So it's official

Hear ye, hear ye! Bypassing my own bureaucracy and assuming Sakari would vote for forumcircle*, I have now determined that the Official TRK Discussion Forum is at http://thereilukerho.forumcircle.com .

All discussion is hitherto moved there. There will be no guarantees anymore that anyone will continue discussion on this blog. We will discuss how we will use this blog in the future, but that discussion will take place on the forum. We also need to iron out a few details like skin, how we're forming our sub-forums, and so on. However, all-in-all, we've now succesfully moved TRK to a forum.

Now move yer asses to forumcircle quick.

The Great TRK Forum Schism

THIS POST IS VERY IMPORTANT. NO MATTER HOW LAZY YOU ARE, PLEASE READ THIS AND COMMENT.

So now, because Sakari can't read and because he actually managed to convince me that his idea was better, we have two forums for TRK. They are at:
www.thereilukerho.proboards.com
and
www.thereilukerho.forumcircle.com.

This post is to clear up the whole forum business now and make sure we're all on the same page, especially as this discussion about forums is spread out over multiple posts' comments and is in general quite messy. So, I'll explain it all.

The first one was made by me on Thursday evening. Ilkka, Meeri, Henry, Pyry, and me joined that forum on Thursday. Then Sakari saw my talks about having the official TRK forum, but didn't see the link, and promptly made his own forum, thinking he was the first. That was joined by Oliver and Jonttu, and later by me. Jonttu joined my forum, and now Sakari is part of that too. So now we have Jonttu, Sakari, Me (yes, I capitalise myself...), and Ilkka as part of both forums. Oliver is part of Sakari's forum, and Pyry, Henry, and Meeri are part of my forum. Tony is, as of yet, part of no forum, and I think that other than him, everyone important has joined.

Now, I think that the forumcircle one, Sakari's one, is slightly better in a few ways. First of all, there's the shoutbox, which is great for random chit-chat that we do a lot of. It also allows you to upload files. The drawbacks are the annoying picture ad, and the lack of some admin tools that I would have liked. It also doesn't have Karma or Custom Titles (well, it does this in a very cluttered way and you can't have both a rank and a custom title). Oh, and embedding Youtube videos in the proboards (Olli's) one creates a huge ad, whereas the forumcircle doesn't have that.

So overall, I think forumcircle is the better choice. I would hereby suggest that we make www.thereilukerho.forumcircle.com the official TRK forum. It is not official, however, until all Ministers have agreed for it to become so. We should talk first, and maybe some people might want to keep the proboards one. But once all Ministers have agreed on one of these, then I will make a new post officially proclaiming TRK moving to that forum. After that, we will move all discussion to that forum and debate the fate of this blog. We will not be deleting this blog, of course, but the future activity of the blog will be talked about.

P.S. Ministers will have a vote about this. Neither site becomes official until the ministers have agreed unanimously on which forum to use. Minions, affiliates, and unclassifieds may offer their opinions, and they will be taken into consideration, but will not be counted as votes. It's like the UN Security Council; everyone's equal, except we're more equal and we have the veto.

New URL for the TRK Forum

---zappp---

http://thereilukerho.proboards.com/

or

http://thereilukerho.forumcircle.com/

See the post above to settle this confusion

Sakari's Awesome Wallpaper of the Week #7

It's time again for what makes your miserable week worth fighting through, wallpaper of the week.
What better to warm your heart than some brave children fighting off a zombie invasion?
But wait there is more! In anticipation of reader feedback, I present to you...
...now with more dark!

Proposal: TRK Moves

As per Sakari's request, I just made a TRK Debate forum. It is at www.trkdebate.proboards.com . So far I haven't done anything cool but play around with the forum options and so on. Then a brilliant or not-so-brilliant idea struck me.

Let's make TRK a forum, or at the very least move most of our discussion to a forum. I'm sure everyone's been part of a discussion forum some time. Someone might ask "Why fix it if it ain't broken?" but allow me to present this compelling argument:

How did TRK blog come to existence in the first place? It was when we were playing an AoE game for the IGC blog (which no one visits anymore). Sakari (and I) got pissed off with the ole' English Crew and quit the whole thing; to compensate, he made the TRK blog for our group exclusively. That is how TRK really got its official name.

