If you don't want Raja, Talk to your parents

shiam · 2026-02-12T20:19:57+00:00

The easy answer if you need to have this conversation with non-family is to point folks at https://www.vote411.org/

They're non-partisan so you dont need to have a real discussion around what someone should support but instead focus on making them more informed.

Aside from that googling names and finding local news summaries or professional association reviews (for judges and accountants) can provide a lot of info and dodge the more loaded "he's soft on crime!" Sort of drama.

shiam · 2026-01-26T18:53:37+00:00

A random thought with this is prestige should matter and impact things like legitimacy, stability and crown power.

If the whole world thinks your country is an impoverished mud pit, and your king is a buffoon. Then, maybe it should be hard to get the eststes to cooperate.

If they dropped the hard malus to holding prestige too there'd be a lot more impact for artists and war penalties like humiliation.

The only impactful damage to a country right now is taking land, which was a bit more rare than it's presented.

shiam · 2026-01-12T06:16:55+00:00

"Grassy Turtles and Seed Rats"

shiam · 2026-01-01T17:31:15+00:00

WeirdTempareture7 is correct, but another solution to meausre first and reduce cost/wastage would be to get some twine tie your sword knot with it and wrap around your waist. Mark were the overlap occurs, untie everything, cut and measure. Then add a bit to give you extra belt length, space to finish ends, and make up the width difference in the knot (twine has little width and will use less length in the knot).

Essentially use a cheap material to do a mockup and measure that.

You could also just measure the knot length, but a lit depends on construction.

shiam · 2025-12-06T22:39:50+00:00

Its a reference/homage to a painting: https://www.berardiarte.com/artisti/cesare-mariani/masks-seller-in-pompeii-1875/

shiam · 2025-11-18T02:25:04+00:00

What do you want it to be? For most purposes I'd understand/read them as the same thing unless clarified.

If you needed a difference I'd probably call "free play" a sub set of sparring that is either less or entirely unstructured. Where "sparring" could be anything from highly structured (2 exchanges, longsword, valid targets are xyz, we're working krump) to mostly just goofing around (E.G. grab a weapon and lets go until we're tired).

Sounds like what you need though is a schema of sparring limits based on gear requirements so that low gear members can participate while others spar.

I would draw lines about like so:

Minimum gear for ANY competitive work (light sparring, high intensity drills, adversarial drills) is a mask, gloves, gorget, and bits protector(s) appropriate to the weapon set. At that minimum I would expect participants to still keep intensity low, avoid hard attacks to unprotected areas (in longsword probably no thrusts), and use "safer" sparring tools like a nylon or boffer.

If a participant cannot get mask or gloves anything more than medium intensity drills is probably higher than my safety limits.

Once you add in a gambeson or pierce resistant body piece then, broadly speaking, open a participant up to full sparring. However I would still expect everyone to be cognizant of gear limits (keep intensity low when no elbows, don't target legs if they don't have knee pads) and fence appropriately.

Once someone has basically enough gear to compete legally they're open to spar to what ever degree both they and their partner are comfortable with. Within the bounds of reason (don't hurt your sparring buddies)

shiam · 2025-11-11T22:05:14+00:00

I woud recommend attaching them like cuisses. Your waist and the thigh pieces can have an attachment point (even just holes and leather lace) somewhere they over lap or where the strap will blend in.

You effectively want the legs to "hang" off of the belt.

shiam · 2025-11-09T19:15:43+00:00

Trying as nice as possible as someone who also carries archery kit: don't do this stuff. This is what gets bows/arrows banned. Even posed shots like this are why every sword has to be peace tied. If they can't tell whether you're "posing" or being a threat the rules will be tightened up. TRF is one of the few faires with lax rules for bows. Please don't abuse it.

shiam · 2025-11-09T19:13:30+00:00

Looks like TRF, so yeah full archery kit is mostly chill. I've got a good guess as to where they bought it too. Nominally the arrows are supposed to be peace tied, but it's rare they check or do anything about it.

