What I’m up to now…
crickets?
I got COVID in May of 2022. It was bad, but not horrendous. But extreme fatigue and brain fog over the ensuing sixteen months kept me from getting much of anything accomplished. Thanks to a prescription, I’m now in much better shape and am beginning once again to pick up all the loose strands and get back to work. I’ve posted (a bit) more about it on my “personal” now page.
at Marquette University
Anduin™
And at the very top of the list is resuming my work on Anduin in earnest. I’ll be releasing version 0.9.0 shortly — yes, that version number accurately implies that these are still “pre-release.” The system is useable as it is, but it’s still missing a number of features and a good bit of polish. “More anon,” as they say in Mordor. 1 1
at Vermont Softworks
Tolkien Art Index and LR Citations
Both the Tolkien Art Index and LR Citations unexpectedly “went down” last week due to problems at my long-time web host based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’d had in mind the idea of using cheaper, faster servers spread around the globe in order to make them more of a pleasure to use in places far from Pittsburgh. There are quite a few Tolkien scholars in India, Australia, New Zealand, and South America in particular who would have found the sites very sluggish. (It’s amazing to me that data travelling even that distance literally at (just shy of) the speed of light could seem sluggish, but there you are!)
Both sites and my personal erikmh.org are now hosted on Vultr servers in Amsterdam, Atlanta, New Delhi, Santiago, Seattle, and Sydney — and boy are they faster!
I’m looking forward to re-writing both TAI and LRC to use ProcessWire as their back ends (as both Anduin and Tolkienists.org do). This will make it much easier to search and sort and filter through the listings, and to integrate both with Anduin and Tolkienists.org.
Tolkienists.org
The site has lain fallow for much longer than I had intended (thanks, long-COVID!). It’s my hope to de-mothball it soon and bring it up to date. Anduin, TAI, and LRC will come first, however.
The Map(s)
And essentially all of the previous projects, one way or another, will give me the tools that I need to properly research Tolkien’s geography, toponymy, and maps of Middle-earth. More about this later, but in the meantime I need to get back to work!