Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Christopher Thomas' LiveJournal:

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Monday, May 28th, 2012
12:00 am	Game Day, Toys, and Procrastination Bought one of the laser printers that was on sale. The new model in this line is about $450. This, an older model, was on clearance for $150. For $150, I can't _not_ buy an actually-rather-nice colour laser printer. I predict a sharp increase in the number of humour printouts that will make their way to the gaming group or to my office wall. Telecommuted to game day, due to still being semi-sick. This went adequately. The game itself was fine; we wrapped up the biggest loose end (rescuing another player's cohort-character), and made firm plans for fast-forwarding to the next adventure hook. The skype part, not so fine. While there were connection issues, the main problem was one of hardware: the microphones on both ends were crap. On my end, this wasn't a problem, as I was next to my mic and speaking loudly. The others were spread throughout a living room, usually facing somewhere other than the mic, and in the presence of very noisy parrots. Unless they were in "BILLY MAYS HERE!" territory, I couldn't hear them reliably. Much frustration ensued. Lapel-mics would solve the problem, but would be destroyed by the parrots in seconds (they're chewable, toy-sized, and you're trying to keep the parrots *away* from them, which makes them extra-delicious). I'm not sure what a good solution would be (other than "likely expensive"). Still haven't registered for convocation or mailed off the job applications. These are due Monday and Wednesday, respectively. Time to deal with that is now. Stay tuned. Felt better yesterday. Feeling less-better today. Outlook for Monday's volunteering: iffy. We'll see how things stand tomorrow. Now, paperwork, puttering, and bed. Current Mood: stressed (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 27th, 2012
12:13 am	Game Day Shift, Game Plotting, and Mad Science Plotting Game day has been shifted to Sunday, due to DM illness. Sunday is looking doable, fortunately. Finally updated my character sheet. Confirmed that level 12 is the "take a level in badass" level for my character. Several things line up nicely for fighter feats at that point, and due to this character's build, his L12 ability score bump puts him over the threshold for additional niftiness as well. Floated plans with the DM (and other players) for what my character wants to do over the longer term, now that the war is hopefully winding down. This involves trying to establish proper diplomatic relations with at least three non-human races. One of these trades with us already, one has interacted with our party but is pretty much never encountered, and the third is the celestial realm (we summon critters and soldiers from there, and priests pray to them, but a "let's sit down and talk" situation hasn't actually happened and is overdue). The "go over and say hi to the Great Dragons" idea has been shelved for now, as the idea is to only contact people we'd _want_ to have visit us. The last time one of the Great Dragons came by, it took the entire combined military might of the central subcontinent to convince him that it wasn't worth his while (and he's probably still peeved about that). Probably not something we want to have happen again soon. Worked mad science numbers for "depraved New Soviet Russia scientists From The Future(tm)"-class fusion reactors. This is a spinoff from the old Mekton campaign (presumably still going, but [2011 drama elided]). The thought experiment this time around was, "would it be possible to build a power plant so big that it needs to use *all* of Hudson's Bay as a heat sink?". It turns out the answer is "yes". You'd want to build it as an array of smaller reactors, if possible, because transferring heat _out_ of a 1 PW reactor that's only 3 km in diameter gets a bit tricky (that'd give it roughly the surface temperature of the sun if using radiative cooling). Cost of the project for the most easily-built version is about $10 quadrillion. So, out of budget for now, alas. (Individual reactors are specced to 100 GW generating capacity and cost $1 trillion, paying for themselves in about 30 years. Harder to build ones cost three times as much and generate 1 TW, paying for themselves in 10 years.) Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 26th, 2012
5:01 am	Recovery Day and Lack of Application Feeling better. Still not over the cold, but I'll be able to run errands without trouble on Sunday (maybe Saturday if I decide to pick up the one item I probably should from the drug store). Got very little done on the job application. Still made incremental progress. I'll look at this again Saturday and Sunday. I should also finally file my convocation paperwork if I plan to go. Main activity for the day: getting sucked into tvtropes. Twice. This is good for 1d6-1 hours each time, so neither visit was a wise move. Now, bed. Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Friday, May 25th, 2012
