More Reasons to Become God

Part One

There's a photograph, of a particular woman, sitting on a cold beach in an oversized sweater (hugging her knees, I think), and she has this really lovely melancholy smile. 

The last time I went to look at it, someone had switched it with another.

I haven't had cause to feel that emotion myself in a very long time - which is good - but in no longer having access to that image, my life is made a little smaller, and a little stupider.

...

There's more to be said about curation, creation, balancing reliability with variety, infinite galleries, and sooner or later attaining access to the full archive, but whatever governs my brain on this is resisting, so it will wait.

curious traffic increase

Anyone happen to know why my blog has been suddenly popular in Brazil, Singapore, and Vietnam?

[Edit, Aug 12: Total traffic level jumped up a magnitude. Seems to be the same posts getting hits as before. /Edit]

timeless

I wore a swimsuit for 40 of 66 hours

And when I wasn't asleep or swimming, I was on my feet

Now I am returned

Doing nothing

Swimming (and paddle boarding) was better

What, besides sit in front of a screen or bar, do people DO between 6pm and 10pm?

Is it something I forgot, or have as yet failed to invent?

Cephalumps and Woozles

There was a time when I knew, then forgot, that the reason the titular story manifested Cthulhu as a gooey blob, with tendrils down its face, is because the phrase

"Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftagn"

can also be transliterated as 

"ah Ah CHOO" (blows nose brassily)

and this may have happened more than once.

Awareness of context, clarity of purpose, and clarity of thought rarely seem to coincide. 

Distractibility, chaotic records, and the survivorship fallacy I guess. Like pineapple and jolly ranchers, TV eats you back.

...

This is not a return to old hobbies and diversions. I have more complicated observations about progress, milestones and timelines, but I am unable to articulate them succinctly tonight.

More Cleaning

If I ever pick coding back up, I should:

• rebuild my "History of BattleTech" chart to be dynamic and interactive;
• make a widget which scrapes my blog & then graphs my posting activity over time (I guess similar to the visitor activity graph that's already on the back end);
• figure a way to refactor all these labels;
• get the archive widget to highlight relevant entries when a "search:label" page is up [Edit, July 3rd: and maybe show how many comments each has /Edit];
• and make some sort of corkboard viewer for email or message chains, to trace the flow of ideas better. Existing formats (including forum threading, forking and other tricks) aren't totally adequate.

More Blogs Removed:

Housecleaning

Planet Stuff:

• Planet Sizes and Tilts - (graphic) 
• orbital inclinations (graph, lost it)
• Orbital Distances - (charts)
• Solar Barycenter - (animation)
• Asteroid Belt - (animation)
• Colors of the Planets - (chart, inaccurate) 
• NASA Planetary Fact Sheet - (table)
• [July 4 Edit: Entire Universe in Log Scale /Edit]

Podcasts Removed and Stashed Here:

Comments

• Still unable to comment on my own posts. Verification appears bugged. 
• Your comments are up now. That's on me. I will probably continue to be slow on that. 
• Browsing to your blogs, my browser seems  confused about which version (desktop or mobile) is being displayed. 

[Update, June 19: attempting to comment on my own blog, failing, and then following a link in my post takes me not to the linked page but to the HTML of the linked page. /Update]

• Fun(?) Fact: Google's product landing page does not link to its products on the first screen. Zipping halfway down the page doesn't reach a product list either. 
• I use youtube help pages to reach my youtube comment history because the normal links are broken or bugged and my comment history is literally inaccessible any other way. 

Thematic Map of BattleTech

I don't remember how many years ago I threw this map together. Last week(?) I tried to comment the most important fixes (my full list wasn't handy) onto that 2013 post but blogspot ate the comment. Trying again now after seeing these guys. 

FASAnomics 101

[Crude summary copy-pasted from conversation elsewhere. Still unable to blog properly.]

3025 production at 5 major sites

[Jan 10: edited formatting, clarity, and added the most essential backlinks]

Tikonov should produce about 6800 tons of 'Mechs/yr.

3025-onomics noodling

I have

Discovered Tikonov's total production mass

Solved part of the Free Worlds production mystery

And confirmed my production numbers for Luthien, Hesperus, and New Avalon

Details will follow when able [see next post]

Confirming 385 Regiments & 450 Settled Worlds in 3025 Successor States

BattleDroids describes regiments as containing 108 BattleMechs (in 3 battalions of 36), and the regimental commander as Duke of a whole planet. MechWarrior 1st Edition counts about 450 settled worlds in the five Successor States. 

108 regiments * 450 commanders = 48,600 'Mechs

BattleForce 1st Edition says the Houses reorganized to 128 'Mechs per regiment (in 3 battalions of 40 plus an 8 'Mech regimental command group). If I recall correctly, it also says this new organization was copied from Wolf's Dragoons.

48,600 / 128 = 379 ²/₃ regiments

Wolf's Dragoons add 5 regiments plus Zeta Battalion to that total. 

379 ²/₃ regiments + 5 1/₃ regiments = 385 regiments

[Mal] Was It Monkeys? [/Mal]

[As always, inactivity on my blog is consequent to inactivity in the rest of my life. Can't do anything in depth right now. Instead: UI complaints!]

The Spacecraft We Could Have Had

A well constructed discussion of where the space program could be right now with current technology, if we'd made more optimal choices.

Courtesy of Ashley R Pollard.

Map of FWL Military Organization

Made this ages ago.

The old HM:FWL book doesn't just have a map, and doesn't just list regimental deployments for summer 3025, it also has a list* of which provinces and worlds organize their military the way Marik does, or Oriente does, or Andurien does.

