active_apathy

This poll is probably most of interest to paper and dice roleplayers, but everyone should play. I'm curious to see just how many dice it's (a)typical for people to own.

Feel free to link or repost this poll in your own journals (by pasting "<lj-poll-1356329>" into an entry where you'd like it to appear), as more data makes the results betterer.

[Poll #1356329]

Firstly-

ISP FTW! My Interwebs purveyor has decided to increase the bandwidth limits on most of their ADSL2+ plans, meaning that I suddenly have an extra 10GB of quota and... 5 days to use it in.

So tell me, dear flist: in what universe is it fair for season 2 of Dead Like Me to be downloading faster than season 1? WHY DOES BITTORRENT HATE ME SO?

Secondly-

Spicks and Specks was, er, fun. And 5% The Princess Bride, which isn't too far from normal - especially when 'normal' includes things like Adam Hills impersonating Adam Ant and the Adam Hillsong.

For all the linkspam, though, the real reason I'm posting about Spicks and Specks is that Jason Byrne mentioned Lego - which, as you might expect, immediately made me think of this. And because I've now got the whole 'hot Lego' thing stuck in my head, you might as well too.

Links are safe for work, unless you're a professional Lego thief.

Thirdly-

Ah, April. The first used to be so much more fun, but that one was mostly people all over the Internets trying to rickroll one another. This makes it essentially indistinguishable from the thirty-first of March, and the second of April, and the first of May, and the twenty-ninth of February, and...

Still, if the Internets suddenly go quiet on the eighth, we'll know why. Helpfully, you can usually identify the misleading links to Samara's video: they're often linked to as Never Gonna Give You Up.

o/ Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you out
Unless you show all your friends and curse them too
Prob'ly gonna make you cry
Got a week to say goodbye
Gonna climb out of your TV just to kill you o/

Um... note that I don't actually suggest Samararolling people. I especially don't suggest Samararolling people and then ringing them up imediately after. Wherever you got that idea from, it was most certainly not me.

Links are safe for work unless you're part of the supporting cast in a Western remake of a Japanese movie based on a Japanese novel not Rick Astley, so what more could you possibly want? A charming little clip of Beaker, perhaps?

Fourthly-

laurenmitchell did this, so I'm going to turn it into a poll meme. Or a meme poll. A meme with a poll, a poll that's a meme, you get the point. So:

[Poll #1164584]

The links in the poll are all safe for work, and come from this Wikipedia article. It lists the Rilmani as true neutral exemplars, and links to a Rilmani article that doesn't even exist. This amuses me far too much - as does the factual accuracy of the Yugoloth article being disputed.

And that, good people of the Interwebs, is about all there is for now. Go forth and... um... do whatever it is you people do.

So, I found an easier way of adding all my icons into the random-icon thingy in my sidebar, by using find/replace (OTP) instead of copying and pasting everything. A side effect of this - not that I'm complaining - is that I've now got a list of URLs for all the icons I have on LJ at the moment. And, while I've been thinking of doing some weeding of my icons, I thought I might turn it into a poll.

Which led me to thinking about reorganising the icons in my Photobucket account so that, well, they're a little more organised. And a lot more there, because my current icon filing system seems to depend a lot on what I have on LJ at any given moment (which is another reason why I don't tend to clean them up very often).

But now, here's the poll. (Or, rather, attempt 2 at the poll; the first time lost half the tickyboxes)

[Poll #1127998]

Something tells me that the 'view answers' thing for this poll will be very interesting.

This poll is to refine the genre and theme and such for the game, and to get a final idea of who's playing. So, without further ado...

[Poll #1125461]

Comments and discussion are encouraged here (and disabled here) so that we're not trying to have a discussion spread over three different journals. Plus, the sooner we get to something everyone's happy with, the sooner we can make the wiki and start playing.

Also, if you're planning to play, please do remember to join apathy_games while you're there. Thanks!

(10 points for anyone who can tell me what the subject line references)

palmer_kun has notions of starting a game of Lexicon.

Lexicon is a game where players, in the role of scholars in a fictional setting, are collaboratively writing an encyclopaedia. There are twenty-six turns in a game of Lexicon, with each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet.

The player whose turn it is must then write an encyclopaedia entry on a topic beginning with that letter. If undefined topics exist for that letter, they have to pick one of those; otherwise, they can make up one of their own. The entry must link to at least one previous entry (if any exist) and two undefined entries that begin with later letters (unless there's at least one undefined entry for every letter left in the game, in which case no new entries may be created).

Overall, the game can be fairly well described as a blend of role-playing, world-building and creative writing. It runs smoothest as a wiki, but palmer_kun has some ideas about how it could be adapted to be playable in an LJ comm like apathy_games.

So!

