A few days ago you might have noticed that you could not visit this site or your RSS feed seemed to stop working. Well, there was something wrong with a server that this site (and the rest of the sites we host), and as such, the site was down until they could get a new server set up.

They restored all of the files to the new server, and everything seems to be stable. For those whom have hosting with us, the problem has been rectified and everything should be working as usual. Now that everything has been restored, we are taking an extra safety measure and are backing up all of our (and your) files to a private server. We will continue with our regular maintenance/backup schedule, too.

Thank you for your patience, and we are sorry for the inconvenience!

Because everyone knows that pirates and scoundrels are always drunk (on rum of course!)

Over the next week you should notice a few changes being rolled out here at the Scoundrels’ headquarters (taking visual queues from The Chatty DM’s blog, as well as Andreas Viklund’s site. The biggest thing is trying to find a content system to settle with while I figure out where I want to go with my homebrew one.

Some of the plans I have include integrating Facebook (for all you stalker folk) and Xfire into the site, as they are two social networking sites that I use quite a bit, as well as finding a way to integrate the Steam group I have for us Scoundrels and our friends. All of us are gamers in some form, and I am aiming at creating a section that helps us bring to you the adventures we have, whether it be Funny Moments in Gaming, or epic roleplay stories.

There are a few other things that I am tinkering with, since I am very new to WordPress, and I will be enlisting the help of the Master Engineer and Senior Airman (after all, this is their ship too). All in all, I am aiming at having myself post here at least two to three times a week (for starters) to get back into the habit of blogging.

In between the pieces of work I have scheduled myself to do, I have been browsing the Internet for more reading material, as most of the blogs I read have changed and/or died. The subject of my searching has been pretty generic, and to my surprise, I found a gem relatively quickly. And there’s apparently a lot more where it came from.

For a while now, Samantha, Shadowbolt, and I have been reading various comics that are geared around gaming, specifically those in the D&D/roleplaying genre. Comics are good and all, but in the end I love full bodied, informative blogs. In my search for some good reading, I sailed across a great blog that is just what I was craving. Musings of the Chatty DM is, as you might have guessed by now, about gaming from the perspective of a DM. Even though I don’t really DM much anymore, it is very interesting to read nevertheless. It has given me many ideas that I want to play around with. You know things are interesting when a random post about dice fetishes comes up. Reading through the comments, I never thought there were so many rituals attached to dice.

I am glad that the majority of us Scoundrels are gamers and that we have started tabletop roleplaying again. Now if only we could find our Master Engineer, maybe we could tie him to a post below deck so that he’d sit still long enough to continue our campaign.

In news more related to The Scoundrels, I am looking into doing a transplant into Wordpress. Gibson has talked a bit about it to me, which led me to investigate it more. Textpattern is very good and useful, but Wordpress looks like it is much easier to make a template for. I am going to be elated if I do switch our platform over, because the way Textpattern handles templates and other things, has been greatly annoying me (they don’t seem as efficient as I would like them to be). This change won’t be for a little while, as I have to do a bit of testing down in our lab.

This current home has been hacked on-demand in order to try and compensate for the crew writing as well, but it’s at the point where I am going to have to do an overhaul on the engine and face itself.

Until next time, may the wind fill your sails!

I just got AJAX all over my PHP!

I have just started work on a new site and for this adventure I have decided to learn some new tricks, AJAX and PHP. I have been watching Commander Tom mature over the last 5 years into a very competent PHP web programmer, and this inspired me to try my hand at it. You can watch my progress at TODE.thescoundrels.net
TODE is an acronym for Temple Of Digital Enlightenment. and is dedicated to the digital age and culture as an exploration of humanity in an online/digital community.

If you have any suggestions or comments I am always happy to here them.

Live well in the age of digital enlightenment (information age). I have joined this League to support each and every member in any way I can.

I may offer critique in writing and prose with an emphasis on grammar; however, I will ignore such things with regard to poetry as in many cases the poet will violate grammatical concessions for artistic style and impact. I enjoy literary analysis and comparison; as well as, authoring poetry and short stories.

I have been known to program a from time to time and am a competent code debugger. I have worked professionally in IT for the past 17 years.

I look forward to working with this group on a varied many projects.