Been researching getting Flash and/or full-mode Photoshop, and I discovered a new service Adobe's doing:
Adobe Creative Suite Cloud
Instead of a couple thousand dollars for the full schmear, one can subscribe to the cloud service and have full access to the latest from Adobe for like 50 bucks a month.
And Since Adobe wants folks to upgrade yearly anyway...
Any thoughts?
''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

There is a presidence with FF.net giving people issues.  So is anyone else getting odd issues where your browser keeps declaring it can't load the page for reasons my browser can't determine.

Apparently the artist Eduard Khil passed away on June 4 after a stroke in May.
He is best known for the Soviet-era pop song "I am very glad, because I'm finally back home" better known as the Trololololo Song, or the Russian Rickroll.

''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

...I've been playing with logos.


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

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.956
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Regnar Rats 0.4: Level 50 Technology Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Robotics
Secondary Power Set: Traps
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Battle Drones -- BriL'shp-Dmg:33(A), Empty(3), Empty(3)
Level 1: Web Grenade -- Acc-I:50(A), EndRdx(5), RechRdx-I:50(5), Immob-I:50(7)
Level 2: Pulse Rifle Blast -- Dmg-I:50(A), EndRdx(7), RechRdx(9), Acc-I:50(9), Range(11)
Level 4: Triage Beacon -- EndRdx-I:50(A), Heal-I:50(11), RechRdx-I:50(13), RechRdx-I:50(13)
Level 6: Maneuvers -- Krma-Def/EndRdx:29(A), DefBuff-I:50(15), EndRdx(15), EndRdx(17)
Level 8: Equip Robot -- EndRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(17)
Level 10: Assault -- EndRdx(A), RechRdx-I:30(19), EndRdx(19)
Level 12: Protector Bots -- Acc-I:50(A), DefBuff-I:50(21), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx:49(21), Heal-I:50(23), ToHitDeb-I:50(23), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:50(25)
Level 14: Acid Mortar -- DefDeb-I:50(A), Acc(25), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng:24(27), RechRdx-I:50(27), EndRdx(29), RechRdx-I:50(29)
Level 16: Force Field Generator -- DefBuff-I:50(A), EndRdx-I:45(31), RechRdx(31), DefBuff-I:50(31)
Level 18: Pulse Rifle Burst -- Acc-I:50(A), Dmg-I:50(33), EndRdx-I:50(33), RechRdx(33), Range-I:50(34)
Level 20: Repair -- EndMod-I:50(A), EndRdx-I:45(34), RechRdx-I:50(34)
Level 22: Photon Grenade -- Rope-Acc/EndRdx:44(A), Dmg-I:50(36), EndRdx-I:50(36), Rope-Acc/Rchg:26(36), Dsrnt-I:50(37), Range-I:50(37)
Level 24: Tactics -- AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg:33(A), RechRdx-I:40(37), EndRdx(39), EndRdx(39)
Level 26: Assault Bot -- Empty(A), Empty(39), Empty(40), Empty(40)
Level 28: Seeker Drones -- RechRdx-I:50(A), DarkWD-ToHitDeb:41(40), Dmg-I:50(42), EndRdx(42), Dsrnt(42), Acc-I:50(43)
Level 30: Air Superiority -- Dmg-I:35(A), EndRdx(43), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:42(43), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:40(45)
Level 32: Upgrade Robot -- EndRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(45)
Level 35: Fly -- EndRdx(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx:27(45)
Level 38: Aid Other -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg:44(A)
Level 41: Charged Armor -- ResDam-I:50(A), ImpSkn-Status:23(46), TtmC'tng-EndRdx/Rchg:50(46), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:44(46)
Level 44: Electrifying Fences -- EndMod(A), Immob(48)
Level 47: Electric Shackles -- EndMod(A), RechRdx-I:50(48), Hold-I:50(48), EndRdx-I:50(50)
Level 49: Static Discharge -- RechRdx(A), Acc-I:50(50), EndMod-I:50(50)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I:50(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I:50(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I:50(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I:50(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 4: Ninja Run
------------
the 'empty' slots are actually where the mm ato bits are
I am rather used to the powers I've got here, I'd prefer to keep them. Most definatly I need better sets (sets, WHAT SETS)
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

As it says, I'm new to fenspace. I first came across it in CitD on the
spacebattles forums, read through the wiki and decided that I should at
least attempt to write a story in this setting. First character has been
mostly fleshed out, comments and advice are encouraged.

Ganti:

An unfocused collage student when the 'wave hit. Panicked he found out
that the grey thing that made his truck run without gas was illegal, so
he finished 'waving it, grabbed his stuff, including his pet cat, and
left. Thankfully, he wasn't quite panicked enough to leave without food,
but it was a close thing. He currently answers to a handle he used on
various forums and IRCs.

Appearance:

 6'0" tall

Brown hair

Blue eyes,

180ish pounds.

Notable Mundane Attributes:

Jack of Many trades: Talented in a number of fields, including
electrical engineering, welding, ceramics, writing, engine maintenance,
electrical maintenance, and general tinkering. Is by no means an expert
at any of these, but with effort, he could be. He seems to be allergic
to effort, however...

