SMF
Do you hear the call?
It’s been quite a long month so far. I’m feeling rotten and can’t seem to shake this tension headache. On the plus side I had my appointment at the Dermatology clinic. They still need to do some patch tests and took some blood, but apparently I don’t need to carry an epi-pen for my allergy, so that’s a relief. I didn’t do too badly when they stuck me with the needle either. I’ve always been nervous about shots ever since I had a lumbar puncture when I was a young ‘un!
I’ve created an ORC Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/orcedinburgh) that should hopefully allow the community to reach a wider audience and I need to create a Facebook page to supersede the group one we had. I’m treading very carefully with the Facebook one – last thing I want is loads of FB spam. I’m considering moving the site to SMF and a MediaWiki/SMF bridge, but I will need to check the functionality and test it thoroughly.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that ORC is no longer short of people wanting to play – however there’s not so many GMs. We’re not short of space any more, but it seems that there’s a marked reluctance to take up the trusty GM screen/shield! With this in mind I’ve compiled a DM/GM toolkit that may or may not be of use to new GMs. We need more folk to run games though, as we’ve more players than we can handle!
In related news to ORC Edinburgh, Illegal Jacks is turning into quite a decent venue for us and I’d recommend it to anyone passing through Lothian Road. As it is a bar and grill, it actually works out quite well for ORC (I haven’t tried the Brew Dog beer yet though).
I ran Ashes of Freedom on Saturday, and I’m actually feeling rather fired up now. The character/aspect of Thresher looks like it might make for an interesting game in April: the Thieves Court is under attack and the PCs were wizard-locked in their chambers…
I finally managed to get through the first three seasons of the geek-com Big Bang Theory. Consistently good, and highly recommended! I’ve also got Burn Notice (season 3) to watch as well.
Oh, yeah. Wish I could see “Game of Thrones” on Sky Atlantic 
Fear is the key
If life is a game; I’m rolling ones. It hasn’t been the best of weeks – work has been hard-going, and I’m not feeling too good. Possibly after the shenanigans last weekend!
I’m going to be updating the ORC website soon. I’ve planned to try and upgrade the key components, but I’m not looking to make any major changes initially – although I will patch some parts of it. As the ORC website uses Joomla! as a backend, it will take a little getting used to. I’ve setup a test area and it looks like the transfer itself will be straightforward enough. I’m planning to upgrade the EventList plugin to use an RSS feed as well, so that events can be published to the ORC Facebook page perhaps, and also to my own blog. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be that straightforward – and the site (shlu.net) developer forums appear to be largely offline. Still, no hurry. I can still update the other parts of the site, such as transforming the current Fireboard forum to Kunena, and upgrading the uddeIM components. I’m getting pretty adept at this kind of thing now! Long-term, I’m not sure what I should convert to: phpBB3 or SMF forked with Zikula, or just to stick with Joomla!
It has been a pretty crummy week, and I’ve not really achieved anything: I’m either too tired or too stressed. The lock on the main door of the flat appears to be sticking (I struggled with it for 10 minutes on Tuesday) and I hope that’s not going to be a problem in the future! Last thing I need is to be unable to get into my flat! I’ve taken a day off today, as I need to clear my head.
