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).

It was a busy night. I remember a brief hypnogogic paralysis and fragments from 2 or 3 dreams.

When I was paralyzed, I hyperventilated to get sarket's attention, because that was the only muscles i could control.

Also, we officially took possession of our capital city today. Busy day, too.

Great big common space. Fairly small bedrooms. Moved some stuff of various people's in. The big stuff goes in tomorrow.

Blessed the new place with a watching of West Wing in the evening just before we went back to better furnished houses till tomorrow.

Sleep now.

Not much to do today. No longer at my house, but don't get the keys to the new place until tomorrow. at sarkat's parents in the meantime.

We tried going to Whole Foods to get lunch and sit in their sitting area with wireless and do work. This didn't go so well. I cut myself as bad as I ever having shaving getting ready. I was starving by the time the bleeding stopped.

At Whole Food, the refrigeration was going full blast, which I suppose is reasonable in a grocery store. But it meant it was very cold when you sat down, which I wasn't expecting and didn't have any warm clothes with me. On top of that, it was noisy so I couldn't hear, which is always stressful, and cups and napkins and stuff were in danger of blowing away in the air conditioning. I was ready to go after a half hour of work.

So I did the rest of Noblegarden in WoW, which is also this week (warcraft easter, which has been unavoidable detained for several weeks). Aodhan's all done with it. The hardest part was finding a female dwarf over 18 to put bunny ears on.

Moving Week, Day One

I packed up stuff this morning to take to the new apartment, since I left Santa Cruz today and won't be back until after we move in.

But I will be back in Santa Cruz in a week and a half, and most weeks thereafter. So for now, I only packed up basic essentials that I'll need in the next week, like The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time, Mammalology, and the complete works of Lois McMaster Bujold. (Including my copy of Hallowed Hunt! which I found hiding on a shelf in the hall.)

When we got to San Jose, we went to Sears for their extra mattress sale day. Though, if I understand it correctly, we could have bought the mattress on the normal sale on Friday, because it wasn't expensive enough to qualify for the extra sales.

So we own a mattress now! It won't be delivered until Friday, though, because they don't build it until you buy it. We own a mattress that doesn't exist yet. A mattress of the future!

For some reason recently, I was looking at this old post. Possibly while I was thinking about pterosaurs.

In the post I mention liking the West Wing episode "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail", and one actor in particular. I just re-watched that episode, and turns out that actor is also in The Man From Earth; in fact playing my 3rd favorite character in that; admittedly, out of a cast of eight, but following only the main character, and the guy played by old Jake Sisko.

Also, while I was opening up other episodes on that disk before watching, deciding if I wanted to watch more than one, I also caught a glimpse of another of the actors from The Man From Earth.

I decided not to watch the whole disk, but now I want to watch more. Or possibly watch The Man From Earth again.

Oh, i've also been meaning to post about 9 for a while. I saw a trailer for it in the theater a while back, and it was fascinating. Forgot about it for a while. Remembered vaguely. Did a google search for "ragdoll apocalypse" and found exactly what I was looking for :)

Here's the first trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/

It was also just mentioned at tor.com a quote from "9: The Creepy Doll Revolurion Continues"
"Elijah Wood voices the eponymous hero, leading an all-star cast of voice talent including Martin Landau, Jennifer Connelly, and my favorite weirdo, Crispin Glover (for those playing at home, that’s one hobbit, one Dracula, one Mistress of the Labyrinth, and one McFly. Awesome)"

Walton just did a re-read of the Vorksoigan saga in publication order, with a primary focus of looking it at a series that gets better as it goes along. I haven't looked at each piece yet, I'm collectiong them here partly so i can do just that (and partly, so you can!)

Also, because the post titles themselves are a fantastic collection

3/31: Weeping for her enemies: Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor


4/1: Forward Momentum: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice


4/2: Quest for Ovaries: Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos


4/3: Why he must not fail: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Borders of Infinity

4/5: What have you done with your baby brother? Lois McMaster Bujold's Brothers in Arms

4/6: Hard on his superiors: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game

4/7: One birth, one death, and the acts of pain and will between: Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar

4/9: All true wealth is biological: Lois McMaster Bujold's Mirror Dance

4/10: Luck is something you make for yourself: Lois McMaster Bujold's Cetaganda

4/13: This is my old identity, actually: Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory

4/14: But I'm Vor: Lois McMaster Bujold's Komarr

4/15: She's getting away! Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign

4/15: Just my job: Lois McMaster Bujold's Diplomatic Immunity

4/17: Choose again and change: Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosian saga

4/19: Every day is a gift: Lois McMaster Bujold's "Winterfair Gifts"

4/20: Interview with Lois McMaster Bujold about writing the Vorkosigan Saga

I'll probably do some responses to a few of these. Expect response to Cetaganda (or possibly Cetaganda+Diplomatic Immunity together) and quotes from the interview at the very least.

I saw a bumper sticker over the weekend that read: "Orthodox Christianity: 2000 Years"

I think it's reasonable to assume the intended reading is something to the effect of celebrating 2000 years of Orthodox Christianity.

