They're holding the local Oktoberfest celebrations this weekend. Yes, I know it isn't October yet; this is like having March Break in April.

They've got food - from a Scottish-style pub, an Indian takeout place, a chip wagon, and a grocery store. Oh, and a general-style restaurant from out of town that happens to sell the occasional schnitzel.

They've got beer - ales, ambers, and pales. And a cider. No pilsners.

They've got music - local folk and rock acts.

I'm so depressed. We used to have a thriving German community in town...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/us/new-li ... ?hpt=hp_t3]Scientists make pseudo-matter out of light.  They've found a way to coalesce photons into a matter-like state that forms molecules.  Let me repeat that:  molecules made of light.  And one of the scientists on the project has basically said this is the basis for a real-world light sabre.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Don't ask me how I got my hands on a pre-release copy of the Blu-Ray disk, but yeah.  And I was wondering if anyone else who saw it felt that some of the animation looked so good that it felt like it had been actually filmed live?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I continued straight on from modeling the FW-190 and roughing out a possible Toggel (Zzard command mecha) to the alien mook suit, the Klogg, but found the thing a real fight to figure out all the mechanisms for, and kept switching back and forth between two basic designs as one of the parts cleared up... then I discovered that I had two workable designs, intended for the same unit but related only in that they have two main engines and three omnidirectional vector fins, and use the same super parts.

Which one is better, do you think?

The Klogg Naro is based directly on my original paper sketches, though the torso and shoulder transformation ends up completely different. It'll have to have a narrower head than planned, but not too badly so, (and that doesn't make the origin of the subtype name obvious AT ALL.)

bare - red patches are for texture mapped missile racks


with the space version super parts, that are all engine and fuel/remass


the Klogg Jau, based on "a flying saucer would be cool, but I have to keep the cockpit ball in one piece this time."


the Jau with atmosphere type super parts, which include a smaller engine and about the same amount of fuel as the space type, but have more mass due to the wings and swing hardware. Having aerodynamic lift and control surfaces more than makes up for the mass, as long as you are in fact inside an atmosphere, though the mecha can operate fairly well in its base configuration.


The Jau is 2-3 components ahead of the Naro, able to transform the torso and shoulders. The barely-opened flap on the side of the shoulder is to let the arms hang down in its hybrid mode, or lift them up to the sides in full humanoid form.


The super parts also include a part that straps onto the outer surface of each leg vector fin with chaff/flare launchers and another micro-missile rack on the top, each also including a fuel tank, though the top one is small and only meant to feed the vector fin microturbine, since they usually just run off small tanks built into the center part of the fin. The robot toes provide some vectoring for the main engines and there are small reaction thrusters distributed across the unit as well for fine adjustments, but most attitude control is intended to be done with the fins, which can swing 180 degrees forward for reverse thrust and have butterfly paddles in the exhaust ports on their tips to control yaw, pitch, and roll inputs. They also provide atmospheric stabilization like the feathers on a badminton shuttlecock if it's flying in base configuration.

All of which is true for both of them. The main difference, aside from outline, is that the Naro's cockpit section has to tip down at the nose, how far I've not yet determined but hopefully only 15-20 degrees, during transformation, requiring an internal gimbaled pilot seat, while the Jau keeps the cockpit pod level, like all of the variable WW2 planes I've made. That alone is tipping me in favor of the saucer design, but I like the other one too... So I'm asking for opinions to help decide.

Yes, again.

Despite hardly getting any responses the other times. The replies I did get were useful, so I'm running a new one up the flagpole to see if anyone will salute.
--
"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

New thread is both new and not closed.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