12:14 am	Sick Day the Third and Coding Still sick. Still have symptoms and am still woozy, but didn't need to be on cough syrup today, which is an improvement. Wasn't clear-headed enough for the job applications, but did get a bit more coding done on the tumblr-archiving script. At least one part will need to be reworked, though, as it needs information it doesn't presently have access to, and it'll mangle data under certain hopefully-uncommon conditions as-is. I can deal with this another day. For now, progress has been made. Plan for Friday is job application #1, no matter what. Plan for Saturday is game day via Skype, as I'm still a plague carrier. Plan for Sunday is unscheduled downtime. Most likely this will be a combination of overdue chores, job applications #2 and #3, and slack. I'm not yet feeling well enough to want to go outdoors (I'm irritated enough when people who are sick are next to me on the subway; I don't want to _be_ one of those people). Monday will likely start a work-week per usual, though that may get deferred to Tuesday if symptoms aren't gone by Sunday. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: restless (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 24th, 2012
3:37 am	Sick Day the Second Still sick. Symptoms are changing locations, per usual for a cold. This should run its course by early next week at the latest. Was marginally more lucid today. As a result, got a bit of coding done on the tumblr archiving script (separating out a couple of functions in a more logical manner). If this keeps up, I should be able to take a stab at the first job application tomorrow. I also have convocation paperwork that needs to be filed (I find the ceremony very tedious, but I'll regret _not_ going). Slack for the afternoon: Master of Orion 1 with "normal" mode opponents, again. Managed to not have my tail handed to me this time, though I'm still not very good at "4x" style games. In previous play-throughs I'd stuck with beam weapons, but I'm really warming up to projectile weapons this time around. There's a lot to be said for attacking from outside the enemy's range, and the "turn retreat into a go-around" trick makes attrition tactics viable. I'm sure there's a down-side, but I haven't found it yet. Now, bed. Current Mood: sick (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
1:12 am	York Flyby and Sick Day I'm definitely sick. The rest of the week is likely a write-off at this point, and skyping into the game this coming weekend is probably a good idea, unless I'm certain I'm better/not contagious. Stopped by York briefly. Picked up my work notebook and the job applications I'll be filing. Far too woozy to reliably fill out anything that important right now, though, so they'll stay on file until I'm feeling lucid again. Picked up groceries on the way home. I should have enough food to last until the weekend without having to make another grocery run. As long as I stay warm, get plenty of rest, and take appropriate steps to suppress the symptoms that exacerbate themselves, I should recover fairly quickly. Very inconvenient in the meantime, though. I'm not clear-headed enough to do useful work, and I'm not clear-headed enough to work on any of my coding projects either. I don't even dare touch the Rassilestia picture, for fear of botching the colouring. So far I've excavated a little bit more in Minecraft and had MOO 1 kick my tail on "normal" difficulty. We'll see how things look later in the week. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: sick (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
12:55 am	BBQ Prep and BBQ Woke up with cold-like symptoms Sunday. Took care not to make them worse, and for the most part this seems to have succeeded (though the acid test will be the next few work-days). Blaming getting 3.5 hours of sleep before game day and then spending a lot of time on transit with people with colds (there's one going around). Ran the remaining BBQ errands without incident. Got to sleep early enough Sunday night to be well-rested Monday. Overnight symptom suppressants were a large part of that (also prevented symptoms from aggravating themselves). It's still possible that this is allergy symptoms rather than a cold. Time will tell. Got to the ferry docks later than planned, and on the ferry later than planned, but this was still within established historical parameters. Island events themselves went quite well. Centreville was still fun, despite some of the rides being closed. Bumper cars happened, and the idea of bumper-car hovercraft was floated (and has now been forwarded to the mad science club). The hedge maze is (literally) down for maintenance, but foam sword fighting and frisbees were still popular. Costuming happened, with adorable results (a passing child really liked the lion character, and spent a while interacting with him [with parental permission]). The barbecue and beach fire also happened without incident. Upside: Successful event, with only minor hitches. Downside: went over even the worst-case budget estimate, at 3.5% of the yearly budget (compared to 2% for ponies to date, 3% for the Feral trip including spending money, or 15% for FC). The biggest