Made an icon i've been planning for a while:

So. Working on re-building the map of the Hajasith. Thinking about latitude and longitude, and the Trade Culture systems thereof.

In Hajasith 2.x, the continent sat squarely on the north pole, and the Trade Culture completely encircled the north pole, covering all points of longitude, mostly between 80°N and 85°N, (by our system of latitude). This being the case, it seemed reasonable for them to count longitude in a full circle from 0-360° (well, 144ᵀ, they divide a circle arbitrarily into 144 units, instead of arbitrarily into 360 units), rather than having two half circles counted out from the center of attention, and meeting at the center of unattention (like our system).

I later came to the conclusion there were more problems with them being that close to the pole than I had previously thought about, and that I didn't want to deal with some of those problems, and decided to re-work the continent (and astrophysical set-up) so that the Trade Culture was mainly between 50°N and 75°N instead.

Or course a full circle around the pole is a much larger area at these latitudes than in the previous set-up, and now the Trade Culture known world covers only ~150° of longitude, less than half a circle, rather than fully encircling the pole.

This makes the system where the full circle is counted seem less reasonable. Why use a system that forces you to count through a half circle you never use, leaving you with the numbers 0-36ᵀ and 120-144ᵀ in use, and have to think about 36-120ᵀ, but never use that range?


Poll #1484638
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 1

How should Trade Culture count longitude?

*Their latitude system is a bit like this, in that it has no set way to deal with latitudes south of the equator, and there are two different obvious extensions of the system past the equator. But no one in this cultural framework has ever been near the equator, much less south of it, so this is much more theoretical than the longitude problem, which affects the entire Elfholt and half the Iravn Badlands, unless... hmm: 4th option added.

I have a spreadsheet which already has the formulae for options 1-3, option 4, just thought up, would require a little more work on the map, and a new version of the formulae.

Wrath unique earnable skill point standing:
4950/4950 (100%)
1650/1650 (100%)
6400/6400 (100%)
370/400 (92.50%)
Total: 13,332/13,400 (99.78%)

Behatne hit 80 today, and then beat trolls about the head with clubs until my last weapon skill was maxed.

Just lockpicking left to go. Unfortunately, this requires yet a 4th level 80.

Wrath unique earnable skill point standing:
4946/4950 (99.92%)
1650/1650 (100%)
6366/6400 (99.47%)
370/400 (92.50%)
Total: 13,332/13,400 (99.49%)

ETA: nnooiissee points out that's 1% of 1% away from being able to round to 100%! Quickly, to the two-handed mace mines!

In other warcraft news, Zerafina and Kelea got a bike!



I'd post more pictures, but my old Photoshop doesn't work since getting system 10.6 :-/

Just watched Prince of Egypt. It's one of the last movies we bought on VHS, unfortunately. But I got Road to El Dorado from Netflix recently, and then decided to get Prince of Egypt, too. It's a really good movie.

In the Parting the Sea scene, there's the shadow in the water that creates the impression of a whale. I was about to say, "I don't think there are whales in the Red Sea", when Jen pointed out its tale goes the wrong way. Rewinding, it actually is the silhouette of a shark.

I said, "There are almost certainly sharks in the Red Sea, but I don't think that big."

But actually, there are Whale Sharks in the Red Sea, which get up to 40 feet long. I think the shape was maybe a little bigger than that, but in all, surprisingly reasonable!

Of course, there used to be whales in the Red Sea. The Red Sea is one of the remnants of the Tethys (my favorite prehistoric body of water!), where whales first became whales. Which is why some of the proto- and early whale fossils come from Egypt (though the best come from Pakistan).

So I've been levelling Raljinda up as a healer (discipline priest*). And as a healer, of course, i'm best in a group, so I've been levelling up by finding pick-up groups and doing pre-80 instances, up the chain.

Now, Aodhan (my hunter main) was doing a lot of heroic pugs a month or so ago, and I had a reasonably good experience, which turned me back onto them, after hating them for a long time. But with Aodhan, we'd burn through the heroics, finish up, collect emblems, and 10 minutes later, I'd have forgotten the names of the people I did it with.

But Raljinda is having a very different experience. I've started adding a bunch of people I'm playing with to my friends list, cause I've really liked playing with them, specifically.

