I have been thinking about starting a "free for all" thread happening completely in cyberspace to give the numerous AIs a little bit more screen time.

Would anyone be interested doing a thread like this just before the start of the Boskone war (early 2012) ?

So, several years ago I wrote a Naruto fanfic called One Hundred Days, which some of you might remember vaguely.  Or maybe not!
After several years of burnout, I'm considering trying to get my writing juices flowing again by working on the long-promised sequel to that story.  A few problems presented themselves, most importantly:
1) Canon has gone down strange and unexpected paths since I wrote the original story, and it would be nigh-impossible to match up as a divergence from the canon plot even if I was inclined to.  Which I'm not, because I'm not overly fond of most of post-timeskip Naruto.
2) One Hundred Days was kind of a large and complex story.  It's not fair to expect people to remember it well three years later, and I don't want to force old readers to reread it or new readers to go through it before (hopefully) enjoying my new work.
So, I decided the obvious solution was to summarize One Hundred Days at the start of my new story for the edutainment of my theoretical audience.  However, due to largeness and complexity, I failed.  Then I decided to throw out any pretense of completeness or seriousness.  But I'm far too close to the source material to tell whether the result actually works as a summary.  That's where you come in!  I would appreciate any comments on whether the below works as a summary and entices you to read the sequel that might follow, or whether it falls flat and turns you off.   I'm interested in the opinions of both anyone who might remember One Hundred Days, and those who never read it.
So, if you made it this far, thanks for listening to me blather, thanks in advance for your help, and here we go:

I had a busy day on Friday and didn't end up getting to go grocery shopping when I'd intended.  I considered putting it off 'til today, but the stores are always crowded on Saturdays and the Metro on the other side of Bank from me is a 24 hour store, so who cares if it's 22h30.  This was my first mistake.  My second was taking the back path through a, very small, bit of trees instead of going the long way around via Albion or Hunt Club.
On my way back I met two kids who decided that the skinny nerd in the funny hat would give up his wallet if they talked loud and mean and threw a few punches.  This was their mistake.  I ended up with a gash in my eyebrow where my glasses cut me after I got punched the second or third time and few bruises on my face.  They got a kick to the groin, a punch to the face and were picked up by the cops before I'd finished writing out my statement, my wallet never having left my pocket.
Still had a bit of a bad night, but things picked up this morning when, before I went to the police station to get photos taken and meet the detective in charge of the case, I took a quick look around the area where I'd been jumped and found my glasses, which I'd given up for lost, completely undamaged.
Other than that, today I learned that the Elgin St. Diner has some very nice variations on the club sandwich and the Canadian Museum of Natural History is well worth the entrance fee.  Also, the Queen's Lantern is a nice bit of architecture and plesiosaurs are not something I'd have wanted to meet while swimming.
--
Another tradition is to soak the pudding in brandy and then set fire to it.
One year we couldn't find any brandy so we used whisky. This produced a
flame which scorched the ceiling above the table.
                    -- Edward Pierce in the Monastery

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CB's are found all over Fenspace, wherever there is heavy construction going on.  Especially prevalent around the Trekker and Warsie shipyards, LaGrange points and near major asteroid extractions in the belt  Each Bug has 2 heavy duty manipulator arms and can manage up to 24 semi autonomous helper drones.  They are unarmed and  unarmored, though their construction tools can be used as makeshift weapons in a pinch.
Quirks:
Sexist Pig!:  CB's are definatly 'male' or 'female', and will only work if piloted by a human of the opposite sex
If you've got it, flaunt it:  The better looking a pilot is, the less they can wear.
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

Right here.  If you have a TTH membership, we'd be ever so grateful if you would take the time to review/recommend the story there.  Thank you.

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

The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/07 ... print.html]Robo-warship sub hunter: Free DARPA crowdsauce game

Apparently, DARPA thinks that making a game available (and, one assumes, recording the inputs that the players make) will help them develop better algorithms for the unmanned subs on their wish list...

The article includes a link to download the game.
--
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

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13000253]BBC article.

I don't know about you, but I wished they'd confirmed it before announcing. Yes it's exciting and possibly very important, but those are the reasons you need to be VERY sure of your results.

Still, I'm keeping an eye out for this.

OMG I AM TOTALLY MARRIED U GUYZ.
... *ahem* This Sunday, I got married to my longtime fiancee and fellow Sailor Moon Expanded author, Becky "The Insane Banana" Malsin.
Most of the wedding photos are going to be late, but here's a pic of the cake, designed in honor of that which brought us together these many years ago:

--Sam
"Comfort, commitment, marriage.  What do these all have in common?  The letter C.  Except for marriage."

Played a game of this this evening when our usual Heavy Gear game was called off. It was great fun, being a pretty simple mechanic and gives a great feel for the original film.... though it does require a fair bit of input from the players.

We start with the party, each of one particular class and each having a particular ability that makes them useful to the team. After that, it plays a lot like the traditional heist movie, but with far more tension. It's a diceless system, instead using a Jenga tower to represent the stability of the dream and how close you are to being kicked out of it and the whole thing being failed. It's also possible to go deeper down to three layers or more of dreaming. If you do something which could possibly destabilise the dream, or inform the Mark that he's in a dream or being attacked, you pull up to three blocks from the Jenga tower depending on how bad the destabilisation was. If the tower collapsed, you were either kicked out of the dream, or kicked up to the previous level.... and in general, bad stuff happened.

The game we played, was pretty basic. Just find the information about a hidden stash of money from a son about to ship off to Afghanistan. What we had was everything from bootcamp involving grannies, a zombie apocalypse and the Bundeswehr, and just to add some bite, one of the PC's had been paid off by the Mark. PC was able to let set up a prior signal which informed the Mark that he was in a dream..... and caused it to destabilise just that little bit..... while not going so far as to be caught by the other PC's.

In the end, the party lost as the dream destabilised and they hurried out before it collapsed, bringing out some information.... but not all the information they needed to win. And the traitorous NPC managed to not be discovered.

The Jenga tower however, was awesome. It gave a real sense of both the stability of the dream and tension as more and more changes destabilised the dream, forcing us to move faster and faster. It really is an excellent mechanic, though it also requires some common sense on the part of the players. After the game, the GM informed me (Was playing the traitor) that he specifically let me draw blocks from the tower so I could topple the tower without it being suspicious.... I realised that I could've done it on my first pull. Which would've ruined the game for everyone.

Still, it's something well recommended. It doesn't require much preparation (We ran it over the space of 3 hours or so) and it's great fun provided the group are into it. And best of all, you don't have to have seen the film to be able to play the game.... It'd definitely make a good one-shot con-game and I know I'm not doing it justice with this short post.

More details available at the link below: http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/2058

P.S. For added tension, play in a pub when you have drink taken....
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

This is a "meta" thread in which I'll be asking other members of the Collective about some things in Fenspace before I create particular images. (No, it won't always be obvious which images I'm planning on rendering when I ask the questions. No, the images won't be as good as Mark's - I don't have a decade of experience or the "Reality" rendering engine.)

First up: Blackaeronaut, what does a Roughrider pilot wear when on duty?
--
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