Log in or Sign up

main

side

curve

In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

We're All Fine Here, Thanks. How Are You? - The FanFic Social Thread

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction and Writing Resource' started by mavjade , Aug 15, 2014.

Thread Status:: Not open for further replies.

Page 238 of 401

Annia Piet Jedi Knight

Registered:

Feb 7, 2015

I feel the need to share this with people that will understand! (Plus I'm trying to make myself be more sociable on her);

This weekend my husband took us on a surprise trip to Cambridge to celebrate our wedding anniversary (we spent a night there during our honeymoon too). This of course included going punting through Cambridge, which of course became humerously disastrous as hubby lost the battle against the current and ended up with the punt sideways across the river. Which allowed me to say, with appropriate sarcasm;

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

(Hubby just eye rolled at me and made me get out the paddle and row, but hey, it amused me! )

Annia Piet, Apr 26, 2015

#5926

Findswoman , Kahara, TrakNar and 7 others like this.
Gamiel Chosen One

Registered:

Dec 16, 2012

May be of interest; Scans Daily is discussing Star Wars: Union #1
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/5258372.html#comments

Gamiel, Apr 26, 2015

#5927

Ewok Poet likes this.
SabyneAmberle Jedi Grand Master

Registered:

Sep 16, 2004

Anna, that's too funny.

Also, Happy Anniversary. May you and your hubby have many more happy years.

SabyneAmberle, Apr 26, 2015

#5928

Annia Piet likes this.
Goodwood Jedi Master

Registered:

May 11, 2011

Annia Piet Too bad he didn't catch the Han follow-up...maybe on 4/5/15 you should make him re-watch the OT.

Goodwood, Apr 26, 2015

#5929

Annia Piet likes this.
Annia Piet Jedi Knight

Registered:

Feb 7, 2015

He knows the films well enough to give to right response, I think he just doesn't like to encourage me!

And to be fair, by the nature of punting, getting out and pushing CAN help - if you don't mind getting soaked and covered in duck weed!

Annia Piet, Apr 26, 2015

#5930

Goodwood likes this.
Chyntuck Force Ghost

Registered:

Jul 11, 2014

Happy anniversary Annia Piet I hope it didn't involve too much duck weed in the end

Chyntuck, Apr 26, 2015

#5931
Annia Piet Jedi Knight

Registered:

Feb 7, 2015

Thanks Duck weed was (narrowly) avoided.

Hubby is long suffering on the cheesy Star Wars quotes. Last week toddler told me our light fitting was a moon and I just told him "That's no moon, that's a space station!" And then I heard hubby groaning from upstairs...

Annia Piet, Apr 26, 2015

#5932

Chyntuck, Findswoman , TrakNar and 2 others like this.
Briannakin Former Manager VIP - Former Mod/RSA

Registered:

Feb 25, 2010

I actually laughed out loud, Annia! May you and your hubby have many more happy and nerdy years!

Also, I have watched Daredevil. I highly recommend it. As a daughter of a blind guy, I groaned at some of the stereotypes (the whole face-feeling thing is NOT a thing) but it's really good.

Edit: AWESOME news! I have roommates for September (for when my sister moves). I think I chose the right people. These were some of the highlights of the tour, "Oh my gosh! Hardwood floors! I can slide everywhere!" "Two bathrooms! We can poop at the same time!" and "Hurah, a dishwasher, we are never going to fight again." We already have plans for Doctor Who nights when new episodes come out and board game nights. It's going to be a nerd house.

Briannakin , Apr 26, 2015

#5933

divapilot, jcgoble3, Findswoman and 5 others like this.
Kahara Chosen One

Registered:

Mar 3, 2001

Nerd house sounds excellent.

Kahara, Apr 26, 2015

#5934

Findswoman , Ewok Poet, jcgoble3 and 2 others like this.
Gamiel Chosen One

Registered:

Dec 16, 2012

I am finished with my bachelor paper

Now I just have to be judged for it

Gamiel, Apr 27, 2015

#5935

Kahara, Chyntuck, Briannakin and 1 other person like this.
Chyntuck Force Ghost

Registered:

Jul 11, 2014

Congrats Gamiel Welcome to the world of the unemployed free

I just HAVE to give you two examples of the cream of the crop of Greek journalism.

From the Sunday edition of the biggest "serious" newspaper, Kathimerini:

Irreversible earthquake in Nepal.

And today's front page of Espresso, the tabloid with the biggest circulation:

Aliens of 80 species are living among us!

