Category: Personal

My head is spinning after this weekend’s online Heralds and Scribes symposium, which was chock full of presentations and informal networking. I learned some things, shared some things, and have made long lists of things to work on in the coming months.

There was an hour-long presentation of the graphical elements and arrangements found on Classical-epoch Greek shields, from the eye of a reenactment herald. There were some differences from Medieval-epoch European heraldry — designs don’t seem to be inherited within families, and are optimized for round shields rather than kite shields — but there are also lots of commonalities. The presenter did a great job of taking us along on their exploration of the topic. It would be fun to help some people who want to design and register arms for classical-era personae.

I took a class on armory charge-group analysis, which is a topic I already know reasonably well, mostly to see how this particular instructor would approach the topic; they covered the same material, but from a different angle and organized differently than I have on previous occasions when I taught this same class, and I hope to learn from that in fine-tuning my own presentation of this topic in the future.

But most of my participation in the symposium was focused on networking and exchanging information with other senior heralds about the technology the College of Arms uses, because they have asked me to take on the office of Morsulus, which is the web / software / database volunteer who publishes the College’s registrations of names and armory.

I took two classes, each an hour long, covering two different ways of conflict checking (searching the database of heraldic registrations for similar armory), each one using a different feature of the web/database tool that I am taking on responsibility for. In both of those classes I was furiously scribbling notes about the details of their techniques in order to guide my software development efforts in the years ahead — I need to simultaneously not break any of the features they rely on, and not make their expert use of the site any less efficient, while also trying to make the site easier to use and understand for the next generation of heralds.

I also did a one-hour presentation about the various IT systems that the heraldic community depends on. To do so, I wrote up a catalog listing all of the examples I knew of, explaining briefly what they do, providing some technology details, and listing some ways that folks who wanted to volunteer might be able help. I published my work at dove-cote.org/chits.

Most of the presentations were recorded, and will wind up on YouTube somewhere in the next few months, but that doesn’t capture the “hallway track” — informal conversations with other heralds, outside of the organized panels, chit-chatting in the “social lounge” Zoom session, or sticking around in a panel’s breakout room after a presentation and talking with the other participants.

Ultimately, that was the most valuable part of the experience — it’s important to refresh the social connections between heralds from other kingdoms, and there’s some crucial information exchanged in small-group conversations that helps to set the agenda for a bunch of work in the year ahead.

I’m glad I invested the time, but now I’m ready for a hot bath and some sleep.

I am volunteering to serve the SCA’s College of Arms as the Morsulus Herald, the staffer responsible for publishing and indexing the names and armory registered by the College.

I figured I’d go ahead and publish my application letter for two reasons: firstly, to serve as an example to other folks volunteering for positions in the College, and secondly as an accountability measure, so that folks can look back at this a few years from now and see whether I accomplished any of the things I set out to do.

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To Birgitta Laurel Queen of Arms, and to the College of Arms, salutations.

I am writing today to volunteer as a candidate for the position of Morsulus Herald.

My three decades of professional experience as a full-time software developer has provided me with the technical, analytical, and interpersonal skills required for this position:

• I have extensive familiarity with the Perl programming language (which I have used regularly since 1995) and with the other platforms underlying the Morsulus codebase.
• I have internalized the lessons and techniques of modern Internet-centric software development based on reusable components, project tracking, and online communication.
• I can effectively discover organizational requirements and tailor solutions to meet them across the full range from high-level system architecture to detailed user interface design.
• My career as a project manager, independent contributor, and freelancer has prepared me both to coordinate closely with others and to make steady self-directed progress on large projects and ongoing responsibilities.

Over the last six years, I’ve worked to understand and improve the technology that powers the Society’s armorial database, and to make that knowledge available to others:

• I’ve become familiar with the full submissions process by consulting, commenting, assisting my kingdom’s submissions heralds, and sitting in on Sovereign decision meetings.
• I have studied the existing O&A software, contributed multiple proposed code changes that have been merged in to the Morsulus applications to improve the end-user functionality, and built proof-of-concept demonstrations of possible directions for future work.
• I’ve written documentation explaining how both the front-end search and back-end update software works, contributed to online discussions about the armorial database, and taught related classes at KWHSS and at local events here in the East.
• I’ve interviewed three of the four people who had previously served as Morsulus in order to assemble a history of how the O&A developed into its current form.
• In recent years I’ve also had discussions with Non Scripta, Silver Staple, and the Archivist to better understand the context of the behind-the-scenes information flows and expectations around the systems Morsulus manages.