thing to think about for future years is how to get burgers cooking faster or more efficiently. Everyone had a hot dog to start, to avoid having people wait absurdly long for food (which worked), but most people still wanted a burger, and they took quite a while. A third grill would have helped, but at some point I'm going to have to revisit other options for this (I'm reaching diminishing returns with the portable propane ones, no matter how inexpensive or convenient they are). We'll see. Plan for Tuesday is to get the first job application out, period. Second task for the day will be a grocery run. Plan for the rest of the week depends on whether I'm actually sick or not. If not, the other two applications go out, and experiment prep resumes. If I'm sick, then everything goes on hold for the rest of the week while I recover (and I may even miss out on game day this coming weekend). Stay tuned. Current Mood: exhausted (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 20th, 2012
12:51 am	Incremental Application Prep, Errands, Game Day, and BBQ Prep Didn't get the job applications out on Friday, but wrote up first draft content for the first one. This will go out on Tuesday (needs to be proofread again, and converted to the format they want). I'll also ping my references at the same time to give them a heads-up. Made a mall run Friday evening. Partly this was for groceries/BBQ supplies, and partly this was a "finally buy things for myself" trip. Ponies are still out of stock, though I've been pointed towards the person who can order them for me if they're in the chain's warehouse. I'll dig through Hasbro's catalogue over the next week or two. Did pick up a few things from the craft store (trying a small latch-hooking kit to see if I like it, and got a couple of pattern books), and from the bookstore (another batch of Pathfinder rulebooks; optional content but getting some use in the present campaign I'm in). Made it to game day on Saturday. Upside: on-time, with a packed lunch, munchies, and cupcakes (easier to transport than a full cake). Downside: 3.5 hours of sleep. Our forces managed to survive the enemy trap and break through and disengage from the enemy forces trying to surround us. Our characters and the NPC casters managed to find, apprehend, and execute the enemy leader, removing the primary threat to our forces (several hundred hard-to-kill and on-fire undead, sustained by a plot-device artifact). Relatively conventional warfare to mop up the remaining besieging forces will ensue, hopefully followed by rebuilding and peace. Our characters, of course, have more than enough plans to keep them busy and/or get them killed very quickly post-war, so the campaign is far from over. Made the planned grocery run. Managed to get pretty much everything needed. There's still one more errand to be run on Sunday (hopefully short), and there's still a chance I'll need to make another grocery run if attendance numbers keep climbing. This year's BBQ seems set to match or beat the previous record-holder (a couple of years ago, I think). Historical high was on the order of 50, possibly with 60 peak. This year, I have 40 "yes" and 10 "maybe" as of this moment, for an estimated attendance of 50. I have food for 60-70 without problems, 80 if a few people don't take seconds. If I hit 60-expected, it'll be time to push the limit up to 80-90 (I usually over-buy by 1.5x). The good news: one of the gaming crew is showing up (nice to see groups of friends mixing with each other), and someone whom I wasn't sure was still a friend after last year's drama-explosion a) confirms that they're still a friend and b) plans to attend if possible. The less-good news: ex the first plans to attend. Stress should be minimal as long as I don't have to interact with them much (it's a big event). In practice, I'll likely spend the entire time running around managing the event, and be on about 4 hours of sleep. My "me" time is generally during the amusement park component (about an hour playing minigolf and bumper cars while someone else watches the supplies). The event is still fun, though; I have moments of enjoyment, moments of catching up with friends, and vicariously have fun through everyone else's activity. It's worth it. If the event ever hits 80+ attendees, I'm definitely going to have to make logistics a bit more formal to spread the load. At 100+, we're going to have to use both BBQ shelters. At 120+, it might be time to reconsider the venue (even though the island is a lot of fun). Fortunately, we've been at or near saturation for a while now (there's a limit to how many people are in the area and interested, and how far people will drive for a few hours of BBQ). It's also inexpensive enough that attendance could double and I'd still have no trouble bankrolling it (this is not a con; there's very little overhead). So, no worries for the near-term. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
