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Friday, December 11th, 2009





Þorfinnr Karlsefni. He explored Markland, which is relevant to my research.

I have one date — 1347, describing, briefly, a trading expedition to Markland.

Pray, good sir, when did they discover Markland? It's described in the Grœnlendinga saga but I cannot find a date. Even a year. Even a friggin' decade.

The Grœnlendinga saga and Eiríks saga rauða are giving me the headache from hell. I've learnt some very, very, very sketchy and uncertain and minimal Icelandic, enough so I can identify familial relationships and names, but I know nothing of their calendar system during the time of the sagas.

I am an annoyed panda.

For the kind soul who asked — my research is on the French and English colonisation of l'Acadie / Nova Scotia, as they passed back and forth several times depending on treaty obligations in wars fought in irrelevant places. It's a fascinating study of English vs. French management of literally the same lands, with the same First Nations peoples, & c.

That isn't Icelandic, but I'm just trying to establish a date for first European contact, which was definitely with the Vikings (and more importantly, exposed the First Nations to Europeans for the first time, which they remembered, as I can show in my Wampanoag Confederacy source documents), and I cannot find it.

I am closing my scholarly research databases, I am closing my timeline done painfully and painstakingly in Excel, I am closing EndNote X3 (thanks be upon the thesis gods that chose to give us benevolent bibliographic software) and I am going to lie with a cool compress on my forehead and try to stop shaking with frustration.

There will be 250 pages wrested from me by 16 March, 2010 so I can have a rough draft. There will be, there must be, there shall be. But, like childbirth, it will be painful and I will be having thoughts of regret, and not incidentally, strong drugs, throughout.

Still trying to decide on Edinburgh. I really need some stuff that's too delicate (correspondence, mostly) to scan or microfilm. On the other hand, I so can't afford it it's ridiculous. Though I can if I stay in hostels, I can afford it, just barely, on my grant. Oh, and not eat.

Below, beneath a cut, is a fascinating piece, "Frodo Baggins, A.B.D." and highly recommended reading for all researchers in acadame.

Frodo Baggins, A.B.D. by Susie J. Lee )

For those who have not read the books or seen the films, the significant parts of the story centre around a long journey made by a hobbit named Frodo Baggins. He travels across a land called Middle-earth to throw a ring into the middle of a volcano called Mount Doom -- an action that, for doctoral students, is known as "filing the dissertation."

Like many a dissertator, Frodo's terrible and treacherous mission has a dual nature. He cannot, and does not, accomplish the goal without the help of others, but ultimately, he must bear the great load alone.

Frodo is accompanied on the journey by his hobbit friends Sam, Merry, and Pippin. )

Frodo, on the other hand, has made the decision that he wants to go all the way. His most important companion is Sam, who is the equivalent of Frodo's "partner".

Sam is not a Ph.D. student, and more than anyone else, he has the terrible burden of being the one closest to the ring bearer. Sam's own fate is tied to that of the ring yet he is helpless to determine his future in a direct manner. He cannot make Frodo finish; he can only try to make it easier for Frodo to do so. He is the long-suffering hero whom every ring bearer thanks at the beginning or end of the acknowledgments of the dissertation — the one about whom everyone writes "I couldn't have done it without you."

On their way to file the dissertation, Sam and Frodo separate one time. The separation is the result of a deception spun by a fallen soul named Gollum — a.k.a., the doctoral candidate who will never finish.

Gollum lived with the ring for many years and it destroyed his life, mind, and well-being. )

For example, he is stabbed three times during the course of his journey by disgusting and horrible creatures. He is hounded by terrifying beings called the Ringwraiths. Those attacks are the equivalent of the dissertator's endless financial struggles. Each loss of funds prevents him from paying enormous photocopying costs, expenses for travel to archives, bills for books and supplies, health insurance, and campus fees. )

Gandalf is instrumental in running interference for Frodo and making sure that he can complete his mission. He writes recommendations for grants and letters of introduction to libraries. He critiques drafts, locates possible sources of money, and feeds his student whenever possible. Most important, he offers intellectual guidance and moral support. Gandalf has his own challenges, however. In the Mines of Moria, he faces down a horrifying demon called the Balrog — meaning he must also teach, research, publish, and serve on committees.

Frodo's “fellowship” also includes family, friends, dissertation groups… )

Frodo and Sam have finally arrived at Mount Doom, which means that Frodo finally has the full draft. But he looks terrible; he has been defeated emotionally and spiritually by the burden of carrying the ring. He has reached the end of his long journey, but will he file?

At the volcano, Sam yells to Frodo to throw in the ring. But by this time, the strain and burden of carrying the ring for so long has damaged Frodo's mind; he doesn't want to let go. He looks at Sam with a crazed look and says, "The ring is mine!" which, translated, means that he can't or won't finish; he has more research to do, more editing; the dissertation is just not good enough; he must reformat the page numbers.

He has taken the step toward becoming Gollum. He will remain A.B.D. forever. Sam cries pitifully. His life is ruined, too.

All of a sudden, Gollum appears and wrestles Frodo to the ground. )


Whereaboooots: 236, Allston Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mood: frustrated
Tuuuuune: gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, frustrated crying jag
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I read the new Winnie-the-Pooh stories. They were much better than I expected: normally I'd expect any sequel, even if promising, to be something like:

- Nine princes in amber prequels, which tackled the interesting question of how Amber was formed from the shadows by ripping up the cosmology and inventing a different one instead
- Dune prequels which are gratuitously awful
- Disney winnie-the-pooh which features flying motorbikes

They mostly fit in with the style of the original, and were pleasant, and appropriate.

