Category: Geekery

Mostly Just for My Own Benefit

The Zurvár second (ZS) is 1.10592 seconds long.

The Zurvár minute (ZM) is 125 ZS long, for a total of  138.24 seconds or 2.304 minutes long.

The Zurvár hour (ZH) is 25 ZM or 3125 ZS long, for a total of 57.6 minutes long.

There are 25 ZH in one standard 24 hour day.

The hour count of a Zurvár day begins at sunrise and continues until the following sunrise. This means that a given day may be longer or shorter than the standard 25 hours depending on latitude and time of year.

A traditional Zurvár week lasts five days. A month is five weeks (25 days) and a year five months (125 days). The traditional calendar has been superseded by a redesigned 365 day calendar on Zurvár Arèáná, but the traditional calendar is retained for cultural and traditional purposes.

For scientific purposes the Zurvár epoch is fixed to 00:00:00 GMT on January 1st 1954. The traditional calendar has also been synchronised to sunrise on this date.

In the traditional calendar, today (Oct 22nd 2012) would be the fifth day of the fifth month, in the year 172. A person born today would be ascribed the horoscope of ‘Double Knot’, which predicts a well balanced personality skilled at problem solving.

Boorman You Wacky Man

THIS COULD HAVE HAPPENED!
I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way...

Stumbled over this recently on the Middle-Earth in Film page on Wikipedia…

…In the 1970s John Boorman was contracted by United Artists to direct an adaptation that would have collapsed [The Lord of the Rings] into a single film. […] In the script by Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg, many new elements have been inserted or modified. Among other things, Gimli is put in a hole and beaten so he can retrieve the password to Moria from his ancestral memory [and] Frodo and Galadriel have sexual intercourse…

My initial reaction was What!? But then I discovered that John Boorman was the guy behind Zardoz, and suddenly it all made sense.

What makes the proposed film even more disturbing is that in the 1970s they wouldn’t have been able to use the digital editing that Peter Jackson used to shrink his actors, and may not have been willing to do an entire film with the complicated trick photography Jackson used when he wasn’t using CGI. So Gimli and the Hobbits would most likely have been played by dwarfs. A movie where little people are thrown into holes and beaten in between sex scenes doesn’t sound like heroic fantasy – it’s more akin to something you’d get under the counter in an ‘adult novelty’ store.

Thank the lord Boorman made Excalibur instead, which (if memory serves) features very little dwarf S&M content.

Hitting the Heights

It seems odd to me that AD&D’s Ravenloft setting never included a version of Wuthering Heights.

Think about it. You’ve got the perfect Dark Lord in the form of Heathcliff, torturing his household and tormented by his memories of Catherine. Catherine would actually be a ghost, tapping on the windows at night and increasing Heathcliff’s torment. The Domain would consist of the bleak, high moors, with a few scattered houses and a single village, and the borders would be sealed when necessary by raging sleet and hail storms.

It’s such a natural fit that its lack boggles the mind. Were there no English Majors at TSR?

While on the subject of Wuthering Heights, I don’t believe that it’s possible for any human being to sing as high as Kate Bush does in the first few bars of her song based on the book. Her pitch is either a post-recording effect, or she is some kind of alien masquerading as a human being.

(I know where I’m putting my money… :D)

Oh, can I also mention Kate Beaton’s brilliant take on the book?

Wuthering Heights: Part 1
Wuthering Heights: Part 2
Wuthering Heights: Part 3

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Ian Hazzikostas of Blizzard commenting on how he designs encounters for expansions such as World of Warcraft: Kung Fu Panda (oh wait! sorry! it’s called Mists of Pandaria apparently…)

…and then a lot of it just comes down to what sounds cool to us. A huge firehawk that bursts out of a volcano. That sounds kind of cool. Huge magma giants. A spider that lives in a forest where the webs it weaves are made of pure fire. That’s pretty cool…

Exactly when did Blizzard hire Beavis?

On the Death of Slaydo

Thinking about things way too much

I’ve been wondering for a while about the conflicting accounts of the death of Warmaster Slaydo in Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series…

First and Only states that Slaydo announced Maccaroth as his successor and promoted Gaunt to Colonel Commissar on his deathbed. The Sabbat Worlds Crusade features a painting of “The Death of Slaydo”, showing the Warmaster passing away surrounded by a bunch of concerned Generals and other officers. But Gaunt, in Blood Pact, states that Slaydo was struck down on the battlefield, and his body dragged away and mutilated by the enemy. So, what gives?

To solve this mystery, remember rule number one – the Imperium lies.

Gaunt’s recollections of Slaydo’s end are entirely accurate. But the Imperium would never admit to cocking up so badly as to let the body of the Warmaster fall into enemy hands. So, they concocted the story of his being rescued and having the time to issue a bunch of orders before peacefully slipping away surrounded by his loyal staff. They even commissioned an artist to depict the scene, and had Tactician Biota recount it in his his historical account of the Crusade. His “deathbed” orders were prepared by him prior to the battle in case of his death, and carried out by his subordinates.

(There is still the problem of tourists being shown Slaydo’s “Death Venue” on the battlefield on Balhaut, but the Balhaut tour guides are shown to be horribly inaccurate anyway. Anyone familiar with the deathbed account who visits Balhaut would probably assume that the marker shows where Slaydo was mortally wounded rather than actually killed, and that their guide doesn’t know what they’re talking about.)

So, there we have it. Problem solved! You can send me my cheque now Mr Abnett 😉

Edit: I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to ask Mr Abnett about this, and he pretty much confirmed my version of events. Good to know!

Good to See

Asylum of the Daleks premiered on Australian TV on Saturday night. Not the best season opener ever, but major props to whoever came up with that giant Dalek building on Skaro, and even more major props to whoever slipped a Special Weapons Dalek into one of the shots. Woooo Special Weapons Dalek!

That’s all I’ve got to say.

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