ArniesAirsoft News

Rather nice news from Airsoft International is that we’ve won the award “For Outstanding Contribution to Airsoft 2010” in the AI Industry Awards.

I’m told by Paul over at Airsoft International that they received over 3500 voting papers this year which averaged at 22 votes per issue sent out.

I don’t know the exact figures but it’s always a welcome news to know that we’ve helped someone somewhere and to be thanked for it. We’ve been here over 10 years and that just wouldn’t be possible without backing from the community.

So a big thank you to all that voted in the AI Industry Awards this year!

As I write this I feel somewhat stunned and unsure what to write.

Galactica_tb may be known to some of you. He was a longstanding Arnies regular and a stalwart of the IRC chatroom, where he could be found offering advice on anything from airsoft to audio choices.

Galactica_tb had been in hospital for the past few months after suddenly experiencing a collapsed lung due to fluid. While recovering from this, a rare blood cancer was found, forcing him to undertake lengthy chemo. Throughout all this time he continued to visit the chat whenever he felt up to it, maintaining his characteristic sense of humour despite his considerable discomfort.

Sadly we’ve just received the news that his other lung collapsed today, killing him.

This news is very raw so I apologise if this is not the most coherent of posts and that there is not, as we so often do in this tight-knit community, at present any suggestions for donating funds to charity – I will update this should his family request this. For now I simply wished to convey this news to the whole of Arnies so that we can, as a community share in our sadness at Galactica’s passing and convey our best wishes to his family.

I for one am now going to have a drink while I try to remember Galactica in happier times.

Bye mate. We’ll all miss you.

It’s Christmas, so I’d like to take the chance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and an enjoyable holiday (for those of you that aren’t working during the festive season).

Here’s looking forward to an equally enjoyable 2010!

An error cropped up with the SQL database for the forums. The database is being repaired at the moment and should be back working without issue very shortly. Sorry for the headache but these things do happen from time to time. Things should be back up in about 15 minutes.

Update 02/01/09: (2029  GMT) All seems to be fine now

Update 03/01/09: (1000  GMT) The quick fix/repair hasn’t held so I’m currently conducting a complete rebuild of the affected table. This has happened before so I’m pretty confident that this will set things back to where they should be. Forums will be unavailable while I do this. Expect it to take a few hours. Fix ETA 1400. So far 173k of 196k records done.

Update 03/01/09: (1407 GMT) Ok that’s 3Gb of data rebuilt and it should all be stable now. Forums back online.

Merry Christmas folks hopefully not many of you are working today and getting a chance to relax with your family and friends.

I’d just like to wish everyone best wishes for the festive period, this includes all our readers, supporters, news staff, the forum staff (that do all the hard work) and the pixies and three hamsters that keep the server running! :)

Hopefully I’ll get a few spare moments to get all the email I have from this week online over the next 48hrs. Apologies for anyone waiting on their news to be published but it’s manic here.