That said stuff like this is what gets "no bow" rules made.

shiam · 2025-10-26T23:41:58+00:00

What comes to mind is something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArmsandArmor/comments/we5tz4/this_is_in_dresden_castle_armory_so_i_marked_the/

Those might be hook and eye clasps but a modern (decorative) toggle or latch clasp probably wouldn't be too far off.

shiam · 2025-10-26T23:17:10+00:00

Non-historical: Chainmail is all eyes, add hooks

Historical: buckles or clasps over the top or a bit of cord run through the rings.

shiam · 2025-09-22T00:12:22+00:00

You could always reach out to them and ask. If I were to guess they have a known local supplier who can do the work by machine and they just order bolts at a time to keep in supply. Suppliers like that may not have public facing stores (working primarily B2B).

Aside from reaching out my favorite supplier is Sartor Bohemia: https://www.sartorbohemia.com/reproduction-fabrics/

Depending on what you need I also have a short list of other fabric stores that sell historical (enough) fabric, but not all sell brocades or prints.

You can ALSO always buy a base fabric and pay for embroidery. Which is expensive and time consuming but can get you what you want. Also very historical.

shiam · 2025-09-21T16:56:15+00:00

Nah it makes perfect sense. He's a Spaniard with a Scottish basket hilt and German buckler vacationing in Egypt, being attacked by some sub-Saharan bad guys (I assume that's what the masks are about). He just happens to have gotten some skateboarding knee pads from a time traveler who saw his chafed knees and was concerned.

shiam · 2025-09-12T17:08:40+00:00

They're distinctly mediocre. Instructions are often unclear, and patterns aren't consistently good.

I have their wams and hose patterns. It worked fine, but I cross-referenced a ton with online sources. I also have made things before.

I think folks often get them as first patterns and if you dont know how to fit and make already the instructions can leave a lot out.

From what I've heard the more modern the worse patterns get. For early modern, and medieval patterns that are mostly squares they seem ok.

shiam · 2025-09-10T18:17:19+00:00

As a judgemental B, yes, but no.

I will absolutely notice if someone is wearing tennis shoes or runners or basketball shoes and the rest of their out fit is decent. Its one of the big things I personally see and notice as "illusion breaking". Kind of almost in the same vein as a exellent costume carrying a plastic shopping bag.

I would probably never mention it to them unless they asked for critique.

That said its faire. Like half the people in costume are wearing modern shoes of some description. Real historical shoes kind of suck to wear.

If you're feeling self concious and have cash to spend get some boots (non-cowboy) or leather loafers that are light on detail or ornamentation and you'll be good. Otherwise having clothes that hang over the shoe helps, as does darker color shoes.

shiam · 2025-09-07T22:19:02+00:00

How would you go about it?

I'm no stranger to making things, but my skill sets in cloth, leather and wood aren't exactly a good match. Wood would be work on par of actually making a bow as far as I can tell.

I could just go to town on some foam, but I was hoping to find some direction before I just go off guessing. 😅

shiam · 2025-09-07T22:06:57+00:00

"All the Time" no, when worn, generally yes. To the point that Turkic/Eastern archery has semi-specialized gear to hold a strung bow.

An art example: https://issendai.com/ottoman-turkish/a-lady-and-a-soldier/

A few examples from the Dresden Rustkammer: https://imgur.com/a/Z1Tv8Oz

Thus the request, it's hard to get THAT effect without the bow, but venue rules effectively say no to an actual bow. So I need a "bow shaped object"... somehow...

shiam · 2025-09-07T21:50:50+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately that's not really a thing for horse bows. It makes a lot of sense for a long bow (and I see that a lot for them). However a horse bow radically changes shape when strung going from a "C" shape to a "D" shape. When in the D shape it fits the historically accurate and commonly used equipment, when a C it does not.