11:26 pm	Incremental Paperwork and New Students Reviewed job applications and did pen-and-paper prep work for them. One will be finished on Friday at minimum, as it'll only take a few small tweaks from my previous application. The others will take a bit more thought, but may also get done. Then it'll be time to give my references a heads-up again. Met one of the four prospective summer students for the lab. We got along well enough, and I've indicated to the co-worker coordinating them that he'd be my preference for summer-minion. We'll see how this actually turns out. I may not actually be in the city over the summer; it depends on when I manage to land a job, where said job is, and when the start date is. In the worst case, I can still manage follow-up experiments remotely (it'll just require a fair bit of ability to work independently on the part of the student). Bumped into one of the dojo knitting crew on the subway. Spent a pleasant few minutes catching up. They've found a new job, and are staying very busy with sewing projects (getting a dealer table at an upcoming con to sell things at). I've expressed interest in being at the next knitting gathering, whenever that happens. Plan for Friday is York, then shopping for game day. Plan for Saturday is game day, then a late-night grocery run for the rest of the BBQ supplies (web confirms the store will be open Saturday/Sunday). Plan for Sunday is last-minute shopping, possibly training, possibly seeing Avengers, and almost certainly downtime. Plan for Monday is the island BBQ. Assuming job applications do go out Friday, the focus for the following week will be experiment data. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: restless (Comment on this)
2:03 am	Day of Little Progress Spent a bit of time at York. Got very little done. Had trouble sleeping. Suspect for the day: allergies. Bedding laundry schedule has been bumped up in case this is dust-related. Spring-related is equally likely. Picked up more BBQ items; still quite a few left to get. Estimated attendance is now about 25-30. Weather forecast for the weekend seems to be "sun and clouds with a chance of thunderstorms", for now. What it'll end up being on Monday is anyone's guess. We can handle pretty much any contingency; there just won't be a beach fire if it rains. Plan for Thursday and Friday is trying to salvage York progress (no mad science flyby this week). Plan for Saturday is game day. Plan for Sunday is final BBQ shopping, and possibly downtime (I still want to see Avengers at some point). Plan for Monday is BBQ. In a perfect world, I'd go grocery shopping on Friday (or on Saturday night), but in practice Friday will be too early (bread and lettuce will both start going off), and Saturday will be difficult (it'd have to be in late evening, after game day). We'll see how this works out. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: stressed (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
11:48 pm	Filingcrastination, Errands, and Job Search Cleared the rest of the email backlog at work. Partly this was procrastination, and partly this was so that I could _find_ the emails from the previous round of job-searching. This is now done on both fronts. Did another scan of job postings. There are at least three that I should apply for (two from before were stale even when I'd first seen them). This should happen this week. At least one application will involve signing up for and navigating through a custom HR portal for the entity in question, which is irritating, but manageable. Ran errands. I now have clothes I don't hate, and shoes that aren't a year past replace-by date. Downside is that another 2% of the year's budget is spent. I've allocated an additional 5% beyond this for interview-clothes. If I decide the old suit is still in good condition, it should only come to about half of that. We'll see. Still poking at Minecraft. Built the Brinstar-ish corridor linking the elevator to Chozodia proper. On one hand, this solved the overlap and height problems, and mis-registration with biomes topside, by shifting the upper levels sideways a bit. On the other hand, this puts it close enough to a) my gallery-mine and b) caves near the gallery-mine to give significant lag. How big a problem this is remains to be seen. Next up is digging another vertical shaft, and decorating the vertical shaft and the Brinstar cave. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: depressed (Comment on this)
Monday, May 14th, 2012
3:10 am	BBQ Prep and Minecraft Went to bed early, had trouble sleeping. Blaming warmer weather. Main useful task for the day was running errands for BBQ prep for next weekend. I now have the barbecues themselves, and pretty much all of the non-perishable/freezable items I'll need. The only thing I'm missing in that regard is BBQ utensils, which I can pick up easily enough during the week. Getting an accurate head-count is still proving difficult. I had 10-15 on the list when I went shopping. I bought for 20-25. I now have 15-25 on the list. I'll likely have to make another supply run, above what I'm already planning, but this is still much easier than trying to get everything at once on a holiday weekend. Non-useful task was poking at Minecraft. The Norfair/Chozodia elevator shaft is now done, and I've built a construction base off the shaft. I've also built yet another cave network access point. This one features a "Throw Lever, Unleash Lava" switch, to clear out a troublesome monster-collecting spot. Apparently I'm easily amused this time of night. Priority for the upcoming week is job applications and getting the experiment operational. Other items are volunteering (Monday), RPG day (Saturday), and possibly a flyby of the mad science club on Thursday (if tasks for the week are in-hand enough to allow it). Stay tuned. Now, bed. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 12th, 2012