However, the style seemed formulaic in places, and none seemed very memorable, but I don't know if that's because the original actually was better, or just because people only see the glow of fond memory.

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Apparently Jemery Beadle, "second most hated man in England", is dead.

When I said "I don't want to hear any news about Jeremy Beadle ever again" I didn't expect people to take it so far not to tell me that he actually died :( OTOH, it shows just how adpet I became at avoiding celebrity gossip!

Come to think of it, I wonder if there's a service where you can sign up for alerts when arbitrary things happen: say "i want to know when XXXX book is released" or "I want to know when they finally make another _good_ superhero film" or whatever, and then if anyone who signed up sees it happens, they can trigger an email to go to everyone else.

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hatam_soferet
la vie soferet
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 09:31 pm
Untagged


Wake up to alarm to see sleet beating through the open window. Bedroom is freezing.

Perk of being a freelancer: roll over and go back to sleep.

Get up. Spend a while proofreading, then head down to yeshiva.

Quill I've been using for the past few months is past using any more, so cut new quill.

New quills are like new shoes - really annoying until you've broken them in. Breaking new quill in is slow work. Write a very small amount of Torah before lunch.

Lunch.

Mincha.

Hot chocolate with friend visiting from Israel.

Observe gleams of late-afternoon sun striking low on the skyscraper opposite. Deduce that it is late afternoon.

Return to yeshiva.

Teach Torah fixing skills to my guinea-pigs. That is, I'm helping them become better Torah fixers, and they're helping me become a better fixing teacher.

It is early evening.

Freelancing means you can spend your afternoon as above if you like, but it also means you have to make up the hours somewhere. Putting it off to the next day is asking for trouble; if you spent your afternoon on non-work activities, you really do have to spend your evening on work activities.

Therefore, write a lot of Torah.

Until bedtime. Oh, the glamour. Zzzzz.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. Re-enabling comments over here because dreamwidth fail at LJ integration. Pity, because they have principles.


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It might be reasonably expected that finding a genuinely revolutionary RPG would be tricky - I've played quite a few RPGs in my time.

To be honest, however, this choice was extremely easy - a fact that is moderately depressing. Similar to fantasy fiction, most plots are terribly unoriginal and the true genius arrives via the implementation.

For the free offering I selected XU4, the Ultima IV remake, together with the Ultima IV graphics update.

Ultima has a mostly prestigious history as an RPG series[1], helmed by Richard 'Lord British' Garriott throughout its tenure (although the story that he was mistaken for someone British is really quite difficult to believe after hearing his hideous voice acting in Ultima VII part 2).

In any case, Ultima 0 (Akalabeth) though Ultima III were typical 'kill the bad guy' RPGs. Perhaps they were a cut above some of the other games at the time, but the series was still finding its feet, frankly.

In one 180° sweep, Ultima IV obliterated RPG stereotypes by creating a game where the aim is to become a paragon of virtue and indiscriminate murder and looting is frowned upon. I'm sure various criticisms may be levied against the virtues, but even now it's a novel concept.

Ultima IV is probably the high point of the series in terms of plot, but not in terms of implementation. Ultima V has a less revolutionary plot, but is technically more sophisticated, and Ultima VI, VII and VII part 2 were the most technically advanced RPGs of their time, bar none. It's also basically true that none of those games precisely boiled down to 'kill the bad guy' either although that wouldn't be frowned upon in parts VII and VII part 2 in terms of achieving the necessary ends.

Ultima IV isn't the easiest game to play. The graphics are primitive and the interface annoying at times. XU4 at least marginally improves the graphics to scaled 256 colour versions instead of the original 16 colours and improves a few aspects of gameplay.

Ultima VI was in fact the first Ultima game to capture my heart, given the combination of interactivity, decent music and acceptable graphics, not to mention the unexpected ending. Ultima VII and VII part 2 were technically revolutionary, and the interactivity and storytelling in VII part 2 would be unmatched for years following its release.

Ultima VI and VII/VII part 2 are not freely releasable, so they don't count. Try Nuvie to play Ultima VI and Exult for VII/VII part 2 to play the games on modern systems. A free mod for Dungeon Siege implementing Ultima VI is also making very impressive progress. Free mods for commercial games still don't count as 'free', however..


The original was available for more legacy computers and consoles than you can shake a stick at; the remake supports Windows, OS X and (if the source code is compiled) Linux.

My choice for the commercial title has not changed in ten years : Planescape : Torment.

As a proper role playing computer game, Planescape:Torment remains completely unequalled. It is easily the best amnesiac immortal RPG of all time ;). The soundtrack and effects are stunning (if not surround), the graphics are adequate (good at the time, low res but acceptable now), the control system was always a bit fiddly - but the interactivity, oh the interactivity!

PS:T has varying estimates on the amount of text in the game; it tends to average at half a million words or more. It is possible to chose your character's statistics within certain limits, but the appearance, sex and initial AD&D 2 class are preset. There are very few fights in the game which are absolutely necessary, although it is possible to have a reasonable number of battles if so wished. Talking to companions and other Non Player Characters is an integral part of the game; more experience is gained this way than any battle fought.

The game is a voyage of discovery instead of saving the universe, and many principles of philosophy and belief are simultaneously present in a complex and unusual world. It's a setting that spans many scenarios, and provides empathy for your companions and the way they are tied to your character.

I've played PS:T at least four times (possibly more) and it was a unique experience each time. This is a game that is a necessity in any collection, provided the player is prepared to read and use their brain a little. I have infinitely more technically sophisticated RPGs, some still in their shrinkwrap, but found myself replaying Torment first. Make of that what you will.

Planescape : Torment

On Amazon recently re-released and now temporarily at £11.33, this is obviously meant to be!

