one dour badger

Further Confusion.

2008-12-18T00:54:16Z

Hooray for last minute planning. Anyone got beds available?

Oh.

2008-11-22T08:12:54Z

...wait, what?

dour @ 2007-09-25T15:40:00

2007-09-25T22:47:33Z

Last night I glanced at the Ron Paul campaign website, and noticed that they were running a fund-raiser for the final week of the quarter, hoping to make $500,000 so as to significantly outdo their donations from last quarter. They've got a flash counter running with the current tally, and it was at about $160k when I looked last night.

Now it's about to break $25 million.

Don't get me wrong, I love the guy. I even bought my very first "Vote For X" swag because of him. But I'm waiting to celebrate until it's confirmed that this isn't a software error!

EDIT: Confirmed that it was a glitch in the flash counter. The real value is $250k. I left the browser open from last night, and at some point overnight they changed it server-side to count pennies instead of dollars... after reloading, there's a decimal point now.

Still, halfway to the actual goal on Tuesday isn't bad. :D

dour @ 2007-09-18T23:38:00

2007-09-19T06:37:46Z

(cross-posted from lapsing.blogspot.com)

ALIF, ALIFIT
A reptilian race, native to subtropical deserts. The term "alif" technically refers only to females; the much smaller male is an "alifit," and of lesser social status. The Great Alifeen Empire is the largest nation in the known history of Lith, and the Imperial Alifeen language is known by most travellers. The Empire's cultural and material wealth are universally admired, and a non-Imperial alif is a vanishingly rare creature.

ERV
The erva are semiaquatic reptiles, one of the two eldest races, and easily the largest. They are most at home in jungles and swamps, rarely venturing out into the uncomfortably dry lands of other races except to trade (or pillage). While they are as capable of art and compassion as other races, their insular tribal culture lets the outside world see little of this, whereas the fact that they are enormous carnivores is plainly evident.

HOM
Homa are mammals of clear arboreal origin, but entirely comfortable on land. Along with the erva they share the mantle of eldest race, but few homa even know this; whereas the tribal erva have kept ancient traditions alive through the ages, homan storytelling is usually about the teller, not the story. Their histories are quickly exaggerated into myths and legends, and wars are often fought over disagreement on the details. Still, they are politically savvy, and manage to form large and stable nations.

TAZID
The youngest race rival the erva in physical mass, and are literally built for combat. With slave-armies of tazidye, created from a burrowing desert mammal by a council of alifeen magi, the Empire was founded. Their mentality was deliberately shaped to desire order and leadership. While this has not stopped some tazidye from fleeing alifeen subservience, their few independent settlements maintain a regimented environment; they are industrious, but rarely creative.

URALIF
This creature's mother is an alif, and her father is an erv. She is not fertile, and never male. In the Alifeen Empire, where she is usually born and raised, she is pitied as the child of rape (even if this is not the truth, Imperial doctrine allows no legal conception of an uralif) and treated well for what she is, but she is certainly not treated as an alif. Many uralifee become hermits, or search for homes among the homa or even the erva, with varying degrees of success.

FOTO

2007-09-03T05:28:09Z

Seeking legal advice.

2007-08-24T04:41:22Z

(cross-posted from lapsing.blogspot.com)

Straight to the point: I want to be paid for my efforts.

I have already put, and will continue putting, large amounts of time into developing a game system, and a game world. I want them to be compelling and enjoyable. This necessitates feedback. Therein lies the rub. How do I expose game mechanics for review, without effectively giving them away for free?

Large corporations do closed testing under non-disclosure agreements. Is this the only safe option? Wizards of the Coast released much of the d20 system as Open Gaming License material, but not until after they'd published a finished product. If I expose my design process here in the name of active critique, what's to stop someone else from taking it and beating me to hard-copy publication? Even worse, possibly doing so with a half-finished and less than streamlined version, so that even if everyone recognizes that I'm the victim of foul play, the first general public opinion is poor, and willingness to try the finished (real) product is decreased.

Short of clamping down and revealing nothing publicly, is there any defense against this possibility?

And what about game world material? That, I think, is slightly better protected by implied copyright; but is there anything simple (and preferably free) that can be done to assert and secure these property rights when publishing on a public forum like this?

