Google Maps is, often, on crack

[First of several little posts about Coronation and reflections on the reign.]

The travel to Coronation was generally fun and stress-free, at least insofar as Friday rush-hour driving ever is. But it was a good reminder that Google Maps is an automated program, and sometimes shows poor judgement. To wit: regardless of the traffic on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike, taking us through the middle of downtown Newark is probably *never* the right answer. This will remind me to look at the route it has laid out, and see what that actually *means*, before uncritically following it.

(On Sunday, we did the more sensible thing: msmemory figured out the route herself, and we just used Google to keep an eye on the traffic...)

Google Maps is, often, on crack

[First of several little posts about Coronation and reflections on the reign.]

The travel to Coronation was generally fun and stress-free, at least insofar as Friday rush-hour driving ever is. But it was a good reminder that Google Maps is an automated program, and sometimes shows poor judgement. To wit: regardless of the traffic on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike, taking us through the middle of downtown Newark is probably *never* the right answer. This will remind me to look at the route it has laid out, and see what that actually *means*, before uncritically following it.

(On Sunday, we did the more sensible thing: msmemory figured out the route herself, and we just used Google to keep an eye on the traffic...)

Picking up a new art

One of the major amusements on Saturday was the point (made a couple of times by different people in different ways) that they thought I'd done this Vox Regis (nee Pocket) Herald thing before. I really hadn't: I've basically been an Emergency Fall-back Herald for a few Royals in foreign courts, and have tended to be Jehan's fall-back when Golden Gryphon isn't around, but I've never formally been The Herald. Indeed, it was a long-running joke that I was the only member of House Silverwing who *wasn't* a herald. That wasn't actually quite true, but I was apprenticed to a Big Name Herald, I'm married to a Big Name Herald, and my first two apprentices wound up Big Name Heralds. And half of Silverwing has been Brigantia at one time or another. So it did often feel that way.

Obviously, the "I'm not a real herald" thing is now largely shot, but it's been a fun and interesting experience. Ultimately, it's much like learning any other art, for court heraldry is as much an art as any other. Dabbling is fun, but if you're going to do it right, you need to go in with fierce joy, pride, care and courage. If you can manage that, you should be able to succeed.

Several people have asked whether I'm going to do it again. The answer is maybe later, but not now. It's a good deal of work and care to do well, and I'm not interested in becoming a professional herald. I went into it for my friends, and I might well do it again for friends, but it would need to be people I care about enough to put in that much work and who I trust enough to not make the job suck. (And a fair amount is simply whether I'm willing to clear my desk for six months and focus on that, because it really has to be one's primary job.) It was a good experience, and it was the right people to do it with, but now it's time to focus on other priorities...

Picking up a new art

One of the major amusements on Saturday was the point (made a couple of times by different people in different ways) that they thought I'd done this Vox Regis (nee Pocket) Herald thing before. I really hadn't: I've basically been an Emergency Fall-back Herald for a few Royals in foreign courts, and have tended to be Jehan's fall-back when Golden Gryphon isn't around, but I've never formally been The Herald. Indeed, it was a long-running joke that I was the only member of House Silverwing who *wasn't* a herald. That wasn't actually quite true, but I was apprenticed to a Big Name Herald, I'm married to a Big Name Herald, and my first two apprentices wound up Big Name Heralds. And half of Silverwing has been Brigantia at one time or another. So it did often feel that way.

Obviously, the "I'm not a real herald" thing is now largely shot, but it's been a fun and interesting experience. Ultimately, it's much like learning any other art, for court heraldry is as much an art as any other. Dabbling is fun, but if you're going to do it right, you need to go in with fierce joy, pride, care and courage. If you can manage that, you should be able to succeed.

Several people have asked whether I'm going to do it again. The answer is maybe later, but not now. It's a good deal of work and care to do well, and I'm not interested in becoming a professional herald. I went into it for my friends, and I might well do it again for friends, but it would need to be people I care about enough to put in that much work and who I trust enough to not make the job suck. (And a fair amount is simply whether I'm willing to clear my desk for six months and focus on that, because it really has to be one's primary job.) It was a good experience, and it was the right people to do it with, but now it's time to focus on other priorities...

New milestones in phishing

Just got this link going around at work, which nicely illustrates how careful you have to be with online solicitations.