Seems like a pretty reliable way to start picking out smaller provinces.

*I forget which page, sorry. It's a purple(?) box in the bottom right corner of a right-hand page. [Next Day Edit: it's page 84, which also says

Across the Free Worlds, many minor variations of the three primary hierarchies exist, due to local government edicts and traditional grants and dignitaries. Below is the military organization used by each state. However, few states, especially the smaller ones, adopt the exact pattern set by their larger cousins. Note that one world is even listed twice.

Courtesy of Reddit user wycca. /Edit]

[Edit, May 15: somehow missed the Stewart Dragoons' Home Guards regiment on Stewart and Juggernaut regiment on Payvand. Now added. /Edit]

Star Trek Episode Roller

White Noise
- Engine Hum
- Bridge Noise

Songs
- Star Trekkin'
- Banned from Argo
- "I Hate You"
- Picard Song
- at the Hothberry
- Tik Tok
- Home ^{[via here]}
- Starships ^{[via here]}

Sketches
- Nimoy vs Quinto
- Voyager Auditions
- Last Voyage

Shatner
- Sha7ner
- Eat Fry Love
- Rocket Man
- Alexander

I think I found this via Popfiend, years ago

In a perfect world, I could dissect all seven or eight hundred episodes to find the Star Trekkiest distribution of Starfleet missions, antagonists, motivations and NPC strategies. Such volume and detail is a sure recipe for burnout, though.

Each new Trek series self-selects what its writers thought was Trekkiest about the previous series, right? So maybe I can approximate the results of all that research by sampling episodes at random and taking different elements from each?

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There's a few other series I could mix in. Babylon 5, Farscape, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Shakespeare... and heck, if even Doctor Who borrows from Battlestar Galactica...

But at some point we stray from the themes and structures essential to Star Trek. Like, your average episode of Firefly has a fistfight, a gunfight, a word fight, some kind of spaceship thing, and involves a moral or ethical dilemma. Not too different from Star Trek TOS. Except TOS also adds a good dose of scientific method to everything - whether the problem at hand is mechanical, social or philosophical, the crew feels it out systematically.

The Orville Episode 12 - Fools Rush In

We still rely on the magic of editing; still start each episode a little stilted; and my delivery is still a little disjointed; but not as much as when we started.  On a good day - like I think we had for this recording - we cover everything we wanted to say without having to hold too closely to our prepared agenda. We could undoubtedly polish the product more with scripted repartee and rehearsed personalities; but for me, the point (when feasible) is to engage with the ideas as we're recording and choose my words as I go. When I can do that well then everything else follows naturally.

...before decrying Ready Player One, I should probably consider what (if anything) distinguishes it from "The Ultimate Showdown" and "We Come Together."

...and closing with "faithful listeners?" Yeesh. This is why we need a formal sign off.

I can't find that map of the east coast and I don't remember what it was measuring. Not simple poverty, teen birth rates, brain drain or gun violence - these aren't great for South Carolina, but they're more in line with regional trends than whatever I'm remembering.

Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) has so much empathy it's a crime, and the crew ignore a thousand years of sociological studies.

Available in podcast form at anchor.fm.

The Orville Episode 11 - These Dimensions

Kirk-era Star Trek carried an almost Darwinian imperative for humanity to test itself against the greatest challenges available. The Next Generation refined that philosophy from a cosmic manifest destiny into a constant personal improvement. The Orville primarily casts such striving as a source of social capital.

It's an interesting inversion of the Next Generation episode "Tapestry." Star Trek doesn't often address career issues or office politics, and I'm glad we get some depth to Yaphit's perspective and get to see how the Captain and Executive Officer handle disagreement.

John Lamar (J Lee) and Ed Mercer (Seth McFarlane) prove themselves as leaders as they explore a piece of two-dimensional sci-fi. Hosts VanVelding and SkilTao discuss the comedic dimensions of the cast.

Available in podcast form at anchor.fm.

Third look at 3025 Lyran 'Mech Production

[TL;DR: Hesperus builds a heavy 100 'Mechs, Coventry builds a light 139 'Mechs, Furillo builds 39, Carlisle and Sudeten make a combined 55, Tharkad makes 55, Twycross makes a heavy 53, Pandora makes 18, and there's another 41 I have yet to account for.]

Basics: The Lyrans build 500 'Mechs/yr, of which 230 are uncommon, including 109 Commandos, 33 Zeuses and 5 Firestarters.

Defiance Industries and Coventry Metal Works - being the Commonwealth's first (HS:LC p122) and second (p165) biggest manufacturers, and each listing their primary products (p136) first - set a precedent for HS:LC's manufacturing page listing everything from biggest to smallest.

Key insight this time around is that many of HS:LC's manufacturers are new, that P1e's manufacturing pages look like they were cut from an early draft of HS:LC, and that the Periphery states build 167 'Mechs/yr.

The Orville Episode 10 - Circ du Fear

This was a fun discussion. "Firestorm" is jam packed with Star Trek references, and it may be the first time the Orville centers an episode on a single character instead of a team-up or ensemble.

Kelly telling Alara that "she made the responsible command decision" is a nice callback (and ironic foreshadowing) that helps distinguish this conflict from her previous one. Alara's self-confidence is hard-won and I'm sure we will never again question it. 

The "plasma storm" is an interesting choice. Sure, the Orville has run into other occasional bits of strange space weather, but for the most part the show seems to favor more realistic astronomy.

Alara (Halston Sage) triumphs over a nightmare of her own making. Hosts SkilTao and VanVelding discuss Halloween episodes, the mystery of rewatchability, and what to do when it's all a dream.

Available in podcast form at anchor.fm.