Now, it's tempting to attribute that to Raljinda's personality differences. Ao, the character, doesn't give a shit about anyone whose not tribe. Raljinda on the other hand, likes all kinds of people.

But it probably has more to do with some combination of other factors:
*Healing makes me a much more integral part of a team. I pay attention to everyone, take care of them, evaluate their capabilities and needs****.
*There's a smaller pool of people levelling through instances, so I see them more. This is true, but I think not enough to account for too much.
*People who level with instances are specifically making a choice to play in groups, when they could probably be progressing faster solo, so they might be on average more gregarious people.

Of course, there have been a few exceptions. The other day, we had the worst DK tank imaginable for doing Halls of Stone. Couldn't hold agro, couldn't mitigate his incoming damage. So I had to heal him all out to compensate for him not doing his job, plus heal everyone else all out to compensate for him not doing his job. But even there, I made friends with the hunter leading the party who was very patient with the DK, trying to teach him which abilities he should be using, and tanking with his Devilsaur when the tank went down.

And then there was the DtK run a few days before that. That party was just complete moron-asshats. The tank there wasn't holding agro either. And the dps weren't avoiding AoE, or doing anything to keep from taking agro. So people took massive damage and I ran out of mana. And then the tank ran down the hall and pulled a really nasty group while I was drinking. At which point it was a foregone conclusion we were wiping. And then they kicked me from the party for not keeping people alive.

But let's not think about that! Raljinda has been really digging his pugs. Especially today's. We had a group that was a little low level for Violet Hold, and we kicked its ass. So we went up to Drak'tharon Keep. After the 3rd boss, we were giving the tank a hard time for making it too easy :-p He went and pulled three groups at once, and we died. But the 'lock pulled off a last minute rapid soulstone on me, so it was barely even a wipe. After kicking DtK's ass too, even more underlevel, we went on to Gundrak, and kick its ass, twice.

The tank was totally awesome. Pulling off crazy mitigation, and never losing adds. And I, of course, was also totally awesome. Though most of the time I didn't have enough people to heal. But when sudden bursts hit, and I actually had to pay attention, I kept everyone up then too.


*He's a priest of Bondadi**; his priests are mostly discipline and shadow. Raljinda used to be shadow in his wild youth, but as he's matured, he gravitated more to discipline.

**You should see his bone collection!

*** As opposed to Aodhan, whose job is mostly to stand back and shoot things in the face until they stop being a problem, and watch over her pet lion, Hama. And occasionally to say, "who me? no it was the tank who was shooting those arrows at you!" (Misdirect)

----
Wrath unique earnable skill point standing:
4933/4950 (99.66%)
1650/1650 (100%)
6307/6400 (98.55%)
365/400 (91.25%)
Total: 13,255/13,400 (98.92%)

cf. Skill Caps, pt. 4

In WoW 2.x (Burning Crusade), there were 11,475 unique earnable skill points, in four categories. Of which I had all of them by the time WoW 3.x (Wrath of the Lich King) came out.

Category 1: Primary Professions
BC total: 375 points × 10 professions = 3750 points.
Wrath increased the cap on all professions to 450, and added an 11th
Wrath total: 450 × 11 = 4950
I currently stand at 4932/4950

Category 2: Secondary Skills
BC total: 375 × 3 plus 300 = 1425
Wrath increased the cap on the 3 up to 450; riding remains capped at 300
Wrath total: 450 × 3 plus 300 = 1650
I currently stand at 1650/1650

Category 3: Weapon Skills
BC total: 350 × 16 = 5600
Wrath increased the cap on all weapon skills to 400
Wrath total: 400 × 16 = 6400
I currently stand at 6306/6400

Category 4: Rogue Skills
BC total: 350 × 2 = 700
Wrath removed the poisons skill, and increased the lockpicking cap to 400
Wrath total: 400
I currently stand at 365/400

Wrath unique earnable skill point standing:
4932/4950 (99.64%)
1650/1650 (100%)
6306/6400 (98.53%)
365/400 (91.25%)
Total: 13,253/13,400 (98.90%)

2D Goggles: The Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
by Sydney Padua
"So Historically Accurate, it's Almost a Documentary!"