I'm hesitant to share much of anything until I know more about these subjects. Pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Nice while it lasted...

2007-08-22T08:41:32Z

Last week at GenCon, Wizards of the Coast announced that they will, next May, be releasing the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The D&D website has full coverage of the announcement, with links to video of the GenCon seminar on YouTube.

I'm not going to rant about everything I didn't like in their presentation, and let's not even get started on how quickly they decided to invalidate all the books I've purchased this time around, but a couple of things they said caught my attention more than the rest. One of them was "subscription-based," and the concerns this raises are obvious enough. But far more worrying to me was this:

"We're defining the roles of the character classes. Like a sports team, you're going to know what your character, depending on what class he is, is supposed to do in encounters and in the game as a whole."

This does not appeal to me, not one little bit. I started playing D&D about the time 2nd Edition came out, and it whetted my appetite for roleplaying, but the rigid class definitions got stale the instant I first encountered a game which didn't have them. Starting with Palladium games (perhaps the stiffest system still on the market), and then moving to the likes of Storyteller, Legend of the 5 Rings, Earthdawn, the old d6-based Star Wars game, Ironclaw/Jadeclaw, and even Deadlands: I've seen a fair number of gaming systems, and learned a lot about what I like and don't like. And toward the end of the '90s, I had started working on a gaming system (and world) of my own, trying to gather together the good bits and avoid the bad from all the games I'd played.

D&D 3rd Edition was released in 2000. The core rules were pruned, multiclassing was simple and viable, and the skill and feat systems allowed a fair degree of character customization. It wasn't perfection, but nothing about it distinctly turned me off... and with the WotC marketing powerhouse behind the D&D trademark, it rapidly became the game that everyone knew how to play, which was the most important thing. Much as I resigned myself to Windows at about the same time, I've played almost nothing but D&D since 3rd Edition was released.

But now, as best I can interpret, we have been told that D&D is bucking for a slice of the WoW pie, and as such will soon become more rigid again. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe stronger guidelines won't actually hinder you straying off the path... but I think I'd like to prepare myself for things being just as bad as I expect.

I'm pulling my old project off the shelf. Expect updates.

This post, and others on the subject, will be mirrored at lapsing.blogspot.com.

Letter to Ron Paul.

2007-07-27T20:34:52Z

So people have been bugging me about my absence from LJ. It's been a while since I've had anything I really thought was worth posting for public consumption. Not that my life has been terribly boring or empty, it's just that the things I've been doing have their own dedicated forums. :)

Today, though, I wrote something that might spark some interest.

to: mail@ronpaul2008.com
date: Jul 27, 2007 1:23 PM
subject: Question from a pro-choice independent.

I find myself in strong agreement with Congressman Paul on nearly every issue he's spoken about, with one major exception: I am adamantly pro-choice. This does not have to be a deal breaker, though, depending on exactly how Dr. Paul plans to translate his moral position (which I respect and do not wish to debate) into governmental policy.

Ron, you have stated that you believe abortion to be a cultural issue first, because any law will simply be broken (just as it was before Roe v. Wade) if popular morality does not recognize it as valid. Here, then, is my question: do you propose, at any time, to enact any Federal legislation banning abortions outright? or, do you propose to simply eliminate any blockades to the States enacting such legislation on their own jurisdiction? The latter position is one I can endorse.

If in fact you intend to promote legislation, one other question is necessary. You have spoken in terms of the difference between one minute before birth, and one minute after birth. This is not so vital to me as the difference between one month before conception, and one month after. Are you equally opposed to early-term abortion, including chemically induced abortion, before the fetus has differentiated organs?

I'll note that I don't care about loss of Federal funding to abortion clinics; a central pillar of your platform is elimination of many Federal programs and the taxes which support them!

As an independent voter, I am on the brink of registering Republican this year to give Ron Paul my support in the primaries. Whether I do so hinges on this issue. I doubt I am the only voter caught in this dilemma, and a public statement clarifying the details of your agenda might be valuable.

- Lief Clennon

dour @ 2007-03-23T15:03:00

2007-03-23T22:06:46Z

A meaningful study on relative drug dangers!

