Diana the Valkyrie

Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - February 1998

A hard man is good to beat

February

In England, February is the coldest month of the year, but on the other hand, in Australia, it's the hottest. The snowdrops are out, though, hinting at the promise of spring next month. Of course, we all know what happens with promises sometimes.

Black-out

On Wednesday 25th February, and Thursday, we had a major outage. It wasn't my servers; they kept going fine, and you could even almost access them. It wasn't even my ISP, who was as frustrated as I was. It was someone upstream from me, like your electricity substation going out. There's nothing you can do except wait for them to fix it. Meanwhile, if you think you were twitching from lack of web site, imagine how I felt. how I'm feeling, actually, because I'm writing this frustratedly while I wait for them to mend the fault.

This may result in my moving the servers. That won't affect you, the address will still be http://www.TheValkyrie.com but it should mean better connectivity, meaning I'd be connecting to the internet at a point above the sub-stations, and it might mean slightly faster access because of that. We'll have to see whether the improvements from moving are real or just a sales pitch; I'll try it out for a bit on a spare server before committing.

Well, there's one thing I can do. I'm giving all members an extra two days of membership, to make up for the lack of access over about 25 hours or so.

New Galleries

I added Laine Dufresne, armwrestler. Big arms!

Also a large batch of Michele Falsetta, and they're will be more of her in the coming weeks.

And a Gallery of Aramis. I thought of calling this "A little girl and her pony", but Nicole Bass isn't exactly little (at 6'2" she's the biggest FBB in the world) and Aramis isn't exactly a pony. But you get the idea. Horse lovers everywhere will appreciate all the pictures of this fine piece of horseflesh. Nicole looks pretty good too, and it isn't often she's standing next to something larger than she is.

You'll also have noticed a major influx from Physical Culture, run by Robin Parker (including an update of her Gallery). She has over a dozen videos for sale, and all the new pictures are from those videos. If you like the look of what you see, say which pictures, and say that you want that video, and Robin can supply it.

The Library

And there's a contest to write a story, with a prize for the winner. We have a couple of entries so far, you can see them on the third Miscellaneous Bookshelf.

Speaking of Bookshelves, I just opened up the fourth Miscellaneous Bookshelf, because the third was getting full. The first story there is a tale of boxing, about Tanya.

On the Ladybumps side, there's a new serial, the Return of the Golden Goose. Each week, a new episode (and you can go back and read the old ones). Thanks to Some Sort of Dog for this.

The third episode in the Ursa series is out. You may remember the song "The night they invented champagne"? Well, just imagine what happened when they invented brandy! Ursa gets into more trouble; you'll find the series in the Multimedia section of the Library.

Some of the latest stories are in an unusual format - they're GIFs! This is because they were sent to me on paper, and all the Valkyries refused to type them in. So I ran them through the scanner.

"Why not OCR", you're wondering, unless you haven't heard of Optical Character Recognition. Because the time you have to spend tidying up what it's failed to recognise is greater than the time it would take to type it in in the first place. "Why not JPG" is your other question, remembering that JPG files tend to be smaller than the equivalent GIF. Because that's true for photographs, but this is black-and-white text. So it's GIFs.

New artists

A big new artist this month is Pope, whose art partly belongs on the Ladybumps site, and partly on the main site. We also welcome Maverick, who also has his own Gallery. And Xbigmusf is now featured in his own gallery (we had quite a few of his already).

The Movie Theatre

The most popular clips I've ever had, are the ones I made of Sonia Fernandes. The day I put those up on the web site, my throughput statistics hit an all-time record.

There's another series going up, this is Michelle Falsetta. In fact, two series, one of her posing, and the other talking about her wrestling, while gesturing with her whip. Well, it isn't actually a whip. It's a long piece of grass. But she uses it imaginatively.

Ladybumps

Ladybumps gets a series, too. This one is the Return of the Golden Goose, a story told in weekly parts.

And ladybumps gets a Movie Theater, too.

Newsgroups

There's been lots of fuss in the newsgroup about someone who's been posting again and again about a video that he has for sale (although it might not actually be available yet, I haven't been following the story). I saw some postings about his spamming, and wonndered why I hadn't been seeing the spam that everyone was getting so upset about. Then I realised. Narella had been chopping it out, so I hadn't been seeing it.

Diana the Valkyrie Video

A lot of people asked me when I was going to start doing videos. The answer is, now. The first production is a double-feature starring Sonia Fernandes, and the two features are "Sonia meets Giles" and "The Return of Giles". Knockouts, scissors, face sitting, lift-and-carry, full nelsons, and even some rather poweful punches. Something for everyone.

As an extra, I've done a Valkyrie animation. People familiar with Fantasia will understand where I got the idea, except I'm not Walt Disney, and he does it a lot better than me. But he didn't do Valkyries, and I did. It's on the tape, as a bonus and an introduction to the main features.

I've done several hundred screen captures, of a reasonable quality; if you look through the new Sonia Fernandes Galleries, it's almost like watching the video, because I took a screen capture every few seconds. Plus a dozen video clips, in AVI and MPG format. You can download those, and if you want more, you can visit the Shopping Mall and get the video.

A couple of innovations; PAL format doesn't cost extra (Europeans will be pleased) and the PAL quality is at least as good as the NTSC quality, because it isn't a conversion, I make both PAL and NTSC from the master. And postage, packing, shipping, handling and tax is included in the price, which means at $40 for a 52 minute tape, it's very keen.

I hope it's going to be the first of many.

