Wondercon 2006

by on February 15, 2006 at 10:14 am
Posted In: Conventions

I was kind of hoping that Smudge would say something about this one. She has a silly con quote and everything…. (Edit: So of course she posts while I’m posting…. X_X )

Anyway, Wondercon is a regional comic-book convention held in San Francisco, and owned by SDCCI.

I could say they’re turing it into a mini-ComicCon, but while that matches the surface, it doesn’t really describe what’s going on.

Similarities: It is growing fast. It was held in Moscone West this year, and the Fire Marshal closed off the dealer’s room for part of Saturday for overcrowding. Estimates handed out to the city businesses are woefully underrepresented. The Taxi driver on Friday said they were expecting ‘about 500 people’ this year. Um, Wondercon had something like 14,500 last year? Hello? Chamber of Commerce, Reality calling….

With it getting too big for Moscone West, there’s not much to do to expand the dealer’s (overcrowded) room without splitting it between two locations. There’s a few things they can take out, like the open gaming which was 90% deserted the entire time (the other 10% being SJG-sponsored demos).

Sales were poor. I don’t think we made back the relatively low table cost. We were stuck in a corner of Artist Alley that seemed to get less traffic than the rest. But even with the people who went by, it was hard to grab their attention at all. Wondercon seems to have been filled with people there to get their fix of whatever it is they’re already into, and have no interest in anything else.

All too often it feels like the comic industry as a whole is becoming more and more like this.

ComicCon itself seems to fight this trend, but for all I know it’s just so large that the minuscule percentage of people looking for something new turns into a noticeable number.

I did what I could to buck the trend, and went hunting for something new. I didn’t find much that caught my eye, but did come home with a couple new things:

Tales of the Moonlight Cutter is a pair (so far) of done-in-one stories about a ghost hunter in 12th-century China. He’s done his research on history, but they are (deliberately) Wu-Xia stories. The storytelling is okay (certainly nothing wrong with it), and the art is very strong.

A Monk’s Tale is also set in ancient/medieval China, but draws it’s inspiration from Chinese history, rather than hewing to any particular period. The story is a very warm adventure tale of three sheltered monks making their way across a China wracked by civil war and a corrupt military. Well recommended with engaging characters, a good story, and some very nice penciled art.

I’m not generally a big kung-fu fan, but that’s what the new stuff I happened to find was.

Not new, but I was happy to see the creator of Little Bat Koku, which I discovered last year, again.

Between the corner of the room given over to Playboy/porn or whatnot starlets, and various girl-attendees that seem to have installed springs under their shirts, the con needs a jiggle-counter…. -_-;

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Mechanical Computing with Legos

by on February 8, 2006 at 9:50 am
Posted In: Technology

Legos are wonderful things, they can be put to so many uses.

One fellow has gone so far as to create a simple difference engine entirely out of Legos. Difference engines were popular in the 19th century as they were handy for compiling solutions tables for complicated functions like logarithims, books of these were essential for many disciplines until the advent of modern calculators, and had generally been plagued with errors when computed by hand. He has obviously spent a lot of time on the project, and it sounds like he’s accounted for the natural problems of trying to do something precise with plastic Legos, and made it pretty robust. Smarter than I….

Another person has come up with a set of Lego-mechanical logic gates, the essence of modern computing functions. It sounds like they have a lot of problems, and hooking together more than a couple will immediately run into slippage ‘errors’. I wonder if anything could be done about that, but they already look pretty darn complicated.

I’ll also admit that the only thing I truly follow in both of these is the math theory of differences. I follow the general plan and function of the difference engine itself, but that’s only because Andy Carol has done a good job of explaining it all, and I didn’t entirely follow all of that. I generally understand logic functions, but the mechanics of these things are completely beyond me.

Still, it’s very fun to see what some people will do with their spare time!

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End of an Era

by on February 2, 2006 at 11:29 am
Posted In: News

As of January 27th, you can no longer send a Western Union telegram.

To a certain extent the surprising part is that they were still offering them. Another surprise is that they didn’t try to cash in on nostalgia and make a bigger fuss about it.

Still, it is kind of odd to actually stop and look around and realize just how far things have come. There’s a lot of old Hollywood movies that will feel a bit different now. No more furious exchanges of international telegrams like in Tintin and the Picaros.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. The message you’re reading was transmitted as 1s and 0s, the functional equivalents of the dots and dashes of Morse Code.

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Minions in Maraudon

by on January 30, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Posted In: MMO

Maraudon is an instance that’s been sitting on the back-burner for a while. Blanc and Dunain have been looking at quests for it for… nearly 15 levels or so. With Sunken Temple successfully taken care of, it was decided that it was well past time to get ready to run Maraudon.

Quest setup was easy, since the quests are generally not part of chains. Late-ish Sunday four of our top guildies were on-line and ready… and wondering where the fifth was. I spent my time trying to run errands and clean up my inventory a bit, which meant that when we decided to go in anyway, I was a bit late.

We did pick up a fifth person, a Druid named Teamsleep, who I would like to thank right now as having done a wonderful job with us. Especially as he ended up main tanking for the party. Our house connection was slow as we started, generating 2+ second lag times in the game. Real bad news for Blanc, who couldn’t depend on things to go as smoothly as needed for a tank. It eventually cleared up, and we went back to green lag, but Teamsleep was doing so well that Blanc didn’t want to shuffle the duties around and stayed on off-tank and DPS duty.