Substances were ranked on direct harm to the user, addictiveness, and harm to those other than the user. This particular article has a full chart of the results at the bottom.

Hooray for libertarian sentiment, I guess?

2007-03-21T23:16:59Z

Associated Press feeds us an opinion piece (not even thinly veiled) regarding the recent trend in banning things; trans fats, cellphones while driving, and headphones in crosswalks are given as examples. In the closing paragraph, a capital-L Libertarian is not-quite-quoted as seeing the validity of a ban one-handed driving, which is hazardous to others, but thoroughly disapproving of a ban on unhealthy foods, as it should be his decision whether he wants to trade donuts for years.

Here is the #1 reason I can't bear to associate myself with the Libertarians, despite holding strongly libertarian views myself: there is an omnipresent underlying assumption that it is the sole responsibility of individuals to educate themselves. This is contrary to human nature. We learn from the culture that surrounds us, even if we are never formally taught anything. Many of us learn that self-education is a valuable and worthwhile pursuit, but it must be strongly emphasized that this, too, is a learned behavior!

It is simply wrong to suggest that anyone who doesn't know that fried chicken can clog their arteries is getting what they deserve for being ignorant. I understand well the frustration that can come from trying to educate (or even work around) the willfully ignorant: those who refuse to be educated at all, or to let go of false ideas that block useful ones from being absorbed. Taking out this frustration on the merely uneducated is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. To further invest this paragraph in proverbs, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." But if you don't do the leading, guys, you're negligent on your end.

I cannot stress enough that I believe any law which attempts to protect one from one's own behavior is absolutely wrong. However, this must not be generalized beyond a certain point. People place their trust in food providers; in the name of cheap manufacture and pseudo-addictive products, that trust is often violated, and this is not exclusively the consumer's fault. The point of structured society, after all, is so that we don't all have to watch our asses from every angle 24/7. Trust should be possible.

The most reasonable avenue to reinforcing the validity of that trust is hard to nail down to a single rule of thumb. Truly toxic substances, the sort which produce consistent and significant damage across all cases, might well be worth banning, but of course the threshold of what's deemed significant is a subjective one. I think a far more effective method is already in place and widely used: the nutrition information on packaged foods is a good starting point even if it's not quite comprehensive, and lately it's often got a list of allergenic ingredients.

If the FDA were to compile a list of ingredients known to have adverse health effects, this could just be added to the info panel. (Some method of differentiating RDAs for "you need this much" against RDAs for "this is too much" would be very handy as well, especially for helping America's salt problem.) Television PSAs encouraging people to check the labels would go a long way, too.

Finally, restaurants and other prepared food which can't be labeled should be required to specially label menu items which are prepared with FDA-flagged allergenic or unhealthy ingredients, including flags for excessive content (e.g., more than 40% RDA) of sodium, fat, and similar. This need not be more than an asterisk leading to a "See full nutritional information for health concerns" footnote, with the actual chart being available on request.

The immediate, obvious result of these actions in the market will be the deliberate hawking of foods with no warnings. Restaurant items without the asterisk will doubtless have an even bigger "Healthy!" tag. We're already seeing a similar reaction to a general public trend toward preferring healthier foods, e.g. Sprite making a big deal about reducing their ingredients list to five items; of course, this list still includes high fructose corn syrup (that thing I said about violating trust?), which is exactly the sort of thing mandatory flags from the FDA would remedy without having to resort to banning.

Jumping back to the full scope of the original article, here's my take on certain categories of ban laws:

Banning an action which is potentially harmful to only the perpetrator (e.g.: crossing the street with headphones on, biking without a helmet)
These laws are absolutely wrong. At most, they should be handled with public service announcements.

Banning an action by one party which may be harmful to a voluntarily-involved second party (e.g.: preparation of food with unhealthy ingredients, selling cigarettes)
These are indeed voluntary actions on the part of the potentially harmed party, participated in for pleasure or convenience. A ban is intrusive and wrong, but clear warnings on the part of the provider are a reasonable requirement.

Banning an action taken by one party which may be harmful to passers-by (e.g.: driving while on the phone, shooting your gun upwards for fun)
This is the one category of bans I'm generally in favor of.