Now, why was TRK a blog instead of a generic website, forum, or some other type of format? Because IGC was a blog. IGC was a blog because its main purpose was to announce our games, and a blog was perfect for that. In the beginning, we wrote a lot of "articles" and it was very figuilu and computer gaming oriented. There was a lot less discussion then. Not every post was commented on and the talking was quite short.

Fast forward over a year. Our average comment count has been going up and up in the last six months. Our current record is 51 and behind that 46. Look at the last 15 posts of TRK:

The Future of Dark Heresy: Discussion
Almost below 80: Serious discussion as well as off topic
Sakari's Awesome Wallpaper of the Week #8: Wallpaper
Two Red Decks: Magic
Painting Night Speculation: Discussion
Sakari's Awesome Wallpaper of the Week #7: Wallpaper
Happy Christmas from Johannes: Youtube
Metallica has fucking sold out: Off-topic, music
Alestorm - Wrenches & Mead: Music, Youtube
Bands that I think are shit: Music, off topic
Sakari's Awesome Wallpaper of the Week #5: Wallpaper
Sakari's Awesome Wallpaper of the Week #4: Wallpaper
How to start a mosh pit: Music, off topic,
Maiden Helsinki part 2 & 3: Music, Youtube
Zombeeh Mayhem: Game discussion

How many of those match up with what we originally used to write about? A few at best, I think. In the last 15 posts, we have had 260 comments. In the first 15 posts, we had 22 posts. That's over 10 times more comments now.

Look at our "mission statement": Welcome to The Reilu Kerho blog. The purpose of this blog is to coordinate TRK events related to computer and miniatures gaming, as well as to provide a forum for our members to exchange ideas and display their miniatures achievements.

I think we've drifted pretty far from the original purpose of TRK. That's not a bad thing, but I'm getting to why it matters. I think the current purpose of the TRK blog is to provide a discussion platform for us all, and that discussion ranges from relevant to random and serious to utter madness.

So, with this evidence in mind, is it not clear that the purpose of TRK has shifted to being more of a discussion place for us all?

If you agree with this, then think this: a discussion forum like TRK Debate would allow us all to undertake this discussion in an easier and more elegant matter. Think about what a discussion forum would allow us to do:

• edit and delete comments (very important in my opinion)
• sort discussions into different sub-forums (e.g. figuilu, magic, olli's-off-topic-shit, etc.)
• read and manage posts/comments more easily
• also, the posts wouldn't be condensed into such a small column, making long text reading easier
• send private messages to others
  

And more. I think the biggest advantage would be the different sub-forums. I know Sak doesn't always want to hear about my stuff in music, I don't really care for Youtube videos, etc, so this would allow everyone to see the stuff they want to see.

Also, it would work so that the founding members are all moderators or administrators. (For security reasons I'd like a shared admin account that no one uses to post, but we'll get to that later) Then the minions, TRK affiliates (e.g. Oliver), and Meeri (who is as of yet unclassified) would get to write posts too if they wanted to. I think they deserve it. And we could block out comments from random passers-by by letting them view the forum but limiting posting to only members. We could also do it so that members can only join by approval of a moderator.

Sak also brought up that debating in the comments box is difficult. I think all extended talking is difficult in the comments box. Also remember back four years ago, Sak had his own forum and we all liked talking there.

So how about it? I think it's an excellent idea, and we could still keep this blog. I would at the very least suggest a trial period of a few weeks. If you say no, then allow me to counter your arguments here:

• if you say no because you think this format works well, consider that with a discussion forum, it would work better
• if you say no because you think the purpose of TRK is to be a blog, think: is the content of the blog post or the actual comments more important to you nowadays?
• if you say no because you think it's too much of a hassle, don't worry, I can handle all the practical side.
• if you still say no, please explain thoroughly and consider if you wouldn't at least go for the trial period

Actually, I didn't actually bother waiting and after writing that last bit I just made a TRK forum. If you think it's a good idea, then you can join right away and if your name is Tony, Pyry, or Sakari, I will make you a moderator. www.thereilukerho.proboards.com

Edit: As of 20:35 on 8 January, Ilkka, me, and Pyry are all members. Pyry has been updated to the role of Global Moderator. Ilkka is a registered member.