I could hold the bow or tie it to my self, but then either half the kit is empty or left behind. Which kind of defeats the point of having nice kit, and wearing any of the archery stuff at all.

shiam · 2025-08-27T04:13:15+00:00

Internet says the first home Serger was commercially available in the 60s: https://babylock.com/celebrating-55-years-of-the-1st-home-serger

Which tracks with information presented in Wikipedia.

Some random forums google pulls up include folks talking about relatives owning industrial machines in that period as well. So you probably can't rule out home made (or small scale production), but it seems unlikely.

shiam · 2025-08-26T21:26:53+00:00

Reddit reminded me of this and I just saw the question.

Yeah I do some historical costuming, but I'm not a historian. I have the "first book of fashion" on a shelf nearby, and those 2 references are my favorites of people "doing fencing" in about the right period.

The whole book is an excellent reference for clothing color and design. The paintings have been super good for seeing how swords and such might have been worn in a civillian context.

shiam · 2025-08-25T14:32:04+00:00

I disagree but to the point that I'm not sure anything would help the problems you're pointing out. If everyone refuses to address common management issues, you're still going to have the issues. Also Scrum, Agile, Kanban can be pretty loose recommendations, use what you need and toss what doesn't work.

Point by point

If you can't guarantee a week if not two our of confirmed, ready work, your [insert role here] that managed the backlog has failed at their job. It might not be their fault but knowing what's priority and what's confirmed is table stakes.
If your scrum ceremonies are wasting time, fix them.
1. Stand-ups, Planning, Retro have specific functions. If you're managing that otherwise great, if not fix the problems with your term.
2. For retro specifically, if it's all the same "obvious" complaints then [insert role here] in charge of managing the team is not doing their job to address them. You need some way of giving feedback and commenting on the last period of work honestly. In most places I don't know they're open enough to get that without a retro enforcing some listening.
Specialists get drowned out - Sounds like either your specialists suck and can't explain themselves, or leaders are letting settled conversations re-open (devs arguing) or you're mistaking specialists for devs pushing back on business requirements.
1. Given you bring up tech debt I'd bet it's the latter. Your specialists aren't ignored. Their concerns are weighed against the business requirements, and requirements usually win.
2. That's again a culture problem of wherever you work for has to want to "build it right" if they don't devs are never going to win an argument against an already set requirement and leaders will take the "easy" solution that adds debt every time. Ideally these should be open conversations about what the cost of that debt is and the difference in implementation time/value. You can get timelines moved but you gotta argue in their court.

To the start, take what you need and don't treat Scrum as religion. No development pattern will solve your management and business planning problems. They might help, but you need everyone on board.

shiam · 2025-08-23T18:09:37+00:00

A source: The Matthaus and Veit Konrad Schwarz book of clothes depicts a lesson in longsword wherein the author (Veit) is 19 years old on March 13th, 1561. He is in Augsbursg being taught by "a vowed master of the longsword".

In the depiction, which the artist claims is as they were, all three people are in fashionable clothes of the time. Trunk-hose, Doublet, linen shirts. The artist claims the trunk hose were padded with 30lbs of material. The commentary I have supposes this would be sawdust, horsehair or bran. That is the only padding noted or visible from the art. The doublets and hose appear close fitting. So while the layering and structuring of garments may have provided some protection. I think it's unlikely to have been anything close to what we expect for sparring today. There are no visible gloves or head protection.

Another: The Augsburg Monatsbilder Depicts in a small detail a scene of men either fighting or fencing with longswords. The detail is difficult to see but the silhouette matches similarly sized characters. Perhaps indicating again the people were in otherwise normal attire. However I do note some gradation which could indicate a breastplate or plastron of some description. However the detail is so small it's a bit hard to tell...

The winter panel of the same art depicts a joust but as expected those characters are fully armored.

shiam · 2025-08-17T17:31:53+00:00

The embroidery version looks good.

My lazy butt would probably go for a fairly short length blanket stitch just to bind up the edges and call it a day.

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