Twittering from Salute 2019

Only one more sleep until Salute 2019 and I am (as usual) unreasonably excited. Like last year Ray, Stuart (aka 'Postie') and I will be sneaking in 'behind the scenes' with early-entry passes which means we will be inside the event shortly after 8am to watch the final preparations of the Traders and Clubs. I'll be posting pictures to my Twitter account before and during the day with the hashtag #Salute2019. 

No Salute would be complete without a slew of excellent display games and as usual I will be taking a lot more pictures during the day (too many probably) and will post a selection of the best here on the Blog sometime on Sunday. Of course, Salute is also a huge trading event and this year I have a very large shopping list to fulfil. The combined entry and parking fees do make this an expensive event to attend, but I always make back the cost by saving postal charges on my purchases and this year I expect to be saving quite a bit! 

I tend to walk around in a world of my own so if you see me and I don't acknowledge you its probably because I'm lost in contemplation (or trying to ignore the pain in my arthritic knees). PLEASE feel free to interrupt my reverie and say hello, I love chatting to readers of the blog and one of the best bits about these shows is the chance to meet people and chat about our wonderful crazy hobby. If you don't see me wandering around I'll be at the Blogger Meet Up at 12 at the big red dot! 

For those that are coming, have a safe journey and I hope to see you inside. For those that aren't for various reasons, I hope my pictures give you a flavour of the day and maybe inspire you to come to  Docklands for Salute 2020!

The DDD's Twerible Twittering

First off let me apologise for the title of this post. I'm the first to moan when someone starts using that unforgivable abuse of the English language that is Twitterspeak. For those that don't know this is the process where you take the first two letters of the microblogging service Twitter and merge them - painfully and often with the aid of a large hammer - to the front of your chosen word. However in this instance I just couldn't help myself and I apologise unreservedly.

The Dagenham Dungeon Delvers are gathering tonight for our semi-regular 4e DnD game night. The campaign is progressing slowly but steadily towards a climax and all our characters are geared up for the inevitable battle to come. But this week we are joined by one of our wayward players, Andrew, who rarely gets to games because of his job - and the fact that he lives in Lincoln, 150 miles away (poor excuse, but we'll let it pass). Andrew is something of an agent provocateur and his presence is almost guaranteed to result in trouble for our characters. With action, conflict and witty banter almost certainly a feature of tonight's game we thought it a good opportunity to report our game live to the twitterverse (there I go again).

Myself @BigLee and fellow Blogger, Derek @djkettlety, will be posting live tweets throughout the evening. I'm not sure if this will become a regular thing (we sort of do it already but not in an organised or coordinated way) but we thought we would give it a try and see if it proved popular.

If you're interested in following the action we will be posting with the hash-tags #DDD and #BLMA from 7pm until about 11pm.

I'll resist the temptation to say "Thank You" in twitterspeak, because that would just be wrong on so many levels. Instead let me say we look forward to you joining us and we hope you enjoy our strange mix of humour and mayhem that make up our game nights.

Tweeting Annoying or Twitterlicious?

Well I'm back from my holiday and I can happily report I am utterly exhausted and looking forward to going back to work for a good rest! I got to visit the Tank Museum twice while I was away (lucky me!) as well as the excellent Keep museum in Dorchester and the Fleet Air Arm Museum. The success of these visits can be measured in the 1000+ pictures I took between these three museums. Needless to say this is going to take a while to work through and label. I'll be posting my new pictures over the next couple of weeks as I work through them.

BigLee at Bovington Tank Museum

In the meantime I wanted to gauge reader reaction regarding my use of the Twitter feed to report on my activities while away. Did you find it useful, interesting, relevant, pointless or just annoying? More importantly should I keep it as a feature of this blog. Is it worth using this on future occasions when I'm on holiday or traveling? So should I remove it altogether. Keep it in its current form and location at the top of the blog or keep it and move it to the sidebar where it's less distracting?

I've put a Poll on this subject on the right but will only have it active for a week as I want to gauge opinion while last weeks tweets are still fresh in the mind. As always thanks for your feedback and comments.

Lyme Regis here I come!

The kids break up for the Easter Holiday today and tomorrow we are driving down to Lyme Regis in Dorset for a weeks vacation. As usual I won't have access to the internet for the week I'm on holiday. Aside from the fact that we are staying miles from the nearest internet hot-spot, I probably won't have the time (or the energy) to do much writing. However I do have a plan. I have prepared several posts for the coming week and post-dated them to maintain the regular schedule while I'm away. So hopefully you shouldn't notice much difference at BLMA. However there will be one change while I'm away and I'm quite excited about it.

I recently reactivated my old Twitter account and I'm using it exclusively to tweet about painting and gaming related items. Basically if I would write about it here on BLMA then I'll also be tweeting about it on @BigLee. And while I'm exploring Dorset and Devon I'll try to keep the 'twitterverse' updated with anything interesting I discover. You'll be able to follow what I'm up to either on twitter or by coming here to BLMA where I've put a Feed at the top of the site. If this proves to be a popular feature I may keep it permanently, but for now the imminent holiday is as good a time to test it as any.

We are not beach people on the whole (If I lay on a beach, Greenpeace come along and try to drag me back out to sea) and we certainly can't sit by a pool and 'vegetate'. We tend to squeeze in a lot of museums and culture into our UK holidays - much to the annoyance of the kids! This year will be no exception with the Tank Museum at Bovington high on my hit list. In fact I have been promised a visit to Bovington as a consolation prize because I will unfortunately be missing Salute at Excel.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyones pictures from the show and I'm sure I'll be green with envy for a month afterwards! On the plus side I'm hoping to come home from holiday with a load of interesting pictures of my own to put on the site. Sorry folks, more photo's of tanks!

AddThis now...added

Sharp eyed readers of this blog will notice a new feature at the end of every post from now on. I have agonized (honest, it rearly hurt) over the HTML code of this blog to add an AddThis button. You can now bookmark articles you like in Facebook, Myspace, DiggIt, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Bebo, Twitter and dozens of other Social Bookmarking sites. This is a great way for you to share articles you like and benefits this blog by helping to stimulate more visitors and more feedback. Have fun!