We're all used to phishing emails that pretend to be from legitimate banks in order to get your personal information, but this one takes it to a whole new level: a company that set itself up with all the accoutrements of a real credit union, including its own website and toll-free number -- but didn't exist. The entire company was nothing but one big phishing scam, encouraging you to sign up for accounts simply so they could steal your information. Very, very special...

New milestones in phishing

Just got this link going around at work, which nicely illustrates how careful you have to be with online solicitations.

We're all used to phishing emails that pretend to be from legitimate banks in order to get your personal information, but this one takes it to a whole new level: a company that set itself up with all the accoutrements of a real credit union, including its own website and toll-free number -- but didn't exist. The entire company was nothing but one big phishing scam, encouraging you to sign up for accounts simply so they could steal your information. Very, very special...

Cross-posting public entries to Facebook

This shouldn't put anybody's knickers in a twist, but FYI: I've set things up to cross-post my public entries. After asking around, I came to the conclusion that most of my friends don't give a damn one way or another (since they're following me on LiveJournal), but my *family* is much more likely to read stuff on Facebook.

This only applies to my public posts (which has always been most of them), so it shouldn't change anybody else's visibility in any way. But given the heated nature of the topic recently, I felt that I should mention it explicitly...

Cross-posting public entries to Facebook

This shouldn't put anybody's knickers in a twist, but FYI: I've set things up to cross-post my public entries. After asking around, I came to the conclusion that most of my friends don't give a damn one way or another (since they're following me on LiveJournal), but my *family* is much more likely to read stuff on Facebook.

This only applies to my public posts (which has always been most of them), so it shouldn't change anybody else's visibility in any way. But given the heated nature of the topic recently, I felt that I should mention it explicitly...

The behind-the-scenes hero of the reign

There are several people who get credit for enabling me and msmemory to do the heralding. The two closest to front-and-center were hfcougar and tpau, who acted as our primary Chancery Heralds through most of the reign. They were the ones standing behind us, feeding us cards and scrolls, so that everything kept moving along. (And coping calmly when plans got knocked askew by reality.)

I have to say, though, the person who really made those smooth and elegant courts possible for the heralds was Mistress Khioniya, the Tyger Clerk of the Signet. Nominally, this office is in charge of the scribes, but in practice I found that she does vastly more. She took charge of contacting the people who recommended folks for awards, figuring out which events were plausible to give those awards out. She built and maintained the preliminary dockets in Google Docs -- basically all of the Real Awards, each court in a separate dated file, so that the heralds just had to add in Other Stuff like presentations. She ensured that not only did scrolls get where they needed to be, but that the scribes knew to include neatly printed cutsheets in Big Type for us to read from. And along the way, I think she calligraphed more scrolls than any other three scribes in the Kingdom. (I think tpau was the only person who even came close.)

So I raise a virtual cup to her. The Vox Regis job wasn't *nearly* as hard as I expected it to be, precisely because she was so completely on top of the bits that happened before things landed on our desk...

The behind-the-scenes hero of the reign

There are several people who get credit for enabling me and msmemory to do the heralding. The two closest to front-and-center were hfcougar and tpau, who acted as our primary Chancery Heralds through most of the reign. They were the ones standing behind us, feeding us cards and scrolls, so that everything kept moving along. (And coping calmly when plans got knocked askew by reality.)

I have to say, though, the person who really made those smooth and elegant courts possible for the heralds was Mistress Khioniya, the Tyger Clerk of the Signet. Nominally, this office is in charge of the scribes, but in practice I found that she does vastly more. She took charge of contacting the people who recommended folks for awards, figuring out which events were plausible to give those awards out. She built and maintained the preliminary dockets in Google Docs -- basically all of the Real Awards, each court in a separate dated file, so that the heralds just had to add in Other Stuff like presentations. She ensured that not only did scrolls get where they needed to be, but that the scribes knew to include neatly printed cutsheets in Big Type for us to read from. And along the way, I think she calligraphed more scrolls than any other three scribes in the Kingdom. (I think tpau was the only person who even came close.)

So I raise a virtual cup to her. The Vox Regis job wasn't *nearly* as hard as I expected it to be, precisely because she was so completely on top of the bits that happened before things landed on our desk...