Collected here for Your Convenience

Lovelace: Origins parts 1&2

Model Sheets, etc.
Brunel, Wolverine of the Early Victorians
Babbage, Mad Genius with a Difference
Ada Lovelace, the Byronic Woman


Lovelace and Babbage vs. the Economy!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Fanciful Interludes
Lovelace and Babbage vs. the Organist
Lovelace and Babbage vs. the Salamander People
The Person from Porlock

Charles Babbage predicts the Future, for BBC's Techlab

Babbage and Lovelace (sic) vs. the Client
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The new Dresden Codak is totally awesome. Admittedly, more to me than most other people, but even so!

Just look at the shapes of those jaws! Gorgonopsids alright!

Also: GIP

One of the highlights of jarsofwind's wedding reception was the bouquet tossing. The bouquet ended up with the most hilarious person. Not that bemaddy is necessarily the least likely person to get married next, but that she would never willingly catch the bouquet, much less actually try to.

As the unmarried woman were gathering up for the bouquet toss, bemaddy went in to take a picture of the toss from the back right edge of the crowd. But jarsofwind's got a good throwing arm :p The bouquet bounced off the back wall (ceiling? couldn't tell) ricocheted back and bounced off bemaddy's head and landed at her feet. There really wasn't anything she could do but pick it up at that point.

As sarkat said, "In Soviet LA, bouquet catches you!"

When bemaddy's boyfriend came over shortly after, he looked at her and said, "I can't leave you alone for a minute!"

Later, bemaddy's friend Nan found us talking, having been out of the hall during the toss. As she walked up, she had this sort of quizzical, confused look on her face as if to say "Why is bemaddy holding flowers?" Then there was an obvious dawning across her face as she realized what she was seeing, and then promptly burst into laughter.

Another highlight was the fact that it was in the African Mammals Hall of the Natural History Museum. There honey badgers (with honey guides!) and elephants and cetera!

Sedes Draconis is back up and live! Extensions restored, permissions and other preferences reset, user list newly cleaned of spambots.

The images are all still MIA, and will have to wait for a while, but everything else should be restored and improved.

Thanks to kellan for wrestling with the maimed directory structure and doing a new install of mediawiki and database import!

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/vorkosigan/

It's real! I scribbled down and told people about so many times I had it memorized the line, still present in the description of the book: "Now you can enter the world of Miles Vorkosigan. Play his soldiers, his agents, his comrades. Play Miles himself, if you're up to the challenge . . . and if you think you can dare as much, and talk as fast, as the 'little Admiral.'" about eight years ago.

I had Danielle at Game*Alot keeping an eye out for the book from eight years ago until six years ago.

Now it's released! But it's only released in pdf yet, it's still at the printers for the hard copy.

I don't know which one to get. I want both!

On the way out of Up, ostone commented that there should have been one last "Squirrel!" joke at the end.

Driving out of the parking lot, sarkat and I both said "Squirrel! Stop, stop!"

There was the teeniest baby squirrel huddled against the curb of the parking lot, maybe the size of the palm of my hand, clearly alive, but not moving. We parked a little farther on, and walked back to it. When we got kind of close, it did finally move and scurry a little way off, over the curb and into the leaf litter, with no visible impediment.

Then I noticed that there was a big open field with ground squirrels in it just through the fence and across a maintenance road (so maybe 15-20 feet from where the squirrel currently was). That made a lot more sense. Ground squirrels are smaller than tree squirrels, and mobile at a younger age. I hadn't seen ground squirrels this side of the hill before.

So in conclusion, I'm pretty sure it was fine.

The server hosting Sedes Draconis broke. Repairs are delayed.

Watching Titan A.E. with a large portion of the core gaming group (that is, the people who live here plus honorary housemate antilles1382). We started casting the characters in the movie by whose character they would be in a game.

*Stith: kalliza
**Cranky, self-suficient and singleminded. Most interaction with the cute character. Similarities to Faye most obviously, also Ahrain, maybe Ikuko (but I never really met Ikuko).
*Gune: me
**Obviously.
*Akima: sarkat
**Idealistics, scrappy background, cute brute force. Some pieces from J.C., Rashka, and the squippy girl archetypal.
*Cale: ostone
**Sort of a jack of all trades. And smartass. Lots of luck. Galvin + Glen + some Ævondell.
*Preed: miatauro
**Conflict with the rest of the party, snarky. Definitely some pieces of Frank and Revi.
*Korso: antilles1382
**Han Solo-esque: brash, indecisive, assistant to main character.