Some tips for playing.

Apply the unfinished business mod, to restore some content that was unfinished and disabled when the game was released.
There's a user interface mod and a widescreen mod that may enable greater than 640x480 resolutions on some systems. This may or may not be a good idea - my advice : play at 640x480 if you can handle it.
PS:T really rewards playing with high intelligence, wisdom and charisma. You can play as a pure fighter if you wish, but many of the nuances will be missed.
Don't drop the bronze sphere once you've found it.

Now, what are you doing, buy it now! It's possibly the best game ever. I'm off to buy the re-release, despite already having the old four disc big box version..

[1] The less said about Ultima VIII and Ultima IX the better. Neither are particularly bad RPGs, but they're not Ultimas


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redbird
A good workout
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 09:09 pm
Tags:


gym numbers )

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth (http://redbird.dreamwidth.org/1185251.html), where there are comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here, there, or both.


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I noticed, on my 64-bit Linux system, that gnome-panel was apparently using an awful lot of virtual memory.

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 3734 rjk       20   0  290m  16m 6668 S    0  0.8   3:22.05 gnome-panel

Virtual memory’s pretty cheap, so that’s not hugely problematic, but it seemed a huge amount for a glorified toolbar. I looked in /proc/3734/maps and found that about 260MB of that space belonged to shared libraries. Now, gnome-panel does use a lot of library, 82 to be precise, but 3MB per library sounded a lot, and the biggest of them is only 4MB. Looking closer I noticed that an awful lot of the libraries had 2MB (0x200000) non-executable mappings associated with them. As an example here are the mappings for GTK+ (with the size in hex added at the start for convenience):

3c7000 7f967efd6000-7f967f39d000 r-xp 00000000 fe:00 3111259  /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.12
200000 7f967f39d000-7f967f59d000 ---p 003c7000 fe:00 3111259  /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.12
  a000 7f967f59d000-7f967f5a7000 rw-p 003c7000 fe:00 3111259  /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.12

The first line is the code segment and the last the data segment. But what’s the strange 0x200000 (2MB) mapping in the middle?

The answer took me a while to figure out.


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feanelwa
<untitled>
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 09:21 pm
Untagged


I have downloaded the leaked UEA climatology documents from Wikileaks. Good god these guys work hard. I am going to put off reading this until I have a Linux box and can grep things and actually open simple text files without the world exploding. So, I don't have the information to discuss its credibility yet.

From Slashdot about the wider implications of "climategate"* on the credibility of science:
long long pasted quote )

I think this is a serious risk - but a serious risk that people will realise that we're actual people in actual workplaces where there are sometimes disagreements; that scientists aren't pretending at being some religious gatekeeper but will say "what, I am so confused and must think about this harder" when we meet something difficult; that the only difference between a scientist and an untrained layperson is training and possibly 20 years of being treated like a performing monkey. We're not secret high priests; we're people trying to figure out how stuff works based on how other stuff seemed to work. The world isn't full of "if people do this, God will do this, certain fact"; it's more complicated than that. Certainty and authority have always been a useful illusion to make society a more comfortable place to live in; they're fine for that purpose most of the time, but to expect atoms and statistics to obey it is a losing battle.

In some way we need to have that authority so we can tell people what urgently needs to be done to e.g. stop a sudden epidemic, instead of being mocked whenever we give advice. But then we want to give the best advice and have it pointed out if there's evidence to suggest we need to rethink; just politely, not by some hick waving a gun who hasn't bothered to read it. And actually, that's the point: it needs to be possible for the wider public to read our publications, not have them behind a subscription-only gate that only enormous institutions can afford. There are people who don't even believe that scientists do experiments, just make up machines and beliefs and potions and present them as sacred fact like some kind of modern-day Aristotle. We seriously need to change this so that our work is visible to the people whose taxes fund us and whose lives depend on us, as visible as bad art and government spin. No wonder the world is so pessimistic, when the real hard work of so many people is as invisible as the washing up fairy.

*I keep thinking of opening the front door and having summer and winter all rush in at once when I hear this word. Back, climate! Stay!


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lethargic_man
Thoughts on Chanukah
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 09:12 pm
Untagged


Every year for the past little while, as you're probably fed up of me saying by now, my conception of Chanukah has been completely overturned. First [info]livredor did it. Then along came Rachel Elior at Limmud '05, then other people (whose identity I have forgotten, but whose teachings are summarised at the above link), then Stephen Rosenberg at Limmud '07, and most recently R. Shoshanna Boyd-Gelfand at the Moishe House Beit Midrash.

This year I'd tell you who the prize goes to... only in the few days it's taken me to get around to blogging this, I've forgotten. :-( It's not Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo, in his fascinating essay about capel-wearing, nor R. Jeremy Rosen in his blog, nor the Reflections column in the AMS weekly sedra sheet. If you saw this information online recently, let me know, and I'll give its author credit.

Anyhow, what the insight was was to point out that that though we have this whole eight-day festival to celebrate the Hasmoneans' recapturing Jerusalem from the Seleucids and rededicating the Temple, what the history we are commonly taught does not mention (but Maccabees 1 and Josephus do) is that shortly after this happened, the Seleucid reconquered Jerusalem, and it was not until 13 Adar that the Jews finally liberated it for good, which was commemorated in the minor festival of Nicanor's Day, named after the defeated Seleucid general (and which was one of a number of minor commemorations of minor victories which have now been rolled together into the eight-day festival of Chanukah). The author of the article I read this in commented that maybe that by choosing the 25th of Kislev as the main celebration of the Hasmoneans' victory, not 13 Adar (or a nearby day so as not to clash with the Fast of Esther or Purim), maybe the Sages of that generation were making a deliberate point.

