Category: Nerdiness

I ran some Spaceship Zero at the HPL Birthday Party gaming convention this past weekend and now I’m making an effort to write the scenario up all nice-nice. It happens on Mars, so I’m trying to figure out exactly where on Mars. The secret human base needs to be in a deep cavern, and I’ve learned that Valles Marineris is a canyon similar to our own Grand Canyon, but ten times as long and seven times as deep and wide. Neat. Then I read about Noctis Labyrinthus, which apart from having a cool sounding name that literally means ‘the labyrinth of night’ looks fantastic.

Here’s a big shot of Mars showing Valles Marineris, which as you can see is ginormous. At the far left of the rift is Noctis Labyrinthus

This is not a photograph. I’m assuming it’s a digital image or a painting or some kind of combo (by Arnaud and Florent Creux of http://marsrender.site.voila.fr/) :

But here’s an actual photo from the Viking orbiter

And a fancy artistic rendition by Fahad Sulehria of novacelestia.com

I like science. I read various scientists blogs and try to follow as best I can but quite often the jargon is beyond me. This post by Carl Zimmer about the puzzle of loyal amoeba is a good one, and I didn’t get lost. I recommend you read it if you’re interested in slime mold and/or evolution (and you’d be crazy not to). It’s a little long and not enough references to D&D, but still interesting. Incidentally the image of the slime mold stalks doesn’t do justice to the time lapse photography of the mold moving around which you can see on the documentary about cell death called Death by Design which I had the good fortune of seeing when Rogers still stocked VHS.

An isolate is what it sounds like: a person, thing, or group that is set apart or isolated, as for purposes of study.

In the Transformers live action movie, out next summer, in addition to Optimus Prime and Megatron, the bot characters will be as follows:

On the Autobot side the movie will feature Bumblebee, Jazz, Ratchet and Ironhide. On the Decepticon side, the film will include Starscream, Brawl, Bonecrusher, Barricade, Scorponok, Frenzy and Blackout.

Where the hell is Soundwave?

My favourite was Shockwave, but I wouldn’t expect them to include him. But come on…Soundwave! Ravage, eject!Must have something to do with tape recorders being outdated.

This week I picked up a whole slough (slew?) of Powers (vol 3-6, I already had 1 & 2) graphic novels at Pulp Fiction. RX Comics (also on Main St) sells graphic novels (and new comics) at the price in Canadian that it says on the book in US (So, if the book is listed at $19 Cdn and $13 US, you pay $13 Cdn) which is usually a really good deal, but the price at Pulp was even better, so I scooped them up, bringing in bags full of books every day hoping that the Powers GNs would still be there – and they were. RX is a decent comic store, if cluttered, but they have the annoying habit of having Chatty Jacks blocking the “counter” and they don’t generate proper receipts (if I’m going to create a comic book, you can bet your mutie genes that I’ll be writing these off).

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. So last month my bike’s back tire went all wobbly on me, to the point where I couldn’t ride it. I took it in to Cyclepath and they fixed it on the spot in about 15 minutes. They had to point out to me that a bunch of my spokes were broken. For some made-up reason they charged me an extra $40 to replace a piece of hardware on the wheel because mine was “too old and not compatible with their tools” to properly get the wheel on and off. So I ended up paying $70 and change to get the rear tire replace. Now, about a month later, my wheel is rubbing against the prongs which is causing me much dismay. I am trying to go over in my head exactly what I am going to say to try to get this repaired at minimal extra cost.

Me: “Do you guys have any kind of warranty on parts or labour?”

Them: icy stare

Me: “Because I brought this in last week and it’s already broken again. “

Them: “You did it.“

“Well I haven’t been taking it off road or anything. Why would I not have any problems for over a year, and then suddenly it breaks again 4 weeks after you guys fix it?“

“Well it broke 4 weeks ago, didn’t it?”

“You know what I mean, (you extortionists).”

“Did you buy the cheapest wheel possible?”

“Yes. Are you implying that I should have expected to come back in a month because of it?”

“It’s your fault.”

“Well maybe I’ll just take my business to the Bike Doctor.”

“We’re all owned by Coke so do whatever you want, you know-nothing-about-bikes nerd. “

“Ouch.”

“$40 for us to unlock the door and let you out.”

Though in fairness they did give me a free plastic cap for my air tube nozzle…thing. (truly I am a know-nothing-about-bikes nerd). Speaking of nerd, I ran a playtest of the World Wildlife Federation of Justice game that I’m running at H.P. Lovecraft’s Birthday Party (Aug 25-27 at the Marpole Curling Club!) and even though it went almost two hours over the estimated time, it was a lot of fun. All of the players seemed to enjoy it and one of them was even heard to say “I would kill small children to play that again.” I won’t reveal any of the details because I know people who are going to play it will be reading this blog. But after HPLBDP anything goes.

ps – I drew Velocelot, speedster and arch-nemesis to Go-Rilla, and will try to post the pic tonight.

