This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
Recent work on The Brambletye Box has mostly been writing, and I can't really show much about that. An article I wrote back in 2010 on the actual Brambletye House ruin was recently reprinted in a local community magazine - you can read it online here, and have a look at various images I've collected over the years.
In other Julius Chancer news, I have a new stock of Secret of the Samurai books - head on over to the shop to order a copy if you've been meaning to get one!
The other writing I've been doing, when I can, has been my first Tunnels and Trolls adventure in about, crikey, twenty-five years, I think. It's to play with my children over the summer holidays and is called 'The Well of Sarduk' - it's been great fun getting back into saving rolls, Monster Ratings, dungeon-building and so on. We'll see how it goes!
The other main thing in my life is the karate club I run, which is going pretty well with almost 40 members now. One new aspect for me, started last year, has been adding bojutsu to my repertoire (the bo is a 6' bamboo or oak staff, like a quarterstaff). A recent trip to Okinawa by some members of our head organisation has brought back lots of information and training material for us to work on. But I'm also going to have to step up my own karate training as I'll be testing for 5th Dan in November.
A short while ago I managed to make some new family history discoveries, resulting in finally being able to write something of the story of one of my more interesting antecedents, Thomas Levell Hammond. The article is here if you're interested in, or connected to, the Perthshire/Fife Ewings (or if you just like a bit of eighteenth and nineteenth century social and military history).
I've not been watching or reading much lately. I did start to watch the new Shogun on Disney+, but gave up half-way through (I may come back to it). Despite it being flash up-to-date with modern effects and direction I think it pales in comparison to the 1980s version with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune - which had a much tighter script and even seems more authentic, despite its vintage.
In books my reading has dropped off with too many late nights, but I've been greatly enjoying the comic work of Olivier Schwartz, his Spirou stuff (especially the La Femme Leopard volumes) and his Atom Agency stuff. I'd seen an exhibition of his originals in Munich a few years ago - a fantastic artist.