On a slightly different note, I was thinking back over what I learned from R. Boyd-Gelfand, about the reason for lighting candles (or oil lamps) on Chanukah. The reason we all know about is the story of the miracle of the single undefiled cruse of oil lasting for eight days, but that story is not attested until the Gemara was written down in the seventh odd century. It's not mentioned in the Mishna or anything earlier, even though the Mishna gives the laws about lighting the lights. This makes it a bit suspect given the generally poor "historical memory" of the Talmud of post-Biblical history. Maccabees 2, meanwhile, gives a completely different story but which doesn't tie into anything we know about Chanukah; which raises suspicions further on the general principle as enunciated by R. Chaim Weiner which is that when the Sages give one reason for why we do something, that's the reason, but when they give multiple reasons, they don't know what the reason is. And then there's Josephus, who tries to fob off his readers with a broken reed of an explanation; it's clear he knows more than he's letting on.

This put me vaguely in mind of the Druze, who practice a secret religion: The details are revealed only to their initiates, the `uqqāl, and even the majority of the Druze themselves don't know their own people's religion. It strikes me that in lighting lights on Chanukah we've gone one step further: We've got a religious practice which is central to one of our minor festivals, but the origin of which we've managed to completely forget!

One can't help but wonder, then, if the original reason for lighting lights on Chanukah might not be something completely different to the reasons which have come down to us—if the reason R. Boyd-Gelfand thought Josephus was hiding and not passing on to his readers was not actually the one about the miracle of the oil, but something completely different, which was so politically sensitive (that being the most likely reason, in a time of Roman suppression of Judaean revolts) that it could never be written down at all, and ultimately got forgotten.


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megamole
O HALP.
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 09:03 pm
Untagged


Anyone got a spare easily-pluggable-into-a-PC mike? Or should I just go ahead and buy one?


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mathcathy
childish working pracice
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 08:26 pm
Untagged


It was a 3 legged race today.

And another department have started "yee-haw"-ing like cowboys.

Customers are complaining. This can't keep going for long.


Moooood: peaceful
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blue_mai
heh
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 06:58 pm
Tags:


i was just ID-ed in marks&spencer (i didn't have any, i just said "i'm thirty").
i was buying cherry liqueur chocolates.
surely not the booze of choice for Bankside's teenagers?


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cartesiandaemon
Film: Push
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 05:38 pm
Tags: ,


Push is another "people with psychic powers pursued by the govt" film, like Jumper or Heroes. It was quite interesting. Unfortunately, like several others, at the end after a lot of fast-paced running around, you say "meh, did anything actually happen in that film?"

But on the brighter side, the various pyshic powers were well characterised, the annoying 13-year-old girl co-protagonist was quite cool, and the seeing-the-future and altering-memories raised many quite interesting questions.

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rysmiel
hoist up the scarlet sail
Friday, 11 December 2009 at 12:15 pm
Untagged


So:

$boss2 indicated to me last week that the workshop was going to be "here are a bunch of people with computers, you will have a computer, show them the website". $visiting_workshop_person mailed yesterday to say "here is the Powerpoint presentation you should present". These are, as you may notice, different things, requiring distinctively different approaches.

$boss2 this morning said that in the announcement he had told everyone to bring a laptop. Which does not suggest that we will be having a space at which everyone has a terminal. He is also to send me the actual announcement for the damned thing before I mail $visiting_person to sort things out. And also that they want me to talk in large part about the capacities of the desktop version rather than the online version.

$visiting_person has mailed me an enormous file, supposedly apropos of this, the which I cannot open at work.

At least I seem to have pulled back to a commanding lead in my Civ game. And I have almost everything that needs posting ready to post to people today, Christmas cards and packages wise, though it would appear that Canada Post is understandably being hit hard by the H1N1 epidemic and things may be late.

Also, having tromped through snow to the bus stop, I have now Had Enough Winter and it can go back to being summer again. (This did not work last year or the year before, but hope is a virtue.)


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Thursday, December 10th, 2009





Todays choices are going to require a bit more effort, so possibly aren't a good idea for a quick Install and Play session, but they're still worth a bash.

Space based fighting and trading games are another genre that sees only sporadic success. Really, I can't see any good reason for this, as increasingly more powerful graphics hardware and processors are substantially more capable of creating a suitably realistic universe. It may be one of the casualties of the rise of online games - Eve Online is staggeringly popular as a space based game and has perhaps taken players away from a genre that was never precisely mainstream.

The obvious candidates for my freeware choice are either the original versions of Elite (BBC, Archimedes, PC etc. NES Elite was apparently the best 8 bit version) from Ian Bell's pages, or OOLite - basically a modern, updated version of Elite for Windows, Linux and OS X. I'm not going to choose those, though.

Frankly Elite has aged badly. At the time it was impressive that it existed at all, the graphics were excellent for the time and the procedural universe creation and trading was a clever trick. Unfortunately, the number of missions are very limited and a great deal of the game is simply involved in random dogfights. After the exciting initial stages it is an absolute slog to reach Elite - I think I gave up at Dangerous, and that was fully kitted out with military lasers.

Do check out Ian Bell's pages if you're interested in Elite, though.

Neither am I choosing X Wing, even though many people raved about it. It was a lovely adaptation, and being able to do things like balance power between the shields and weapons makes tactics rather interesting. It's a bit too simulation based for my liking, though - I prefer my space games more arcade based (and frankly, they're all unrealistic from a flight in a vacuum point of view). I note X Wing may be coming to the XBox360, though..

My choice is the remake of Privateer. Originally it was a 320x200 DOS game, but has evolved to a fully 3D accelerated Windows, Linux and OS X game adapted from the Vega Strike project.