Recently I’ve been thinking about hanging up my Vancouver Gaming Guild pooh bah hat, after V-Con. It’s just too work-intensive and though I love gaming, I’m frankly tired of organizing conventions. It takes a lot of time and energy and commitment, and I figure 6 years of that is nothing to sneeze at. Would anyone pick up my responsibilities, such as they are? I don’t know. I think everything is in place for the system to continue. Certainly the message boards aren’t going anywhere and we’ve got a good ongoing relationship with the Marpole Curling Club and the various game stores in town to continue events. I would still go to events and whatnot, but I want to focus my time, energy and commitment to new personal projects.

Speaking of which, I learned last week that Chester Brown got a Canada Council grant for his Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography. While my comic wouldn’t be about a historical Canadian personality, at least I know that it’s possible to get a grant for a comic. I’ve been browsing a number of sites for lists of Canadian animals (for World Wildlife Federation of Justice characters). Still haven’t come up with any gripping ideas for beavers or moose, though Datalynx and The Great Wolverini could apply. Maybe I can find a Haida co-writer for some extra sellout action (though even in Power Enterprise I did have a Kwakiutl eco-terrorist shaman). Did you know that Canada is home to the rubber boa, the hoary marmot, and the bushtit? Some of them, like the nighthawk and the screech owl, write themselves.

I used the Computing Effects of an Impact on Earth website to learn what would happen if I, Toren Atkinson, fell to Earth – or the closest I could come to such.

My Inputs:

Distance from Impact: 1.00 km = 0.62 miles (Is this where I fall from or where you are watching from? The former, I think)

Projectile Diameter: 1.00 m = 3.28 ft = 0.00 miles (I’m two meters tall but obviously I don’t have a diameter of even 1m. So I’m cheating a bit, but that’s the minimum value I could enter. Just imagine me curled up in a phoetal position and fattened up on Thanksgiving dinner when I fall. I do love being called a projectile.

Projectile Density: 500 kg/m³ (This is about half the density of ice. I guessed. I don’t really know what my density is.)

Impact Velocity: 15.00 km/s = 9.31 miles/s (11 is minimum, So I figure 15 is decent.) Impact Angle: 90 degrees (straight on – the best way.)

Target Density: 1000 kg/m³ Target Type: Liquid Water of depth 1.00 meters, over typical rock. (I imagine myself falling into Chris Woods’ kiddie pool.)

Energy:Energy before atmospheric entry: 2.95 x 10¹⁰ Joules = 0.70 x 10^-5 MegaTons TNT. The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is less than 1 month. (Think about that!)]

Atmospheric Entry:

The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 89300 meters = 293000 ft (“I regret nothing!” you hear me cry). The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 72700 meters = 239000 ft (I’m so beautiful!). The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 14.3 km/s = 8.86 miles/s

The energy of the airburst is 2.78 x 10⁹ Joules = 0.66 x 10^-6 MegaTons. No crater is formed, although large fragments may strike the surface. (Watch out for hot flying junk)

Major Global Changes:The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass. (Negligible mass? How dare they!) The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth’s rotation period or the tilt of its axis. The impact does not shift the Earth’s orbit noticeably. (Not literally, but metaphorically, watch out.)

Air Blast:The air blast at this location would not be noticed. (The overpressure is less than 1 Pa) (I.E. no Toren shock wave).

And if I was 500 miles across, I might look like this (7 minute video which according to astronomer Phil Plaitt is pretty accurate). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYgEwXWilUc

I love Stewie my roomie like El Guapo so I will post something here that is important to everyone in this household:

Hello all,

The last three years of my life have been tied up making a video game – and after all that time, it’s finally about to come out.
If you’re interested, please follow the link where you can have a look at the demo. If you’re not interested, then I have a favour – follow the link anyhow. The response to the demo has been huge and positive, but we are at odds with the fans of another game. I’ve always chuckled at that sort of thing when Star Trek fans did it to Star Wars fans and all that, but now I’m on the other end of it – who’s laughing now!?

So, even if you wouldn’t mind following the link and adding your vote for the game – even if you’re not into strategy games, think of it as voting for me.

http://www.fileplanet.com/165574/160000/fileinfo/Sword-of-the-Stars-Demo?r=5

Thanks everyone.

c

But in accordance with the Blogger Code I must also warn you that if you are like me and want to actually look at the demo you will have to register on the site, confirm via email, be asked to subscribe for a fee, get confused about how to actually download the file without subscribing, be told that there is an error because you don’t have Internet Explorer on your system, that you will have to wait 25 minutes for your download to begin because you are NOT a subscriber, and then give up, slightly miffed for wasting time to register on the site in the first place. No fault of Stewie’s of course. I support his game, but there are only so many hoops to jump through before my big feet get snagged. I think you can rate the game without having to jump through any of said hoops though. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Oh and I did voices for the game in case you didn’t know.

ADDENDUM: I actually did wait for the 25 minutes and downloaded the game with no problem, and launched and played with no problem! Pretty neat stuff – I even got in a battle.