My work in other areas of the Society demonstrates my commitment and reliability:

• I’ve held numerous offices at the canton, baronial, and kingdom levels, including as branch herald, local seneschal, youth marshal, webminister, and event steward.
• Over the last eight years I’ve built and maintained the Book of Traceable Art, which has become the primary source of armorial clip art used in Society submissions.
• During the last eight months I’ve worked with Codex and Clarion to make updates throughout the College of Arms website, including improved navigation and better usability on mobile devices.

Should I be selected, my goals for my time in the position of Morsulus would be to:

• Live up to the standard of timely LoAR and O&A updates set by my predecessor.
• Rebuild the armory-indexing tool with a web interface rather than XWindows so that armory indexing duties can be shared among multiple contributors. (This will also allow the outgoing Morsulus emeritus to review my efforts in the most heraldically-challenging aspect of the position during the transition period.)
• Provide an updated search interface for oanda.sca.org that leverages modern interactive web technologies, while retaining the current interface as a “classic mode” option to preserve compatibility with current documentation and workflows for folks who have grown accustomed to it.
• Revise the deployment tooling for the public-facing search tools, so that updating the ordinary data is independent from rebuilding the distribution package, and so that compilation products are not stored in the source repository, which will facilitate a more- modern branch-and-merge development approach.
• Migrate the database-update process to a shared server and increase the level of documentation, logging, and automation to improve transparency and disaster resilience, and to decrease the amount of esoterica known only to one or two individuals.
• Bring the technology platform up to date and make it more accessible to the community of techie heralds in such a way that there’s a larger pool of candidates ready to take on this position when I am ready to step down, so that future terms in this office can return to a more-normal span of five or ten years rather than twenty-five.

Although I suspect I might be the only applicant for this office, should it turn out that there are others who are interested in the position, I would love to speak with them about ways in which we might collaborate or usefully divide up the responsibilities of this office to best serve the College’s needs.

If you have any questions about my qualifications or intentions for this office, I would be glad to discuss them in detail at any time that might be convenient for you.

— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin

The personal heraldic title which I submitted earlier this year was accepted and registered on this month’s LoAR, which has prompted some to ask: “why a gadfly?”

I chose the name Gadfly not because of a particular affinity with the family of insects also known as horse-flies, but rather for its metaphorical connotations.

Continue reading “Gadfly Herald Extraordinary”

I waited until almost the last possible minute, but still managed to snag a room for two nights at the Sheraton around the corner from the University of Pennsylvania library where the Known World Heraldic and Scribal Symposium will be held next month.

I’m looking forward to hanging out with my fellow nerds and talking about heraldry and the various crazy things we do and make to support our little corner of the SCA.

And I’m loving the fact that despite being in another barony eighty miles away, this event is fully transit accessible, with just two inter-rail transfers to get door-to-door in under two hours.

I look forward to seeing a bunch of you there!

When Wilhelm Laurel established the rank of Herald Extraordinary, he began the practice of personal heraldic titles:

Each Herald Extraordinary shall have a title that is his/her own personal title that s/he shall hold so long as s/he remains active. 

Cover Letter, July 1981 Letter of Acceptances and Returns

Over the year since my elevation, I’ve struggled to think of an appropriate title to take on, until I was startled awake this weekend with a stroke of inspiration. The submission form has now been sent off and we’ll wait to see if the College will accept me as the “Gadfly Herald.”

Continue reading “Personal Heraldic Title”

The above social media post marks the five-year anniversary of my having joined the heraldic community.

I had started researching names and device designs for my own submission the previous December, getting some very helpful Irish onomastic advice from Mistress Alys Mackyntoich, and some armory feedback from the Facebook Heraldry Chat group.

I spoke to the former heralds of my canton and province that spring, but they weren’t submissions experts, so rather than mailing in the forms I filled them out as best I could and brought them to the Heralds Point tent at Pennsic that summer.

By happenchance, the herald who I was routed to was Meisterin Gisela vom Kreuzbach, who looked over the large pile of poorly-summarized documentation I had handed her and decided nonetheless that I had some promise, and invited me to come around the desk to sit by her and watch over her shoulder as she entered the records into the forms interface. I wound up shadowing her through several consultations that afternoon and returning for more a couple of days later, and by the end of the week I was hooked.

Little did I know that moment would set me on a path to spending literally thousands of hours working on this esoteric corner of our peculiar hobby. Thank you to everyone who has given me a hand up over the last five years, and to the many who went before us and paved the way for the world we now inhabit.