Beautiful Blogger Award

I recently received a Beautiful Blogger Award! 

I was so surprised when Ravanel (http://ravalation.blogspot.com), a fellow blogger who I admire, gave it to me and mentioned danania.net on her site.

http://ravalation.blogspot.com/2012/09/awarded-beautiful-blogger.html 

She is very talented both as a writer and as a gamer, so I was honored to have her view me like that.

I met Ravanel when we and many other bloggers signed up on the NBI in May-2012 (Newbie Blogger Initiative @ http://nbihq.freeforums.org/). Ravanel was one of the other finalist bloggers in the Best Newish Blogger category. (Best-Newish-Blogger) I voted two different days; once for her and once for myself. As is obvious by her blog, she has great computer savvy and is a fun story teller.

This post will be the longest I have written, but I am going to write my history about how danania.net came to be. If it is interesting for you, this post will say more about me than any other post. So, on to the questions… J

Why did I put a picture of the council of elves? … because it was a really neat picture. Lol! Left to Right = Aranelleth, Glorfindel, Danania, Elrond, Gandalf, Ereston, Laegbrannon. “Chillin out, maxin, Relaxin all cool…”

Why did you start a blog and why do you continue it?

Danahistory: An elf’s tale.

     ~In the beginning. In the beginning there was Pong, and it was good. I did enjoy my Atari games! I recall some games next along the way, such as Oregon Trail (actually I played it with a book and maps in school before it became a computer game), Civilization, and Warlords 2 (one of my all time favorites). Then, I enjoyed Warcraft and Warcraft 2, but had not played them online. My first online game was Diablo 2. I remember the frustration of a slow dial up modem, watching the lights blink as it tried to connect. No good, but I did like playing the Diablo 2 barbarians. J I enjoyed Nintendo a bit more… Donkey Kong 64. I had never seen anything so amazing. I could move my monkeys 3 dimensionally, similar but different than Diablo 2.

     ~Then came lotro. Fast forward a couple of years. My friends talked me into trying lotro. I had never actually played a MMO but I was hooked immediately. I wanted to know more. I didn’t want to miss a thing. Not one quest or deed. I figured that someone had gone through the effort of designing this entire world, *just for me*, how could I do less than see every corner of what had been built for me?

I was a Runekeeper, and an Explorer/Tailor. But, I did not know much. Danafact: the first time I met defeat I think I was level 7. I had not even left the Intro. Being completely unfamiliar and a noob gamer, I had not gotten the hang of don't-cast-induction-skills-over-and-over-while-monsters-are-killing-you. But, I was learning.

     ~Exploring the internetz. Where to learn? I frequented excellent sites such as Lotro-Wiki, Darzil’s guide, and CasualStrolltoMordor. That was about it. With his blessing, my given name is Danania Darzil. From lotro-wiki, I still have my printouts explaining what the basic RK skills were. The pages are tattered and have notes and marks all over them. At the time, I did not even know people blogged about lotro. Heck, I didn’t even know what a blog was and am not entirely sure I had ever seen one. (Yeah, I should get out more.)

     ~Szarwyn. I read about Szarwyn, a player from Arkenstone who had become the first “Featured player of the month”.

 http://my.lotro.com/turbinecommunity/2010/05/07/szarwyn/

Seeing the date now makes me smile. I had literally been playing one month when she became the featured player. She was in Arkenstone, so I congratulated her. She replied and was very nice! So, I now had a friend, who introduced me to her kinship, the Riders of Rohan. It turned out that she was webmaster of a truly amazing site and forum which was all about lotro! 

After reading everything in the Riders forum, thousands of posts, I asked if I could join the forum without joining the kinship, because I couldn’t leave my friends and family kin. No one had ever joined their forum without joining the kin, but she and the officers made an exception for me, a little, unknown but excited elf.

     ~The forum and Creative writing. I enjoyed the Riders of Rohan site. It was really well laid out for guides and forums and events. I learned from those around me and discussed what was happening with me in-game. Most of the kin was at end-game (65), and here I was just now 30 something. I would take pictures, write stories, design contests… people seemed to have a good time with what I was doing.

It was a new experience for me. “Creative” writing might be one of my weakest areas. When I wrote in school, it was always technical. Even when I branched out, I was technical. I recall in my Senior English class, while others were writing about sports or social commentary, one of my term papers was on applications of Newton’s Law of Cooling, in which I explained how to “Determine the Time of Death” using thermodynamics. It was complete with explaining differential equations and theorems until the professor had me take out many of the Greek symbols and simplify. Unique? Perhaps. “Traditionally creative”? I dunno.

Ok, that last paragraph went off on a tangent. The point was that while I was writing stories on the forum, people were recommending that I start a blog… but I had no idea what that meant. The reply was… “you are doing it now, except you are scattering the stories across various posts”. It did in fact look like a scavenger hunt.