Privateer was a considerable upgrade from the wireframe or shaded graphics of Elite, it has a solid main storyline, plus the ability to just wander off by yourself. With a few exceptions, the universe actually seems alive - other ships in the vicinity will pick off pirates regardless of who they're targeting, you can do ship to ship comms and there's a whole load of emptiness. About the only criticism that can immediately be levelled is the lack of unexpected wonder in the middle of nowhere, but hey it was 1993 and the first game probably came on floppies.

Privateer 1 and its expansion pack also managed to avoid the FMV overload of the Wing Commander series and the strict mission structure. The little touch of anarchy rather than regimented militarisation is very welcome.

The problem with the remake is that it's still in a bit of flux. It is possible to *cough* obtain *cough* the DOS version, but it is by all accounts difficult to get working - even under Windows 95/98. Plus, it's 320x200, and in the days of 17"+ monitors things do start to look a bit pixelated.

The link to how to obtain the latest remake is on the forums and requires a degree of fiddling. For anyone who has never played Privateer, it's probably worth waiting till all the bugs have been ironed out, as it might spoil the main storyline otherwise.

DOS Version

Privateer : DOS

Remake (I will probably update this with a better screenshot, soon)

Privateer remake

My choice for the commercial game is an updated installation of Freespace 2. Whilst it's true that there haven't been many space games, FreeSpace 1, 2 and X3 Reunion are a few that have done well.

I'm guilty of drifting away from space games too, but the difference appears to be that Freespace 2 is more of a Wing Commander With Bells On action shooter, whilst X3 is an indepth simulation. Both have a decent plot, but Freespace 2 is easier to get into.

Freespace 2 is a 1999 game and thus the graphics started to age badly. It's a good job therefore that the Freespace 2 Source Code Project existed to bring the game up to date. However, it seems that although it is a bit more mature than the Privateer project (which is itself not that bad), it is not handily packaged in the way that many other games are.

Freespace 2 with SCP
Windows only original, SCP version supports Windows, OS X and Linux. $6 at Gog.com


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megamole
Yay.
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 01:11 pm
Untagged


The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Daleks

Though I might need to offer my services as a voice-over artist. As yer man himself says, the Guide doesn't quite sound right, howay man, hinny, pet, canny like.


Moooood: Geordie Vogon.
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View poll: Variables with units

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blue_mai
grammar
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 11:23 am


hello LJ. I have a question of grammar that i hope one of you can answer (because neither i nor my colleagues can) - when talking about a place, the place is sometimes a plural. Is it wrong to say "The fens are a place where... " because it goes from plural to singular?


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I really have to thank [info]cathedral_life for pointing me in the direction of the Fifty Percenters Blog. I might blog about it more later. I particularly liked the post The Christmas Tree Debate is a Distraction. Go read the original post but if you really can't here's a quote which sums a lot of it up:
"if my children's sense of Jewish identity was so fragile that the act of decorating a Christmas tree was capable of destabilizing them to the point of not knowing who they were, then there was something very deeply wrong that went far beyond Christmas. Perhaps I am an idealist, but I believe that Jewish identity, when it is steeped in history, community, education, love, reflection, and sincere practice, is strong enough to withstand the temptation of shiny baubles.

On a similar note there's a post on Homeshuling entitled Playing Christians in which the author confesses:
"But my approach to Christmas has been different. I treat it more like a gateway drug – serve a few glasses of eggnog, or turn on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and next thing I know, my children will be signing up for the convent."
Happily she then explains how she came to realise that her children's sense of Judaism was not so fragile that it would be destroyed by a visit to the Nutcracker.

At my conversion course we had a session on "The December Dilemma". I've also been to a session on it at Limmud (which was sort of an excuse to watch Southpark) and I've discussed it with my cheder students (that's December not Southpark). I've come to realise that Alec and my approach is quite different to a lot of Jews so I'll write a bit about it.

The first difference which really strikes me is that the "December Dilemma" pails into insignificance compared to the "March/April Logistical Nightmare". We find December quite easy. Channukah is a minor holiday and only requires minimal preparation (buy candles, find channukiah, eat fat) and the things I need to celebrate it are relatively portable. Christmas doesn't involve too much prep for us, just a bit of dashing about the country, visiting relatives, and ordering gifts from Amazon. Compare that to deep cleaning the entire house, coming up with a week's worth of kosher l'Pesach food and not being able to travel on certain days or eat out at all, all at the same time as your spouse is experiencing the most important festival of his religious year and your relatives want you to visit them and and eat non-kosher l'Pesach sweeties. Apart from the far greater logistical problems there's also a difference in the level of discordance of mood. Alec is a bit of a Prot and therefore doesn't really do Advent other than going to church on the different Advent Sundays. Christmas is a joyful festival as is Chanukah. If you squint you can see lots of the same themes come through: hope, miracles, pretty lights, unhealthy food. Compare that to the complete discordance when the Pesach seder, complete with joyful singing of Psalms and multiple uses of the word "hallelujah" (to shock my more Catholic readers) falls on Holy Thursday. Even better, a few years ago Purim fell on Good Friday. Imagine Alec trying to mourn the death of his Messiah whilst I'm running around in fancy dress getting drunk and eating far too many biscuits. Compared to that, finding a place for your chanukiah where it won't set fire to the Christmas tree is a minor issue.

