 Sucks! (26) |
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(40) Rocks!  |
When I first thought about doing this site, I asked people on the Chipco games mailing list, which I used to run back then, what they thought of this name. One of the comments was that Small Cuts might be confused with an "adult" site.
Well, I've had people stumble on my home pages looking for pictures of fantasy princesses (access to server logs is one the ups of running your own). So this consideration didn't really bother me.
Another name I considered was Q.E.D. but as there is a QED Games, Inc. I wanted to avoid confusion.
Why or how did I come up with Small Cuts then? Well, since this site is about miniatures, I wanted a name connected with miniatures. And small cuts seems to be what I frequently get when working with miniatures.
The name is also something of a statement of style. I was not looking to producing yet another fan site, club site or news site. This site is based on the articles it publishes, and those articles are intended to be thought provoking, analytic and critical.
Small Cuts is meant to have a certain bite to it.
I am the editor, and this site is mine. I retain the right to yank any posting or user privileges for any reason, including no reason at all.
This does not mean you can't disagree with me, or any other author's article. Just be civilized about it.
Yes, I woke up and smelled the coffee, ergo anonymous posting was enabled. Ironically it seems my custom software and mandatory posting preview feature are enough to fool most spambots... The discussion is quite deliberately tied to the published articles, and off-topic postings will be removed regardless of their other merits.
However...
I used to edit a small hobby fanzine for three years, so I have no illusions about who's going to write most of the articles here. Yes, to some extent this is a vehicle for my rants and raves.
However, I'm in no way averse to publishing other people's articles, even when their views don't agree with mine. What I am looking for is analytical views, clear and cohesive writing. I will format your article and at least proof-read it.
If you feel like starting a forum topic, how about publishing an article instead? Contact me if interested.
Photography is not really one of my hobbies. To me, it is simply means to an end, namely recording my miniatures collection.
Therefore, I'm not really interested in hearing how I could improve my photography.
I'm also aware that I can't paint, no need to point that out. I'm not pretending to hold a painting masterclass here. If you think only Golden Demon winners are worth looking at, you're in the wrong place. Go elsewhere.
I archive all my photos of miniatures here. There are a lot of them and more are coming. I still have piles of old stuff that needs to be photographed and meanwhile I keep churning out new ones too.
This imposes a few limitations on the photo archive user interface -- would you really like to browse through 800 picture thumbnails? At 20 thumbnails per page it would be 40 pages and growing. Most users would probably never get past page three.
The pictorials serve pretty much the same function as "photo galleries" in certain other systems. However, mine are created manually so they are naturally lagging behind and some pictures never make it into a pictorial. I'm thinking of a good way to get around this.
Everything here, if not otherwise mentioned, is copyright by Mikko Kurki-Suonio. Names of games etc. are trademarks of their respective owners.
Feel free to link to the site. However, the URLs of dynamic content like the photos currently are, are not guaranteed to stay the way they are. If you just want to link, you're safer off linking to the static pages. If you'd like to use a photo or an article elsewhere, please contact me. We can probably work out the terms.
Other people's articles are theirs. If you are interested in someone else's article, I can introduce you to each other, but that's as far as my part goes.
One of my other hobbies happens to computers and programming. While I could have created the content easier by just firing up DreamWeaver, GoLive or whatever and uploading the stuff to Geocities, it wouldn't have been any challenge to my computer skills.
Thus this site is running on my own Linux server, using Tomcat platform with MySQL database. The site application is virtually entirely handcoded by me, including the HTML. I have not used third party components even though that too might have easier from the end result point of view. The notable exception is Jakarta ORO, which is simply brilliant, and some snippets of JavaScript, which I usually hate, from GrassBlade.
Therefore, if you see a bug or have an idea about improving the site, don't hesitate to contact me.
And sorry, the custom taglibs and stuff are not really production quality items, and by now no one wants that technology anyway...
The styles are W3C CSS Core StyleSheets.
JSP-based semi-static site? What is this guy smoking? Yes, I know it's a bit antiquated now. All this was hot stuff back in 2002 or so when I started coding the site software. But guess what? It still works.
Still, I do recognize it's a bit clunky, especially for me as the content creator. I don't really mind writing raw HTML because I bloody well can, and even recompiling to publish these additions is tolerable, but adding photos is a bit tedious.
We'll see if I get around to revamping the site software. And no, WordPress is not an option. Writing software is fun, learning to use other people's software isn't.
There is none. This is a hobby.
I can't pay you for your contributions. Likewise, I don't really expect to be paid for running this site. At this point, I don't even consider running ads to be worth the trouble.
Yes, Greg, I guess I am a blockhead.
Your secrets are safe with me. While I need your email address to communicate and I tend to respond better to people with real names, I won't sell your address to a spam-list or anything like that.
If this site ever gets the ability to communicate directly between members, you will have the option whether to participate or not.
If at some point you wish to cut all ties to this site, I can and will remove all traces of you from this site. Can't help with Google cache though...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Copyright 2003-2021 Mikko Kurki-Suonio