Other than that, the instance went very smooth, and really fast. No deaths (I think that’s a first!). With a little clean-up for the early stuff after the main run, all the quests were completed. Admittedly, we were mostly over-level for the instance, but I was the second-highest, and most monsters were still green for me, with the end being yellow.

At the end of it all was the Princess. I’ve seen a fair number of stories about fighting her, generally with things going… not so well. It was a challenge. We had a couple of characters hanging on by the skin of their teeth, but she went down, we didn’t, and she made an ugly splat on the floor. (Reports of the character design are not exaggerated.)

Gottesfaust (finally) leveled, along with me (late) and Lance (early). I’m not sure if anyone else leveled off-hand, but I don’t remember any at the moment.

Speaking of leveling, Nanshe, the oldest member of Fickle Moos hit Level 60 the other day! (More shocking when you realize that Nanshe is newer than most of the Fickle Muse characters, and 58 (Blanc) is still the highest on that side!) Happy 60th Nanshe!

Next up: Blackrock Depths (…gulp!)

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The Battle of Cygnus VI

by on January 29, 2006 at 11:14 am
Posted In: SFB

After the failure to seize the Cygnus system because of the unexpected size of the Cygnan navy, the Kzintis started a campaign of consolidating their gains and cutting off the system from all outside help, while the lead fleet elements were repaired. To aid in this campaign, a raid was planned against the major ore-extraction facility of the system, located on an unusual moon of the major gas giant of the Cygnus system. Federation personnel in the system were just as aware of moon’s importance as their own repairs depended on materials that traced their origin to the same place. So the Kzinti raiding force was surprised at the size of the patrol visiting the installation when they arrived….

This was attempt to write-up and play a scenario featuring some ships shown in CLs 20 and 24, particularly one of the Cygnan designs, which only saw action in the opening stages of the Second Federation-Kzinti War. So, it was an assault on a fixed defense, as a home-brew scenario. Since I’ve never done any sort of base fight before, balance was unlikely. But it was fun. Worried that the Kzintis didn’t necessarily even have to engage the enemy ships to win, I put on a time limit as well as BPV balancing without including what needed to be shot up (do 200 points to one side of a moon). Besides, that made sure that it wouldn’t turn into a long siege (which would be an interesting project), and with the last couple of recent sessions dragging out on-line, I wanted a chance at getting this wrapped up.

Mark and Mike took the role of the fixed defenses and the defending squadron (a Fed FF and two Cygnan YDDs), while I had the Kzinti force with a CLC (Light Command Cruiser), 2 CLs and a DF.

The first turn was mostly approach, which happened at a much higher speed than expected. This put me in a good position to pepper the defenses and moon and have a decent double-wave of drones. (They should have been tighter, and I can think of how to do it better, but I’m still learning the basics.) The main problem is that I had not realized the insane number of ph-3s that build up once you get ground bases and defensive satellites into an area. As it was, some of the drones got pretty close, even without fleet support. If I had it to do again, I’d concentrate more on the DefSats during the first round instead of hoping I could get around them. I killed one, and could have easily killed a second (of 5), if I had decided that’s what I wanted to do instead of trying to score points.

So, the fleet ended up turning away at the last moment (after firing as close as they dared), and moved away with no more than a couple down shields and a couple ships with light internals. I turned and prepared to try again, with little hope of being able to do everything that needed doing with the limited time and drone stocks.

Then, the defending squadron put itself in the way, with the moon to far away to support it. The Cygnan ships turned off and towards the moon, which was really where they were needed. The FF ended up going toe-to-toe with the CLC. The initial exchange was okay. I ended up crippling the FF in exchange for moderate internals, but it wasn’t quite as dramatic a difference as I’d hope for with a FF absorbing fire from two ships (a CL being just a hex further away).

Mistake: I had forgotten at this point that the CLC uses the expanded phaser and disruptor arcs of the later Kzinti designs. I should have pumped an extra ph-1 and Disr into him, which would have really gutted the FF at that point.

After that, it turned into running a gauntlet of drones (which the Cygnans use) and shuttles left behind by the squadron, while I tried to position myself for one more salvo at the moon. At this point the CLCs wounds became terminal as various things pot-shotted through the down shield. If not for the time limit, it would probably be possible to cover it as it puttered away from the moon, as the two CLs were not so damaged as to be unable to keep YDDs cautious.

And the DF? Almost untouched, it bravely followed some of its drones in for a final shot at the defenses before turning off. A salvo at the beginning of the next turn barely brought it down to the point where it couldn’t disengage and could be run down.

So another failure for the Kzinti. Two ships gone, and two damaged, in exchange for one DefSat, crippling the FF, and some other minor damage. I’d call it better than Tug of War, but that’s about it. The scenario is agreed to be extra-tough on the Kzinti, but not bad as a first try.

With this, we move the clock forward again, and the next fight will be happening in Y138. We’re going to be doing a frigate squadron battle, as everyone is convinced that we need some practice with handling the smaller ships.

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