Yup.

Chyntuck, Apr 27, 2015

#5936

Ewok Poet, jcgoble3, TrakNar and 3 others like this.
Jedi_Lover Chosen One

Registered:

Nov 1, 2004

What a crock! There are not more than a dozen alien species living among us!

Jedi_Lover, Apr 27, 2015

#5937

Chyntuck and Kahara like this.
Kahara Chosen One

Registered:

Mar 3, 2001

I wasn't aware of the existence of reversible earthquakes...

Only 80 species. We're such a pathetic backwater.

Kahara, Apr 27, 2015

#5938

Ewok Poet and Chyntuck like this.
Chyntuck Force Ghost

Registered:

Jul 11, 2014

Kahara said: ↑

I wasn't aware of the existence of reversible earthquakes...
Click to expand...

Which is why you should Greek newspapers. You learn new things every day.

Chyntuck, Apr 27, 2015

#5939

Kahara likes this.
TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

Registered:

Apr 4, 2011

80? That seems like a relatively low count. Obviously, they missed my species.

TrakNar, Apr 27, 2015

#5940

Ewok Poet, Chyntuck, Kahara and 1 other person like this.
Briannakin Former Manager VIP - Former Mod/RSA

Registered:

Feb 25, 2010

I'M FREEEEEE as well. For like a week, then my May class starts The shavit I make myself do.

Also, only 80? They apparently missed my step-family.

Briannakin , Apr 27, 2015

#5941

Chyntuck, Kahara, TrakNar and 1 other person like this.
Goodwood Jedi Master

Registered:

May 11, 2011

I think 80 refers to the species of aliens living in Greece, not the world over. I estimate that members of no less than 582,797 distinct species make up the total alien population of Earth.

Not counting the half-breeds and experimental rejects, of course.

Goodwood, Apr 27, 2015

#5942

Chyntuck and JediMaster_Jen like this.
jcgoble3 Chosen One

Registered:

Nov 7, 2010

TrakNar They've announced Five Nights at Freddy's 4: The Final Chapter. Are you ready?

jcgoble3, Apr 27, 2015

#5943
TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

Registered:

Apr 4, 2011

I just saw, and no, I'm not ready. I have a half-finished Bonnie head in my closet and only plans for FNaF miniatures. I plan to tackle the latter tonight after dinner.

TrakNar, Apr 27, 2015

#5944

jcgoble3 likes this.
Gamiel Chosen One

Registered:

Dec 16, 2012
Something that may be of interest for you dieselpunkers here, from http://www.dieselpunks.org/

Interview with Anders Blixt: Dieselpunk Pioneer

Posted by Larry on February 21, 2015 at 5:00pm

View Articles

Most people know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. However, most don’t know that many credit Antonio Meucci for also inventing it. The origins of dieselpunk follows a similar pattern. In most dieselpunk literature, Lewis Pollack is credited with coining the term ‘dieselpunk’ to promote the RPG Children of the Sun in 2002. It turns out this is only half the picture. In a posting on the excellent Facebook page Dieselpunks HQ I met an gentlemen by the name of Anders Blixt who independently coined the term ‘dieselpunk’ for his RPG the same year as Pollack. What follows is an interview with Mr. Blixt that he kindly granted me.

Anders, tell us a little about yourself.
I am a middle-aged chap who lives with wife and three children in Stockholm, Sweden. Since a few years, I earn my living as a tech writer, and in my spare time I write science fiction and role-playing games.
I grew up in Gothenburg in the 1960s and 1970s. In those days, that city was Sweden’s maritime nexus and its seagulls, ports, wharfs and merchantmen made me fall in love with the sea.
My mother had been an elite Lindy Hop dancer as a teenager in the 1940s and still owned a large collection of big-band records on 78-rpm discs. So she infused the first drops of diesel in my blood through the music of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and the Dorsey brothers.
When I was eight, my father gave me Twenty-thousand Leagues under the Sea with the comment: “I liked this book when I was a boy”. I was mesmerized by it and I still remember the sunny afternoon on my uncle’s porch when I read about the Nautilus getting trapped beneath the polar ice. That book opened the gate to the literary universe of science fiction – my everlasting thanks, dad.
Role-playing games entered my life in 1977. Soon I organized gaming conventions and wrote articles for GDW’s Journal of Travellers’ Aid Society. In 1985, I graduated with an academic degree in international politics. By chance, Sweden’s only RPG manufacturer needed an editor/designer at that time. The 1980s was a golden age when Sweden was the second biggest RPG market after the US. So I spent the next four years producing best-selling games and supplements.
I switched careers in 1989, but kept on writing games as a freelancer. During the Balkan wars, I was a civilian specialist at an army base near Stockholm, working with logistics matters for our Blue Berets in Bosnia. One day when snow covered the field outside my chilly office room, I started writing an SF story to put my thoughts and worries on paper. It evolved into The Ice War, a dieselpunk spy adventure that was self-published in Swedish in 2011 and in English this year.

You mentioned on the Facebook page ‘Dieselpunk HQ’ that you independently created the term ‘dieselpunk’, without knowledge of the RPG Children of the Sun or Lewis Pollock, when you developed the game Lemuria. What year was the game created and what is the storyline?
I created Lemuria as a game world in 2002 and it was published in four consecutive issues of the now-defunct gaming magazine Sverox in 2003. I remember an inspirational flash about a rough southern continent, a pulpish adventure place for the 1930s; the igniting spark was the phrase “Lemuria, Mon Amour” (a reference to the art movie Hiroshima Mon Amour) that made me ponder what kind of place this Lemuria ought to be. A mental Big Bang followed: during a few hectic days I created a continent with vast taigas, immense ice wastelands, a savage fauna, harsh conflicts and plenty of cool vehicles and gadgets.

The response from the Sverox readers was so enthusiastic that Krister Sundelin and I, both veteran RPG designers, decided to expand the articles to a campaign book for D20 Modern. However, the choice of rules engine turned out to be unfortunate, because D20 Modern never gained a significant following here, and the commercial success was therefore modest. (If I would get an opportunity to reboot Lemuria, I would include a set of rules, probably based on Chaosium’s Basic Role-playing, because I know that engine well and it is easily adapted to that milieu.)
As for Lemuria’s first storyline, I will start the explanation from an odd direction: My wife is from northern India and her late father participated as a teenager in the independence struggles in the late 1930s. Therefore I have learned much of the brutality of colonialism. That permeates Lemuria where immigrant settlers toil to build better lives, while robber barons and warlords compete for wealth and power around them. And the aborigines, as usual, get the worst of it. Much of Lemuria is in a legal limbo, because by treaty no colonizing nation may claim sovereignty over land that it does not control properly. So the settlers in the outback have no recourse to lawmen and each village has to fend for itself. This storyline can therefore be called “The Wild South”, because it contains elements of Western movies, seen from the underdogs’ perspective with players characters that are, e.g., aborigines, miners, lumberjacks, sailors, and settlers.
The second storyline: During the 1990s I wrote two non-fiction books about United Nations peacekeeping missions in Asia and, as I already have mentioned, I worked with the UNPROFOR mission in Bosnia. I used these experiences to create a campaign outline in which the player characters are field agents for a League of Nations (the predecessor of the UN) civilian bureau that monitors what is going on in Lemuria’s wilderness to detect exploitation and other malfeasance, i.e., a sort of retro-flavored Mission Impossible or MacGyver. To give these agents an advantage of the opposition, be it American industrialists, the Soviet OGPU or the Japanese military, they have access to “hitech” gadgets through their employer. (My father, who was born in the 1920s and earned an MSc in electrical engineering around 1950, told me a lot about what pre-transistor technology was like. I have written numerous RPG products during three decades, but Lemuria was the first one in which I could add his name to the list of contributors.)

Would you tell us a little what the term ‘dieselpunk’ meant to you when you coined it?
I had read several of William Gibson’s early novels and Sterling’s The Difference Engine, so I was familiar with cyberpunk and steampunk. In Lemuria I wanted to move the steampunk concept forward to a rough post-WW1 milieu. That meant that the main propulsion technology shifted to diesel engines – to describe that I coined the word dieselpunk. Other aspects came from authors like Hammond Innes, Harold Jenkins, and W E Johns, who wrote about tough people adventuring in gritty far-away places. I also had in mind the 1930s King Kong movie, CS Forester’s World War One novel The African Queen, and the adventurous journalist Michael Chandal in Chaim Potok’s Depression-era novel Davita’s Harp.

Do you think the genre of dieselpunk as it exists today is consistent with the term as you coined it?
Well, currently the genre has so many facets. Sleek aeroplanes, chugging ship engines, rigid airships, and khaki & leather jacket fashion, yes, they are consistent; but Gernsbackian shiny utopias, jazzy zot suits and sinister parade uniforms, no, they are not. (I have never cared much for Leni-Riefenstahl-ish esthetics or “dictator chic”.)

