By Dixon-Spain

So Scottishlaird.com has over 11,000 subscribers divided into three separate lists, and frankly we were growing tired of an ever-inflating monthly charge from our old supplier – a rather overgrown simian. Now, don’t get me wrong the service was excellent, the templates great and creating an html email a breeze to put together and design, but the cost was ridiculous.

So yesterday, in email dialogue with Julie from ACT around the mailing list for that charity, the contractor recommended Elastic Email. So me having the technicals, I gave the system a once over. So impressed was I, that I have converted our entire list to Elastic Email and dumped Mailchimp back down to the free account.

Why keep the free gorilla account? The wonderful integration between it and my e-commerce software – we’ll be using it to collect subscribers and then transfer them over to EE. Security-wise we’re fine, given that both companies are at the top of their game, but it is a bind to have to migrate users over ….

The only word of caution I’d give, is that EE isn’t quite as user-friendly as MC – but then I *think* that’s what you’d be paying extra for with when you go ape!

(… and all of this rather explains why there has been a hiatus on the email newsletter front with Scottish Laird – sorry!)

By Dixon-Spain

Both the commemorative edition for Lairds and Ladies, and the PDF version have finally been published on ScottishLaird.com. This marks the first stage in the consultation on the plan, and all answers will contribute to the development of our plans for the building, grounds and bridge.

By Dixon-Spain

Watch the Scottish Laird site for news on the books (in particular our Lairds’ and Ladies’ and the PDF versions), and in the meantime enjoy the inside of the ScottishLaird welcome pack A4 folder. Gorgeous isn’t it? Lots of Dunans Rising tartan, lots of Lairds and Ladies taking the tour, and lots of new information researched through the plan.

By Dixon-Spain

Join our intrepid guide Colin, on a tour which tells the tale of Dunans over the last 500 years.

Today a party of 15 learned about the history of the building, the fire in 2001, the bridge and the tallest tree in the UK (it is!).

By Dixon-Spain

As is obvious from the picture, this is not a trivial task. The GPS coordinates we’re generating have to be processed using excel, then a text editor, and then parsed into SQL. At the same time, we’re relating the coordinates to specific plot numbers according to the schematic we drew up right at the beginning of the project in December 2007. These things take time, and we are still calibrating the results, so its all not entirely accurate yet.

If you would like to get an idea of where your plot is, please visit our beta app, here.

By Dixon-Spain

Over the bank holiday we have been testing our new quadcopter mounted camera and this is a short excerpt of what we think will become an exciting and revealing tool for the restoration of the castle. We’re presently designing shots for a forthcoming ibook of the Conservation Plan.

By Dixon-Spain

That’s the printer’s ink, the new paper and the ozone of a press that I can smell … No, but really the proof is a live book printed by Lulu, ordered three days ago and received today – and it’s lovely and glossy and just beautiful.

We’re looking for a small Scottish printer at the moment to do a run of between 250-500 hardbacks with dust jackets. And that run will be the primary publication, but we’ll continue with the more expensive Lulu version to enable easy sales around the world.

The PDF version is also nearing completion, and that’ll be immediately available on the Scottish Laird website. It’s not as glossy, but all of the text is there, albeit in a more compressed typographical form!

By Dixon-Spain

We have a lot of requests from Lairds and Ladies for a GPS Coordinate of their plot when they come here for their tour (and actually alot of folk want to be able to see the exact location of their plot online too). So we have a small app which does exactly that.

At the moment, it will provide a result for all plots up to around N5400E1. You enter your plot number into the search box, and if there is a result, you are taken to googlemaps where a pin is dropped on the approximate location of the GPS coordinates (see picture above).

We say approximate because we are not entirely sure that Google plots GPS exactly right in our location.

Anyway, you can check your plot here.