How the system worked

For those who might be considering a job in the Heraldic field, or are simply geekily curious, here's how we actually ran the courts, from the heraldic perspective. The model was broadly suggested by mrgrumpybear, and evolved a bit from there. (Hopefully Edward and Marguerite will forgive me for pulling back the curtain a bit, but now that we're done, I figure it may be useful info for later reigns. Those who prefer not to know how the magicians pull the rabbits from the hats should just skip this post.)

To begin with, Signet would do a lot of the heavy lifting: contact the recommenders for the awards, find out which events the candidates will probably be at, and track the schedule of who should get what when. We set up a shared folder in Google Docs (which turns out to be a great tool for this sort of thing), with one master spreadsheet of the tentative overall schedule, and one spreadsheet per event of the awards we really expect to do. These per-event spreadsheets would typically get finalized about a week before the event, at which point Signet would send an email summarizing the list.

Once the email went out, we (the heralds) would put together The Cards. Everything ran based on decks of 3x5 index cards. We set up a simple template in Word: each card was essentially a copy of the row in the spreadsheet, including the person's name, the award, a few brief notes reminding who they are and what they've done, and the scroll information. We also added cards for things like expected presentations, quests and other items of business, as well as the two cards that were always included: Welcome Newcomers (which was a high priority this reign) and Thank Musicians (which was always included, although only relevant about half the time).

In parallel with this, tpau, in her capacity as Keeper of the Big Bling Box (a large tackle box full of little comparments holding different medallions and tokens) would take a look at the spreadsheet, and make sure that the Little Bling Box (which actually went with the Royalty) had any medallions that might be needed. (In practice, most Orders have someone pass on a medallion, but we ran on the assumption that we might need to provide everything.)

We would then print two copies of the card deck, one for the Heralds and one for the Royalty. I would prepare a proposed order for the docket along the lines that TRM prefer, typically an hour or so before Court. (Multiple "acts" punctuated by the big awards, for better dramatic tension.) They would review and tweak that to get the final docket; at that point, we would go through both decks, all of the scrolls and all of the cutsheets, and put them into matching order.

The Royal copy of the cards would go into the Little Bling Box between them, so they could keep track of what was coming up next. (Ideally, they would get this deck in advance, so they could review the docket while traveling, but that didn't always happen.) The Herald copy would be given to one of the chancery heralds standing behind the thrones (usually tpau or hfcougar). She would have the cards and a pen. Going in order through the stack, she would hand the next card to the Herald, who would do the item of business and hand it back; she would then number it. If things went askew from the expected schedule, we would shuffle the card to later in the stack. (We also tried to usually have a few blank cards, in case something came up in the middle of Court.) The numbered cards then got transcribed, after the event, as the Court Report. (For particularly long Courts, we occasionally printed a third copy of the cards, so that the Head Lady in Waiting could use it to pace the retainers.)

All in all, it was a fair amount of prep work (and OMG we went through a lot of index cards), but the process works quite smoothly, and is relatively tolerant of things shifting in mid-Court. By taking the tracking-what-happened job off the shoulders of the Herald who is actually yelling, it allowed us to be a hair calmer in Court (not quite as many things to keep track of). It takes some discipline, but so long as you set aside enough prep time, it's a good model...

How the system worked

For those who might be considering a job in the Heraldic field, or are simply geekily curious, here's how we actually ran the courts, from the heraldic perspective. The model was broadly suggested by mrgrumpybear, and evolved a bit from there. (Hopefully Edward and Marguerite will forgive me for pulling back the curtain a bit, but now that we're done, I figure it may be useful info for later reigns. Those who prefer not to know how the magicians pull the rabbits from the hats should just skip this post.)

To begin with, Signet would do a lot of the heavy lifting: contact the recommenders for the awards, find out which events the candidates will probably be at, and track the schedule of who should get what when. We set up a shared folder in Google Docs (which turns out to be a great tool for this sort of thing), with one master spreadsheet of the tentative overall schedule, and one spreadsheet per event of the awards we really expect to do. These per-event spreadsheets would typically get finalized about a week before the event, at which point Signet would send an email summarizing the list.

Once the email went out, we (the heralds) would put together The Cards. Everything ran based on decks of 3x5 index cards. We set up a simple template in Word: each card was essentially a copy of the row in the spreadsheet, including the person's name, the award, a few brief notes reminding who they are and what they've done, and the scroll information. We also added cards for things like expected presentations, quests and other items of business, as well as the two cards that were always included: Welcome Newcomers (which was a high priority this reign) and Thank Musicians (which was always included, although only relevant about half the time).