And that's just silly. It's hard to see how you can justify talking about "orthodox" Christianity before the First Council of Nicea.

And even if you don't think the Ecumenical Councils are relevant when you start using the word orthodox, 2000 years ago, by standard convention, not only had the Ressurection not yet occured, but Christ wasn't even doing much teaching yet.

And at that point it's just ridiculous and clear that the statement is completely without any though behind it.

Somebody was wondering to me recently (I don't remember exactly who, chances are sarkat), "why are sea birds almost always black and white?" I didn't have anything to say at the time, but I was thinking about it yesterday and today.

I had some ideas, but I had some more questions, so I went looking around for answers today. I found a couple answers, but mostly I found that the questions I had are still up in the air.

Superficial discussions say that seabirds are black and white as camouflage, particularly aggressive camouflage: it helps them hide from their prey. I think that's true. But I also think that's fairly true of land birds. I think that is not sufficient to explain the magnitude of difference between land birds and sea birds. (Though it is worth noting that hawks and similar predatory birds tend to much drabber than other land birds.)

I think more to the point is that sea birds are, as a class, very sexually monomorphic. There tends to be small differences between the sexes. Notable black-and-white land birds are all corvids, which also have very low sexually dimorphism. So plumage color in land birds is probably largely an adaptation to sexual display (that's not a new and shocking statement); and it's probably expensive, either in development energy, or in camouflage opportunity costs, or both.

On the other hand, the gulls around here are notably sexually dimorphic in plumage, while still being basically greyscale: the males are stark white-and-dark-grey, the females are sort of pale grey all over. But it's still low-ish.

So, sea birds are grey because the have low sexual dimorphism, plus possibly some other reasons, too. Why do sea birds have low sexually dimorphism. Because they are overall more K-type than land birds. Why are seabirds more K-type? That's a good question. Size is probably a significant factor, seabirds have to be bigger. Patchy resources are probably a factor, as is distance between resources and nest sites.

In the end, my conclusion is: we know a lot of reasons it makes sense for seabirds to be how they are, but it's not enough to really explain the strong pattern of difference between land and seabirds that we observe.

I wrote an ElfQuest Reading Guide; a guide to all the publications (all freely available online!) and the information I think you should have in order to decide what to read and in what order. For people just starting, or people getting back into the series after a long absence.

It's now caught up with the most recent publications (from 2006). It's also now 37kb of text.

I may do a simplified guide for people who don't want to make decisions, just want me to tell them what to read in what order. Or a couple versions of the same with different thresholds for inclusion (with "minimal"/"streightest possible shot from beginning to end" and "all the best" versions).

I twittered earlier: "Oh man. Kings of the Broken Wheel #7. It doesn't get any better than that." The strokes the story is painted with is amazing; though I'll say no more.

And then comes Hidden Years, hard on it's heels. And the stories are almost as good, and the art is simply stunning. Simply the best.

And then we get to Hidden Years #6. Even knowing it was coming, it is such a profound disappointment. This is the beginning of the New Blood era, when new artists and writers take over. Under the supervision, but not the direct intervention of Wendy Pini.

It is the constant fight in ElfQuest fandom. The fanatics who say, "If it isn't Wendy, it isn't ElfQuest." And the other people, who join their voice with Richard to say, "for f*'s sake people, give it a rest and enjoy it."

Yeah, well. I'd love to enjoy it. I don't care that it's not done by Wendy, if they could do it as well. But they aren't doing it as well. In another story, I probably would call it well. It is technically good work. But it does not live up to the bar Wendy sets, it can't pass.

I know these stories. They form some of the bedrock of my aesthetics. I know when the characters look right, and when they don't. The characters change appearance, sometimes because for reasons in the world, sometimes for shifts in artistic style, but they were always true up to this point, and now they are false.

And I know when the story rings true, and when it doesn't; and the story of HY#6-7 falls flat. It is too neat, it contradicts what we already know, it is uneasy even in its own internal consistency.

I still want to know what happens, but there is a constant niggling, "wait, that's not right", and I can never quite accept them as canon.

I will continue to read, wherever the work is tolerable; Byam&Abrams&Barnett is tolerable (the first story of the Essential was not tolerable, it was hideous).

I hope for work beyond this that actually rings true; we shall see.

ETA: Hidden Years and Shards continued on, they probably got better as they went. They were fine. Aroree's face had mutated, but at least it was consistent in the new form. I felt annoyed and let down with Ember's personality sometimes in Hidden Years, I felt it didn't leave up to the promise she showed, but that's probably my problem.

New Blood... is horrible. I started where the canonical stories start, at #10, not the junk before that. It's still so bad, and getting worse. The art and writing are both really poor in quality and inconsistent both internally and with the rest of the world. The characters are flat caricatures. The jokes are recycled at 100 RPM. It stinks.

All the shrilling about people being prejudiced against Blair doesn't change anything. It' not prejudice, it's judgment. This series sucks.