The latest issue of Ragnarok, the journal of fantasy and science fiction wargaming, was published this week and contains the usual mix of useful and off-the-wall articles. I liked the Daleks, the moon landings and the discussion on alternative history.
Combined two stylesheets into one (originally the second stylesheet had been @imported in order to hide it from Netscape 4, those were not the good old days)
Converted the site to HTML 5, just because I can, and added some ARIA role attributes for accessibility
Pulled in the latest blog posts onto the homepage (using Magpie RSS to do so)
Added all the new sites to the navigation
Added social bookmarking links to most pages so visitors can send the page straight to Google, Facebook, LiveJournal, Delicious, Stumbleupon or Twitter
Ragnarok is the journal of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers. The latest issue, the first with John Wilson as editor, of Rag has been published and is in the post to members.
Saint Snatch – Relic steaing in Dresda
In the Dog House – Strontium Dog in Inquisitor
Crimson Twenty One – Crimson Skies in Air War C:21
Ottomania II – More Turks in Aeronef
The Rules of War – Reviews of Space Vixens from Mars and Battlestations
Best headline in this morning’s Metro was “Man Killed by Gimp Suit”. I suspect Auton involvement but the newspaper gave some mundane explanation instead – UNIT misinformation in full swing.
According to the SFSFW Awards I’m in a minority these days for preferring Wargames Illustrated to Miniatures Wargames. I subscribe to the former but only pick up occasional issues of the latter. Yesterday, I bought the latest issue for the article on the conquest of the Canary Islands – Conquistadors versus Cavemen. I’m a bit miffed that the article (billed as part one) was just two pages long and did nothing more than give the geographical description of the islands.
There’s a new wargames mag – Battlegames – but its not being distributed to newsagents and whilst I can subscribe or order a sample issue online, there’s nothing like being able to flick through a copy to help decide whether it’s a worthwhile read (which clearly I should have done in WHSmiths yesterday prior to buying Miniatures Wargames). With luck, someone will be selling copies at Salute.
Apart from WI, and with Harbinger having folded, the magazines I either subscribe to or buy every issue of are:
That doesn’t seem like too many (especially as some of them are published rather infrequently), so why do I never seem to have time to read them properly?
Last night Lettice stayed up until half past four working on her thesis proposal. There was computer related stress as well. And there’s some sort of bug doing the rounds at work. I feel very fuzzy headed and just want to go home and sleep.
A while ago my head of department revealed that in a previous life she had been involved in the creation of the sort of game that people who read this blog would probably be interested in. However an eBay search for “Romulan Challenge” reveals four copies for sale and no bids.
Not exactly a cult classic then.
Essex’s finest, Hal Berstram – famous for his election blog over at The Voice of the Turtle, is threatening to return to the world of blogging but needs just a little bit of a kick up the arse to get going. Hal, consider yourself kicked.
After a month of cock ups and delays the sfsfw.net domain name is now back pointing where it should. I suppose I should make some time to update the site (especially as Steve F sent me the cover and contents for Rag 48 last night).
This weekend is SELWG which marks the end of the year as far as the Counting the cost of war(games) experiment. I need to update the running total with the past fortnight’s eBay purchases (a really random collection of stuff but more on that later).
I was going to post something about this, but Steve Flanagan said it better on the SFSFWmailing list.
Harbinger is now billing itself as “The Only Independent Miniatures Gaming Magazine” (their emphasis). How true.
Except for Ragnarok, Slingshot, Lone Warrior and all the other society magazines.
And Wargames Journal, Total Model and all the other on-line magazines.
And Ravage and Vae Victis.
And Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, the newly-Englished Dadi & Piombo, and Historical Miniature Gamer.
And Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated.
And is a magazine whose avowed editorial policy is to provide a mouhpiece for medium-sized wargames companies actually “independent”, or is it just multiply-dependent?
… if you’re the person who ended up on the SFSFW web site after searching for “centaur bestiality”.
The word ‘bestiality’ appears exactly once on the site, on the same page as the word ‘centaur’ though not at all close together. I’m afraid that the searcher would most likely have been disappointed.
Other search terms that somehow ended up at the SFSFW in the first half of June include:
“disadvantages of being vertically challenged”
“lap dancers devizes”
“why gamers should go to anime conventions”
“why does pooh have mr sanders on his door”
“inca drawing of dinosaur killing a man”
The worrying thing is that the society has such wide interests that all of these, except possibly the lap dancers (especially as GZG are not based anywhere near Devizes), are topics that we could cover.
But the number six term overall was “emperor dalek”, only just behind “troublesome trucks” and “bob naismith”. Will it be higher by the end of the month?
Let’s get this straight – here we have someone who argues passionately about standards in various public fora but he now says that his sites don’t validate? Sounds like a hypocrite.
Let me explain. Of course my sites, such as my home page, my blog and my hobby sites all validate. What I’m talking about are the sites that populate my CV. Why do none of them validate?
Mostly I blame other people.
I hand over a perfectly validating template and then an ASP coder or a web editor starts shoving all sorts of crap in there. They mix up XHTML and HTML syntax in the same document, they don’t encode ampersands, they forget alt attributes, the nest elements incorrectly, they don’t understand character sets. So after a few months all the pages have been hacked about and nothing validates anymore.
So what am I to do when a job spec asks for examples of validating web sites?
The latest issue of Ragnarok, the journal of fantasy and science fiction wargaming, was published this week and contains the usual mix of useful and off-the-wall articles. I liked the Daleks, the moon landings and the discussion on alternative history.
accomplished
pleased