The absolute darkness of the bag was replaced with the absolute darkness of a somewhat larger space. Wanblume was on the verge of making a snide comment when a phosphorous flare abruptly lit up the cigar chomping, circular smoked lensed woman sitting a mere four feet in front of her.
She lit a second stogie off of the meteoric end of her own, and passed the newly lit one to Wandblume.
The pretty planes of her face and pneumatic swells, picked out in the firelight, hitched as the tip of the cigar flared. in time to a fit of coughing.
“You inhaled?” Mikuru’s voice, tinctured with laughter, wafted from the zone of glow.
Wandblume’s  somewhat affronted response was,  “It’s all just smoking, isn’t it?”
“Hardly! You don’t inhale cigar smoke : it’s more alkaline than cigarette smoke and is absorbed in the mouth.”
“Lights!” Mikuru’s voice, taut and terse, brought on an illumination, spastic and endlessly garish. It was all rotating disco ball glitter, flitting gel filtered spots, black light strips, and sputtering strobes that lit the stage upon which Wandblume sat looking across at a Mikuru lit like the final twenty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“I’m tied to a brass pole.” It was a statement of fact.
“Yes! Yes, you are!” She relit the end of Wandblume’s stogie with the prerequisite wooden match  until it achieved the cheery red bellows flare of a well and truly lit cigar.  
Wandblume expelled an aromatic plume of cigar exhaust. “Cuban?”
“It’s a L-5 Figurado Torpedo : something about zero gee is extra kind to tobacco plants.”
They puffed away what would have been peaceable plumes of smoke had it not been for the laser light disco show of Lazarus Long’s, the premier peeler club of Fen.
Wandblume took in the club’s eclectic mixture of Heinleinian decor spanning the Fifties to the Eighties--19s, that is. “Not exactly Patrol SOP, I imagine.”
“No, not the official standard operating policy, but it’s de rigueur for Patrol POP : Party Operating Policy. We swing all our best in-house dos here.”
“Huh, what else do you hold back from John Q Fen?”
“Besides the final digit of pi and the actual location of Guelph, Ontario, Canada...” She looked thoughtful as she decapitated two more stogies with her sinister looking guillotine-style cutter. “...nothing more important than the alien origins of the Big Mac.”
Wandblume grinned as she accepted the fresh cigar from her captor. “Never trust a person who isn’t capable of being fatuous!” They lit and puffed.
“So, it seems a little under-populated and under-Chippendaled for a Doe.”
“I was beginning to wonder when you’d bring that up.” Mikuru picked up a clunky Fifties styled microphone next to her chair ; spoke into it. “Execute.”
The establishment began to fill with two types of people : employees who were not surprised to be there ; guests who were very surprised. Wandblume noted the guest list with the arch, “Apparently I have quite the dossier.”
“You are half of that outré Venusian celebrity relationship, Vandblume. It doesn’t take master spycraft to concoct your Doe guest list.”
Wandblume raised her cigar in salute to the discombobulated looking president of her fan club, Suki Mashin. That was all it took for the quick-witted Suki to figure out what was really up : she was elated so quickly and completely that her expression of only seconds before seemed but a mistake of faulty memory.
“Wait, did you kidnap your guests too?”
“Please, we in the Patrol don’t kidnap : We enforce civic duty.”
Wandblume grinned around her torpedo. “What, is my Doe jury duty?”
Mikuru returned the combustable object distorted grin. “For your sentencing!” was her  laconic  response as she removed herself from the stage to became just another forced guest of someone else’s arrangements.
The establishment  filled, the DJ marshaled her vinyl, dancers costumed the prerequisite Village People archetypes,  servers  hovered.
Wandblume was not overly surprised to find Jodie Starling presiding as the red herring MC. Starling proved to be an efficient Alpha minion for everything including providing the target of visible responsibility for mass party napping : she garnered a generous load of laser-looks from people who were not having so much fun as to forget that they had been whisked away to have it. Mikuru, meanwhile,  was merely party attendee Number 42.
"For those of you still unsure of why you're in Fen's finest fleshpot, Lazarus Long’s, it's my job to shed light upon your predicament." Starling was in her glory working the crowd like a combination Mata Hari & Abraham Lincoln.  
"Not having the time for the niceties of RSVPs & fancy envelopes, I had very little choice but to fall back on the time tested method of shanghaiing the lot of you ! However, you'll be relieved to hear that the terms of your release are as straight forward and as simple as helping to make Ramona’s Last night as a Wandblume the best night of her unmarried life!" With that she flourished in a cut cowboy clad in clingy cowhides.
The crowd reacted with a complex cascade of apoplectic joy that made Mikiru absolutely glad that she was utilizing a minion MC. Starling, being directly in front of all of that strong emotional energy, quickly began to feel less of a facilitator and more of a catspaw. As the throng ogled the gyrations of the thong, Starling gave herself a dose of her own speechifying :
‘Well, Startling, you’re got two ways to survive the night : entertain some of these angry folks into pardoning your offenses and make the others forget your offenses. I’m a pretty good talker; for the rest, we’ve hardly ever touched the Black Ops budget : surely one Doe bar tab will vanish unseen into all that cash!’
***
The premises weren’t exactly destroyed, but they, like the people within it, were a happy shambles. Starling, weaving on her feet and sporting a happy-hat traffic-cone and swagger-stick riding crop (she couldn’t exactly remember where she had attained the crop but the cone had been a prop of the construction stud, Hard Highway!) under her arm she surveyed the after-party wreckage with the aplomb of George Scott’s Patton.  
“Veni, vici, Hrrk...” She stumbled over and heaved into the real clay pot of an ersatz coconut palm. “...vomitus!” She slurred sluggishly, before succumbing to a boozy snooze against the terra cotta potta.
Still lashed to the club’s mainsail, Femdysseus dreamt of the siren song of too many Buttery Nipples, chiseled abdominals, and of her own warmed posterior.
***
The Patrol’s Party Emergency Recovery Team’s  job was considerable but far from beyond the talents of its masterly members. They had cleaned far bigger shindigs than this. Still, it was an imposing after-Doe.
“Gatsby, help me with these knots. Starling really tied this well-nigh bride!”
“ Cukes & bergs, Kurtz, everything in stride!”

When I click on the little 'go to new post' link to the left of the thread name, for some reason it has been sending me to the second post in the thread, not the newest post.  I've noticed this happening for the last day or so.
Is anyone else is having this issue?
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

I thought that this might be of interest to some of you (at least those that are in or near the New England area).
It is a smallish convention for Western animation, in southern New Hampshire, and it looks like it is going to be quite fun.
Anyway, they're discounting the registration through this Monday, so, um, yeah.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Willow -- A Buffy crossover which takes a few chapters to reveal the actual crossover.  Only six chapters so far, but it's very well written and I'm both tracking and recommending it on TtH.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/Sept ... th_Returns]Today's Daily Illuminator is about http://io9.com/meet-the-mysterious-men- ... 1265330944]this historical (hysterical?) marker in Oklahoma City. In case you're having trouble reading the plaque in the photo, the inscription is:

In the Year
of Our Lord
2012
Creer Pipi
Claimed
This Land
for
Azathoth

I feel a song coming on... "Ooooooooo-klahoma, where the madmen dance amongst the trees..." Okay, maybe not.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012