Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Monday Dec 18, 2006

Filed under: Random 16 comments

Geeze. Let’s see, let’s see…

Normal baseline level of Holiday confusion, plus…
Daughter is going to have surgery (Tonsillectomy) this week.
Son is sick with a worrisome fever that has hung around for about five days.
Death in the family. (Not a close relative, but this was someone young – a twenty-three year old woman – and that is always a tragic blow.)
Hectic project at work needs to be done BEFORE Christmas.

This sounds like the set-up to one of those wacky movies where the frantic energy of the holidays acts as a catalyst of healing and reconciliation, and at the end everyone remembers the true spirit of Christmas. Except in this case, it isn’t very hilarious, everyone already has a firm grip on the Christmas spirit, and we were all getting along just fine to begin with.

Sigh.

Maybe my boss will give me a call on Tuesday and say something like, “Shamus, you’re a hilarious guy and I want to see the next issue of your webcomic, so take a day off. Screw the client.”

I’m thinking this isn’t very likely, but this is the season when miracles happen.

If not, then we can catch up with the comic next week.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Wordpress Bug?Previous Post

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16 comments

Session 11, Part 2

By Shamus Posted Saturday Dec 16, 2006

Filed under: D&D Campaign 3 comments

 Session 11, Part 1Previous Post

Next PostSession 12, Part 1 

The party continues east. Several times throught the trip they see Garret scanning the horizon through a spyglass, looking at it through the wrong end. They have written Garret off as an idiot by this point, so they let it slide without comment. Eventually this gets on Eomer’s nerves and he tries to show Garret how to use a spyglass.

Garret explains that this is how the Mages Archives can be seen. Up close (within a hundred or so paces) it can be plainly seen, but at a distance it can only be spotted by looking through the wrong end of a spyglass.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 11, Part 2”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Session 11, Part 1Previous Post

Next PostSession 12, Part 1 

3 comments

DM of the Rings XLII:
Joining the Rebellion

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 15, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 38 comments

 DM of the Rings XLI:
A New HopePrevious Post

Next PostDM of the Rings XLIII:
Rail-Rodian 

Dave as Frodo wants to play Star Wars D&D. Sam wants to be a Jedi. Dave quits. Casey Jones.

Characters come and go, but the relative success of a campaign story can be judged by the number of players who are willing to see it through to the end.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 DM of the Rings XLI:
A New HopePrevious Post

Next PostDM of the Rings XLIII:
Rail-Rodian 

38 comments

Yew Tock and it Types Four Hue!

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 15, 2006

Filed under: Rants 13 comments

 Spam: How to Make Things WorsePrevious Post

Next PostVista, Your new Governess 

One of the ads in the sidebar right now is for “Dragon Naturally Speaking”, a program which allows you to “type by talking”. You know: speech recognition and whatnot. The ad boasts “99% accuracy, can your staff do as well?”

Actually, unless they are just learning English the average person is bound to do a lot better than a mere 99%. Words are lost all the time due to background noise or differing pronounciation, be we are nearly always able to auto-correct for this on the fly, usually before the other person even finishes speaking. If we really couldn’t figure out one out of every hundred words, conversation would be maddening. We would be misunderstanding each other, or asking the other person to repeat things more or less constantly. The average Joe can do better than 99% talking on a cell phone in a noisy room.

So yeah, unless you’re the governor of California, your staff probably does a lot better than 99% accuracy.

(Oh, and a slight disclaimer: You need to train the software for a week before you can attain that less-than stellar 99%.)

LATER: I must add: I don’t have a problem with the software itself, my gripe here is that the ad was trying to pit their software against human beings. Computers are unbeatable when it comes to doing calculations, sorting, and storage of data. But when it comes to deciphering language, they can’t hope to keep up with a human. So, the ad was kind of indirectly insulting, which is why I just wasted four paragraphs on it.

Sheesh. I shouldn’t be this grumpy on a Friday.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Spam: How to Make Things WorsePrevious Post

Next PostVista, Your new Governess 

13 comments

History of the Internet

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2006

Filed under: Links 12 comments

 Stop me if you've heard this one before...Previous Post

Next PostPerspective, Realigned 

The recent spike in traffic to this site (because of DM of the Rings) reminded me of this:

On May 19 2003, both FARK and Slashdot linked to my humorous “History of the Internet” bit. The original site is long gone and replaced by a spam portal, but I do have the thing archived here. Now that was a day of heavy traffic. I give full credit to Hosting Matters, though. Despite the simultaneous FARKing and Slashdotting, the site never went down.

The History of the Internet hasn’t aged well, humor-wise. The jokes about X10 and Instapundit don’t really work. When I wrote it, Instapundit was still a huge monolith of the blogging world (not that the site has gotten smaller, it’s just that everything else has gotten bigger) and X10 is no longer an instantly recognizable name. I bet there are a lot of people reading this who’ve forgotten all about their sleazy, ubiquitous ads.

Still, that was a fun couple of minutes of fame. Everyone gets their 15 minutes I suppose, but I seem to be getting mine in lots of little 2-minute allotments.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Stop me if you've heard this one before...Previous Post

Next PostPerspective, Realigned 

12 comments

Session 11, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2006

Filed under: D&D Campaign 9 comments

 Session 10, Part 3Previous Post

Next PostSession 11, Part 2 

This is done all from memory and a few brief notes. Much detail has been lost. Entire conversations are missing.

Eomer the Rogue, Thordek the Fighter, Enoch the Cleric, Thu’fir the Blade Lord, Endo the Monk(an NPC), and Garret Lorman (another NPC) are all in the small farming and fishing village of Washport.

Beck the (former) first mate of Ocean’s Majesty (and also an NPC) has been left behind in the town of Telwin Port to the west, where he plans to help in the ship construction currently underway.

The party loads up on supplies and then heads east from the town of Washport. The terrain ahead looks uneven and rocky, so they head out on foot, leaving their horses behind.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 11, Part 1”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Session 10, Part 3Previous Post

Next PostSession 11, Part 2 

9 comments

Nerdcore 4 Life

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2006

Filed under: Nerd Culture 9 comments

 Wil PowerPrevious Post

Next PostAttacked by the Show 

Nerd culture is going to hell in a handbasket: (Warning: Colorful language.)

Dang kids.

I didn’t see Optimus Rhyme in there, which would have been nice.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Wil PowerPrevious Post

Next PostAttacked by the Show 

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