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| This is quite interesting - a DVD duplicating machine (without drives) for £22 plus delivery. Bung in a DVD drive and DVD writer, say £30 for the pair, and you're in business. If I didn't already own a CD duplicator for the games stuff I'd be very interested. http://www.svp.co.uk/technology/periphe | ||||||
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Meme-Free Zone
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November 30th, 2009
November 29th, 2009
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| This is a BtVS / Gerry Anderson crossover. Enjoy... ( Departure ) Comments please before I post to archives. | ||||||||
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Spotted by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} autopopeDaleks in Need | ||||||
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November 28th, 2009
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| ...was a BIG success - sold several things and made some money for me and raised £6.40 for Cancer Research UK from my game table, and the stuff I put in the charity auction raised £74 for children's charities. That was small beer compared to e.g. £200 each for an advance copy of Cubicle 7's Dr. Who RPG (delayed in customs so it wasn't available at the con) and a boxed set of GW's Rogue Trader Warhammer RPG, £150 (I think) for a Planescape belt buckle, etc. etc. Both games I ran were maxed out on players. The team for A Ceres of Unfortunate Events managed to get through it, do the things I'd planned, and survive more or less intact. And Earth Girls Aren't Easy went really well considering that it's mainly a player-driven scenario and I was running it from about fifty words of notes; basically all I did was provide several characters with some back story and things to hide etc., then sit there, stirring things a little occasionally, and providing clues etc. if things slowed down. The players managed to screw themselves comprehensively through a mixture of greed, a few really bad dice rolls, and very good role playing. It's definitely going into the book. And amazingly both games were played with virtually no violence - three characters were punched in Earth Girls... at different points, that was it. Just shows that it can be done. | ||||||||
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November 27th, 2009
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| ( minor spoilers ) | ||||||||
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November 24th, 2009
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| For reasons not unconnected to molly_brown's recent infection of my brain with a particular tune, I seem to be using a picture of Lady Gaga for one of the player characters in Earth Girls Aren't Easy. Another will probably be Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars). Not sure about the male characters yet, but I think they will be equally famous faces. | ||||||
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| I need a group of characters for Earth Girls Aren't Easy, which I'll be running on Saturday. Everything that follows is spoilers, don't read on if you plan on playing. ( SPOILERS ) | ||||||||
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November 22nd, 2009
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| Pointed out by various friends - Charlie's take on the Digital Economy Bill, the latest and most vicious attempt to stop file sharing and ensure that organised crime has a monopoly on bootleg DVDs etc., and where to go to sign a petition against it. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-st | ||||||
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| OK, let's say up front that I know that this isn't how atomic power really works. It's my best guess as to how Weinbaum thought it worked. Does this seem vaguely plausible from the perspective of 1930s SF? ( Atomic Blasts ) Remember, I want something that might seem plausible by 1930s SF standards, not hard SF! | ||||||||
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November 21st, 2009
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| Spotted by ps238principal Absolutely beautiful little simulation - what would the Earth be like if it had rings? | ||||||
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November 19th, 2009
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| The section on space travel technology etc. in the Weinbaum RPG is going to be called Between Planets, a title I'm nicking from Heinlein. What I want is something similar for the (large) section that describes the solar system and aliens etc. - currently it's just called The Solar System which is accurate but just a bit bland. Doesn't have to be a Heinlein title, anything will do if it has the right ring to it, though a period SF reference would be nice. The other section titles I have so far, incidentally, are Load Up On Guns (Friends Optional) for the weapons section Love and Rockets for the section on romance. I could also do with a good overall title for the adventures section. Anyone got any ideas? | ||||||||
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November 13th, 2009