In parallel with this, tpau, in her capacity as Keeper of the Big Bling Box (a large tackle box full of little comparments holding different medallions and tokens) would take a look at the spreadsheet, and make sure that the Little Bling Box (which actually went with the Royalty) had any medallions that might be needed. (In practice, most Orders have someone pass on a medallion, but we ran on the assumption that we might need to provide everything.)

We would then print two copies of the card deck, one for the Heralds and one for the Royalty. I would prepare a proposed order for the docket along the lines that TRM prefer, typically an hour or so before Court. (Multiple "acts" punctuated by the big awards, for better dramatic tension.) They would review and tweak that to get the final docket; at that point, we would go through both decks, all of the scrolls and all of the cutsheets, and put them into matching order.

The Royal copy of the cards would go into the Little Bling Box between them, so they could keep track of what was coming up next. (Ideally, they would get this deck in advance, so they could review the docket while traveling, but that didn't always happen.) The Herald copy would be given to one of the chancery heralds standing behind the thrones (usually tpau or hfcougar). She would have the cards and a pen. Going in order through the stack, she would hand the next card to the Herald, who would do the item of business and hand it back; she would then number it. If things went askew from the expected schedule, we would shuffle the card to later in the stack. (We also tried to usually have a few blank cards, in case something came up in the middle of Court.) The numbered cards then got transcribed, after the event, as the Court Report. (For particularly long Courts, we occasionally printed a third copy of the cards, so that the Head Lady in Waiting could use it to pace the retainers.)

All in all, it was a fair amount of prep work (and OMG we went through a lot of index cards), but the process works quite smoothly, and is relatively tolerant of things shifting in mid-Court. By taking the tracking-what-happened job off the shoulders of the Herald who is actually yelling, it allowed us to be a hair calmer in Court (not quite as many things to keep track of). It takes some discipline, but so long as you set aside enough prep time, it's a good model...

Happy New Year!

No, I'm not holding a New Year's Party early to compensate for the late Memorial Day party.

As many of you know, I am an Nancyist. This is a simple faith, with few commandments (the Wearing of the Button being the principal one, of course). And its primary holiday is the turn of the year. But the Nancyist year is different from other years, since its length is determined by the individual adherent. And so, once a year, on this New Year's Eve, we must engage in the ritual Counting of the Buttons, which determines the length of the following year.

The next year shall be 630 buttons long. Verily, my button-box floweth over.

Actually, that's a little scary even for me. But I do take my small joys in the courage of my own geekitude...

Happy New Year!

No, I'm not holding a New Year's Party early to compensate for the late Memorial Day party.

As many of you know, I am an Nancyist. This is a simple faith, with few commandments (the Wearing of the Button being the principal one, of course). And its primary holiday is the turn of the year. But the Nancyist year is different from other years, since its length is determined by the individual adherent. And so, once a year, on this New Year's Eve, we must engage in the ritual Counting of the Buttons, which determines the length of the following year.

The next year shall be 630 buttons long. Verily, my button-box floweth over.

Actually, that's a little scary even for me. But I do take my small joys in the courage of my own geekitude...

Yeah, somewhere along the line I really did turn into a Laurel

(And yes, I'm posting a lot today. I think it's a reaction to the double de-stress of the reign ending and the first release of our Check Fraud product going into code freeze. It'll pass.)

It occurs to me that I never did talk about my ridiculously geeky Pennsic purchase. Not the most expensive one (that was a couple of outfits of 12th century garb, on the grounds that it is literally linen from head to toe, and therefore helped me survive Pennsic), but the preposterous impulse buy.

So: no shit, there I was, standing in the Haunted Bookshop. Now you have to understand, Haunted is my *bane* at Pennsic. Once a year, without fail, Gwyneth manages to pull out some used book that costs more than I really should spend, but which is so esoteric and cool that I wind up agonizing over it. (And more often that not, succumb and buy it.)

This time was weird, because I needed to kill time there. Y'see, TRM had decided to give Gwyneth her AoA, but we'd been told that, since EK Court is opposite Midnight Madness, there was Absolutely No Way she was coming to Court. So Her Majesty decided to bring the mountain to Mohammed on Thursday morning. msmemory was going to do the actual heralding, but I decided to act as a spotter, to make sure she was still there when HRM came by. (And besides, having been a customer of hers for years, I kinda wanted to be there.) But of course, it took a while for HRM to get there, so I wound up poring over the books even more closely than usual, and found this year's siren of the bookshelves.

