Pretty Piccies: Samurai Eye For The SCA Guy And Gal

Newly updated to rat out the well dressed in public. Thanks to all our Samurai Eye participants! You know who you are.
http://wodefordhall.com/samurai.htm

I think it's time for some lunch!

In semi related news, I have been home enough consecutive Saturday evenings to figure out what the hell is going on in "Tenchijin," an NHK historical soap that's been airing on Channel 26. Yummy costumes, and an appealing, mostly young, mostly photogenic cast, which probably explains a lot about the "history girl" trend in Japan right now. 

The Thingy

From the West Kindom Arts Thingy FAQ: "We want to know who you are, so we have a name to go with that lovely dress, scroll, or cabinet... Please use your full SCA name-without titles - for the community. Here, we are all artists."

Added to the West Kingdom Arts Thingy this week: "We've added a new field in everyone's profile. You can now add a list of all of your awards. To add them, just click on settings bellow your name on the right top corner of the screen."

Added to my West Kingdom Arts Thingy Profile this morning: "Now now. If "here we're all artists" I am not filling this thing out."

The initial announcement of the creation of The Thingy included the statement "There has also been some remarks made that people wish that there was a database of Laurels and what they can do and how to contact them." I guess they're is still wishing. We've got a self-billed "social network" in which one cannot tell who is a Laurel or what a person is interested in unless one opens every single member profile. And as this participant has just proven, profile contents are entirely at the discretion of the profile owner.

Given past experiences this writer has had with people who have flaunted their Leaves to teach subjects in which they have not done any homework whatsoever, I'm 100% in favor of the "We're all artists" approach. However, for people who are looking for a mentor in a particular subject, they still have a hunt ahead of them.

Plus: People are joining. Minus: Not a whole lot of people are starting discussions. You have to join each interest group you want to post things to, instead of it being an open forum-type set up. I'm going to guess it's structured that way so that membership in certain sections (e.g., Laurel, Royal Artisan, etc. ) is limited to those members. Fine, that's not unreasonable, but is it more cumbersome than it needs to be? Are people not posting because they can't figure out how? I don't know. I posted something I thought would be a nice, general, get things going sort of post on whether anyone was reading anything interesting and discovered the reason nobody wrote back was because it's on my "wall," not in a general discussion forum. What is this, freaking Facebook? 

I prefer the Tousando/Armor Archive forum set-up. It's not profile driven. People just post stuff and comment. Nobody has to friend or unfriend anyone. Even I can use it.