Well, that’s a turn up for the books.
I posted my Gaunt’s Ghost Lego project to Reddit. Next thing I know Dan Abnett himself is calling me ‘a very, very fine human being indeed’.
Brutal! 😀
Category: Geekery
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness
TV Tropes is not only an awesome site for general browsing, but (for some reason) it also has this great page on Asperger’s Syndrome. Read it if you want to know why I’m such a freakin’ weirdo 😀
Somewhat related, my order from Forgeworld came in W00t! (as the young people used to say…).
(Oh, and also some Lego for my Gaunt’s Ghosts project.)
Maths-Hammer 40k
There’s been a lot of trash talk recently about the impossibility of every Crux Terminatus containing a fragment of the Emperor’s armour. Well I’m here to set the record straight!
The first thing we need to consider is how many Crux Terminatii are there? Let’s assume that only the ones on suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour count – no doubt many marines that have been awarded the Crux carry small replicas with them to show off when not suited up, but the real ones are on the armour. Each suit bears only one Crux, so the question boils down to how many suits are there?
Codex Chapters are usually divided into ten Companies of roughly equal size. As a full strength Codex Chapter consists of 1,000 Marines, this means each company will have 100 members. Only the first Company are usually provided with Terminator Armour, so at full strength each Codex Chapter could be considered to have 100 suits.
Of course, not all Space Marine Chapters are Codex compliant, and very few Chapters of any type are ever at full strength or full equipment. However, there are said to be around 1,000 Chapters in total, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that over such a large sample size things will even out. Roughly speaking therefore we can assume that at any time the Imperium has 100,000 suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour at its disposal.
Now, how big would the Emperor’s armour have to be to provide material for 100,000 suits? This depends on how big the piece on each suit is. For the sake of argument, let’s say each Crux Terminatus contains a one centimetre cube. This works out to 100,000 cubic centimetres. The cube root of 100,000 is 46.416, so therefore the fragment of the Emperor’s armour for every Crux Terminatus in the Imperium could be provided by a cube 47cm (18.5 inches) on each side.
That’s pretty damn small, especially considering the Emperor was a frickin’ giant!
So, simple maths makes it abundantly clear that the Emperor’s armour is more than capable of providing a sample of material for every suit of Terminator Armour in the galaxy. Hell, a one metre cube could provide enough material for every Space Marine in the galaxy (1,000 Chapters of 1,000 Marines) to carry a one centimetre cube around his neck!
Ain’t numbers wonderful? 😀
Winter is Coming
Earlier this week I had the singular pleasure of playing the Game of Thrones board game with a bunch of Paula and Bek’s friends. It was a fun afternoon, made even more fun by the fact that I – as House Tyrell – stumbled my way through to winning. I ascribe my victory to the following factors…
1: Keeping a low profile and not attacking any of the other players until well into the game.
2: It was the first time any of us had played, so we were all learning the rules as we went along.
3: A very opportune Westeros card came along at just the right moment to break House Baratheon’s defensive strategy and let me grab Kings Landing.
If we play again I don’t expect to win so easily 🙂
I have been thinking about the game since however, and have come up with what could be an interesting variant (or a horrible, horrible travesty). The game as it stands doesn’t do anything with the seasons of Westeros. I think it could be interesting to play a game where Winter is most definitely coming…
New Rules
* These rules come into effect at the start of Turn Six or (OPTIONAL) as soon as a “Winter is Coming” Westeros card is revealed.
* At the start of every Westeros Phase, before the cards are drawn, the Wildling track is automatically advanced by one.
* Territories with Supply and Consolidate icons lose them at a rate of 1 per turn (if a territory has both Supply and Consolidate icons, it loses one of each).
* Supply is recalculated at the end of every Westeros Phase.
* Players may pay Power Tokens to prevent their supply counter from being moved down the Supply track at a rate of 1 Token for 1 level. For example, if House Lanister’s Supply Counter is going to be moved three places down the track, they can pay three Tokens to leave it where it is, two Tokens for it to move down one place, or one Token for it to move down two places. Tokens CANNOT be used to move the counter up the track.
* OPTIONAL RULE: At the start of the Westeros Phase, all counters are moved one space down the King’s Court influence track. Counters moving off the bottom of the track are removed. The Raven is retained by the holder of the highest position on the track, until only two counters are left on the track, at which point it is removed from play. Bidding for position on the track is played as normal, but bidding cannot place a counter higher than the current maximum (ie: if the tokens have moved down two spaces, then the winner of the bidding places their token on space 3).