Possibly with miatauro and antilles1382 co-dm'ing and playing those last two as npcs.

Ran out of characters before getting one to emerald_moon519. So, the core people of our gaming group are greater in number than the characters of the movie :p The other option is that emerald_moon519 is dm'ing :p and miatauro and antilles1382 have special deals with the dm.

Feel free to add to the description of whys.

Yesterday was wildlife day at the apartment: fruit flies and baby squirrels. These are different in every regard:

Fruit flies:
Very annoying
Lots of them
All over, in the apartment
But given that we have fruit flies, we've got (I think) the coolest species to have, Drosophila melanogaster itself (the standard genetics experiment fly)

Baby squirrels:
Very cute
Not many (I don't think, but:)
Hiding, not in the apartment
But given that we have baby squirrels, probably the least cool species to have. I'd like to think they were Sciurus griseus (the western gray), but they're almost certainly actually S. carolinensis, a nasty invader from the east.

In other news, we're starting to have actually furniture in our room. We spent 6 hours assembling our bed on Thursday, picked up miatauro's old dresser on Friday, and took a bookshelf and a file cabinet off ceolrince's hands on Saturday.

Though the file cabinet was for ostone and the bookshelf didn't end up in our room either, it turned out to be a better fit for the living room, we moved the dvds which were previously forming a small wall across the living room to it.

Topics of discussion in my book seemed to me to obviously raise a question, but the author seems not to have agreed, cause he doesn't directly address it.

The Romans were pretty big on birthday celebrations. During the Julian calendar reform, people were very concerned about making sure they figured out when their birthday really was in the new calendar.

But the pre-Julian calendar had month intercalation. That is, some years would have an extra month inserted between February and March (in the Julian reforms, the standard year length was increased to the point where only one day had to be added between February and March, more or less the familiar situation).

So, what did Romans born during an intercalary month do to celebrate their birthdays? (Or, more accurately, due to the oddities of the Roman calendar, what did people who were born in the time bewtween the Ides of February and the Ides of Intercalaris do).

What about other people who use or used calendars with intercalary months, notably including lunisolar calendars such as the Chinese, Hebrew, or Iranian calendars. I don't know how much attention is given to birthdays (specifically birth anniversaries*) in those calendars. People using the Chinese calendar do seem to pay at least some attention to birthdays, based on a couple pieces of evidence.

Does anybody know anything?


*Ancient Greeks paid some attention to birthdays, but not as anniversaries, not yearly birthdays. Instead, they tracked and had minor celebrations every month, on the day of the month they were born on. For example, the 10th of every month.

Let's see. It's been a while since my last confession. Trying to remember back that far.

Our mattress delivery was scheduled for Friday morning between 9 and 11. So I got up around 8 or 8:30, and started preparing for that. I planned to move sarkat and bed (air mattress) to emerald_moon519's as yet empty room around 8:45; and momentarily checked when I was unable to open that door, thinking it was locked. After a bit of worrying, I remembered that it was just sticky, and got it opened, and moved sarkat.

The mattress came pretty shortly after nine, and everything as fine with delivery. Unpacking I was briefly concerned since the "under penalty of law, tag not to be removed except by customer" was all ripped up and mostly gone. But the real warranty tag was intact on the other side, so I'm pretty sure it's fine.

Then ostone and I went over to his old apartment to work on clearing stuff out, and left sarkat sleeping at the apartment. We came back around 12 and found that antilles1382 and (later information) miatauro had come over while we were gone to drop off some of emerald_moon's furniture, and left it in the living room, having found sarkat sleeping in emerald_moon's room.

Then we realized that the TV was going to be delivered in an hour or two so we'd need to move sarkat, so we could get the furniture out of the way to get the tv in. About 10 minutes later, the TV arrived early, so we quickly shuffled that around, and put in the new 46" TV.

ostone gloried in his new TV for awhile, and we had our teleconference at 1:00.

Then we went back for another trip of stuff from ostone's, with a stop at In N' Out; while sarkat went out shopping at various places.