[Poll #1106984]

And should you have any other ideas or suggestions, do feel free to comment.

Observation of the day: Fashioning a chain from paperclips is an essential skill, and should be taught in schools in case it's ever essential to find an escape route from invading zombies using only stationery. This is plain and simple fact.

On the other hand, making chainmail from paperclips is recommended in exactly the same way as using a mouse as a planishing stake, or corrugated cardboard and staples as substitutes for plate lamés and rivets: ie, not. It's certainly possible, but the time and effort mean that by the time you had cardboard tassets or paperclip haubergeon, you'd have been eaten.

On the plus side, I now have a small piece of 4-to-1 paperclipmail where previously I had thirty fifty-two sixty-six paperclips of expired usefulness, which is probably proof against papercuts or something. Yay. Mercifully, the paperclip box is empty now.



And now for something far more useful: community info! In bold, so that it's easy to see.

I've been starting to kind of plot out the finished community info for critique_club, which (so far) mostly means making some notes and a couple of lists. In the interests of getting things right fairly quickly, what kind of things do you consider useful when someone comments on writing?

I'm especially interested in what those of you who write things other than prose fiction have to say, but I'll field suggestions from everyone.



Also, because I've just thought of it, I still need a tag for when I post ridiculous and/or nonsensical things. So!
[Poll #1087213]

This morning (assuming 'this morning' is 'yesterday morning' is Thursday, because I said so) I shuffled out the front door to go and get my public transport fix for the day. The following all-too-frequent exchange happened:

Me: *mumbles something that sounds like a greeting*
Driver: Mornin'.
Me: Uh...
Brain: *remembers how mornings work, takes over*
Me: A [ticket], thanks.
Driver: (puzzled) Um... a [ticket]?
Me: Yes. One of those.
Driver: Don't you want a [ZOMGdifferent ticket]?
Me: No. I mean a [ticket].
Driver: A [ticket]?
Me: (encouragingly) Yes. The [price] one.
Driver: *encodes and hands over [ticket]*
Me: *takes ticket, scampers to seat*

Notice that? It's all generalised, because it happens for virtually every kind of ticket I try to buy. Anyway, it essentially translates as:

Me: Morning!
Driver: You look like you're trying to pay your fare. Would you like help?
Me: Would you like to swallow a paperclip? Answer carefully. I'm decaffeinated.
Driver: Um... this isn't about me. This is your story; I'm just visiting.
Me: Well, good. Now we've got that sorted out, I'd like a [ticket], thanks.
Driver: (is puzzled) A [ticket]?
Me: Yes, exactly.
Driver: But surely you'd like a [ZOMGdifferent ticket]...
Me: No, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't.
Driver: Are you sure?
Me: Entirely.
Driver: Is that your final-
Me: Finish that sentence and you will ingest the steering wheel.
Driver: Fair enough. So, that was a [ZOMGdifferent ticket]...
Me: No, it was a [ticket].
Driver: Are you sure? The [ZOMGdifferent ticket] is better.
Me: Not for me.
Driver: For everyone!
Me: Apart from me.
Driver: But I think you want the [ZOMGdifferent ticket].
Me: Well, that certainly makes one of us.
Driver: So you want-
Me: Remember that thing there used to be?
Driver: Thing?
Me: The kind of division of labour thing.
Driver: (puzzled) The what?
Me: The thing where I decided what ticket I wanted, and then you drove the bus?
Driver: Oh, that. Well, I think-
Me: That those were good times? Wacky fun? That we should go back to that?
Driver: Um, well, actually...
Me: Good to see you agree.
Driver: But I think that you-
Me: See my exact change? See how [ticket] is [price]?
Driver: It could be a coincidence!
Me: Unfortunately, we're still on planet Earth.
Driver: Actually, no. This is still your story. Have you noticed anything about your stories?
Me: Lies. And slander. Lies, slander, and libel. And nonsense! Wait... I'll come in again.
Driver: Please don't.
Me: Fine. So, [ticket]?
Driver: But you really want a...
Me: [ticket]. Yes. Who'd have thought.
Driver: But...
Me: *stares*
Driver: *mumbles incoherently*
Me: *is optimistic*
Driver: Are you-
Me: Sure? Yes. Certain? Utterly. Definite, decided and indisputably abiding. My mind, it is made up. My resolve, let me show you it. I can has [tikkit].
Driver: You... can has?
Me: [tikkit]. Now.
Driver: You know, I can hear the misspelling, which means-
Me: That you'll give me my [ticket], or I'll be forced to lolcat a second time.
Driver: Well, why didn't you say so? *encodes and dispenses ticket*
Me: I hate my stories sometimes. *accepts ticket, scampers to seat*

With the addition of your choice of 'grrr', 'argh', 'arrrrrr', 'someone set up us the ticket' or 'this is public transpoooooooorrrrrrrrt!', that's about all there is for today.