Banning a non-hazardous public nuisance (e.g.: public smoking, noise)
These are a special case. I understand and don't deny these sorts of ordinances, but they should be implemented on the smallest possible scale, never globally. I am a non-smoker and nearly retch whenever I pass through a cloud of burnt tobacco when walking between businesses; this is a place I have to be every day, and if enough of the local community agrees with me, I'd love to see a public smoking ban on Redwood Drive. I would vote against a ban that extended to the residential areas of Garberville, or which additionally banned smoking in a private establishment which specifically posted a notice that smoking was allowed inside (provided that such an establishment doesn't reek when I walk by, if it's in an area where public smoking is otherwise disallowed). The key to this category is that "nuisance" is an incredibly subjective term, and any ordinance of this sort should be strictly limited to clearly defined areas where those who want the ban are a firm majority. In any but the smallest towns, even a city ordinance is probably too sweeping; these should be done at the neighborhood and business district level.

dour @ 2007-01-31T12:27:00

2007-01-31T20:40:05Z

Outraged by the detainment of inmates at Guantanamo without a fair trial or even meaningful evidence, American jurors set out to prove that we can do it inside our borders, too.

Life without parole for "inappropriate grieving," folks. Twelve angry [wo]men. This is why a well-funded and effective educational system is of the utmost priority, and well worth paying taxes into, even if you have no children of your own.

I thowwy, Theev Uwwin...

2007-01-14T19:59:23Z

(Smalltalk > you) ifTrue: [self postTo: LiveJournal].

2007-01-12T09:43:55Z

Been fiddling about with Dolphin Smalltalk. I'm really liking this language. I first figured objects out in Java, and they seemed like a great idea, but certain things just seemed more complex than they needed to be. Smalltalk has no such cruft. Most especially, writing a small class does not necessitate writing a header which is larger than the method code.

It took a little bit of getting used to, but building live classes in a browser is immensely superior to writing them in an arbitrary editor. There is no compile cycle! Testing code in a workspace makes debugging an instantaneous process. I wondered at first if the live image methodology would hurt collaboration (because with a monolithic image instead of individual source files for your classes, CVS is essentially impossible), but now I see that Smalltalk classes are so... well, small, that the ability to trade packages around is plenty.

The degree to which you can re-use code is unbelievable, even on a small scale. Block closures are my all-time favorite structure. In every other language I've used, there has always come a time when I've wanted to insert arbitrary code into a routine at runtime. Silly me, I was just using the wrong languages! Thinking back now, I wonder if it was Logo that put the idea in my head; Logo is simplified Lisp, and Lisp does similar things.

And where closures let you make a lot of your code highly generic, the way class inheritance works (and the speed with which you can build new classes) lets you also hone general tools into very specific ones just because they're easier to reference later. Case in point, I was building a very generic PolyhedralDie class; once I was done, it took about a minute to subclass it into a FixedPolyhedral abstract singleton (mirroring instance methods to class methods and disabling the #new method), and then mere seconds to subclass that into concrete singletons D4, D6, D8, etc., which I can now utilize with direct class calls (D4 roll) instead of building an appropriate-sized PolyhedralDie (PolyhedralDie new sides: 4; roll).

It's bedtime, or I'd ramble more. This language is so... fun! :D

dour @ 2006-12-17T21:32:00

2006-12-18T04:32:29Z

Just bought a fresh bottle of Listerine. It had this little promotional sprayermajiggy which you can carry in your pocket and use to spritz your breath when the stank arises away from home.

There is a label on the box. "Warning: Avoid spraying in eyes."

Sadly, I didn't read this until it was already too late.

They really do mean it.

dour @ 2006-12-06T02:38:00

2006-12-06T09:38:42Z

moltenglowstick and I have a room for FurCon. We would like to find one or two roommates to chop the cost down. Anyone interested?

An interesting fact...

2006-10-16T01:50:29Z

HowManyOfMe.com

There are:
0
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

(Seriously.)

dour @ 2006-09-27T00:57:00

2006-09-27T07:59:43Z

Holy crap, Christopher Walken is a flaming furry.

Flaming.

Crikey II: The Reckoning

2006-09-12T17:36:26Z

Words fail me.