Then it was starting to get close to game, but ostone decided if we could get a load in antilles' truck from storage direct to storage, that would vast speed things up, so four of us zoomed over there and loaded up as much as possible out of the storage and back over.

sarkat got back to the apartment while we were out and called to say "I thought we were gaming here tonight, but it's almost game time there's no one at all here!" and I said "we'll be right back there!"

Then miatauro and kalliza came over for game, and we ordered pizza in cause many people hadn't had dinner yet, but also many people had no interest in putting shoes back on and going anywhere anymore. Also miatauro and kalliza brought us some loaves of bread from kalliza's parent's sourdough bakery in Oregon.

Then we had game (star wars). We are the worst pirates you've ever heard of. Incredible run of bad decisions and bad luck in trying to ambush another ship and board and take their cargo. A couple of us, Lopima (me) and Ash (kalliza) ended up in hard vacuum for a few seconds as we
A) failed to pull of the ambush, and they shut the airlock with half of us on their ship and half not;
B) I failed to open the airlock back up with Mechanics check that used both of my re-rolls on, downgrading a 6 (on a d20) down to a 1, and then a second 1, resulting in a critical failure, so I mostly just welded it shut instead of opening it; and
C) the pilot failed to engage our magnetic grapple three or four turns in a row (from point blank range, we're thinking it took him a few tries to remember to turn on the magnet at the same time as firing the grapple);
and they ripped our umbilical pulling away.

I think we did eventually subdue their ship, but I was exhausted and fell asleep shortly before that.

Also, we found out yesterday that our dsl might take siginificantly longer to activate than previously understood.

We slept at the new place, so never got back to the internet for that night.

sarkat, on things to pack for spending the night at the new place: "my scale,... Ulysses S. Grant,...".

In the morning, sarkat went to yoga, while I stayed at the internet and went through my mail and got some work done for the first time in a couple days.

Then we were thinking about lunch plans and called ostone and he said he and Chris were just about to bring a load of stuff to the new place and then think about lunch, too.

So we went over to meet them at the new place. After some unpacking, and much dithering, we headed back to iHop for lunch, with the plan to go directly to iKea right after that*. We sort of went directly to Ikea for certain definitions of direct. We ended up spending an hour in gridlock on University Avenue after some indecision/confusion about what the best exit might be.

Later we would say, "That's part of why this day felt so long: the four years of University in the middle."

Ikea went on too long. I was well past ready to not be standing anymore by the time we left. Also, it was past closing time when we left.

And, uh, some other stuff. But I'm going to post this now before the wireless fades out again.


*(sic on the iHop and iKea)

Apartment continues to not have internet. So still sleeping at sarkat's, and still only having a chance to update when it's bedtime. Because we've got almost everything necessary to live there, but not quite because we're still missing the internet and the booze, and you gotta have one or the other and I don't drink, so it'll have to be the internet.

Moved ostone's heavy furniture today, so there's now the outlines of living room furnishing, which is nice. Couch, dining room table and chairs, wine rack (empty), ostone's giant monitor acting as a place holder for his gianter tv to be delivered Friday. We also get our mattress on Friday.

The two-year old in the next door apartment came over to say hi to us when we arrived. And her father came out to tell ostone he better not be having any parties cause he's got a two year old, when ostone arrived.

My back hurts.

antilles1382 and I put away ostone's books on bookshelves while he was returning the uhaul, alternating between helpfully sorting them for him, and just sticking them on shelves on the theory he'd probably want to sort them for himself.

We ran some dishes in the dishwasher, including the components of my new toaster over (the components, not the elements, mind you). Then I baked the plastic smell out of it for a while. Hopefully it will stop stinking soon.

Speaking of which, there are a couple oddities in the shower. There is a place where the enamel of the tub seems to be partly melted in an area the size of a quarter. Not near the water input mind; so how do you melt a single spot in your bathtub? Also, there is a weird-ass pvc pipe sticking out of the wall, into the shower. It is weird-ass.

We spent some time at Fry's, then spent quite a while driving across the city to spend 5 minutes at a different Fry's that had what ostone was looking for in stock.

Watched some "How I Met Your Mother", when to get pizza, the traditional reward for moving help, then watched some "Sports Night" (more Sorkin).