Well. I'm back.
I have returned from my holiday and I am more or less caught up online, bar a few sites. I am also pretty much caught up with drama, though I am about ready to move my bed to the Pavilion since I was there for a few hours on Sunday, three hours yesterday, and I'll be there for nine more hours between now and Thursday. Plus I'm getting caught up on OU. Have an essay due on Friday which is currently rather skeletal, but you need to start somewhere, don't you?
At some point (hopefully soon) I will post a proper entry about what we did when we were on holiday. Whenever I go away I keep a careful diary so that when the time comes to tell people about what we did (and when) I can actually remember. This year there will also be a DVD of the holiday, thanks to my super-duper video editing software and my handy-dandy video camera. Of course the chances of me showing that to anyone outside of my immediate family are pretty slim - and I really don't think people need to listen to me 'enjoying' a trip out to sea on a seventy-year-old lifeboat. ;)
I am, however, going to share the photo we had taken while we were away. Some people have already seen the blurry, camera phone version which I took shortly after it was done (purely for showing off on Twitter and Facebook). We are so pleased with how it turned out, and I've always wanted to get my picture taken in one of those 'old-fashioned' photo places. Just getting it done was an experience in itself. The guy was fantastic (I know he had a website but I can't remember his name to look it up, I'm going to have to do a bit of searching I think). He was a brilliant photographer and such a character as well.
Ta da!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v158/Caitak/Victorianphoto-small.jpg
I love it. The dress was this lovely deep red colour, as was the hat. You got different choices for the man (including military outfits - British and American civil war), and then different dress styles for the woman. I think it was between a high collar, a sort of simple colour or the off-the-shoulder one that I went for. And you got different props as well. I had a fan, John had his top had and stick - even his glasses are Victorian style! :D
I keep getting ideas for things we can do with Cirith Ennor. I'm wanting to keep the whole Passage to Middle-earth thing going. Maybe, since The Hobbit'll be out in the next few years, we should open it up to include the places visited during The Hobbit.
There's also the whole thing about extra features in the site, activities and making your way from one place to another. I'm hoping I can come up with something a little more interactive than just find the hidden link. Perhaps something similar to the riddle sites that are floating around, or even just some sort of password thing. I don't know, I'll have to think about it.
There's also what to do about Mordor. I think it needs to remain as the humour hub, though we'll need to actually do something more with it, at the moment there's not a lot there. I had an idea for a Cirith Ennor Commentary, inspired by something on the BBC website for Doctor Who, where a family of kids watch each episode and at certain minute marks make comments about what they're thinking. Or something.
There's also addition things which I don't think would fit into Mordor. Crafts, cookery, music, and the like. I was thinking about perhaps putting them into suitable regions within Middle-earth - cookery being the realm of the Hobbits, music might be found with the Elves, etc. Connecting things up that way. I want to play with the software I'm going to use, but I might be able to organise things so that people can choose which region they 'fit' into, they'll still have access to the others, but they can be associated with their chosen region and so can submit things accordingly.
I would also really love to do some sort of newsletter type thing. I made one once before for another website I made, and it worked really well. If I had people in different regions then that would give me plenty to work with newsletter-wise. I'm also kind of shying away from the idea of having a fanfiction section on the site. There are plenty of places that do that really well and I don't see the point in competing with them. I've set up a LiveJournal community for Cirith Ennor, should we wish to branch out into that, and I'll maybe set one up on Fanfiction.net as well to cover the main bases. But if we had a newsletter we could select the best of the fanfic and maybe put two or three in each time... maybe two one shots and one work in progress... I'd need to think about it, but I think that could work well.
Oh! So many ideas. I really need to finish writing my OU essay so I can actually get the software installed, played with and figure out exactly how much of this I can pull off. Oh, and I need to get the big show out the way. On Saturday. Ack!
At some point (hopefully soon) I will post a proper entry about what we did when we were on holiday. Whenever I go away I keep a careful diary so that when the time comes to tell people about what we did (and when) I can actually remember. This year there will also be a DVD of the holiday, thanks to my super-duper video editing software and my handy-dandy video camera. Of course the chances of me showing that to anyone outside of my immediate family are pretty slim - and I really don't think people need to listen to me 'enjoying' a trip out to sea on a seventy-year-old lifeboat. ;)
I am, however, going to share the photo we had taken while we were away. Some people have already seen the blurry, camera phone version which I took shortly after it was done (purely for showing off on Twitter and Facebook). We are so pleased with how it turned out, and I've always wanted to get my picture taken in one of those 'old-fashioned' photo places. Just getting it done was an experience in itself. The guy was fantastic (I know he had a website but I can't remember his name to look it up, I'm going to have to do a bit of searching I think). He was a brilliant photographer and such a character as well.
Ta da!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v158/Caitak/Victorianphoto-small.jpg
I love it. The dress was this lovely deep red colour, as was the hat. You got different choices for the man (including military outfits - British and American civil war), and then different dress styles for the woman. I think it was between a high collar, a sort of simple colour or the off-the-shoulder one that I went for. And you got different props as well. I had a fan, John had his top had and stick - even his glasses are Victorian style! :D
I keep getting ideas for things we can do with Cirith Ennor. I'm wanting to keep the whole Passage to Middle-earth thing going. Maybe, since The Hobbit'll be out in the next few years, we should open it up to include the places visited during The Hobbit.
There's also the whole thing about extra features in the site, activities and making your way from one place to another. I'm hoping I can come up with something a little more interactive than just find the hidden link. Perhaps something similar to the riddle sites that are floating around, or even just some sort of password thing. I don't know, I'll have to think about it.
There's also what to do about Mordor. I think it needs to remain as the humour hub, though we'll need to actually do something more with it, at the moment there's not a lot there. I had an idea for a Cirith Ennor Commentary, inspired by something on the BBC website for Doctor Who, where a family of kids watch each episode and at certain minute marks make comments about what they're thinking. Or something.
There's also addition things which I don't think would fit into Mordor. Crafts, cookery, music, and the like. I was thinking about perhaps putting them into suitable regions within Middle-earth - cookery being the realm of the Hobbits, music might be found with the Elves, etc. Connecting things up that way. I want to play with the software I'm going to use, but I might be able to organise things so that people can choose which region they 'fit' into, they'll still have access to the others, but they can be associated with their chosen region and so can submit things accordingly.
I would also really love to do some sort of newsletter type thing. I made one once before for another website I made, and it worked really well. If I had people in different regions then that would give me plenty to work with newsletter-wise. I'm also kind of shying away from the idea of having a fanfiction section on the site. There are plenty of places that do that really well and I don't see the point in competing with them. I've set up a LiveJournal community for Cirith Ennor, should we wish to branch out into that, and I'll maybe set one up on Fanfiction.net as well to cover the main bases. But if we had a newsletter we could select the best of the fanfic and maybe put two or three in each time... maybe two one shots and one work in progress... I'd need to think about it, but I think that could work well.
Oh! So many ideas. I really need to finish writing my OU essay so I can actually get the software installed, played with and figure out exactly how much of this I can pull off. Oh, and I need to get the big show out the way. On Saturday. Ack!