11:04 pm	Day of Downtime Took a day of downtime, rather than getting to any of the weekend's tasks. This was apparently much-needed, though it'll make BBQ shopping a hassle (store hours on Sunday are less nice than Saturday). Poked a bit more at the tumblr-cacheing script. It's now smart enough to top crawling through index pages when it gets to ones full of entries it's already seen. Full spider-mode is still available if manually invoked. Poked a bit more at Lunar Alicorn Attack, mostly on paper. The Right Way to do this is to run it at 30 FPS, but running at 15 FPS makes the rendering easier (and involves fewer frames in the animated sprites). We'll see. Also started nailing down how jumping physics will work. This will take a bit more thought before I'm ready to implement it. Main downtime activity for yesterday/today: Master of Orion 1. The first game went on much longer than it should have, due to nobody getting environment-colonization technologies (I went clear up to Soil Enrichment without finding any, and the AIs either had similar luck or didn't consider it a research priority). The galactic vote is only triggered when a certain fraction of the planets in the galaxy are colonized, which took near-complete domination of the entire map (due to it not being possible to colonize most non-Earthlike environments). Second game was more conventional. Secondary downtime activity was Minecraft. The cave network now has access doors, so I can resume ignoring it. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
12:28 am	Yorkcrastination, Minecraft, Spriting, and Quantum Ponies Spent time at York. Did not make progress on priority tasks at York. Instead procrastinated with low-priority filing (which is at least better than procrastinating with non-work). Job search is bumped to next week as a result. Still Minecrafting. Built the iris door for the elevator shaft between Norfair and Chozodia. Elevator shaft to follow, eventually. Also continued pushing the gallery mine through the cave network. The first of the access doors to the cave will be added shortly. Dusted off the "Lunar Alicorn Attack" art project. Background sprite fixes are now done, and all four boards have been coded. Next up is adding sprites for obstacles ("Tom") and guides (stars), and rigging code to automatically find the terrain path. Then it'll be time to add Luna. This will take a while (especially since it's not a top-priority task). Amusement from yesterday evening: Applying particle physics to ponies. I'd previously thought about giving ponies explicitly elemental themes for a different art project (earth/air/fire/water for earth/pegasus/unicorn(magic)/sea ponies). Then it occurred to me: what if fire-ness and water-ness basis states "mix", giving you a spin triplet of possible eigenponies? I'm going to have to think this through a bit further, but if it ends up making _sense_ to apply particle physics to pony taxonomy, that'll be extra-hilarious. A follow-up thought was, "is the seesaw mechanism responsible for alicorns being bad-ass, and if so, what's on the light end of the seesaw?". "Parasprites" would be one possible guess. Food for thought, per above. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 10th, 2012
11:41 pm	Marginal York and Incremental Computer Did not get much done at York. Did at least get the insulation installed in the experiment enclosure. Still have to add the black-out felt and the ducting. Didn't even touch the job applications. That's now on the list for Friday. Poked a bit more at the DHCP server/firewall machine. Had to do a fair bit of the software installation manually, for reasons which remain mysterious. Either way, it now boots to its OS properly. Next up is locking down all unwanted/unnecessary features, and then setting it up to do DHCP and forwarding and filtering. Not happening tonight (maybe over the weekend). ObFoodUnpleasantness, yadda yadda. The suspect this time around is pepperoni that was in the fridge for a week (absurd shelf-life or not). There's still the possibility that I have another problem-food that I don't know about, but pinning that down is very tricky. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: uncomfortable (Comment on this)
