When taking breaks, I like to go and check what is happening on Twitter. I don't post there often, but there are a lot of tweeters that post things I find amusing, and occasionally a retweet lures me to yet another twitter account, and I follow yet another one.

This happened this morning, when I stumbled across @AcademicsSay. If you are in academia, have been there, or are interested in it - check out that twitter feed. It is a wonderful mix of the hilarious with the slight sadness that comes from knowing that life is exactly that strange, and that weird. Also there's the potential of luring you off into strangenesses, such as this article about a satirical article regarding evidence-based medicine.

The guy behind this account also has a blog called SAS Confidential, which promises quite a few interesting reads as well. Which I will resist to look at for now... because, you know? I should be writing.

Today was a slower day than I had hoped for - but at least I have an amusing link for you, and that is pictures of post-war mass-produced bras called "Maidenform", brought to you  by JSTOR Daily. (The research paper linked to in that article seems to not be behind a paywall, and it contains a few more pictures.)

Outside, it has finally snowed - so our garden now contains this:


 
The cat is not too thrilled by the cold white stuff outside, but she copes. She's also almost invisible in this light in front of certain backgrounds:

I've been getting an early start today, and you are getting a very, very early blog, because of this:

I've started the server migration, and I'm already really, really happy that I did test-runs of almost everything before, and took copious notes. This way, my panic probability is much reduced, even if something does not go quite as planned.

Like my database fooling me into thinking it had not imported, thus trying to re-import... and getting an error message. Obviously.

If you're interested in following the shenanigans in detail, I'll be tweeting live about this - you find me on twitter as katrinkania, and I'm using the hashtag #newserverorbust.

Today was sort of scheduled to get back on track with the website redesign and relaunch. (Short version: I'm running the webshop on Joomla, and I need to do a thorough update on the shop software - which needs some preparation, and also a new template, so I'm looking into that.) Unfortunately, all kinds of things did not go as planned... as in there were server errors, and a version that had been running smoothly before did not run anymore at all.

So. I'm still looking for a design solution that will work properly for a blog function, the webshop and my general site; the templates I've found until now don't really cut the mustard, but I am running out of patience with looking for the perfect solution. Instead, I want this thing over and dealt with.

And just like every time I'm working on something like that, it is amazing how much time gets eaten up by trying to get something running. Even if it ran before... or maybe I should say especially if it ran before.

Tomorrow: Another try. With nicer outcomes (hopefully). Today, though, for calming my nerves and for making you smile, have a picture of a sleepy cat:

The last few months have been... let's call them hectic. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out how they could have gotten so hectic, and trying to make sure things will be more under control in the future. There's also been developments business-wise - the online shop is growing (and a big thank you to everybody who has ordered from there - I hope you have a lot of fun, and are happy, with the things you bought); I've been doing a few workshops, and I've been doing the blog tours, and I have started shifting my appearances from Living History fairs more to wool markets and other kinds of fairs.

So there's been quite a bit of change, and quite a bit of kinds of work that have taken away time from this blog, and from research. There are a few projects that have gotten shoved to the back for ages now, even though they are things I'd love to work on (such as the never-ending project of getting my thesis translated into English, or researching all kinds of smaller and not-so-small questions, or a totally crazy knitting pattern that has been in development for months now), but I just can't find the time, it seems.

I'd like that to change. I'd like to be able to sit down and make a video tutorial for how to make hair nets, or how to spin with a hand-spindle. I'd like to sit down and research female headcloths in the twelfth century, and possible reconstructions for them. But, as I have learned with the embroidery book, these things take a lot of time, and mean quite a bit of an investment of money in some cases, which has to come back in before I can tackle the next project. It's also not such a big deal to work on something for a while hoping that it will eventually bring in a little income, but if projects like that come along again and again, it can sap your energy away bit by bit. And that is, to be frank, happening to me as well. If I spend three weeks of work time on planning, making and cutting a video tutorial (and that is a relatively realistic estimate), then burn it on a DVD and offer it via the shop, but I'm only selling ten or twelve of the discs... it just eats away on me, regardless of how good I think the results are, and regardless of how much fun I had making it.

So... I was thinking of how to get you more content, and how to make it possible for me to create these things, and Patreon popped into my head. Again. (In case you have never heard of Patreon before, it's sort of like an ongoing kickstarter where you can pledge recurring small payments to an artist or a creator of some kind to support their work.) Getting support like that would make it possible for me to start spending more time on research, and sharing that research with my supporters. I'm not entirely sure yet whether that would work at all, or about what to offer, and still very much thinking about this whole thing, so if you have any input at all, please use the comments - would you consider joining in?  Or do you like the idea, but would prefer some other way instead of Patreon? What would you like to see - tutorials about textile crafts? My thesis translated, bit by bit? Things exclusively published for patrons, or would you prefer to support things that are then free for everyone to see?

Just to make things clear - I'm not planning to stop this blog, and I'm not planning to stick it behind a paywall. I would, though, absolutely consider adding extra content only available to supporters - such as the occasional video, copies of my academic articles, or even installments of the book translation. I'd also be happy to take suggestions from the supporters about topics to research.

So... do let me know what you think, per comments, or per This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or with whatever means you prefer!

In spite of all my efforts, I did catch some con crud, and today my head is woozy and I'm not good for too much. So it's a day for drinking lots of tea and resting, and for blogging links that have been waiting for ages to be blogged.

Here you go!

Magistra et Mater has a very interesting post up (has had it for a while) about how men dominate women.

You can find old city plans from Austrian cities here at the Österreichischer Städteatlas.

And for those of you in the States and looking for something to do in the next few days, there's an exhibition running until the 18th: Treasures and Talismans: Rings from the Griffin Collection at the MET.

Finally for something completely different: an Imperial Speeder Bike going on a flight.

These past few days were wonderful, and very relaxing, and much-needed. I got to spend time with friends, and eat lots of lovely food, and play many, many games, as the big game fair in Essen took place on the weekend.

As usual, we went there and ambled through the halls full of people and games. The fair at Essen is the world's biggest boardgame fair, and they had about 800 new games this year, released at the fair. There's tables with games set up that you can look at, there's usually someone there who explains the rules to you, and then you can give the game a try and play a round or two or even the entire game in some cases to see how you like it.

We spend a long weekend there, with three and a half days at the fair, plus more gaming in the evening, and we usually play (or test for a few rounds) about 30 games. As usual, some of them were nice but not mind-boggling, some were fun, some were really, really bad (mind-bogglingly bad in one case) and some were so much fun that a copy had to travel home with us.



Today was busy with doing things for the shop (all in the background for now, though) and preparing for the next blog tour together with Gillian - the US release of the Beast is coming up!