     ~The transition. Szarwyn built a section on the site just for me. It was my very own blog! From the time I joined the site until then, I had written 1000 posts (or replies, etc), many with pictures. That was my “warm-up” into the world of blogging. I still had not seen another writer-Blog (unless CSTM qualifies as a blog, though I think "mecca" is probably a better term for CSTM).

I just did what I enjoyed …until ~gloss over this next part ~ the kinship moved to a “low-function-low-maintenance” guild site, the webmaster went a different direction, and the site imploded and everything was gone. With my friend’s advice, I picked up my very new blog and moved it to Blogger. Danania.net had been born. You can see that the first 10 posts on danania.net were written before the move.

     ~The NBI. I continued writing but now I was on my very own site! I enjoy it, and I learned basics about how to work with Blogger. I still read CSTM as my main news source. One day, CSTM carried a post about the NBI, aka Newbie Blogger Initiative (http://nbihq.freeforums.org/). I followed the link and to my astonishment, there *are* other bloggers out there, a *lot* of other bloggers, many who write about lotro!

Syp, the NBI leader nominated me into the category of "Best Newish Blogger" …and you dear Readers showed up by the truckload to vote.

Wow! Now that was a humbling experience, knowing that you actually cared. Talk about motivation!

     ~Why I continue to blog. I bring my passion for my hobby to danania.net. …and you show up. I see it in the Blogger visitor stats. You sign up in the “Followers” list. You comment. You tell me about it in game and send mail. You enjoy the stories and get value out of the guidance I try to provide. I love and thrive on the feedback. And, I want to do better. If I build it, you will come, and that makes me happy.

Danania versus Ergoth: “I’m your huckleberry…”

What does your average day look like?

Dana’s Day: I am married with young children and am an engineering manager for a large company.

Engineer? Shocker, right? Lol. Yeah… my main degree is in chemical engineering, and I specialized or got minors in biochemical engineering, environmental engineering, quantum physics, and psychology. Moving along…nothing to see here… J

My day starts around 5:45am. We are up and kids are out the door and off to school by the time the sun has risen and I am off to work. I do engineering stuff for the bulk of my day.

The day is a normal workday, and I come home. If no lilhobbit organized activities (baseball) are occurring, there is dinner, homework/playtime/bath-time with hobbits, house chores and such, “married” stuff, and hobbits are off to bed by 8:00pm. Then, some quality married time, and at 9-10pm it is time to…

To what? It is roughly 8ish hours until I wake up and do it again. How bad does the fire burn within me to enjoy my hobby, to save Middle Earth, and be the Supergirl of Lorien? This is my main playtime, when everyone else goes to sleep.

My friend Bilbo described the situation quite well, “I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel... thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

Mebbe one day, my Fortitude to burn the candle at both ends will run out, but that day is not today, the fight has not yet left me, there are quests to do and Steeds to acquire!

After 2+ hours as I pass the midnight threshhold, I start to wind down and prepare to do it again tomorrow. Of course, even I cannot run on 5ish hours sleep *every* night and I take days off. J 

Besides, I have the DVR running to watch “Once Upon a Time” on ABC, “Switched at Birth” on ABC Family, and catch the reruns of "Sliders" on the Hub network. (I am hoping that Sliders is better than the reviews say as I have never finished the series.) My all time favorite series were Quantum Leap and Chuck. My favorite cartoons were/are “Kim Possible” and “Phineas and Ferb”, and my favorite “shows-that-only-I-seemed-to-like-because-they-were-canceled-early” include “Flash Forward” and “Journeyman”.

What is your best and your worst collaboration with other bloggers?

Collaboration: Another interesting question. I did mention that part about barely even realizing that other bloggers were out there when I started not that long ago. Since then, I have been so excited to read other blogs! The NBI had an amazing number of gamer writers, and Blogger has features to search for other bloggers.

I put some of my favorite links on my page, (Danania's Links) and am still finding new blogs I like to read each month. I try to share them as I write new articles.

Does Aegthil count as a collaboration? The letters danced back and forth between http://lotrominstrel.blogspot.com/ and http://www.danania.net. You can get up to speed with the summarized post, Adoration.

What does this blog mean to you?

When I game, I often think about how what I am doing might bring joy to my blog. I mentally prepare posts well ahead of time and often have at least one post written in advance, and stick to the Tuesday (and sometimes Friday) schedule.

When thinking about this question, I wondered “do I game just so that I can have entertaining things about which to write?” Which is greater for me, danania.net or actually gaming? The answer would still be gaming. I love playing with my friends and meeting people. However, writing about what I do and what I have learned (or am trying to learn) brings such joy to me now that I have trouble imagining one without the other.

As long as you show up, I will continue to rolls the drums. 
Thank you so much for making danania.net full of life!