12:38 am	Incremental Experiment Prep and Incremental Computer Prep Cleared away the old heater attempts and started preparing the experiment enclosure for the real tests. Hopefully the dryer-based heater will work for this. If not, it'll be time to resume kitbashing the toaster oven. The enclosure setup will stay the same either way (the heater is outside, connected via ducting). Still haven't touched the job applications. That'll start on Thursday. Started preparing a firewall for my parents. The idea is to make a combined firewall/DHCP server that handles guest machines on the wired network and also talks to the wireless router they've insisted on getting. Anything that goes through this machine can see the internet and nothing else. Trusted wired machines get to see the file server (preferably filtered by MAC address). It's not a perfect scheme, but it beats what they have now (no wireless, and all wired machines can see the file server). Trusted-vs-untrusted filtering will take a while to set up properly, so an interim scheme may be used for the near future. To be determined. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
4:30 am	Marginal York, Fire Alarm, Errands, Cooking, and Downtime Got a couple of things done at York (dropped off a claim form and did a bit of rework to make the heater relay module more durable). Work was cut short by a fire alarm (normally those only happen during exam season). Ran errands. I now have more groceries. I do not have more ponies, as the toy store still hasn't re-stocked. Did pick up a gift for my mother on spec; I'll have to decide whether to add this to her mothers day gift, her birthday gift, or save it for later. Finally made lunches for the rest of the week. Going to have to pick up more lunch bags for them, as I'm running out earlier than I'd expected. Spent the rest of the evening unwinding. Ideally this would have involved coding projects; in practice, this involved minecraft. Still pushing through and sealing off a cave network. Access doors will come later. Plan for Wednesday is York. Plan for Thursday is York, then mad science club - the laser cutter needs to be inspected (bumped up the priority list). Plan for Friday is York. York priority tasks are job applications and getting experiments running. Paper-writing resumes next week, in theory. This weekend should include training, and might or might not include gaming (TBD). It'll also include the first of several shopping trips for BBQ trip supplies; this time around, it'll be for non-perishables/freezables (condiments, meat, drinks, cutlery/napkins/cups, and the portable BBQ units themselves). Estimated cost of the BBQ is about the same as the pony budget to-date (2% of my yearly income). The main logistics hurdle I've been missing is getting an attendee list: I usually start pushing it heavily at T=-1 month, but so far I've only sent out one ping. This should be sorted out within a week or so. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: restless (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
4:27 am	Training, Downtime, Coding Milestone, Volunteering, and Experiment Prep Milestone Spent time training on Sunday, for once. This went well, and I'll have to do more of it. Reviewed weapons, but did most of it without actual weapons in-hand (tonbo is the only thing I can wave around in public without causing a hazard). At some point I'm going to have to find people to train with, either via friends or by joining another dojo. There are things I just can't practice effectively alone (and others that I can, but that would still be much better to do with a partner). Dojo will wait until I have a job and know where I'll be living, at minimum. Took the rest of Sunday as downtime. Among other things, I'm still extending the gallery-mine through a "swiss cheese" cave area in Minecraft. There are enough caves that I'm honestly not sure whether I've hit a ravine or not ("tiny" fogging will do that). Reached a milestone with the tumblr-archiving script. It'll now process everything in the larger selection of tumblrs that I've tested it with. On the to-do list is recognizing when it's already fetched index pages, to avoid doing a full crawl (some have close to 100 indexes), and automatically capturing blog metadata (thumbnail, banner, background, description text). The lion's share is done, though. To recap, this is part of a larger project of making a local copy of everything I care about from the internet. I've seen too many art projects, comics, and web pages just vanish over the years (archive.org has some of them but far from all of them, and often not images). I've cached a few of these over the years, but have barely scratched the surface (and several have already vanished). Got to volunteering on time today. Arrived ahead of time, but not enough to make significant progress on the wings before class. Was mostly in the background this time, as there was a guest speaker talking about cosplay techniques. This time around, all of the kids were interested in sewing, so she's doing _something_ right. Make the control widget for the hair dryer. Tests with manual knob-twiddling suggest that it works. Next up is gluing the header plug in place (it's assembled but rattling around right now), cleaning up the remains of the last several heater attempts, adding ducting and insulation, and seeing how well the heater works in an actual feedback/control situation. Job application paperwork should also be started. There'll be enough "wait for temperature to stabilize" time to at least ping references. Now, puttering and bed. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 6th, 2012