...

[Poll #1043982]

First, though - interactive fiction. packbat has discovered text adventures, and linked to Inform 7, which is essentially a z-code IDE of sorts. It's kind of reawakened a vague desire I once had to write a text adventure; so far I've just been playing with it, but if I (a) get an idea and (b) lose the feeling that natural-language programming is cheating somehow, then all will be good.

Anyway...


Polls! The shiny poll seems to have the expected result at the moment - that a vast and overwhelming majority of people like shiny things. Of course, the sample is a little bit skewed, but still: shiny!

Usually, in polls I add something to easily watch for new answers. Usually it's a question with one option, but this time there was a scale, so I really didn't need to. Instead, I've been keeping note of when new answers are added by watching the mean in question two. At the moment, it's exactly 80, which is almost annoying in itself because any new answers of 80 (coincidentally the modal score) won't affect it. Rar.


Robots! Apparently, there's a Spidersapien robot. I kind of noticed it when I was buying my (as yet unread) copy of Deathly Hallows, and went back to look thinking 'hey, a robot spider, that's kind of interesting'.

It's not. A robot spider, that is, which made it seem infinitely less interesting. Apparently it's just their normal robot in a Spiderman costume (which is, as it happens, significantly less shiny than the usual faux-metal finish). Grr.


Annoyances! Of a sort. Well, just one. And that annoyance is any sudoku puzzle that has more than one possible solution, because I'll probably think 'where have I gotten it wrong?' instead of 'o hay i can has multipl solutionz.'

(Random thought: if Daleks were superior, surely they'd speak in lolcat. It'd make it easy to gain a  foothold (wheelhold?) on the Interwebs.

...

I made you a cookie, but I exterminatede it. (Which clearly needs to be an icon. *Starts Photoshop*))


Classes! As of this week, I'll once again be going to learn things on a nearly daily basis. This means two things - one, I'll be learning things, and two, I'll have looooong bus trips twice a day in which to do things like finish writing that post I've been meaning to for Chaos Theory, or to write some kind of requisitioned stories (or asked-for fictions, or entreated narratives, or allegories by behest, or spiel by supplication, or... you get the idea).


Chaos! Was in there. Dear self, stop being lazy, kthxbye. (Which probably seems weird, given I'm unusually LJ-prolific for now THE FORSEEABLE FUTUREZ, but there you have it.) The 'of a sort', in case you missed it, went with 'annoyances'.

And that's all for the moment. I'm not entirely sure why I haven't really felt like reading DH yet; if it were Jim Butcher or K.J. Parker, for example, I wouldn't waste a second before devouring the text, but these things happen.

I have something of a tradition of picking arbitrary milestones and posting music quizzes for them, mostly based on picking interesting post numbers and using those.

This is post 464, which was an accident - I wanted it to be post 463, which is the ninetieth prime number, which means... absolutely nothing to anyone, so nearly as I can tell, hence: arbitrary. So, this is an out-of-order post 463.

And it means I don't have to convince myself to wait to do the quiz!meme, so, yay.



This one's fairly straightforward - it's the first lines, and the comments are screened, so guess any you think you might know. I'll add a line every day for the ones that aren't guessed, and keep scores, and eventually they'll all be guessed (or out of lines), and someone will win. Yay!

[Poll #1026399]

Remember that I write poll entries as though they're responses that you'd say to me, even if they're probably nothing close to what you'd actually say. Also, keep in mind that there's sixty songs under the cut.

So! As usual, title and artist (or source, for some), one point for each one you get right.

( Cut for length )

And there they all are. Go forth and guess. Again, comments are screened, so guess at anything that looks familiar.

EDIT: Point of interest: the poll title was supposed to be "hey, look, I'm being indecisive!"; the apostrophe broke it.

So, in this post, I called for expressions of interest for playing Nomic on LiveJournal.

Nomic is an interesting game, in that the game is played exclusively by changing its own rules. A turn consists of a player proposing a rule change, and then the players voting on whether to adopt or reject that rule change. Of course, you can even change the rules that are responsible for that. More detail can be found on the creator's website, on Wikipedia, or from nomic.net.

Typically, the rules start from an initial set of 29, which provide enough of a game to be able to start playing. In the post with the poll, packbat and I discussed ways to make Nomic work on LJ. And then, yesterday packbat posted a draft initial ruleset, which is:

( Cut for length )

So, yes. The game demands no special skills or knowledge, and doesn't demand much of a time commitment. So, with a bit more detail:

[Poll #910255]

Feel free to link others to this post and this poll if you think the'd be interested.

Also, the comm will need a name; I'll take suggestions in the comments, if anyone has some to offer.