Random Trivia: He's got lots of it. This often includes quotes applicable for the situation or odd facts that might help.

Handwavium Abilities:

None yet.

Quirks:

Scottish, by way of America: Self-Identifies as a Scot, despite being
born in the US. Listens to bagpipe music. Eats haggis occasionally. Even
speaks a little Gaelic.

Not without my Cat!: Rarely goes anywhere without his cat. Gets more
then a little twitchy when separated from her, who he took with him when
he went into space, for extended periods of time. Oddly, his cat seems
to react the same way.

Give me that Old Time Rock and Roll: Fan of classic rock. Can identify a
large number of classic rock songs from just their opening bars. Is
almost guaranteed to end up at a Kansas concert one of these days, never
mind the legal difficulties.

Faction:

Pirates, with Gearhead and Warsie leanings.

Hera: Ganti's cat. Pretty typical Main Coon Silver Tabby, except for the
fact she got into his 'Wavium. She's now about twice the size of a
standard one, and has received a large intelligence boost. Ganti hopes
for an extended lifespan also being part of her mod.

Handwavium Abilities:

Big Cat: Pretty much what it says on the tin. She's now a very big cat.
She was already larger then some (Very Small) Dogs before the biomod.

The Cat who walks through Walls: She can get to where she wants to be
despite the intervening distance, locked doors or walls. About the only
thing that actually stops her is vacuum. This only functions when people
aren't watching her or the destination.

Quirks:

My Human!: Doesn't respond well to the presence of other pets near Ganti.

Where are you?: The counterpart to 'Not without my cat!'. She gets twitchy if separated from Ganti for long periods of time.

Bully: A bit of an extension to 'My Human!'. She doesn't like dogs. At
all. More then that, she will go out of her way to make life hard for them. As there are very few dogs in Fenspace, this probably won't be showing up much.

While writing the last chapter on Marduk, I got the inspiration for this ship. I meant to stay away form the war, because I did not want to turn my characters into military powers, but I realized than Genesis will be a mayor company in the Belt, so staying safe in Luna was not an option. And then I realized than with the new plot of Belter refugees in Marduk, I had all the crews I could need. The design is (hopefully) a good compromise between creating a battle fleet with no visible resources and doing nothing while your neighbour families are dieing.
I would specially like comments in ship size, tonnage and crew, because I chose the numbers more or less at random. I did not want it to be too big, so it is 30 m, about the same size of the Adler class transport, but twice the weight (700 tons) due to the massive armor. the crew is ten people (pilots, gunners, damage control, and medical) and the marines are the part were I have more trouble. I have settled in a platoon of 50, but I have no idea it it will be too many or too few.

 

Ariete class APC ship.

Originally meant to be a weaponized version of Genesis C&D construction ships, the end design mutated to the Ariete ("Battering Ram") class of armoured personnel carriers.

The Ariete ships take advantage of Genesis' expertise in building very though ships, and breaking big rocks. Their function is simple, as shown in the class designation: They ram enemy ships, and then unload a Marine boarding party inside .

The ships design is simple. It is about 30 m, long, and the front armour narrows until it ends in a sharpened ram, designed to open once it has broken the enemy hull to allow the marines to board. It weights 700 tons, and so it is the slower ship of its size.

Most of its weight consists in thick, and super dense, armour plating: The ship is designed for one purpose: To brush off massive amounts of damage, and protect its crew until they have taken the enemy ship. While it has artificial gravity, it has to be turned off in combat; then all the gravity generators and kinetic shields are used to maintain structural integrity and keep the interior (with the crew and engines) safe from the kinetic energy caused by the crash.

It has a crew of 10, plus a detachment of 50 marines. The interior is sparse, but it has a tiny emergency surgery.

While it would outright destroy any small ship, the lack of speed and manoeuvrability compared with small craft means they seldom get the chance; it is meant to attack space vessels, stations and habitats. The ship will usually need refitting after a successful boarding.

Weapons:

Weapons are a problem with this design, as they will either hang outside the hull, and be destroyed when the ship rams an enemy, or need weapon ports, which will weaken the armour.

The Aries only have three weapon ports, all in the back; in the top they have the kinetic cannon, and on both flanks they have one weapon port, which can be used for several weapons.

The Marduk shipyards do not have hard tech weapon production capacity: They will only install the Kinetic cannon, a purely 'waved “weapon” Originally a Federation design, it is yet another attempt to create a tractor bean. The cannon will stop any vehicle on its tracks (with a spectacular show of light, so the theory is than it changes kinetic energy into electromagnetic radiation) for several seconds, but neither it nor its crew will be damaged; after a short time it will move again (it varies, with the quality of the ship drive. Moving objects with no drives, like small asteroids or cannonballs, will not start moving again until more force is applied; but it never has been longer than 20 seconds so far). It is not very useful in combat, but it will grant a few seconds of advantage for the ramming.