2:22 am	Game Day, Rules Revisions, and Coding Game day happened. Character survived game day, mostly due to the DM triggering the cut scene when it got too lethal (apparently his plan from the start). My character has now learned that a big enough demon can outright ignore his strongest attacks, magic sword or no, while slaughtering his valued and trusted allies (non-pushover NPCs). End result: Cavalry (superwizard from the previous strike force) returned in time to have a battle royale with the demon, which we won (barely; if not for a lucky scratch from my character, the demon would have lived long enough to shred our superwizard patron). One NPC - a follower my character liked quite a lot - died. One follower - the cohort/disciple of the party wizard - is kidnapped (and will probably end up tortured to death, used as a hostage, or both). One other NPC - leader of the druids helping us, and probably of PC level or better - was very _nearly_ killed. Without his survival, the entire army would be in very serious trouble (he's the one with the wind spells that can keep back the on-fire undead that we'd otherwise have no way of dealing with). So, for the second or third time lynchpin allies have remained alive due to a lucky shot, and we've very nearly lost the war. Fortunately, the enemy is running out of tricks to pull. Talked over the spell point proposal with the group. John raised another objection: that even an ostensibly balanced point system rewards firehosing one's entire pool without keeping a reserve (which slot systems end up giving you simply because not all spells are applicable to a given situation). This is a valid complaint. The compromise solution was to go with a slot system that could be swapped out. Functionally it's a lot like the sorcerer class; the difference is that you do assign specific spells to slots, and have to take time (one full round) and make a skill check to switch them out (only difficult for top-level spells). End result will likely be loading up on attack spells, which have to be cast reliably and with no delay, but being able to flexibly use utility spells given a bit more time (the feature I'd missed most from the point scheme). We'll see how this plays out in future sessions. Poked more at the Tumblr-archiving script. Still learning about how exactly it structures URLs and tags, but the script is mostly-functional by this point. Still continuing to poke at it. Now, coding, relaxing, and bed. I can sleep in for a change tomorrow. Update [5:20am]: Tumblr-archiving script works. One, and only one (so far), of the tumblrs I've tested it with used a strange format that required me to add several special cases in the code. We'll see if I run into any more of these before the dust settles. Next up will be collecting metadata (tumblr title and description, mostly), and then testing with a larger set of samples, and then making prettier output. Unwise gaming snacks were unwise. I'm going to be up for a little while yet before I can sleep. Current Mood: plotting cat is plotting (Comment on this)
Friday, May 4th, 2012
11:09 pm	Hardware Progress and Gaming Prep Finished modifying the guts of the hair dryer, and reassembled it. I still have to add a control module before I can use it in the heating rig, but the tinkering part is for the most part done. Reverse-engineering household appliances has been interesting; there are usually at least a couple of surprises involved. The hair dryer was tricky to figure out (due to the circuit looking like a spider-web wound around a heat-resistant armature), but interesting. Biggest surprise with it: The "110V/220V" selector is a placebo. With 220V, it'll overheat very quickly... but there's a bimetallic strip thermostat in it, which should cut the duty cycle to compensate. Transient currents would still be high enough that I'd worry about blowing fuses, though. Moral of the story: don't trust any variable-voltage travel appliance unless you've taken it apart and inspected it yourself. Ran errands. DM informed me that we were out of munches for game day; this has been fixed. In theory I'll bake brownies as well, but in practice there are enough munchies in-hand that this isn't actually needed (so I may defer that until next session). DM liked the spell-point proposal, but I haven't heard back from the player who'd objected to the original system. We'll see how this goes. Plan for Saturday is game day. Plan for Sunday is downtime, and in theory training. Plan for the upcoming week at York is running a test of the heater, and writing up job applications while the tests are in progress. After the heater is confirmed to work, it'll be time to start optics experiments (with more waiting time in which I can write up job applications). My goal is to have applied for all 5-6 positions of interest by the end of the week, as I've been putting this sort of thing off for far too long. Now, relaxing and bed. Current Mood: restless (Comment on this)