The Nomination

When I received this award, it was with the responsibility to nominate someone else. I am really starting to get into reading other blogs and enjoy so many of them, but there is another that has really sparked my interest that I have read regularly.

My nomination for the next Beautiful Blogger Award winner is

http://wanderingthroughdigitalworlds.wordpress.com/

Lothirieth has such a quick wit about her. She has the cunning ability to read between the lines and understand the way things work. I have learned much from reading the way she sees the world. 

I believe that she is the type of person that could change the world (or go Incredible Hulk on it and Smash!, hehe, tune in to her site to find out). Also, she has an artistic side and has a flair for taking interesting pictures! Lothirieth is a deserving Beautiful Blogger. Thanks for being you. Enjoy.

The six bullet points of this blog award: 1. Who gave you the award? 2. Why did you start a blog and why do you continue it? 3. What does your average day look like? 4. What is your best and your worst collaboration with other bloggers? 5. What does this blog mean to you? 6. Who would you like to nominate yourself?

A Dream of Weatherstock

Last Friday night, after an enjoyable time pounding the horde of creeps into submission (or was I the one getting pounded?), I went to sleep in Arkenstone.

Through my mind’s eyes, I saw myself flying across the vastness of the abyss. Unlike other visions where I have become a chicken, a horse, or a ranger, where I still exist in the world but interact differently, this time it was different. I awoke in a world called Landroval, in a time called Weatherstock.

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Arkenstone anymore. .... We must be over the rainbow!

I had been summoned by friends I hadn’t seen since a previous age (beginning). Szarmaleth and Jairandir were there to meet me. We were soon joined by another old friend, Droggyr.

Szar: Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Dana: I'm not a witch at all. I'm Danania, Supergirl of Lorien, from Arkenstone. I came to see the Weatherstock.

Jaidan: She wears the ruby boots.

Szar: Oh, so she does! Well bust my buttons. Why didn't you say so in the first place. That's a horse of another color, Come on in!

It’s time to see what drew me across the impassable divide.

In the Lone lands, as we walked up the path toward Weathertop, the excitement builds, the bustle and intensity of hundreds rolls like an ocean wave. The crowd is thicker than I have ever seen. As the information rolls in, I see nametags on all these strangers… so very many that I “/n” to focus on their faces.

(side note from the conscious self… Szar warns me to switch out of Ultra High view to Medium to reduce lag, but she was the one who designed this system and it has never been properly put through the paces. It handled the view just fine. J …but if you are ever in a too-much-information area and unsure of your system, follow her suggestion and scale back.)

Through the crowd, I found my friend Goldenstar and gave a /hug and a quick hello, as all watched the revelry on center stage.

It looks like I have arrived mid-festival as one band leaves the stage and the Emcee Harperella announced the next group of performers.

"...This is positively the finest exhibition ever to be shown... well, be that as it may, I your wizard emcee, par adua outer, am about to bring to the stage the next group that will send your mind racing on an unexplainable journey..."

A group lead by lead singer Ingolemo took the stage.

I followed along as the captions imprinted on my mind. His words strung together, I read his lips sing a ballad, called Stridin’ Man.

It is my dream, and of course, in my dreams, I fantasize that people actually show up to read my blog. So, naturally, I had the extreme pleasure of meeting a hobbit named Apis, who recognized me and said she was a fan of the blog! Wow, what a nice thing to say in a dream!

/bow to Apis

I watched a few more bands perform as I could feel my time slipping on reality.

Here are six more.

Phedelene of Leaves of Laurelin.

Larkfeather of Breakfast Club.

Rohaena of The Songburrow Strollers.

Khalawyn of RKO.

Arelias of Mornie Alantie.

Emyli of Symphonia et Gloria

When I awoke, I was back in my bed in Arkenstone, bewildered, amazed by the amount of planning to pull off such an elaborate dream, and glad it was mine to share. 

No, but it wasn't a dream. It was a place. And you - and you - and you - and you were there... But you couldn't have been, could you? Bird, you should have seen it... This was a real, truly live place.

If you have had a similar dream and recognize any of these performers, feel free to let me know who they are so I can include them with the pictures!

Update 07/03/12: followup to Weatherstock at dream-of-ingolemo-weatherstock-forever.

Sailor Moon of LOTRO

Woohoo! When I made the jump to this blog site, I was hoping for a couple of hundred hits per month. My friend Szarwyn who hosted the blog at its previous site told me that it got traffic and was probably more popular than I thought it was.

The Blogger stats starting out have surprised me!

I transitioned this blog and set it up the second week of February. So by the 15th I had the pieces in place. Some friends like Assmunahi showed up to see me still planting the flowers in the garden. By Feb 18, I had some of the kinks worked out (forgive me Internet Explorer people, I do see some wonky text in some of the columns, but haven’t figured out how to get rid of it yet. The blog is produced in Google Chrome). By Feb 22, I wrote my first new post for the site.

