October 18th: LOCHAC.SCA.ORG DOMAIN The changeover of the main Kingdom web server in September went rather smoothly - minor glitches arising were addressed soon after they were reported. Lord Raoul and Don William de Cameron deserve great credit. Many thanks for the problem reports to date - please continue to report any issues to masonry@lochac.sca.org. A Masonry project which William has been steadily working on for months is the adoption of the lochac.sca.org domain for all "in game" websites, mailing lists and email addresses. That is, instead of using seneschal@sca.org.au or lko@sca.org.au, we can now use seneschal@lochac.sca.org and lko@lochac.sca.org . And instead of examples like these: * http://www.sca.org.au/riverhaven * http://sg.sca.org.nz * http://aneala.sca.org.au * http://www.sca.org.au/marshal * http://www.sca.org.nz/equestrian * seneschal@ildhafn.sca.org.nz ...we can now use: * http://lochac.sca.org/riverhaven * http://sg.lochac.sca.org * http://aneala.lochac.sca.org * http://lochac.sca.org/marshal * http://lochac.sca.org/equestrian * seneschal@ildhafn.lochac.sca.org These "lochac" domain names do not fully supplant the earlier ones, they parallel them. The old forms can all still be used. And, for "Inc"-specific addresses, e.g. registrar@sca.org.au or http://sca.org.nz , there is no reason to ever change. But: for published in-game domains, please use the lochac.sca.org forms in preference from now on. That means gradually amending your newsletters, websites, introduction cards in coming weeks and months. NB: If you are responsible for maintaining web sites, please DEFEND "something@lochac.sca.org" email addresses on web pages from spam by instead using this form: "something@lochac.sca.org". This obfuscated variant works in your browsers just fine, and helps create a small but long-term advantage for us all by reducing harvesting by spambots. Please report problems to the Masonry Deputy, via masonry@lochac.sca.org. In service, Bartholomew Lochac Kingdom Seneschal
Known projects in the works, with relevant champions are:
These options are listed here so they aren't lost in the traffic, but have no particular timeframe
The following servers and administrators are known to be supporting two or more sites or activities in the Kingdom of Lochac. Not all receive direct support from the Masonry budget. If there's a significant server not mentioned here, please get in touch.
Lochac (Kingdom Exchequer), SCA Australia and SCA New Zealand all contribute funds to support this office. The budget approved for 2010 is $A600 from SCAA, $NZ150 from SCANZ and matching funds in both countries from Kingdom. Allowing for the balances brought forward from 2009 (see below), all being held in the Kingdom accounts, the balances available for 2010 are:
2010 $A Balance remaining: $1790.51 (held in Kingdom account, managed by Exchequer on request from the Masonry Deputy)
2010 $NZ Balance remaining: $343.39 (held in NZ Kingdom "01/11" account, managed by NZ Deputy Exchequer on request from the Masonry Deputy)
Under the original proposal, the first year's funding was roughly double what was expected in future years, to allow for purchase of a new main Kingdom server and other hardware catch-ups. The total allocated for 2009 was $A2,000 and $NZ500 respectively. Expenditure during 2009 was:
2009 $A Balance carried forward to 2010: $590.51 (held in Kingdom account, managed by Exchequer)
2009 $NZ Balance carried forward to 2010: $43.39 (held in NZ Kingdom "01/11" account, managed by NZ Deputy Exchequer)
For reference, the full proposal which led to the establishment of the Masonry office is available here.
Herewith some technical information for the key servers receiving support (or likely to) from this office:
People with administrator access to sca.org.au: Raoul, William de Cameron, Will of Rowany. People with administrator access to sca.org.nz: William de Cameron, William de Wyke. People with sca.org.au DNS access: William de Cameron, Raoul, Bartholomew. People with lochac.sca.org and sca.org.nz DNS access: William de Cameron, William de Wyke.