The Clubhouse

More romance in the air - Cancuz has been grabbed by a Valkyrie nearby, and she's persuaded him to get hitched. But he says he'll still be doing artwork. I think he'll be doing a lot less, Valkyries are very demanding. Well, we all wish him the best of luck and much happiness to both of them.

Megilla is about to go to California for five days of wrestling with a lady he met via the internet. This is their first meeting, and naturally he can hardly think of anything else. My suspicion is that this will lead to a more permanent relationship based on his head and her thighs, but we'll wait and see and keep our fingers crossed for him.

Jane Bond has arrived. Martial arts and firearms expert, plus a licence to thrill. She has a Message Board. And another new Message Board, for Mistress Lauren Taylor who is well known as one of the best and most experienced professional Dommes you could tremulously hope to encounter. But don't be scared, there's a Valkyrie here to protect you, go chat with her.

Cheryl Harris is leaving; the Iron Belles message board will be closing down.

Robin Parker runs a business called Physical Culture; they offer videos, and can also organise sessions with many famous names such as Christa Bauch. We're proud to say that we're hosting that web site.

And in the Chat Room, there's more romance. As you surely know, everything said in the chat room is logged and archived, anyone can go and read what is said there (so if you're planning a little tete-a-tete with your favourite Valkyrie, don't make the assignation in the chat room, or your wife might find out).

Looking at the site statistics (I get to see what parts of the site are most popular), the chat archive is one of people's favourites (also the Message Board archive). It's great, it's like listening in on other people talking. And all of what follows is based on that public archive.

Anyway, the big ongoing story is the Smitty/Crystal romance. Smitty is a sports writer from New Jersey, his big current thing is the Olympics, of course. Crystal is a microbiologist (her Masters thesis was on "The effects of vasoctimization by cells of the caput epididymis in mice and rats". I think I'd spell that "Vasectomisation". Maybe you're wondering what a caput epididymis is? Well, read the explanation. Smitty is 34, Crystal, being a lady, doesn't publicly announce her age. The romance has been one of those on-off romances, you know the sort. One minute they're all cuddly/cozy, the next minute frosty/chilly. But progress is surely being made, because Crystal recently phoned Smitty, so at least he got to hear her voice.

Meanwhile, the consortium that's being put together by HardBodyPaul is progressing nicely, and has Sandy Bouman lined up as being the woman they'll be bringing to St Louis. The consortium consists of HBP, sub, Scooby and two others (it gets a bit confusing sometimes, because some people use different names sometimes). Scooby is the person who puts together compilation tapes of m/f fighting, he's currently working on his second (you can read about this on the Message Boards).

Another regular in the chat room is sub (author of a fine treatise on the Valkyrie's toes). And he's found someone called Dom who's started to visit from time to time. And she's been domming him, of course - he was forced to stay in the chat room for 24 hours at a stretch. Heaven knows what she'll make him do next time.

But the sub-a-thon turned into a major event, as regulars came into the chat room all day to keep him awake and kicking, including Horation Hornblower, Captain Bligh, and Mr Midshipman Easy (that was me, actually). It was as if the whole web site was rooting for him. Wonderful. And then, at the end of the 24 hour sub-a-thon, Dom appeared and told sub that his next task would be to write a poem.

You can see sub's poem on the Abuse board. It's supposed to be a sonnet, but two of the lines don't scan (a sonnet is supposed to be pentameters, and he has an extra foot). Well, Dom accepted it as a tribute, and that's all that counts. he certainly put a lot of effort into writing it, and that's what's important.

As a rather daring experiment, I've given Scooby (mixed fighting fan) and Kandor (author, photographer, videographer and total scissors freak) their own Message Boards, because Diana the Valkyrie does not believe the old adage "men should be seen and not heard". There's already been some criticism of this, suggesting that Scooby would be less of a hazard in the kitchen, but I'm not convinced of that at all. And the only thing that Kandor would recognise in the kitchen is the scissors.

Nicole Bass

Some fool posted a message that she died in a car crash. Not funny. She's alive and kicking; in fact, if the fool would like to admit who they are, he can get that kicking administered first hand (first foot?).

Server changes

I changed the server for chat and messages again. I changed it in January, and a few people said that as a result, it was all running a lot more slowly. So I bought a whole new server for it, and that went in February 19, and the slowness problem seems to have completely gone. The new server is called Freya (look her up), but if you go to the usual Clubhouse page and click on links, the move won't affect you, it's only if you bookmarked a place that I wouldn't really expect people to bookmark.

I'm looking into yet another server. You might think that all this change is unsettling, but it's necessary if you want to grow. Think of it as bursting out of your clothes; if you've got any sense, you have to hand a set of clothes several sizes bigger so that you can get dressed again. The idea is to site the new huge server somewhere close to the internet backbone, to reduce the chances of outages.

Andrulla Blanchette

We've announced the second Sponsorship; it's Andrulla, a leading contender for the Ms International contest in March. Andrulla has had her own message Board here for some time; now she'll also be hostessing a regular weekly chat session on Tuesdays at 9pm UK time (4pm EST). We all wish her the best for the Ms I.

Back Page

I checked the site statistics. that Sandra counts up each night. 90,000 pictures (4.9 gigabytes), 2.6 gigabytes of video, 2200 text files (mostly stories).

This web site has been going for over a year now, in its current format (I had a much smaller free site before that). I went to non-free membership on March 1, 1997, and some of the people that joined up that day, are still members. And this is the 12th issue of the newsletter. That's a long time, in internet terms, where sites come and go all the time.

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