Hogwarts Live Blog

So, I'm sure you've noticed the site crashes a lot. Alchemist Edmund has had a solution to this problem for a while now. Guess what? I finally decided to implement it. This solution is likely to cost a lot more than our current setup. Because of this we'll be testing it to see if this price is within reason (i.e. can be covered by our average monthly donations). If so you'll all get to experience a relatively stable (meaning little to no downtime) Hogwarts Live. I know I've promised no downtime before but considering the nature of this solution and its ability to scale it should effectively eliminate prolonged periods of time where you can't access your favorite game! I should warn you though it's possible that we'll be trading speed for stability. With that said I think we'll all prefer a slower HL as long as we can get on whenever we want. ^_^

The podcast of our own session at Azkatraz (Wizarding Physics: Gamp and Beyond) will be up in a few days (I just got my copy of the recording of it), but in the mean time, you can hear the Wizards.FM panel in another podcast recording at Azkatraz which went up last night.

While at Azkatraz all 3 primary members of the Wizards.FM panel, myself, my wife Barbara (SerenityRose) and Mike Johnson (MikeCrim) auditioned for parts in the SpellCast Podcast Play.

I was cast as the role of Hagrid, Barbara was one of the Narrators, and Mike was a Love Sick Dementor... and he was playing the role of... a Love Sick Dementor.

Anyway it was a lot of fun, and I hope you like it.

Check out Summer: Live from Azkatraz on the SpellCast podcast, and if you like fanfiction and radio drama, give SpellCast a listen in general, they do dramatic readings of Harry Potter Fanfiction, and more Podcast Plays, it's a lot of fun, you can find them at SpellcastPodcast.com.

Stay Tuned for Wizards.FM Live from Azkatraz, later this weekend.

As you can see by our Countdown to HP's Birthday, the day is drawing near. In celebration of this, we are having not one, but two raffles!

To enter, simply click on Candy Raffle on the left and use all those Bertie Bott's Beans you've been saving to buy your tickets!

As always, it only takes 1 ticket to win! Good luck!

It's Harry's Birthday, but you get the present, Real Bertie Botts Beans
Beans per Ticket: 5
Trade in your fake Bertie Botts Beans for a chance to win a bag of real Bertie Botts beans! 4 Winners will be announced at 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Harry Potter's Birthday (July 31st)
Raffle Runs From 1969-12-31 to 2009-07-31
There are 4 days, 20 hours, 38 minutes and 39 seconds left to purchase tickets in this raffle.


Ride in Style, a custom mount!
Beans per Ticket: 15
1 Lucky Winner will win a custom mount, don't like the brooms and dragons we have available, always wanted something a little special? Enter this raffle for a one-of-a-kind mount available just to you! Winner will be announced on Harry Potter's Birthday, July 31st at 7 p.m. Pacific Time.
Raffle Runs From 1969-12-31 to 2009-07-31
There are 4 days, 20 hours, 38 minutes and 39 seconds left to purchase tickets in this raffle.

The live new day timer which counts down until the new game day is not working right now. The game days are still set to be 1h 30m and that IS functioning correctly- just the time displayed is off.

Each village has an in-game clock however and so when that reads 12:00am (midnight) the new day will start.

Just a reminder, please don't talk about the new movie in open chat for a week or so, "OMG The Movie was Awesome" is ok, but please don't spoil anything. Yes the book has been available for 4 years, but there are people here who only watch the movies and haven't seen it yet, not to mention there are definite spoilers for the movie that are not in the book or different from the book.

Let's be kind for a week or so and not spoil in open chat.

That said, we'll work up a place you can talk about the movie, perhaps I'll bring back the Quibbler office.

Ok, I've done several MoTDs over the months on this, so you had to expect another. Any of you who are going to Azkatraz in San Francisco this coming weekend, be sure to stop by the HogwartsLive Flock meetup this Saturday night at 7 p.m.

Our meetup will be in the Mission II/Mission III room at the Parc55 Hotel (where the Symposium is)

I look forward to seeing you there. Everyone who comes will get an early access code to get into my Alchemy Lab (yes I'm opening Devon and my Lab up once again for more great prizes)

Also, Me and SerenityRose, along with former HLer MikeCrim will be presenting a panel discussion on "Wizarding Physics: Gamp's Law and Beyond" on Monday.

For those of you who can't come, we will be recording a podcast version of this panel after the conference, and it also will have a way to access my secret lab!

Also, we understand that there have been some requests for our annual Harry's Birthday Raffle, we are working on getting something up and I assure you, there will at least be a donator points raffle, hopefully we can come up with something a little cooler though, we'll see.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to WitchyWoman for her wonderful MoTD on my anniversary, and for the owls my wife and I received congratulating us on 3 years of Marriage.

I was deeply moved, and I thank you all. I met Barbara (SerenityRose) right here on HogwartsLive almost 5 years ago now, and I'm happy to say that it is thanks to this place that I am happily married. I will always owe HogwartsLive a debt of gratitude for bringing the love of my life to me.

Stop with the joke petitions. They are stupid and take time away from us that could be used to deal with people who have a real problem that needs to be fixed or a question that needs to be answered.

We are no longer choosing Prefects from each House. We have a new idea to use instead and we will announce it once the module has been completed.

Let's get the HogwartsLive page it's own vanity url on facebook while we are at it!

The page currently has 81 fans, let's get it to 100 shall we?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/HogwartsLivecom/14135549042 just go here and click on Become a Fan

UPDATE:
We did it! http://www.facebook.com/HogwartsLive

If you get stuck in a bad nav, please PETITION and TELL US you are stuck.

Only a certain few of us can fix the bad navs and when you petition, they will get fixed faster. ONE petition is enough to let us know that you are stuck.

Do not get your friends to petition if you are stuck.

Do not owl staffers if you are stuck.

Do not get your friends to owl staffers if you are stuck.

Do not IM staffers if you are stuck.

Do not get your friends to IM staffers if you are stuck.

Once again, PETITION (ONE TIME!!) if you are stuck in a badnav. We will unstick you as soon as we are here to see the petition.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Headmaster: Please stop hitting refresh it doesn't work on this website. Don't hit other shortcut keys while a page is loading; just wait for it to load. Don't click on other links after you've already clicked on something--wait for the current page to load first. If you do this you want have to worry so much about getting badnavs. Thanks, Danilo.