CitizenKate

Nice overall appearance. I'm curious to know what you used to create your stitching holes. Kate

Here is a line drawing of the helicopter I made using Photoshop. To get this, I applied a "find edges" filter to it. I'm sure most photo editing programs have a similar feature. Kate

It looks very... er, lord-ly. Heheh! Seriously, it looks cool. That tripped off the idea that you could probably also make a great Ent mask with wet molded leather. Just a thought... Kate

Um, well, it's also a great finish. Kate

Madmaxx22, I see your point, but I think you misunderstood what Bruce was saying about "a group running off donations". That group is us, and his point was that, as a non-profit organization with very little funds to operate on, let alone insure ourselves against copyright infringement suites, we cannot take the legal risk of publishing something we may or may not have the right to publish. Regardless of how freely the information was shared before, the current copyright holders may have different sensibilities about it, and they do have the legal right to make that call. Who else has it, and what they do with it, is not our concern. We do not know what arrangements they made with the owner of the material, so we are not in any position to question what they are doing at all, only what we should do. Johanna is 100% right to defer to Verlane's family, not only for legal reasons, but also because we respect Verlane and her family. But meanwhile, (just my opinion) you all are well within your legal rights to enjoy the site as long as it is there to enjoy. Thanks for sharing it with us, Bree. Kate

Tan-Kote is a favorite of mine, especially with the water-based dyes and stains. It renders a very stable, breathable, yet moisture-resistant satiny finish. I also love wax finishes in all forms, for the same reason. Of the acrylic finishes, I like satin shene the most, mainly because I'm not a huge fan of super-shiny finishes, but the only place I use it is on pieces that will not likely be exposed to the elements. Kate

That was rumored to be the moniker of a WWII shipyard inspector, who left that bit of graffiti as he went from panel to panel to count rivets completed. Here is the full story from snopes.com, including the British variants. Kate

One probable factor is that the voter turnout this year is significantly higher than in past elections. The local registrars generally staff and equip the polling places based on historic turnouts. Some of them had the foresight to see a higher voter turnout coming in this election and bought more machines... there were two more in my assigned polling place. But in the more heavily populated places, I'm sure they must have been unable to make a big enough adjustment. I live in a moderate-sized town (around 50k), I went during the morning rush, and was in and out in 20 minutes. Kate

I've seen this before. This is most likely a domain registrar in China, or elsewhere in Asia, who is trying to con you into registering domain names with them. They imply that someone in China is after your trademark (i.e., "essexleather"), and has applied for domain names like "essexleather.cn" (which contains the top-level domain name for China). They further imply they are trying to protect your claim to that name by "alerting" you, and giving you the opportunity to take the domain name before granting the registration to "the applicant". It kind of follows the notion of registering domain names with multiple top-level domain names (such as ".com", ".net", ".biz", etc.) to prevent others from registering domain names very similar to yours in an effort to steal some of your site traffic. But unless you are planning to market your wares in china, on a web site hosted there, I would ignore the claim. If you already have a domain name, such as "essexleather.com", they can't apply for that. But what they probably do is go through all the registered domain names, find out who they're registered to, and send them emails like this to get more domain registration business. Hope this is clear enough... Kate

I find it helps a great deal, when cutting parts from very soft leather, to line the flesh side with packing tape. That helps it stay firm and flat while it's being cut. Kate

Since we're discussing steampunk and the underlying sub-culture, I thought I would share a short feature I stumbled onto at YouTube that shows a lot of steampunk influence. I should warn you that, although it's very well-produced, it's very dark, sad, and depressing. I really don't care to watch it again, but I was fascinated by the artistic style and all the wonderous steam-powered machines. Kate

You could build a regular computer and set up web services on it. The problem would be that residential internet service providers will block any web services emanating from your node. To operate your own public web server, you would need commercial internet service, which would run you some $$$. In most cases, it's much more cost-efficient to rent space from a web hosting provider. Kate

This link will show you all the places where daylight savings time is observed, and when: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ Kate

I've installed Serendipity on a couple of web sites, and it's a very nice blog system. If more of a forum is what you're after, I second Johanna's recommendation of SMF. Both are open source, you can download them and use them for free, and are easy to install. Kate

I had problems getting to it yesterday, but it seems to be working fine today. Great looking site, by the way! Kate

Howdy Adam, I'm also a resident of the Flint Hills region of Kansas. Welcome to the neighborhood! Kate

Gotta visit that place, sometime. (When it's winter here, of course! It's springtime there, right now, right?) Kate

I checked the broken links. The Purses and Bags link references "http://www.brucejohnsonleather.com/brucejohnson%5Cbagsandpurses%5Cindex.htm". Those places where you see "%5" need to be changed to "/". Other than that, great looking site, Bruce! Only thing I can suggest is possibly a way to improve some of the the photos. Some of them appear to have been enlarged to a size greater than their original size, which causes a kind of "chunky" appearance. (Here is an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.brucejohnsonleather.com/brucejo...s/ropebags.htm) If possible, ask your web designer to use photos that are larger than they need to be on the page, and reduce them to size. This creates a much better quality image, which does more justice to your beautiful leather work. Kate

I am also one of the survivors. And I am very grateful for the support of everyone who contributes to this cause. Thanks, Tim!!! Kate

I was actually thinking of the Wild Wild West. Kate

I read up on vegamite... it sounds revolting, so naturally, I'll have to try some. Kate

Heheh! Left the building, you say? Looks to me like he left the planet! Cute idea... do you think that'll put an end to all the rumors of sightings? ...naaaaahhhh. Kate

Ooooooo.... exquisite! Kate

This is a spud launcher. Kate

Ohmygosh... that really brings back memories from the summers I spent in LaCrosse in the Blue Stars. "Bubbler? There are no bubbles coming out of that thing!" Kate