These rules would ensure that once winter sets in, everything will go completely to hell in the most entertaining fashion 😀
Back to work on Monday. Blech.
Keldáq and Keldáqimon
An significant aspect of Zurvár music is a form of harmony singing called keldáq (‘balance singing’). Keldáq has existed among the Zurvár for as long as their histories record and in addition to being a form of entertainment has a notable ceremonial aspect.
A full, traditional keldáqimon (‘balance singing group’) consists of five vocalists with no musical accompaniment,
1 Keldit Fodim (‘front singer’) – The fodim provides the main melody that the rest of the group follows.
1 Keldit Lârim (‘top singer’) – The lârim sings in a high falsetto, prefiguring and and echoing the lyrics sung by the fodim.
1 Keldit Burmá (anchor singer) – The burmá provides a rhythm by producing non-verbal sounds in a deep bass, interspersed with occasional echoes of the fodim‘s lyrics.
2 Keldit Nìad (back singers) – The mon nìad sing a counterpoint to the fodim and each other with a mix of echoed lyrics and non-verbal sounds. This is considered the most demanding role in the group.
A number of variations of keldáq exist. While many involve assigning additional singers to the roles, the most common is a simplified form called keldáq rèd (‘short keldáq‘), which uses only the fodim, lârim and one nìad. Use of instruments is more common in keldáq rèd than in full keldáq.
The most important ceremonial use of keldáq is on the sûln cârálân (‘day of the departed’). Held every five traditional years this is a commemoration of the community’s deceased and begins with the assembly of the population at the local cremation ground before dawn. As the sun rises a full keldáqimon perform the kelkârâ, a lengthy keldáq song sung in Old Zurvár. Properly timed, this should finish just as the sun clears the horizon. Being chosen to perform the kelkârâ is considered a major honor for a keldáqimon and in the larger settlements on Zurvár Arèáná there is fierce competition to be selected.
Keldáq is also used ceremonially at weddings and funerals, and any Zurvár party worth the name will feature some keldáq singing – if only at the hands of drunken attendees.
RIP Sir Patrick
Sir Patrick Moore, astronomer and broadcaster, dies aged 89
Rock on Sir Patrick!
Y’ha-nthlei is Deeper than they know…
The festive season is definitely upon us – I can’t get It’s Beginning to look a lot like Fishmen out of my head.
Still, I suppose it’s better than getting earwormed by the original version…
Thoughts for the Day
1: People who can’t tell the difference between ‘balmy’ and ‘barmy’ should be shot.
2: Kim Deal’s vocals on Here Comes Your Man remind me of the high school sweetheart I never had.
3: The government’s new National Broadband Network ads look like the containment grid’s broken down again.
That is all
Astro Kitteh!
Civil Engineering
I just heard that Dave Gorman is leaving Absolute Radio, which means no more Dave Gorman podcast. Booooo!!!
(It also means that Magna Carta Travel and Discount Airfares will never make it onto Fail Lane, and Danielle Ward will never have to figure out what GBOB* means. Sad times indeed.)
But hey, life g0es on. Particularly in New York City.
Somewhat appropriately given the effects of Hurricane/Frankenstorm/Superstorm Sandy I was thinking a few weeks back about how one could go about protecting New York (or at least Manhattan) from sea-level rise – inspired by this particular post on BLDGBLOG.
I eventually decided that the optimum way would be the construction of a number of dams, as follows…
* At the southern end of Arthur Kill at Perth Amboy
* At the northern end of Arthur Kill at Bayway
* Across the Verrazano Narrows
* Across the Hudson River between the George Washington Bridge and Harlem River
* At the northern mouth of the Harlem River
* At the north end of Randalls Island
* Two dams at the south end of Wards Island – blocking the East and Harlem Rivers
Additional to these, levies would need to be raised along the Harlem River.
The idea would be to limit flow into Upper New York Bay to the Hudson, Hackensack and Passiac Rivers. The level of the bay would be controlled by letting water in through the Hudson dam, and pumping it out down Arthur Kill. If flow down the Hudson became too great, it would be diverted through the Harlem river into Long Island Sound.
What’s interesting about this idea is that the level of the bay would be highly controlled, meaning it could easily be lowered by a few metres. This would expose large areas of land for development – once they had been properly dried out and decontaminated from years of pollutants. Sales of the land involved could even make the entire project economically feasible – which it almost certainly isn’t at present 🙂
So that’s the idea. No real point to it, just an idle exploration of the hydrology of New York City that I thought deserved permanent recording before I forget about it and come up with some other crazy idea.
* I don’t know. Figure it out.