The Future of Dark Heresy

I would like to know what we are doing with Dark Heresy after Sak comes back. I put together a committee and they came up with two options:
a) Sak plays Dark Heresy
b) Sak doesn't play Dark Heresy

So which of these options do we take? If Sak does join, then he will have to be debriefed on the fluff and create a character and learn the rules, which isn't such a big thing in my opinion but I can understand if he doesn't want to go through all the fuss. If he doesn't join, then we either have to shelve Dark Heresy, play it more rarely, or then he will have to wait it out while others play.

I think it would be preferable to all, including Sak, that he plays, but I can also understand that jumping on the bandwagon when everyone else has already played for some time can be daunting (though the only hard thing to learn are the combat rules, but even I don't know them properly anyway; also, we've only played two sessions in this campaign). But if he says no, we will naturally pressure him until he agrees to join.

I'd like for us to have a decision by Friday, as we are playing Dark Heresy then and I will need to incorporate Sak into the storyline if he is joining. Don't worry, I'll come up with something suitably feasible if he does.

Almost below 80

Woohoo! Almost 50,000 people resigned from the church last year! Progress! The amount rose by a whopping 10,000 people that resigned this year, and only about 80.7% of Finns belong to the Church any more (a drop of 1% from last year!). I am happy to say that that those 48,268 people would be one less without me, and now I'm free to worship Satan/Flying Spaghetti Monster/ninjas/whatever I feel like. I went to a church service exactly once this year, and that was an obligatory one that was Ilkka's confirmation ripari thingy. I was polite enough not to sleep, though, partly because I was surrounded by relatives. Funnily enough, it was the first time after my confirmation that I could have taken ehtoollinen, but I had already resigned from the church by then and I thought that they might not let me since I didn't have a membership card. They might have fined me or something for trying to cheat my way in.

Because I'm me, I of course have to do some cool nerdy thing with this church resignation stuff. So behold this awesome graph where you will see that by 2027 only half of Finland will belong to the Church:

(click to enlarge, fools)

This, of course, is based on only eight years of statistics, and thus not very reliable. I also assumed that the shape is a simple parabola of a quadratic equation, but it could be any kind of curve really. I think an extended and inverted "s" shape which doesnt' touch the x-axis might be more realistic, but any such graph drawn from those statistics would not have been realistically possible.

And the obligatory bit of anti-church preaching done as little offensively as possible: Those of you who might be reading this (no idea who since TRK members are all Pastafarians except me, but anyway), think about whether you really believe in the teachings of the Church. Then think whether your faith requires you to belong to an institution which was not made up by Jesus, God, or any of those other guys who thought Christianity was a good idea. i.e. You can be Christian and promote Christian values without belonging to the Church. Think how many times you've gone to church within the past year. Once? Twice? Ten times? Were you bored during those times? Probably. Do you feel it made you a better person? Maybe, maybe not. But how much of a role does religion play in your life? Do you belong to the Church because your religion is important to you and you want to share it with other people, or do you belong because you've always belonged and you somehow feel obliged to still belong? If you were a member of a political party ever since your birth, would you continue belonging to the party? Does belonging to the Church make you a better person, for yourself or others? Hard questions, but everyone should think about them at some point of their lives. Another new year's resolution I could try: get someone to think about these things and resign from the church.

Heh, this post actually made me remember one of my first blog posts ever. It was a "guest article" for Sak's first blog ("the aaack" or something I believe it was called). I think I was 15 or 16 then, and back in those days my views about religion were a lot more... shall we say radical. I wrote that post on a week-end, after midnight, and basically it was full of religion hate and pretty much utter bullshit. Nowadays I've mellowed a bit on my views on religion, funnily enough.

Sakari's Awesome Wallpaper of the Week #8

My second last wallpaper of the week in Japan!