Including me. I just haven't really been active in the MMO arena lately. (Persona 4 Golden is eating my soul)

However, in between bouts of floor hopping and Shadow stomping, I messed about with the offline costume maker that Titan did up a while back.

I recall a certain pun concept being made aaaaaaaaages ago, and I finally sat down and just outright made it.

I give you, the Sabre Senshi
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

I am notorious for coming up with big ideas and not following through, or starting projects and not finishing. So, I'm looking for collaborators for a few good story ideas.

• The One and a Half Doctors: A QL-DW crossover that I described yesterday in Crossovers That Should Not Be, but have decided it should.
  
• Untitled QL story: Part 1: Sam fails at whatever it is he's supposed to do and leaps out once the failure is complete. Part two: He has leaped into someone else in the same time and place to try again. So there are two Sams operating in the same setting, and their separate attempts to right the wrong get in each other's way. Some events from the first try are changed while others seem to have been muddled by "Sam II" in the first place, being left deliberately ambiguous; the timey-wimey stuff is extra wibbly-wobbly. Part 3: The two Sams figure out what's happening and start working together. The solution to the problem is one that could never have been pulled by one leaper alone.
  
• QL alternate timeline - Sam gets home. Two story sequence.
  

1. 1. Introduction: Start with the first episode sequence where Gushy calls Al to say that Sam is leaping and Al tells the girl with him in the convertible "Hang on, beautiful." Continue from there with dialog about how it's not like Sam to be so reckless and what could have made him do it? Main story: Not long after visiting Beth, perhaps immediately after, Sam leaps into Sam the day before he first leaped out. Holo-Al and future-Ziggy tell Sam that all he has to do is not leap when he originally did and he'll end up coming home like he'd never left. He starts to go along, but sees signs of the good he's done - Donna is his wife and at the project, Sammy Joe Fuller, someone has a picture of Jackie Kennedy, Al and Beth are together - and decides to go through with the leap. Holo-Al tells him that Ziggy can't predict what would happen if Sam re-leaps while on a leap. Sam says "Well I know. Things will go a little ca-ca." Meanwhile, solid-Al and the rest of the team are going about business as usual. Al's three daughters are home. The oldest and youngest are married with three kids between them and all are gathered for the middle one's wedding in a couple of days. When Sam begins the leap and Gushy calls solid-Al, the conversation is almost identical to the first time, but Al is having dinner at home with the whole family; he gets up to leave giving the bride a kiss on the cheek and telling her "Hang on, Beautiful."
      
   2. Immediately following: Sam is on a fairly "routine" leap, one of two bodyguards or cops or secret service or something protecting some VIP who is going to die. Meanwhile, back at the mountain, Al is ready to retire and Ziggy is getting some major upgrades, both to the electronics and the wetware; she is going to have more donated brain matter installed from Al's replacement as the observer. Ziggy has determined that Sammy Joe is the most compatible choice; Donna is jealous, as neither of them knows the real reason for the choice. Once the upgrades are complete, Sammy Joe begins to "remember" things from alternate versions of history that only Al, Ziggy, and (sometimes) Sam know. Meanwhile, back on the leap, none of us is surprised to learn that the other body guard is the murderer. He kills Sam first with some kind of cliff hanger moment (maybe literally.) Sam leaps out at the moment of death, leaving the real guard dead in his own time and (meanwhile back at the mountain) Sam dead in the accelerator. He is moved to the floor in the control room where there is much wailing. That's when Sammy Joe "remembers" that Sam is her father. Donna somehow knows it too, so in just a moment of eye contact and understanding all is forgiven between them. But Sammy Joe will not accept the unfairness. How can this great man be her father without her knowing it until his death? She won't stand for it. She steps into the accelerator and leaps into the other guard. She pulls Sam up from the cliff edge (or whatever) so the VIP and everyone lives. They both leap out. Meanwhile, back at-you know- Sam's body disappears from the floor (blue and white sparks and all) and Sam appears alive and well in the accelerator. Sammy Joe does not return. Sam sends Al off to enjoy retirement, and goes to the imaging chamber to be the observer for Sammy Joe's next leap, and all the many more to come.
      
      

The Shortest Leap

Quote:by Joesph Avins

At least, not in Ottawa.

The Hogsback Brewing Company is about to release a time-limited Oatmeal Bacon Stout - beer flavoured with real bacon. They're calling it "http://hogsback.ca/our-beers/]Aporkalypse Now"... but I still want to try a pint.
--
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

So, for the next round of our GURPS IST game, the team is going to be stationed on the newly-christened Unity Station at the Lagrange 2 point, for the year 2012.
So, in preparation for this, I'm making a new International Super Teams Monthly cover.
The main picture is still rendering, which is why it's fuzzy.  And, I need to come up with more cover text, which I'll figure out while I'm at work tomorrow.
I do realize that the picture is, technically, impossible from a "geographical" standpoint.  But, it's more striking this way.