I think another big difference in our attitude is that we are both religious and both regard Chanukah and Christmas as religious festivals. My parents are practising Anglicans and my childhood Christmases were very much Christian religious festivals. We would go to church on Christmas morning before we were allowed to open any presents, and when I was older I was allowed to accompany my parents to Midnight Mass. A prominent part of our Christmas decorations was a nativity set* and there were explicitly religious ornaments on the tree. I think the fairy on top of the tree was referred to as an angel. Lots of Jews say that they find Christmas easier to deal with if they think of it as a secular festival. I find the opposite. I see Christmas as a religious festival celebrated by many of my friends and relatives. Just as I might go along to Muslim friend's Eid celebration, I don't feel a problem with going to my in-laws for Christmas dinner. I won't take part in the religious services and I don't really feel comfortable singing Christmas carols (which is a pity because I like a lot of them). I wouldn't celebrate Christmas on my own, and some years I haven't taken part in celebrations because I've been at Limmud, but I'm happy to go and spend time with loved ones whilst they celebrate their festival.

On the other side of things, I think being religious helps me to feel more comfortable when negotiating Christmas. Like, Hannah and Amy, my Judaism doesn't boil down to whether or not I have a Christmas tree and isn't going to be vaporised by a verse of Jingle Bells. With a clear idea of what it means to me to be Jewish, I'm able to sort out what aspects of Christmas would come into conflict with it (worshipping Jesus) and what won't (helping Alec pick out tree baubles, eating vegan mince pies). I think that would be harder if my Judaism boiled down to a nebulous 'we must be Jewish or Hitler has won'.

I think one way that we're different to some interfaith families is that we like to keep our religions separate. At our wedding we held two different marriage ceremonies rather than trying to meld our different religious traditions into one. Our religious traditions are like oil and water. They exist around each other but we try not to let them mix. In this context, I'd rather have a Christmas tree in my house than a Chanukah bush. I'd rather my children receive Christmas presents than pretend that gift giving is a traditional part of Chanukah. Being in an interfaith family actually helps me to keep Chanukah more Jewish.

*Over the years bits got broken or lost and replaced so that we ended up with two Maries, about ten shepherds but only two wise men.


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Church sign: 'Christmas: Easier to spell than Hannukah'

(In any case, it doesn't matter how you spell Chanukah just so long as it has eight letters. :o))


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redbird
November reading
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 06:43 pm
Tags:


Books read, November (defined broadly). Possible spoilers for Ilario and Unseen Academicals.

Brust, Gentle, Pratchett, Fisher, Carey, Elkins, Wrede, Lathen )

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monanotlisa
Meme-time again
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 12:07 am
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Ooh, this one looks like fun:
If I came with a warning label, what would it say?


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From XMAS2009AWW


[personal profile] anna_luna, thank you so much for your Christmas card! This is the cutest thing I've seen all day, and mind that I'm sitting in the office with the cutest Englishman in all the land.

::

When my bike's front tyre was flat again yesterday, I gave up and had these put onto both wheels. So far, I'm happy with everything but the price - a slightly harder ride, but I've seen from reviews that they withstand glass, shards, nails etc.: everything but intentional malice (i.e. a sharp knife slid into the slit between the protective tyre and the tube inside). Which has happened to my bike, but not in my new garage. *knock on wood*

::

La, la, la, see icon. *sigh*

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atreic
<untitled>
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 07:20 pm
Untagged


Hmm, I am failing to write my yuletide story, and at some point I will need a beta reader or two...

Poll #1496777
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 24

So yuletide...

View Answers

I'm doing yuletide!
4 (17.4%)

I'm not doing yuletide!
19 (82.6%)

And just so I don't get you to beta a story I'm writing for you...

View Answers

My yuletide name is my LJ name
4 (100.0%)

My yuletide name is not my LJ name, it is:

View Answers

So beta-ing and general yuletide filter...

View Answers

I'm doing yuletide, and if it's not for me I'll beta your story!
2 (14.3%)

I'm not doing yuletide, but I'd beta your story.
12 (85.7%)



ETA: The 'I'll beta your story' tickybox is there to mean 'if you set up a filter to talk about your yuletide story in more detail and it sounds like there's a cat in hells chance I understand the fandom you're writing in, I might then volunteer to beta your story'. But that was a bit long for an LJ poll box.


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cakmpls
Rate My Life quiz
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 12:36 pm


I got this from [info]beckyzoole. I think it's accurate in assessing "spirit" (by the quiz's meaning) as the highest success in my life, but I think that "mind," "friends and family," and "love" should be higher than they are. I suspect that not checking "I read great literature" lowered my "mind" score, but I can't explain the others.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:
6.9
Mind:
7.5
Body:
5
Spirit:
9.6
Friends/Family:
7.2
Love:
7.3
Finance:
7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz



Those who know that I am a nontheist may be surprised at the exceptionally high "spirit" score, but I am not. The quiz results said, "Your Spirit score is very high, much higher than the average. If you wouldn't mind, please take a little time to explain how you manage to succeed so well at this aspect of your life." This was my response:

I call myself a nontheist: I think that if there is an entity worthy of what we mean by the title "God," it is irrelevant to that entity whether I believe in it or not. I sometimes say that I don't "believe" in anything; my viewpoint is "This is what I think right now, based on my observations, experience, and knowledge. As those aspects are added to, what I think may change." I do not need certainty, and so it seems I have less stress, less fear, less worry than many people. Some time after I developed my moral code, I discovered that it is much like Kant's "Categorical Imperative," which is "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." My viewpoint is that I cannot control anyone or anything in this world except myself; therefore, there is one, and only one, thing that I can do to make this world more like I want it to be: be that way myself.