The flank weapon ports leave the shipyards empty; Great Justice will install weapons there after the ship is on their hands. The eventual standard weapon will be a point defence system once the computer tracking tech gets good enough for it; but for the moment the usual weapon is a heavy machine gun (a missile launcher can be fitted, but hold space for ammo inside the ship is too small for a long engagement).

History:

By 2012, Genesis main market was the Belt. With the Boskonian War raging there, a good percentage of its production capacities in Luna stood idle.

He offered Great Justice the use of Marduk shipyards as a repair facility, and began to design a combat vessel.

An initial lack of manpower soon disappeared once he opened Plinius crater to Belter refugees; he found himself with literal thousand of workers -enthusiastic, pro-war workers.

While he began the design of a few fancy (and, with his military experience, probably useless on the real world) capital ships, he decided to focus in his strengths, resistant materials and very, very tough ships.

The Aries launched in January 2013, with a crew of Belter marines. Over the course of the war, a total of twelve Ariete ships were built, all of then crewed by Belter refugees in Luna. They were very useful in breaching Boskonian fortified positions, and all twelve were part of the Fall of Boskone Prime

After the end of the war, Oscar Vykos gave ten of the ships to Great Justice; the other two returned to Marduk and were “decommissioned” (the message he sent back the GJ did have the quotes), but he also returned the last two ships' hardtech weapons, so GJ did not protest). As far as anyone knows, no new Arietes have been built, either for Genesis or for Great Justice.

The Besieger:

This design was a huge super-carrier craft. Several hundred meters long, it holds launch bays for a dozen Arietes, thirty fighter craft, weapons depots, a small repair drydock, medical station, and living quarters for the crew and marines.

It is the only of the initial “fancy designs” than Oscar finished; but at the end of the War, only the structure was finished. Instead of recycling the materials (which GJ had paid for, anyway) he sent the whole unfinished thing to Great Justice, whom carted it to float somewhere in the Belt, ready to pick up the construction back sometime should it even be necessary (there are rumours than not only the structure, but the engines, were finished by the end of the war. Vykos will only answer with “no comment”, while GJ speakers will say then information about battleship construction rates is classified.

I've been watching my website statistics in the wake of the the DW5-07 release.  The traffic to my site has spiked dramatically, with the vast majority of it going (of course) to chapter 7 -- I've had 600 hits on the chapter since Friday, and almost as many on both the DW5 page and the overall DW main page.

Given that the FFML got a full text copy, and there aren't nearly 600 of you here at the forums, I think that means the word managed to get out a goodly number of unaffiliated folks...  
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Sepia - 27/May/2012
Summer, 2007, UK.  Post-Thunder Storm.
Brains thought frantically.  He'd come-around after the ritual to find that everything around him was sepia-coloured.  And, a late teenage girl, in Victorian dress, was standing in front of him.  Wearing a not too happy expression.
"Are you a god?"[1][2]  "Yes", he quickly replied.  She smiled, for a moment.  "You pass on 'pop culture'.  Are you ready to go on to philosophy, like, 'why do I exist' ?"
He swallowed.  "Because the world needed you.  You are part of it..."
She waited, and his mind churned.
"OK.  I need you.  The world is broken.  I'm broken.  Both need fixing.  You get things fixed", and he broke down, crying.
She waited, until he regained his composure, stroking the cloth cat that she held in her arms.
She sighed, "You might be a god.  You've created life, after all.  But, I'm not a goddess.  Or a fairy godmother.  I'll let you give it a try".
She looked around, and the mess tidied itself up.  Then a work table unfolded itself, and moved to in front of Brains.  She carefully put the cat down on the table, and somehow reached inside it, pulling out a woodpecker bookend, a rag doll, a toad with a banjo on a tin, and finally, a mouse organ.
"Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old Fat Furry Catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light
Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing"
Then she turned around and walked out of the room, the colours gradually brightening back to normal, as she went out of sight.
Brains watched the cloth cat.  He showed no sign of animation.  No sign of waking.  Finally, after about ten minutes, the room slowly faded to sepia again, as Emily walked back in, carrying a tea cup on a saucer.
She sipped her tea, watching Brains.  This time he stubbornly waited until she spoke.
"Have you figured it out?"  "No", he said sullenly.
She sighed, "Bagpuss never wakes when anyone is watching.  They only ever repair inanimate things.  Not people.  You are not a 'thing'.  Do you understand?".
"Yes."  She looked at him with obvious compassion.  "You can do this, but it will need Work.  Alchemical Work.[3]  The sort that transforms the Worker as much as the material worked on."
"Call me when you need me."
She stepped forwards, blurring.  And all that was left on the table was a framed Victorian print.  Of a girl.  Holding a cloth cat.  Beside an empty tea cup on a saucer.
'Wasn't that cup cracked?', he thought.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Apparently I'm not going to be able to get in to the game tonight. NCSoft stumbled over the pipes in the basement and broke something and now all of us have to fix it.
In other words - the launcher... isn't. Launching that is.
Just in case anyone else has seen this problem? This is the error message I get:

Quote:"Could not load file or assembly 'UnRar.Net, Version=1.0.4461.28482, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest."