Flametree Ball
held 22 May 2004 at Bulli Masonic Hall, Bulli: Wollongong, NSW
hosted by Saint Malachy
presiding royalty: Ædward I and Yolande I.
* Alessandra Dellamorot, Award of Arms
* Llywelyn òr Llyn, golden tear
*Were there more perhaps?
Action Taken:
*Bethan was chasing this up
I’ve decided to write one post per missing event, so that the comments on the event can relate directly to it. Well actually this post is going to have 2 events because they were held on the same weekend in the same place.
Country Dance and Games Night
5 Jun 2004 at The Community Hall, South Rd, Airport West, Melbourne, VIC, AU
hosted by Stormhold
presiding royalty: Ædward I and Yolande I (Yolande sick and mostly in back room)
*Tamaly & Zyl of house Abbotsford- AOA’s
*probably someone - golden tear
*any others?
Royal Bash
held 6 Jun 2004 at John Gardiner Reserve, Hawthorn East, Melbourne,
hosted by Stormhold
presiding royalty: Ædward I and Yolande I
*any awards?
Action taken:
*searched pegasus, stormhold newsletter
*searched stormhold, krae glas, arrowsreach mailing lists
*enquired of presiding royals - pending
*enquired of selected locals
to do:
*send general inquiry to local mailing lists
When you find an event where only one person obtained an award (eg a bug fix comes in, or you find a solitary entry with no event details), that is generally very suspicious. Take a look at the histories - it doesn’t generally happen unless it is a log way back into the history of our fair lands. What is more likely is that there were more awards given out, and they are not recorded in the database.
So here’s my standard procedure for chasing it up:
*double check the date you entered. Check your source isn’t using month-day-year format.
*confirm the event happened on that date. Information sources that can be used are listed below. While people have good memories, a firsthand account written within days and saved somewhere is less likely to only mention only their friends, and is more likely to have accurate date information, as well is less likely to be susceptible to the fuss of time.
*Try to confirm that royals attended too if possible. Thankfully people generally advertise that fact.
*Contact the person who received the award if you can easily. They will remember the details more clearly, and may remember clearly that they were the only award recipient that night.
*Consider contacting the royals who gave out the award. Maybe they have some spare copies of paperwork tucked away.
*Contact people from the area - be it a personal communication, or a post to a relevant mailing list, or just an appeal to the lochac list. Give as much information about the event as you have found out. Details like event location can really help jog people’s memory more than years.
*Remember that titles can be given at court that are not awards (eg admiral of lochac, royal guard) , and if a lot of these were given out, there may have been only one award that gets listed in the OP, and this may explain the abnormality.
Information sources:
*pegasus - adds for events, lists of awards given (mostly complete), royal itinerary, royal words, etc
*local newsletters - adverts for events and mentions in calendar in preceding months, mentions in baron/ess’s blurb just pre or post event, event reports in month after event. Neighbouring groups within the same city may also be worth checking. Many groups have a number of newsletters online, and even groups that don’t keep older copies, may have a digital or hardcopy archive in a senior member’s house - keep asking around.
*mailing lists (local and lochac) - event adverts just prior to event, event reports just after, notices to the populace about the event (eg “can someone bring thrones for the royals” confirms royal presence was expected), people suddenly signing their name or being adressed by new titles. Check local group websites for mailing lists, or lochac website for lochac mailing list archives.
*people - ask in person if it’s your local group, or try an email for a group further away. Give as much information about the event, weather, location, activities, etc as possible, as this will help people recollect the event better. You can target particularly knowledgeable locals, or just try and mail to the mailing list. Often people (eg senechal if you know no-one) will be willing to forward you message to the group, so you don’t have to join the mailing list for one mail. (Don’t forget to ask people to “reply to you offlist as you are not on the mailing list”).
I’ve begun a database specification for Canon Lore, on the excellent Jottit site. It’s kind of like a wiki, so I’ll add to it as I get a chance, trying to explain how the fields and tables in the database interrelate. This will be of use to Mouse and any other volunteers who want to understand and use the database, and also to Kenrick, who is planning something quite interesting.
Canon’s tasklist:
*enter just past reign’s awards
* enter current reign’s awards
*fix fix me messages
*seek out local OP followers for each group
*setup mailbox so people can see how many fix-me’s I have
*fix current court herald form to my details
*check awards against pegasii
easily delegated/small delegateable tasks:
*scan through names, looking for any that are suspiciously similar and check if they are the same
*enter names for events, based on pegasus event listing
*enter all branch websites
* research names for events that are not listed in pegasus in local newsletters, local mailing lists, and if that fails, asking local people. (note that even if old newsletters are not online, someone may be archiving them).
*collate list of registered names for later entry
>BTW this page should be sure to mention that it is submitting a
>problem about a specific person so that they don’t end up giving you
>URLs and names like I just did. Looking at the URL of this form I
>*think* that is being recorded automatically but the text above
>doesn’t say so.
There have been other fix me messages that show similar lack of knowledge that the fix me message will contain the record they clicked on in the url too. Suggested text:
“You’re here because you clicked a Fix Me button somewhere on Canon Lore. Which fix me you clicked on will be recorded in your message. Use this page to contact the Canon Herald. You can be anonymous if you wish, but then the Canon Herald won’t be able to reply, so please leave a name and an email address if possible. ”
Note I’ve also changed the gender of the canon herald to ambigous rather than masculine.
>PERSON 1948 Arnfinn of Ynys Fawr:
>I recommend this man be made a Baron!
Well it made me giggle. I hope this was deliberately humerous.
But it does bring up an issue - Landed Barons. Should we be recording who is a landed Baron when?
A new feature idea which her majesty related to me she would find VERY useful, and I also think would be quite useful to a number of other people:
Each person’s canonlore entry contains a listing of their title, or rather how they would be addressed. eg I would be addressed as “my lady” and Bat as “your excellency”.
Gratian already knows what level of award a person has - the level of award is programmed in so it can calculate the Order of Precedence. So, not being a programmer, I’m guessing it’s a relatively simple script that say [if highest award level is Armigerous, add text to webpage “The generic title for this rank is my lord/my lady”]. Dearest mortar, do I deduce correctly?
I can dream up fancier versions - but they would likely require extra database fields eg a gender field to decide if a person is a lord or a lady, or an override rank field where a user can specify they want “Yarl” instead of count. I think adding the simplest version may be best - there are plenty of other bits to work on, and immediacy is of more value than completeness if we want this to be of use while our dear soverign reigns. Besides we will get a chance to evaluate the user utility and acceptance of such a feature before upgrading it.