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In many "introduction to C-style programming language" books, you see two variables being set to the same value with syntax like:

 x = y = 0


In fact, I almost never write that in real life. Normally I find:

* The variables are being declared and initialised, and you can't write "int a = int b = 0"
* It's possible the variables may be set to different values under some circumstances, in which case I find assigning them in separate statements clearer.
* It's being done to squeeze an extra statement into a conditional expression, like "while (p=getcharacter()) { dosomething(p) }", and it's actually clearer to move the assignment to a separate line

All the same, if I've ever declared any assignment operators on any user defined classes, I've always scrupulously declared them to return the value used*.

But for the first time in about five years, I actually *did* try to write "if (newval>obj.max) obj.val = obj.max = newval".

And it failed. Because obj was from the .NET framework, which has getters and setters, and setters apparently do NOT return a value. I'm not sure if they _should_. But maybe this piece of advice is dead now, if I never needed it before?

* Aside

In the C++ books I've seen, in fact they return a non-const reference from their assignment operators, allowing you to write:

(obj=1)=2


I assume no-one ever WOULD want to write that, because either (a) the assignment has no side effects, and it's pointless or (b) "obj=1" does something interesting, when it should have its own line. Why is the reference non-const, is it so it so that you can write "a = (obj=1)" or "f( obj=1 )" even if a.operator= or f take non-const parameters?

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megamole
Thank God for Oatibix.
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 04:05 pm
Untagged


Milk and Oatibix make a big mushy pap that can be digested easily and seems to have helped stabilise things. I have flushed most of the toxins out of my system. Now all I have is a slight cough and a very runny nose, but the muscular aches have gone. Back to work tomorrow.

The worrying thing is that if my antibiotics react this badly to alcohol, I have a choice either of pulling an infected tooth out just before Christmas and hence not eating anything, or of waiting a week and not being able to drink in the meantime. Argh.

Edit: Decision made. I'm going to have myself operated on on the 23rd.


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Revisiting adventures, because there are many fine ones out there. There will be at least one more set of adventures prior to the 24th.

Freeware wise, I'm selecting Reactor 09 from Origamihero. Reactor 09 is one of many games created with Adventure Game Studio, and exhibits the limitations of many of those games - namely low resolution graphics and a finicky interface. What it does feature, aside from the lack of price tag, is a plot that evolves naturally, a set of characters you come to like and multiple endings.

There's one fiddly locker puzzle that depends on positioning, but otherwise the puzzles are pretty solid, the graphics are good given the limitations, and the music fits the game quite well.

Reactor 09.
Free, Windows only.

On the commercial side I'm recommending The Longest Journey.

Adventure games suffered somewhat when gaming as a whole became more 3D based and publishers' attitude was that 2D - no matter how good - would not sell. The lines began to blur between RPGs, first person shooters and adventures creating the occasionally successful hybrids of the 'action adventure' and the 'action rpg'. 3D offers a great deal more flexibility, but the interactivity and art can sometimes lose out.

Admittedly the sprite scaling was usually an issue in 2D games, especially in the age of 320x200 graphics, and the art resources required for more sophisticated scenarios can be rather excessive. It's also true that striking the balance in adventures between telling a story and presenting a series of puzzles to the player is a task that's less than trivial.

I choose The Longest Journey because it was possibly the first 3D oriented adventure to work as well as a decent 2D one. The backgrounds and 3D are excellent, the control system is highly usable (as opposed to games such as Grim Fandango where the controls are substandard and the exits are not obvious), the music is of a consistently high standard, the puzzles are mostly good (with a couple of illogical and time based exceptions) and more than anything else, the world(s) feature characters you care about and the ending does not follow one of the lazy standard plots.

There are a number of niggles about the game, but none I can remember that truly irritate. It's also pleasant for once to play a female protaganist - somewhat of an exception in the gaming world.

The Longest Journey

£6.99 from Amazon new, or £14.99 bundled as part of Dreamfall Limited edition. Dreamfall was not as well received as TLJ was, though, so that choice should perhaps be approached with caution..

On certain operating systems later than XP, if using the four disk set instead of the two disk set, it may be necessary to copy some of the MFC and MSVCRT DLLs from disk four into the TLJ directory in order for the game to work.


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rysmiel
bringing balance to the Force
Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 10:50 am
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It would appear that, having had barely a dusting of snow so far this year, the weather is determined to catch up on all the snow we could have had since October in the space of a day or two.

It is a good day to be working from home, save for the bit where something that might well be a floor polisher has been going on the other side of the wall to both my room and the room with the computer in for some time.


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Wednesday, December 9th, 2009




cakmpls
Oh, goody
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 07:30 am
Tags: ,


According to the National Weather Service in Chanhassen this storm will potentially rank in one of the top five biggest storms for early December. Here are the current rankings on big early December storms.
Twin Cities: Rank Value Date
1. 8.4 12/1/1985
2. 7.4 12/9/1961 2. 7.4 12/3/1934
3. 7.1 12/8/1995
4. 6.3 12/7/1927
5. 6.0 12/7/1969
http://www.kare11.com/weather/weather_article.aspx?storyid=830177&catid=80

Patrick is calling in to work, to tell them he will be in later if our alley gets plowed. Not only is there deep drifted-in snow, but people's recycling bins have been blown out into the alley, blocking it. He is not happy at having to take personal time off, but I am too old and decrepit to risk having to shovel the vehicle out of a drift.


Moooood: cold
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adrian_turtle
zip
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 08:06 am
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I signed up for Zipcar. It's possible that I will only use it to go to this one job interview (rescheduled for next Monday), and then need to buy a car to commute off the T. In the unlikely event that turns out to be the case, I should have just rented a car from Enterprise for the day, rather than wasting the $75 signup fee for Zipcar. I am uncertain about how long the interview + drive time will take--at least 5 hours, with a cautious estimate being 6 hours, and a very cautious estimate approaching 7 hours--this doesn't look like a trip to show how cheap it is to only rent a car for a few hours.