As I write this post a week or two after lauch, the site has gotten over 1600 hits this week! That is just truly humbling and amazing. Of course, I love stats and graphs and charts (who doesn’t right?) and wanted to see from where the readers were coming.

Thusfar, USA tops the list of readers, and the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Canada, and France are some of the other countries that are dialing into Danania.net. I’ve gotten mail from some of you in the UK and Canada, but some of the other countries… very interesting. Wherever lotro is, people are tuning into this site.

So Dana, where did this title come from? I traced back one of the traffic source links from Russia and it described me as “the Sailor Moon of Lotro”. Lol! Oh my. My friend Berda said that is probably a compliment. Not knowing Sailor Moon, I had to Wikipedia it to be sure, and found her name to be “Pretty Soldier Sailormoon” and her story to be described as “a special warrior with the destiny of saving the planet Earth, and later the entire galaxy”. I will take it. Thanks for the compliment Russia! J

To Germany, danke fur das Lesen “die Abenteuer von Supergirl”

To France, merci d’avoir lu “les Aventures de Supergirl”

(I did learn both German and French once upon a time, but I totally used translate.google.com above, hehe).

Thank you for reading the Adventures of Supergirl.

p.s. I noticed that there is still room to be a blog follower. As I understand it, by doing so, you will be advised of when the blog is updated. AND, you will get my thanks knowing that you care.

Cremello Szand

(archived from October 24, 2011)

One of my favorite things about living in Middle Earth is the collection of various horses available. There are still plenty of horses I don’t have. Last week, the Cremello steed of PAX rep was one of those in the “don’t have and probably won’t be able to get” column.

However, this week, I am the proud owner of a shiny new Cremello steed, a gift from my friend Szand, courtesy of Sapience.

I have such nice friends that I meet in Middle Earth, and this is one of my favorite gifts. I think back to some of the others… Menelchol teaching me the Watcher the first time, and Szarwyn setting up this blog for me, and the awesome friendships I’ve made over the past year or so come to mind. But no one has ever given me a steed outright!

Here is a picture of me riding the Cremello steed. The tack even matches my outfit really well, and we know how important that is! It is a beautiful red, white, and blue set against the creamy grayish-tan color of the horse. The horse actually looks different in the moonlight versus daylight.

Here is a picture of Szand, as her overgrown bug-pet looks on menacingly. Bog-lurkers are fun to ride also, but not as much fun as a horse (or a woolly mammoth).

She knew how much I liked flying horses, and gave me a helium-filled one. Here are Cremello and I descending into the Shire in time for some morning fall festival fun! Oh, I'm getting to the fall festival posts. :) New horse is news-breaking though!

BTW… some were asking about “subscribing to the blog”. Send me a PM, comment, tell, mail, rorweb chat, or smoke-signal if you would like to be notified of new posts, and I will make that happen. Thanks!


(lots of wonderful comments lovingly recreated at final-comments)
<Edit Update> This New blogspot site allows for "subscribing". Seems easy enough? Give it a try? :)

In a beginning hole far far away...

(archived from October 19, 2011)

“Let’s go on a super adventure!”

Woohoo! My first blog line!

The funny thing is when starting writing a story… where to begin? Do you jump in the middle of a story, then use back-story context as you go along? Or do you start AT the beginning? Here are some famous first lines…“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”... “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”... "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

Hmm... I’m not sure if my opening line can withstand the pressure.

However, looking at some of the best tv shows, Seinfeld and MASH come to mind, they didn’t even have memorable first lines, or were even attention-getting the first several years, but they finished strong. "See, now to me, that button is in the worst possible spot. The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt.”... that one was Seinfeld; I got bored googling for MASH’s opening line. See? Not telling or exciting... bear with me, this adventure is just getting started.

Regardless of how this turns out, I must start with a special thanks to my friend Szarwyn, who taught me enough magic as to not destroy Middle Earth while putting this blog together. Mostly, I feel like the Sorcerer’s apprentice, not the cool one that is Merlin-incarnate, rather the Mickey Mouse one that takes the boss’s toys and conjures up uncontrollable mops. If you see dancing mops here, hopefully the situation will get corrected (and you can guess that the apprentice isn’t the one doing the heavy magic).

And by the next post, hopefully I will have something to say about adventures in Middle Earth! Feel free to leave a comment!

For now, here is a picture of me riding Coriander, the horse I got at the anniversary party. Oh, why am I riding you ask? There will be time for flying soon enough, and horses are some of my favorite animals to ride (bigger than chickens, less bitey than dragons, takes direction better than yaks).

See you soon! Danania

<Edit....> The first 10 posts in this blog were originally written for the now out-of-commission guild site to which I used to belong. For posterity, I recreated them here. Enjoy! :) There were even comments, recreated here (final-comments)