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| This time I'm trying for the look of the internal illos on a Heinlein juvenile ( The Red Peri near Pluto ) For some reason I can't remember the name of the artist used for the Heinlein books - anyone know off-hand? | ||||||||
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November 9th, 2009
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| Either I'm missing something or Weinbaum got the most easily calculated detail of his description of Pluto badly wrong. If Pluto is about 30 AU from the Sun at its closest, it receives 1/30*30 = 1/900th the amount of heat and light as Earth. Wikipedia seems to confirm this by saying that Earth receives about 1.4 KW per square meter, Neptune gets about 1.5 W per square meter. At its closest Pluto is slightly closer than Neptune. So, when Weinbaum describes Pluto and claims that "high noon was hardly brighter than full moonlight on Earth," I think he's got it badly wrong. The trouble is that he hasn't got it wrong the way I initially thought - Wikipedia says that the full moon is about 500,000 times fainter than the sun, so noon on Pluto is about 600 times brighter than the full moon on Earth. It's counter-intuitive, but I think it's right. It's still dim light, a few hundred Lux compared to 20,000+ for a bright day on Earth, but we're looking at the same order of magnitude as an overcast day or an office with reasonably good lighting. Now I have to explain this away as an illusion caused by the tiny size of the sun in the sky (or something). | ||||||||
| comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
November 8th, 2009
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| This one's a "Caterpillar-beast" from Uranus, basically a series of six-legged animals that join together to look for food - they're blind (sight isn't actually much use because the planet is always covered in dense mist limiting visibility to about 50ft) and the leader uses its "sensory disc" (the sucker thingy at the front end of its body) to seek food. Once they find it they attack in a continuous chain of teeth and sharp claws. Their nervous systems are linked so they essentially become one animal. As usual some jagged edges etc. should be invisible in the book, since it's going to be reproduced pretty small. ( caterpillar beast ) The idea was later used by James White in one of his Sector General books, the second collection of Ambulance Ship stories I think. That's almost the last creature, apart from some living crystals from Pluto, basically nanobots with an appetite for metal, carbon, etc. Next I start on the tech side of things, space travel, etc. which will hopefully go a bit faster. Incidentally, does "Load Up On Guns (Friends Optional)" sound good as a title for the section on weapons? | ||||||||
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| I'll be running two adventures at Dragonmeet 2009 Slot: AM Slot System: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril Adventure title: A Ceres of Unfortunate Events The Smithsonian Institution needs scientists and other personnel for an interesting mission - exploring the water-filled interior of the asteroid Ceres. Somehow the adventurers have exactly the right combination of skills they're looking for. It's the opportunity of a lifetime... just hope it isn't the final opportunity of your lifetime. 3-6 players 2-3 hours characters provided. Slot: PM Slot System: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril Adventure Title: Earth Girls Aren't Easy After the mysterious death of a mine owner, his daughter must travel to Titan to unravel his affairs and get the mine back into production. Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to make sure that she doesn't rock the boat too much. Titan has a lot of secrets, and it will be a disaster if some of them come out... 3-6 players 2-3 hours characters provided. As usual I'll also be selling stuff for charity. If I understand things correctly I'll be in the basement near the stairs - same place as last year. Hope I'll see some of you there. | ||||||||
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November 6th, 2009
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| It occurred to me today that all of Weinbaum's stories involve romance, but I've written very little into the adventures etc. Bearing in mind that Weinbaum's idea of meeting cute was for the couple to meet, trek a couple of hundred miles through swamps while arguing furiously and blowing away frequent monsters, then escape death by inches just before reaching safety, I really ought to have some in there somewhere. So I'm trying to come up with a few ideas, probably to be included in a short chapter devoted to romantic plots and sub-plots, rather than the main adventures. So far I've got Earth Girls Aren't Easy When the owner of Titan's main gold mine is killed, his daughter ships out from Earth to take over the family business. Needless to say most of the single men on Titan (pop. 50) are VERY interested, but she has ideas of her own - and a lethally fast trigger finger. The Best Little Whore-House on Deimos Speaks for itself, but I suspect not quite the right type of romance (which isn't really the right word)... The Princess Bribe While visiting Mars / Venus / some other colony a Russian princess (or whatever) decides that she has had enough of the decadence of Earth and wishes to experience the adventurous life as a pioneer. Our intrepid heroes are hired to make life unpleasant for her, but harmlessly so, with the goal of persuading her to return to Earth and resume her royal duties. Of course things won't be that easy... Any other suggestions? Later Just realised that the perfect title for this section is, of course, Love and Rockets | ||||||||