But I could park a Zipcar on Tuesday and NOT WORRY ABOUT IT if there were a snowstorm on Wednesday. I wouldn't need to pay somebody $15 or $20 to clear the snow off the car, or find a place to park it while the parking place is plowed. If I'm not the first user of the car on Wednesday or Thursday, somebody else will deal with all that.


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papersky
Wednesday, snowing hard
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 08:01 am
Untagged


The Baltimore City Paper, the best newspaper in America or anyway my favourite (they're the ones that reviewed Ha'Penny with an original illustration) have Lifelode in their best ten books of 2009.

My recent Tor.com posts have been all Brust all the time Orca, Dragon, Issola.

AM is on her way home, and the weather, having belatedly noticed that it was very mild for November is busy catching up to the season, laying down snow and offering no temperatures above freezing.


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When someone invented petrol pumps that accepted credit cards, they must have been really pleased. "We can save everyone time!" they might have said. But judging by the "safe, secure, fast" stickers all over them, they must also have worried that people might not be eager to take them up.

Thus, in an effort to make paying at the pump seem easy and attractive to people stuck in their ways, there are two sorts of pumps: those that cheerily proclaim "Pay at pump" and those that cheerily proclaim "Pay at pump only".

However, there seemed to be one aspect of this stragegy which was woefully ill-thought out: what on earth if it _succeeds_. If your customers see paying by card as normal, and going into a quaint little hut full of chocolate bars and newspapers as touchingly retro, then "pay at pump" no longer carries the connotation of helpfully, this pump also offers the shiny futuristic pay-at-pump option, naturally contrasted with "can't pay at pump". It starts to look more like it ought to contrast with "pay at kiosk". But it can't, because if "pay at pump" means "pay at pump only", then what would "pay at pump" mean?

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simont
Grand unified theory
Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 10:31 am
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Rather late in the day compared to many people, I've recently been taking steps toward joining the DVCS generation.

For a year or two I've been an occasional light user of bzr, either to hold temporary branches off my main SVN repository (e.g. pre-commit polishing of a big patch somebody contributed to one of my public projects) or to hold projects too small, too experimental, too embarrassingly silly, or occasionally too private or legally encumbered to want to put into my public main SVN. A few weeks ago I managed to lose my long-standing fear of git, by dint of playing with test repositories and examining the output of git fast-export until I actually understood how its data structure fitted together and could work out everything else by reasoning about that. Having done so, I immediately migrated all my bzr repositories to git, because that kind of understanding is very valuable to me and bzr's documentation seems to place almost no emphasis on imparting it.

At the weekend, though, I actually did find the document which explains bzr's data structure – and, despite a superficially completely different user experience, it's actually very similar to that of git. As, I discovered after a brief browse on another website, is the data structure of Mercurial. The user interfaces can vary, but all three of these DVCSes have an essentially similar underlying data model.

And, curiously, a thing that struck me about this model is that it's surprisingly similar to something I already know about: Usenet.

may not be entirely serious )


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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009




redbird
Work and gym
Tuesday, 08 December 2009 at 10:07 pm
Tags: ,


I have a doctor's appointment (nothing major, I hope and expect) tomorrow, and will therefore be working from home, with a break while I'm at the doctor's office. I also have a manuscript that I'm supposed to have finished editing and turn in to production by Thursday afternoon. So, when I realized at a quarter to five that we might need the author to send us some more material (so the practice tests will match the state test blueprint in terms of content in different areas), and then my boss reminded me that I needed to check the fine details of that before emailing the author. (This is the difference between "it needs to be 30% physical science" and "we need at least one question on each practice test about lenses"). She asked whether I would have time to do that before I left. I said "yes," which was more decision than prediction: if necessary, I was going to stay a bit late so I could write to the author. It turned out that I had time to get that information, email the author, and put all the files I may need tomorrow on a thumb drive without staying past 5:30. [I got out the door slight late this morning, so wasn't at work until 9:30, hence staying until 5:30; some days I leave at 5:15 or even 5:00, though that requires really good transit luck or taking a shorter lunch break.]

I went to the gym, where I did a few things and then headed home; I wanted to get some stuff done here, and not to overuse the shoulder. I had read the freebie paper on the train in, so read a book on the cardio bike.

some numbers )

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ravingglory
<untitled>
Tuesday, 08 December 2009 at 04:19 pm
Untagged


So last night Robert and I went to Ceili at the Starry Plough. (It's a type of Irish Folk dance which is a apparently rather different then Ceilidh, which is pronounced the same way (kay-lee) but English) I decided to go because a friend of a friend is living in London and having a hard time meeting new people so I keep telling him he should go folk dancing. I've been finding myself wanting to meet some new people so decided to follow my own advice.

We had a lot of fun. I'm a bad dancer (bad at sports ect too), I can't tell left from right or think about my feet fast, but people didn't seem to mind too much. I meet one of Robert's Amptgard friends (who we didn't know would be there) and the other people seemed nice. I think we will go back but not next week because Robert has finals.


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friend_of_tofu
Ladybits
Tuesday, 08 December 2009 at 11:53 pm
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Gosh. Feministing readers will already have seen this, but I'm absolutely fascinated by this PDF from the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education, about the vagina, virginity myths and the hymen, which they call "the vaginal corona".

My gynaecological knowledge is not the best, so any medically-minded persons on my f-list want to interject?

I must admit, I could never quite get my head round the idea of what the hymen would actually look like, so the very stylised pictures, while fascinating, remind me of crosses between flowers and petri dishes. Which is kinda cool.


Moooood: musing
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