How does it make you feel that there exists an entire subculture with the name that you coined?
I feel both happy and amused. It is pure coincidence, of course. I wrote about dieselpunk and Lemuria in a minor language and that book did not circulate beyond Sweden’s borders. Lewis Pollack introduced the same concept in English at the same time, probably because time was ripe for the trope. So the credit for giving the word dieselpunk a wide circulation goes to him and those that followed in his footsteps, not to me.

Where do you see dieselpunk as a genre and subculture heading?
The indie-publishing revolution has opened up a field for books and games that did not exist a decade ago. So I think we are going to see more genre-specific literature during the next few years. As for dieselpunk cosplay and reenactment, well, I have not seen much of it in Sweden, so I would not dare speculate about their future. Swedish cosplayers seem to favor steampunk and anime.

Would you like to tell us about some of your dieselpunk projects that you have going?
The Swedish publisher Affront will soon publish Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep, an anthology of science fiction shortstories in English by Swedish authors. My contribution is a dieselpunk story called “The Road”.
Since last year, I have been working on a dieselpunk-SF collection of shortstories and novellas. They are inspired by my 2008 sojourn in Kabul, Afghanistan, where I worked as a civilian specialist in an EU mission, and by the experiences of my late uncle Arne Fallenius, a Swedish army officer who served as a UN observer in Sinai during the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition in 1969-70. I write in my spare time, so the project moves forward slower than I want, but I hope to complete it this year. I write the stories in English to gain a wider audience. My Swedish-Indian family is bilingual so English is not a foreign language to me.
Check out Anders Blixt’s blog “The Dream Forge”. In addition, check out his recent dieselpunk novel "The Ice War."

Click to expand...
Gamiel, Apr 28, 2015

#5945

Chyntuck likes this.
Goodwood Jedi Master

Registered:

May 11, 2011

Nice Polikarpov I-16...

Goodwood, Apr 28, 2015

#5946
Gamiel Chosen One

Registered:

Dec 16, 2012

Goodwood said: ↑

Nice Polikarpov I-16...
Click to expand...

the artist is Tomas Arfert and here is Another pic he did for the Lemuria game

Gamiel, Apr 28, 2015

#5947

Chyntuck likes this.
Gamiel Chosen One

Registered:

Dec 16, 2012

From https://gondica.wordpress.com/, I think some of you here will find it, or at least the links interesting.

Space Empires and Macro-economics

Posted on 1 October 2014 by gondica

Thirty-two years ago, I did a semester of macroeconomics at Gothenburg university. Many of the lectures dealt with scarcity and pricing mechanisms. I was more into political science and economic history, so I did not pursue that discipline.

But the knowledge I had gained helped me in designing mechanisms for for “international trade” in gameworlds, no matter whether they were in space or on planet surfaces. I tended to emphasize the exchange of technological products for raw materials (e.g. cellphones for oil) and the importance of rare metals in hitech industries (e.g. superconducting alloys contain a lot of unusual metals). One particular interstellar trade specialty is expertise, i.e. well-paid consulting experts going to far-off places to assist in industrial endeavors.

Here is an interesting glance at the macro-economics of some sensible, or less sensible, space empires — link >>> (Dune may be a well-designed world, but, no, I don’t buy the politico-economic structure of the Padishah Empire.)
Click to expand...

The Economics and Logistics of Space Flight

Posted on 16 July 2014 by gondica

The Space Economy is a blog that discusses technological and industrial aspects of space exploration, such as how to manage secure food and water supplies. It is worth a visit — link >>>
Click to expand...

Gamiel, Apr 28, 2015

#5948
Chyntuck Force Ghost

Registered:

Jul 11, 2014

More top-notch Greek journalism, from Ta Nea, the second-largest "serious" daily (spoiler tag because the pic is big)

Main title: They're asking for the Finance Minister's head ("they" probably being the 80 alien species?).

Picture: Earthquake domino effect -- Will they come all the way here? (someone needs to tell them that Kathmandu is 6000 km away.)

Sidebar: How come Ch. Xiros didn't go to Guantanamo -- The CIA agents withdrew at the (former) Prime Minister's request (These people read too many bad espionage novels. Seriously.)

Chyntuck, Apr 28, 2015

#5949
Goodwood Jedi Master

Registered:

May 11, 2011

It's like Weekly World News meets The New York Post!

Goodwood, Apr 28, 2015

#5950

Page 238 of 401

Thread Status:: Not open for further replies.