Crikey. :(

2006-09-04T06:17:07Z

Steve Irwin is dead.

dour @ 2006-08-23T12:22:00

2006-08-23T19:32:58Z

Here is an editorial describing the United States' intentional sabotage of Iran's genuine negotiation offers.

Here is an editorial opining that Iran's nod toward negotiation is a smokescreen, and we can't trust them.

What I found interesting is that despite having nearly diametric attitudes toward the entire situation, both writers find a military solution to be a terribly bad idea.

(Also, they both used the word "anodyne" for no good reason.)

dour @ 2006-08-16T10:37:00

2006-08-16T17:37:12Z

Creative approaches to AIDS prevention now on the horizon, such as male circumcision and diaphragms, may never reach the people who need them because many countries wouldn't be able to roll them out, a report said Tuesday.
[...]
A study of 3,274 men in South Africa found that those who were circumcised had a 60% lower risk of infection than men who weren't, and they also were less likely to infect their partners. Studies are underway involving more than 10,000 men to confirm this result.

A study released Monday by Jim G. Kahn and Elliot Marseille of the University of California-San Francisco and Bertran Auvert of the University of Versailles found that it costs $181 to prevent an HIV infection using circumcision. But it saves $2,411 in medical costs to treat a person with HIV.

- USA Today

Similar articles appear in other publications, including the New York Times and even Xinhua. How the hell does this crap make it to print? The circumcision-vs.-HIV thing infuriated me half a decade ago, and does the same today.

Of course circumcised men in Africa are less likely to contract HIV. Circumcised men in Africa are more likely to be religious or culturally European, thus either married and faithful or simply better educated.

The cynic in me wants to place odds on those who are circumcised and infected being about 80% composed of those who got circumcised to prevent infection. A poll with no demographic adjustment, even one involving blood work and repeated over the course of several months, is not scientific data.

dour @ 2006-07-21T22:52:00

2006-07-22T06:17:33Z

Man, what a week. And/or month. And/or year.

Finally back to having my own place, shared only with Feather, with the internet turned on and my computer hooked up, and all we have to do is scrounge up the other half of next month's rent by the 5th (because we had to move in two weeks early or lose the apartment, paying half a month's extra rent) and from that point forward we're solid. After six months I'll have repayed the loan I got from my employer to cover the move-in costs, and then I'll be able to start in on all my other debts, both institutional and personal. All told, I'm really in better shape than much of America; I should have clear credit in about two years.

In other news, I nearly wiped out the entire party tonight with a single ochre jelly. Feather, who's playing her first D&D campaign and is delightfully unfamiliar with the range of monsters and what they do, cast Ring of Blades and stepped into the middle, which quickly resulted in 7 fragile but hard-hitting beasties. In a few rounds there was nobody left standing but one nearly-dead jelly and one 1st-level halfling rogue with a heavy crossbow, in an all-or-nothing face-off. Two die-rolls later that was one very proud halfling, and against all odds nobody bled to death. See you all next week—same ooze time, same ooze channel!

dour @ 2006-07-11T18:49:00

2006-07-12T01:49:29Z

Bah, I got nudged! Guess I better update.

Been a terribly hectic couple of weeks. moltenglowstick and I have been effectively homeless since the first of the month; it's just a brief stint between the loss of the previous residence and the pre-confirmed gaining of the new (permanent and, thank goodness, unshared) one, but it's a bitch nonetheless. After a bit of genuine floor-hopping, including a few days spent up in the hills with an outhouse and no electricity, we've got a stable roof (with running water) for the next week until our apartment's ready.

Our computers are set up in the back at my workplace, where I have permission to stay after-hours, so we're fully functional until the final move. I still haven't been spending much time online at all, though. Will probably get back in touch with the world after this weekend.

Take care, y'all.

dour @ 2006-05-20T09:13:00

2006-05-20T16:14:00Z

Hey, check it out, Feather found Doug Winger's photo references on the DeviantArt forums.

dour @ 2006-04-28T00:31:00

2006-04-28T07:34:33Z

The only available pan was heart-shaped. Feather managed to make the most of this.

<3

(The lessthanthree was obligatory. She's watching over my should*suddenly cut off!*)