posted 10-20-2006 08:51 PM            

It's been a long time since I was here last, but very happy to see the site is still going and many of the same 'faces' still to be seen.

My direction changed a few years ago to a serious interest in researching armour, and that just didn't leave enough time to also pursue my interest in catles.

I see Duncan's forum has also grown a lot.

I've got a few digital castle photos now, so I will try and get back soon to post them. I never did get time to scan all my hard copy photos as I wanted.

Regards,

posted 10-24-2006 01:07 AM            

No, No, Gordon, our son will remain well behaved and my hair will stay in place :-)
My hair has 4 options that would seem to be genetically likely. You see, on my father's side it stays nice and brown, but falls out, whereas on my mother's side it goes grey but stays put. So either my hair will go grey and fall out, stay brown and fall out, go grey and stay put or stay brown and stay put. As it's going grey and not falling out, I am betting on it following the trend on my mother's side. My brother's is already following my father's side. :-)

Yes Merlin, I have been continuing my research into central European armour of the 14th century since about 2001 I think, spending at least one year full time working on it, and the rest of the time as much as I could get time to. I have gotten to the stage where I am trying to wind up the research side of things and actually start putting my book together. I have given myself till the end of 2007 to write the text so that I have something for publishers to consider.
My research trip in 2003 was very fruitful and I have since had the chance to spend another two-three months in the Austrian National Library because my wife is from Vienna and we have spent a lot of time there.
I have managed to get hold of much of the literature I was after, although I am always finding out about other publications that could be of use. I guess research never actually ends.

How are you all doing? I hope things are going well for you all.

By the way, I added a couple of Austrian castles to the photo archive and will add a couple more soon.

posted 10-27-2006 03:37 AM            

The last two years I have invested most of me castle-related spare time for www.burgenwelt.de. I've visited many, many swiss castles, did research and built up the swiss section of that web-archive. It contains now detailed descriptions of about 220 swiss castles and town-fortifications - with about 1000 more to be done!