 25 -Fashion Parade Pot luck Picnic Tourney -St Malachy
Oct 25 – Bal dAneala – Aneala
Oct 25 – Baronial Championship – Politarchopolis.
If you are the webmaster of an SCA website, feel free to use this semi-regular article on your site either by adding the RSS feed to your website, or by copying it unedited into your site, this written permission only covers unedited versions.
This is our second edition of “What’s on in Lochac!” and the start of expanding it to a month in advance. Whilst this Month starts with a large event, it also ends with a number of smaller local group events. If your event isn’t displayed below, please join us at http://forum.lochac.net and feel free to add your local events
The Big Event for this month is of course…
Followed two weeks later by…
Oct 18 – Combined Guild day – Stowe on the Wold.
Oct 18 – Battle of Bottony Cross! – St Florian de la Riviere
And then the week following there will be…
Oct 25 – St Crispin’s Feast – Mordenvale
Oct 25 -Fashion Parade Pot luck Picnic Tourney -St Malachy
Oct 25 – Bal dAneala – Aneala
Oct 25 – Baronial Championship – Politarchopolis.
I look forward to seeing more of you on the forums in the future, and possibly offering to help with writing for the network.
In attempting to make one easy place to find out all about events I have concidered many options, from utilising Google Calendars, to writing my own software. I’m lazy, and I certainly don’t believe in reinventing the wheel just cause I think my way is much better. What I prefer is a system that is fairly generic so that it can be be rebuilt easily from generic components with custom glue holding it all together. This way if something happens, the site can be rebuilt easily even if it’s just a generic boring looking Forum.
In preparing for the easy-ness, I have created various subdomains that will link you all directly to various aspects of the site. The latest one of these is http://events.lochac.net which currently will take you directly to The Entertainment Quarter, which is the Events logging forum.
Whilst the forums are still slow in activity, our membership continues to rise with new people signing up to the forums each week. This week we had 14 new members willing to take the time to sign up just in case they have anything worthwhile to add to the forums.
The Entertainment Quarter still remains the most active forum, however organisation changes have meant that there is now some activity in the Artisian’s Workshops also. Would be great to see more people activly participating, though time will tell, and hopfully we will hit that critical number where people do start activly participating.
Remember to tell your friends, The Lochac Network is here to take the work our of networking. 
In order to better organise the forum listings and balance them a little more also, I have moved the Guilds into the Artisan’s Workshops which I believe is a much better place for them to be.
These guild forums are at the moment open discussion forums, however they are there for representitives of the various Guilds to claim them and run them as they choose. If you are a member of a Guild and you would like to claim the forum for your guild, then please contact my by registering to the forums and sending me a private message.
Greetings All! Welcome to the first edition of What’s on in Lochac. Hopefully this post will be a weekly post reminding you all what’s coming up in Lochac over the next few weeks. At the moment I’m a little strapped for time in collating all of the events due to some groups websites not being available, and also not easy to find events which have been advertised elsewhere.
If you know of an event that isn’t shown at http://events.lochac.net, then please by all means please contact me about it at sveinn @ lochac.net (Remove the spaces). I’m looking for willing collators all over Lochac who have a bit of spare time to keep an eye out for events around their local area and are willing to post them on the forum for us. The more the merrier, and it will help promote events in your area! Contact me and we can discuss you contribution.
OK, so what’s coming up…
26 Sept – Baronial Championship – Aneala - Not much more to be said about a Baronial Championship, turn up and fight, feast and f… something else that starts with F that’s not a dirty as my mind is making it seem.
28 Sept – Knight School and Picnic – Rowany – Engelin and Theodoric have cooked up a fantastic day of fighty stuff for newcomers and current fighters alike. with their inate ability to be on everyone’s good side they have united the Knights of Rowany into providing a day of training starting with a hearty bacon and egg breakfast. Turn up and enjoy a day of learning, and then spend some money in the Merchants stalls that will also be available.
3 Oct – Spring War XIV – Mordenvale – It’s Spring… and that means it’s time for a budding new war.. or just the same old war, but fresh and new… Spring War, one of the premier fighting events on the Lochac Calendar. Come along and drink, fight and then drink some more, with A&S, a fantastic Tavern and Market Stalls a plenty.
Here endeth the Events post for this week. Hopefully I shall post a new one next Wednesday and this might become a regular thing.