The AoA presentation was lovely, BTW: the other booksellers all gathered around, and the scroll was a fine piece by Eowyn. Gwyneth seemed touched.

But this posting is about this year's Book Doom, which I talked myself into over the next 24 hours. As always, I'm a sucker for weird bits of period culture, and 25+ years in the SCA have left me with a very strange definition of "useful". So it was that my reaction was, "That looks really useful!" when I found the six-volume set of Chapters in Medieval Administrative History.

The title on the spine is misleadingly vague. The full title inside is Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals. So this is basically a history of the administration of England: how they actually managed to *run* the country, gradually building up layers of administrative bureaucracy to do so. It pays particular attention to seals: what the various seals all meant and how they were used.

It's one of the geekiest things I own, but it's actually kind of neat, especially as I get into all this court-heraldry schtick. This is a deep dive into how all of that worked in reality, and I suspect there are a lot of entertaining ideas to be mined out of it. From the first page, it is explicitly a "think with your persona's mind" book: the introduction is focused on the way that we tend to introduce our modern assumptions into historical study, and fail to pay enough attention to stuff that was Really Really Important to the actual nobility in period. In short, it's so Silverwing it *hurts*.

(And yes, it cost *way* too much. But I comfort myself with the fact that it cost far less than the $500 two-volume set that claimed to illustrate 80,000 period coats of arms...)

Yeah, somewhere along the line I really did turn into a Laurel

(And yes, I'm posting a lot today. I think it's a reaction to the double de-stress of the reign ending and the first release of our Check Fraud product going into code freeze. It'll pass.)

It occurs to me that I never did talk about my ridiculously geeky Pennsic purchase. Not the most expensive one (that was a couple of outfits of 12th century garb, on the grounds that it is literally linen from head to toe, and therefore helped me survive Pennsic), but the preposterous impulse buy.

So: no shit, there I was, standing in the Haunted Bookshop. Now you have to understand, Haunted is my *bane* at Pennsic. Once a year, without fail, Gwyneth manages to pull out some used book that costs more than I really should spend, but which is so esoteric and cool that I wind up agonizing over it. (And more often that not, succumb and buy it.)

This time was weird, because I needed to kill time there. Y'see, TRM had decided to give Gwyneth her AoA, but we'd been told that, since EK Court is opposite Midnight Madness, there was Absolutely No Way she was coming to Court. So Her Majesty decided to bring the mountain to Mohammed on Thursday morning. msmemory was going to do the actual heralding, but I decided to act as a spotter, to make sure she was still there when HRM came by. (And besides, having been a customer of hers for years, I kinda wanted to be there.) But of course, it took a while for HRM to get there, so I wound up poring over the books even more closely than usual, and found this year's siren of the bookshelves.

The AoA presentation was lovely, BTW: the other booksellers all gathered around, and the scroll was a fine piece by Eowyn. Gwyneth seemed touched.

But this posting is about this year's Book Doom, which I talked myself into over the next 24 hours. As always, I'm a sucker for weird bits of period culture, and 25+ years in the SCA have left me with a very strange definition of "useful". So it was that my reaction was, "That looks really useful!" when I found the six-volume set of Chapters in Medieval Administrative History.

The title on the spine is misleadingly vague. The full title inside is Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals. So this is basically a history of the administration of England: how they actually managed to *run* the country, gradually building up layers of administrative bureaucracy to do so. It pays particular attention to seals: what the various seals all meant and how they were used.

It's one of the geekiest things I own, but it's actually kind of neat, especially as I get into all this court-heraldry schtick. This is a deep dive into how all of that worked in reality, and I suspect there are a lot of entertaining ideas to be mined out of it. From the first page, it is explicitly a "think with your persona's mind" book: the introduction is focused on the way that we tend to introduce our modern assumptions into historical study, and fail to pay enough attention to stuff that was Really Really Important to the actual nobility in period. In short, it's so Silverwing it *hurts*.

(And yes, it cost *way* too much. But I comfort myself with the fact that it cost far less than the $500 two-volume set that claimed to illustrate 80,000 period coats of arms...)