Table of Contents
1.  Intro to Latin (This Post)
2.  Pactio (Negima) Post #1
3.  Project Listing Post #2
4.  Rough cut at at Negima style pactio for members of the Azumanga Daioh cast post #11
Latin is a dead, dead language,
as dead as it can be.
It killed off all the Romans,
and now its killing me.
I'm keeping this short and simple for now.  I may revise this to be more comprehensive later, but that isn't needed at this time.  
Latin is written with the Latin alphabet.  However, it was originally a more primitive form, with cases of single letters where we use two.  (Iulius or Julius, for one.  Either works, they are said the same.)  Also, this was before capitalization, so that matters less.  The language can also be used without such things as spaces and punctuation.
I was told to say c hard, like k, and say v like w.  Hadrian is Ha dri an.  (I do not remember all of the rules exactly, I'm writing this off the top of my head for now.)
English codes some of the meaning by word order.  'That cat ate my dog' has a different meaning from 'my cat ate that dog' or 'that dog ate my cat'.  Latin codes these things by modifying the word itself.  The word order can be changed entirely, in most cases, and retain the same meaning.
Google translate, as far as I can tell, has major issues with this and should be avoided.
Just the coding for three genders, singular and plural, and IIRC, six or seven cases, works out to something like 36-42 different variations for each word.  Throw in voice, person and tense, and it starts to look impossible.  Thankfully, there are patterns that most words follow.  Even more thankfully, for those that just want to get their toes wet, there are tools that can do most of the heavy lifting.
Nouns are declined and verbs are conjugated.  Nouns and adjectives are classified in different declensions, depending on how they vary.  Likewise verbs and conjugations.  Agricola (singular, nominative) is first declension, but oddly male instead of female.
I use two tools, which have so far been enough for all my translation work.  These should be enough for most fanfic applications.
The first is Wheelock's, the famous Latin text.  Basically, there are some tables in back and front that are very useful.  They may not be needed for everything, but they are useful for things like 'which case is the indirect object' and 'what ending do I need for the right plural of this third declension word?'
The second is William Whitaker's Words.  This is an electronic dictionary with a pretty good collection of words.  (~E sets it to english to latin, ~L sets it back to latin to english.)  I use it to check my spelling, to expand my vocabulary, and to help keep track of all the crazy variations in Latin words.  I've just found that he'd died some years back, when I went to check his website, and found it gone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whitaker's_Words
http://archives.nd.edu/whitaker/words.htm
Quick tutorial part two: Type in sanctum, and it will display ADJ in part of the entry.  Type in sanctorum, and in the same part of one of the entries, it will display N.  This is how you recognize nouns and adjectives in this program.
Cases
Nominative, direct object of a sentence.  The dog in the dog at my homework.  (In Latin, I might write 'the homework of me', if I can find a word I like for homework.)
Genitive.  Shows ownership, almost always translated to English with of.  Of men in the master of men would be translated as the plural genitive of man.
Personal note:  I wrote a lot of tables when I was studying Latin more formally.  This has left me a bit OCD about Latin Grammar.  
I also only took the basic stuff.  Formal written English is the form of English that has the firmest rules.  It is possible that they teach people to be less OCD in the more advanced courses, with reading Caesar and the poets and all that.  Thus, some of what bothers me about what I see as incorrect grammar may be due to my limited education.

I just obtained for myself a Google Nexus 7 Tablet, running Android 4.2, a "Jelly Bean" iteration.
What are some "why don't you have this already, you fool" apps?
I'm particularly looking for e-reader and media player apps that aren't hideously annoying, etc etc.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

A serial killer is targeting the LAPD and their families. The kicker. They trained him. He knows their modus operandi. He used to be one of them. I would had thought it was plot straight out of Hollywood if it wasn't real.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Does Doug have any songs that generally duplicate abilities? I was thinking something like "Wanna Be Like You" from Disney's "The Jungle Book," which implies that Doug duplicates the abilities, and possibly the appearance, of a target. (Though the references to being an "ape like me" might be a joke between Doug and his teammates.)
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

Spotted this tonight:http://mcahogarth.org/?p=10593 Author MC. Hogarth, who has an ebook called Spots the Space Marine, that was on Amazon, had it taken down because Games Workshop voiced a trademark complaint, as the blog post says, believing that their entry into ebooks gives them the common law trademark rights to the term Space Marine in all its forms. Amazon complies rather than investigate, as, judging from what I do know, this is pretty thin legal standing on their part(Saw a comment where someone mentioned them trying something similar against Blizzard for the marines in Starcraft, but I do not know if truth or rumor)

Other info:

http://boingboing.net/2013/02/06/games- ... bully.html
"This hand of mine glows with an awesome power. Its burning grip tells me to defeat you....
Shining FINGER!" -Domon Kashuu, Mobile Fighter G Gundam