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November 3rd, 2009
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| One especially for fluffcthulhu and his brain-sucked minions... | ||||||
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November 2nd, 2009
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| I have a small problem with the HTML version of The New Adam I'm preparing for the Weinbaum RPG; I didn't do the first pass HTML conversions (and haven't been able to get in touch with the guy who did it) and now can't find my copy of the book. While I've tidied it as much as I can, there's a very long chunk at the end which is all italics, and I'm pretty sure shouldn't be. I think some of it ought to be italics, I'm just not sure which bits. Does anyone have a copy and the time to take a look and see if they can sort this for me? Later Never mind, turned out to be a fairly obvious coding error; a block of italics that was ended with another <i> instead of </i> | ||||||||
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November 1st, 2009
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| As regular readers will know, there are some problems with Weinbaum's Flight on Titan, when compared to the other stories of the Planetary sequence. Basically, the background is similar, but dates don't match up, Venus and Mars are described differently, and so forth. It's a bit of a nuisance, but it was easy enough to ignore the discrepancies for game purposes. Except that it suddenly occurred to me that there might be something I could do with them... ( Adventure Idea: Time-Slip on Titan ) I'm rather pleased with that one. | ||||||||
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This is the native intelligent species on Titan, described as looking like a seal, and only a little more intelligent. So I've gone with a three-clawed seal with eyes adapted for very low light. I may mess around with the colours a little, but it works pretty well as is. | ||||||||
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October 31st, 2009
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This is another creature, this time from Titan. It's an ice-ant, basically three-inch long three-legged thingies that live in teeny tunnels under the ice, make domes over their hives to melt ice to water, farm fungus, and mind their own business. They're tool users (to the extent of using leaves as sleds) and have some sort of intelligence, possibly a hive mind. It's going to be reproduced pretty small so some minor outlining etc. probably won't be noticeable. | ||||||||
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| Just watching the Prof. Nutt thing re cannabis etc. on the news; Gordon Brown really is staggeringly inept, isn't he... All he really needed to do was say "thanks, we'll consider it the next time we look at this legislation" then forget about it for a few months. Or better yet, do something about it. But no, not a chance. Roll on the next election... | ||||||
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October 30th, 2009
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| By Monday I need to work out a schedule for four technicians working on two sites, two people on each site, so that if possible everyone works with everyone else at some point. Initially there's a seven week term, with things starting up again after Christmas, it'll probably be easiest if I treat each term as a separate entity. Ideally I'd like to do this in two week blocks with overlap, so that e.g. I would be on one site in week one and two, another technician would be with me in week one then on the other site in weeks 2 and 3, and so forth. The reason for this is so that there will be someone at each site who knows what was happening there the previous week and some continuity of work. I've tried to block this out in a spreadsheet, but if I can make it work at all I always seem to end up with a result that has two people never working together, which isn't ideal from the point of view of team building, training, etc. Anyone got any suggestions on ways of making it work? Preferably with people spending equal amounts of time at each site? It doesn't necessarily have to be two week blocks if there's some way of doing it by another means, but it does need to be whole weeks, not parts of a week (we've tried it that way and it isn't working), and hopefully something that people can understand easily and will understand to be fair. Is there some sort of (preferably free) software that will do this? Or some simple planning technique I've missed? Later I asked this on the ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} ljgenie community and someone came up with a good method. One person alternates weeks at each site, the other three do three-week sessions. On the example below B is the person alternating every week - after the first two weeks everyone else is on three-week sessions. Works best if it's continued after the Xmas break, but we'd be doing that anyway.1: AB|CD 2: AD|BC 3: BD|AC 4: CD|AB 5: BC|AD 6: AC|BD Translated into my actual needs, I get this, where T,A, and J are the other technicians. A ends up being B for these purposes, she's the least experienced and keeping her moving and getting her trained ASAP works pretty well.  | ||||||
| comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
October 29th, 2009
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| SVP are selling a 16" LCD freeview TV with built in DVD player for £99.99 - made by Alba, so probably a reasonably OK but not inspired build quality. HD ready rather than true HD, if it was just a 19" or so screen I'd be quite tempted to buy it for this room, and move the 15" TV/DVD and freeview box I currently have in here to my bedroom. As it is it feels reasonably priced but not enough extra capability to justify the expense. http://www.svp.co.uk/electrical/av-h | ||||||
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| Gacked from vae_editor; Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald," which does a wonderful job of merging Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft, has been put on line in a rather nice PDF version: http://www.neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/ex Well worth a look. | ||||||
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October 28th, 2009
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| This is Weinbaum's version of Titan's days etc.: ( Titan swung endlessly... ) To say that I'm finding it fairly difficult to work with is an understatement - it's vitally important to the plot of the only story Weinbaum set there, but I can't figure out any easy way that it works. Basically, in the real universe Titan is tidally locked to Saturn, and takes 16 days per orbit. Saturn rotates in 10.6 hours. Titan is eclipsed fairly often, and in multiple orbits when it happens, but the longest eclipse is only 6 hours. Now, if I ignore the exact times given I can more or less explain this by a rotating Titan and some sort of climactic shift when Titan is nearest and furthest from the Sun. The eclipse thing can be handwaved away, I think. But I need a mechanism for the regular climate changes and I can't think of anything obvious. Titan is described as having a dense atmosphere, mostly Xenon plus some oxygen, if that helps. I'm assuming that it gets some of its warmth from Saturn (which in the Weinbaum universe is moderately hot), some from internal radioactivity, and some from the sun. Any suggestions? Or should I just begin "for unknown reasons..."? later just realised that if I say Titan has an axial tilt I can explain most of this as seasons related to the heat received from Saturn and the sun, similar to the shifting of the trade winds on Earth. If I keep it vague is it vaguely plausible? | ||||||||
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October 24th, 2009
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| Pointed out by frostfox http://slapnickgriffin.co.uk/ Go on, you know you want to... Now if I could only do this to the arse who sells signed posters of the bugger on Ebay UK and keeps popping up in my search for laboratory equipment manufacturer Griffin and George I would be VERY happy. | ||||||
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October 23rd, 2009
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| Adding a download option for buying the FF CD-ROM has definitely been a good idea. Since I added it 60% of sales have been downloads and without working it out in detail I'm pretty sure I've actually come out very slightly ahead, since most have been overseas sales and I'm saving a lot on postage. The total raised for charity is slightly less than it would have been since it's 10% of a smaller fee, I'll probably round things up a little to make up for that. Now a little annoyed I didn't do it earlier, but I've only had the space and bandwidth available for about a year. | ||||||||
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| This is a part of a series of Saint crossovers; this is the only one to involve the Good Omens universe. The other stories can be found here. For the purposes of this story Simon Templar is the version described by Leslie Charteris in the 1940s. All characters belong to their respective creators etc., there is no intent to infringe on copyright. This story may not be distributed on a profit-making basis. | ||||||||
| comments: 17 comments or Leave a comment |
October 18th, 2009
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| Am I wrong to feel really happy that I can legitimately call one of the nastier creatures on Ganymede, which is essentially a silicon based life form that behaves like a rock crusher with hypnotic powers, a "Black monolith"? | ||||||||
| comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
Meme-Free Zone
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