I'll just leave this here.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... urvey-says

Compare and contrast:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_B-1_Lancerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-160
I can has retcon please?  Besides: If Jet had been involved with the project one of the first things she would have looked at was Russian designs for their... sturdy man-machine interfaces.  Besides, unless I'm mistaken the Tupolev seems to have the actual interior space Knightsaber 1 would need.

One of the new anime series this winter season is definitely making an impact. It reminds me a bit of Excel Saga.
If you're curious about what it takes to conquer the world, take a look at World Conquest: Zvezda Plot (crunchy roll) (hulu)

...specifically, I'm looking for good apps for my 7" tablet I bought with Christmas money.
I already have Kingston Office, and a barcode scanner, and even a radio scanner (network streaming type). I'm open to a lot of things, but I'd specifically like a GPS program, a good sketch program that doesn't come from Autodesk and works with a stylus, and a really good offline map program. Anything past that would be gravy as far as I'm concerned.
Do note that one of my requirements is "will work when I'm not internet connected". If a program will say, "sorry, I need to load ads, you can't use me right now", it's a deal breaker. Ditto for anything that mandates I allow it to actively report my location to others.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

Christopher Malcolm http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/19 ... s_aged_67/]has passed away.

Who's Christopher Malcolm, you ask?  Rogue Two in Star Wars, and the original Brad Majors from the very first stage production of The Rocky Horror Show.  Oh, and Saffy's dad in Absolutely Fabulous.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

So I was tinkering with a few things... No! Wait! Let me explain! Not the bees NOT THE BEES

*ahem*

I was fiddling around with graphics this weekend & ended up redesigning the Convention flag a little. Not like a ground-up reworking or anything, just redid the center device to it looked a little less, ah, slapdash. I do like the spaceship & sun device, it's almost like the Fen have accidentally fallen into building a Galactic Empire. However, since it's a bit of a change from the one on the wiki I thought I'd put it up for comment before I did anything rash like replace it wholesale. So without further ado...

The current version, for reference purposes:


The redone version:


Whaddya think, sirs?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

So the lovely wife and the Darkling took a trip over the weekend.  TLW asked me to pen a note stating that I knew about the trip.  (A colleague of her was once hassled for taking a child across hill and dale without a note from the other parent.)  It struck me as an odd request, but I ran with it.
To Whom it may concern,

(That would be you, you nosey bastard.)

Robert Andrew Dark is travelling via
train with his mother, Cynthia Lynn Dark to visit my parents.

He is not being abducted, kidnapped,
absconded with, or otherwise removed from my presence without my
knowledge or permission.

He is also not being abducted by
aliens, as my lovely wife is from earth. Were it suddenly revealed
to be otherwise, I would be just as surprised as you; but also proud
as it means I would share at least one thing in common with Captain
James T. Kirk of the star ship Enterprise.

Andrew and his mother are not running
away to join the circus. There is a genetic predisposition in my
family to react to clowns, mimes, and sports mascots with sudden and
quite horrendous violence. Sure the thought of my offspring
co-opting a medium sized wheat thresher and driving it through a
congress of clowns, causing a bright, Pagliacci tinted rain is
wonderful; but no such activity is planned. Andrew is visiting his
grandfather to celebrate the senior Dark's birthday. If they are
planning a visit to the circus, I have no knowledge of it, and cannot
be held responsible for the terrible things than ensue.

My lovely wife has confirmed that she
has no intention of using the opportunity afforded by the trip to
sell Andrew to gypsies, the Blues Brothers, the black market organ
trade, the Denver Broncos, the People's Front of Judea (not the
popular front – splitters) or the shape-changing space-lizards
described by crackpot David Icke. Funny enough, we once tried to
sell David Icke, but E-Bay made us take down the sale.

Should you need to confirm any of this,
I can be reached at XXX-XXX-XXXX or by e-mail at [url=mailto:revdark@magma.ca[/url].
With the exception of two hours at the gym and an occasional foray
out to walk the dog, I will be power watching a season of Archer and
doing a jigsaw puzzle; which is the wild life of hedonism that I
indulge in in the absence of wife and child. There is also a new
season of Luther, but that may be too much.

Cheers,

Shayne Dark

P.S. Please do not let Andrew drive
the train, I have oft observed him playing with Thomas the Tank
Engine and his friends, and it can only end in tears.

...and other media.

I don't find anything in the outline about pop culture -- no comics, no movies, no music, no TV; the only mention of the word "media" is in the context of their occasionally bestowing super names. Which is kind of sad, because the history of pop culture in the IST world was one of the bits of sub-creation that really made it feel lived-in.

(Of course, I'm using the term "sub-creation" not in the Old Philologist's full meaning, that any "creative" act undertaken within the Primary World was merely a reuse of the materials wrought in the only truly Creative Act, but in the more common sense of corroborative detail intended to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing Secondary World.)

Some of this stuff, obviously, is going to be on the timeline; dare I hope other bits would be covered in the history-chapter sections for the time-frames they come out of? (The rise of the Big Five comics companies in the WWII section; M*A*S*H and "Psi in the House" in the late-70s section...)

Whether or not that's how it ends up working, this would be a good place to brainstorm. I've just signed onto the Release of Rights thread, so any new ideas I come up with are available for the Silverbook. (My brain just spat out that name for it; I have no regrets that I can detect.)

Hi. I'm Austin Loomis. Bob may, apparently does in fact, remember me from such io.iou characters as Zedd Staarlinn (and his family), Honey Trappe, and Wilhem Torkener (not to mention the Weird and Dark counterparts of all the above). He may also remember me from an email I sent him on CompuServe after buying GURPS IST, in which I blithely mistook parallel evolution (with the Wild Cards series) for wholesale drawing of inspiration.

Some of you may recognize my username and its source. I know Chris Davies will (if he's still here), because I used the term in replying to his very first post on alt.fan.sailor-moon.

Anyway, here I am, introducing myself. (Right on!)

What if you took the classic Breakout mechanic, but changed it to a polar coordinate system? You put a "mini black hole" in the middle of the screen, set the thigs to be broken up in rigs around t, and have a smallish paddle (say, 1/4 coverage of the starter hole) in to bounce the ball off of. The paddle stays the same width barring power-ups or debuffs, but the hole gets just a bit bigger with every piece of brick rubble that falls into it - you can disintigrate rubble into the paddle or absorb it to power fuel to move it out away from the hole in the middle or laser shots or whatever as well, but the main point is to slow down the growrg of the central hole, as the more it grows the less coverage your paddle provides and the less distance there is between it and the inner blocks to give you reaction time to catch and bounce the ball again. You could set the ball up to do slingshots and orbits around the hole back out to hit another brick, if you were good enough... expanding this into 3d would be even cooler, but I think it would become too hard to control to play reliably. Set up a random noise generator to place the bricks, and you can count levels cleared versus total time to score points, in classic arcade game "play until you die" (or the score counter overflows the byte length) style.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows