Amarok's recent activity

  1. Comment on How do you design your campaigns? in ~games.tabletop

    Amarok
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    Surprised to see no mention of the Session Zero method. That's where I get the players to do most of my planning for me. First step is talking to the players and finding out what kind of game they...

    Surprised to see no mention of the Session Zero method. That's where I get the players to do most of my planning for me. First step is talking to the players and finding out what kind of game they want to play. Are we doing an all rouges thieves guild run? Or is this an epic planar adventure? Is everyone from the same small town, or coming together for some major event that puts the players in competition? Perhaps everyone is on a prison galley or is the crew of a pirate ship, possibly even a spelljamming ship - I've got no real preferences. I usually leave it up to them.

    Once that's out of the way we roll up the characters and I give them their homework assignment - a couple of pages (5ish) of character history. I'll break rules with impunity here and allow them just about anything they can reasonably justify with useful story bits in the character's history - you want a +3 flaming rapier? That'd better be welded into the story like Inigo Montoya and then I'm good with it. This gets them invested into the characters more and they'll always take the time because free loots - I find it the most devious and useful bribe a GM can make in any tabletop game.

    They like it less around level twelve when some faction one of the characters mentioned in their history as part of a family blood feud shows up as one of the main villains. I'll take every single little detail of their histories and use all of that to do the world building. Once you've got that you'll know what kind of campaign to build around it. I rarely do any heavy planning unless I know I've got the characters on a railroad - such as a dungeon or fortress they have to visit. Then I'll get down to the maps and traps level.

    Another handy tool is the lost art of the Hex Crawl. I'll do some of my world building this way and fill in only the hexes the players might reasonably end up visiting. It's fun because you don't have to do it all at once, you can build your world one hex at a time just ahead of the players themselves. There are even self-generating hexcrawl variants which auto-populate the content for you to riff on. This helps with both writer's block (let the players drive plot which drives discovery) and the world builder's disease (don't fill in more hexes than you need for the current session). There are plenty of free tools to make this easy.

    Mostly I find I concentrate on location and factions. Weather, terrain, settlements, a handful of notable NPCs or Patrons perhaps... and then it's time to sketch out every group in the area that has 'power' and what their machinations are. Who are the lords, bandits, various clans or tribes, secret societies etc. I don't even need to know where they are yet, just which groups exist out there so I can pair them to plot hooks as they happen, and which ones to hook into the threads they gave me in their character histories.

    This creates a kind of self-driving story web that farms the players for story generation. I am one spectacularly lazy GM so this works well for me. ;) I find it to be a better way to make sure all the work I'm doing is going to make it into the game rather than get lost at the bottom of a pile of notes.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Tweaks to state laws mean many Americans will be able to benefit from small, simple plug-in solar panels in ~enviro

    Amarok
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    I'm very, very interested in this tech. I've got one small 200w panel that can charge up a pair of 350w/h batteries in about five hours. Doesn't even have to be strong/direct sunlight either, that...

    I'm very, very interested in this tech.

    I've got one small 200w panel that can charge up a pair of 350w/h batteries in about five hours. Doesn't even have to be strong/direct sunlight either, that panel makes juice on low light just fine. Handy for when power goes out as those batteries can run a fridge, the water pump, the furnace, and the pellet stove for several hours at a time. They can also recharge lanterns, flash lights, phones, and run lights or fans or other smallish appliances. I just picked these up because they were on clearance and I wanted to play with the tech. It's kinda cool carrying around electricity like water.

    The two batteries are light and small enough to fit right in a backpack, which is great for running small electrical power tools like a leaf blower or weed eater. I'd love to ditch the gasoline power tools for an electric set, they last longer and are lighter overall, plus I don't have to worry about making sure all my batteries are compatible with the power tools. Most of the companies do vendor lock in - no thanks, this way it's universal and I don't get fleeced buying low quality power tool batteries. The tools cost far less if they are just simple electric outlets with no battery tech built in. The money is better spent on a big battery pack and some extension cords.

    I'd need a 1200w portable battery to run the chainsaw (for one hour's operation time total). At that size the word 'portable' is debatable, however with lithium-sulphur batteries coming, a ten pound battery that can manage 3000w could cost under three hundred bucks in a couple of years time. That would really put the nail in the coffin for gas power tools (which are a far greater polluter than automobiles - gas power tools have no catalytic converters).

    I have a big roof (about 1800 sq ft) that's in direct sunlight from about an hour after sunrise all the way through sunset. If I covered that thing in solar panels, even on an overcast winter day it would still get enough light to produce a couple thousand watts of charging power. All that's missing is a big base load battery like this 50kw model or perhaps something even more aggressive.

    I've got a great generator that runs on gas, natural gas, or propane. Quiet as a person talking plus puts out clean inverted power too, won't fry any electronics. The circuit panel has a pair of 50A breakers (from 1962, still working) and is wired to be fed from a proper 4-prong generator hookup in the garage. All I have to do is flip the master switch to keep it disconnected from the grid so I don't blow some poor electrician off of a pole further up the road. Then it can power all the outlets, no fussing with extension cords.

    Put all this together and I'd have a steady flow of power coming into the big battery from solar all the time, and the ability to switch over to generator power to run the entire house (even big ticket items like the dryer or oven or water heater simultaneously). Anything extra the generator is making (it idles around 3000w) gets dumped back into the battery. If grid power goes down, I can coast for ages on the solar and solar storage. The water heater (115gal westinghouse) keeps the water hot almost an entire week so I wouldn't even need the generator to shower.

    I prefer smaller portable propane tanks but with this system I could go in for a larger one. They aren't that expensive. The propane and natural gas are super cheap fuel sources in the USA - we make so much of it as fracking byproducts that they regularly burn it off into the air in their rush to get oil. We've had to pass laws to get companies to ban flaring the wells and stop them wasting natural gas. :p

    I also need to invest in heat pumps. They don't do so well in winter under sub-freezing temperatures, but they are killer air conditioner replacements at a fraction of the power consumed.

    That setup means I don't have to care about the power grid, since I've got everything I need to roll my own. Our electric prices have tripled over the last five years (>$500/mo) so I am not a fan of the power company. I am going to invest in building out something like this just to get them off my back. If they want to change state laws to make that easier then great, I'm all for it.

    Ditch the idea of a unified power grid completely, focus on micro-grids instead. It's not exactly solar punk living yet but it's a step in the right direction for sure. It'll do until I can get a fridge-sized small modular nuclear reactor to step in for the generator. :)

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Alton Brown is back! Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 1: The Big Bird in ~food

  4. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    I'm nearsighted - anything past arm's length is blurred to the point of not being able to read letters unless they are huge on a billboard. I probably did that to myself reading books. I was in a...

    I'm nearsighted - anything past arm's length is blurred to the point of not being able to read letters unless they are huge on a billboard. I probably did that to myself reading books. I was in a local library reading program and reading before I ever set foot in a school. It's also what I spent most of my time in school doing to escape the boredom. That meant I spent most of my time focusing my vision at arm's length and that seems to be where I permanently parked it. Then screens came along at the same distance and I work in tech so I'm always in front of one. :P Can't read lettering on typical street signs at all at any distance. I can't even read the numbers on a wall clock that's in the room with me without squinting.

    Got my first eyeglasses at 14, cleared it up perfectly. Just got a new prescription last month, vision is still great even at distance though I now need bifocals to read very close. I do have some floaters but nothing unusual for someone of my age.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Alton Brown is back! Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 1: The Big Bird in ~food

    Amarok
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    Are you kidding? There can't be a safer bet than that... though at the rate he's drinking, maybe True Brew V: Whiskey Business is the safest bet. I'd guess he's been drinking since he went on Heat...

    if this new YouTube series of his actually takes off

    Are you kidding? There can't be a safer bet than that... though at the rate he's drinking, maybe True Brew V: Whiskey Business is the safest bet. I'd guess he's been drinking since he went on Heat Eaters, still trying to put out the fire.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    That is exactly how it worked for me when I was trying to visualize things. I'd have a blank piece of paper with something small on it (like a thumbnail-sized bird) and stare at it, then try to...

    That is exactly how it worked for me when I was trying to visualize things. I'd have a blank piece of paper with something small on it (like a thumbnail-sized bird) and stare at it, then try to retain it after I closed my eyes. I could pick it up and hold it for a bit, I'd lose it after a minute or so unless I dipped back out onto the page to refresh it. I figure if I practiced at this a lot every day I could perhaps open up a wallet-at-arms-length size area where I could place a visual image that would persist, perhaps even with some control.

    The 'cloud-rorschach' trick is much, much harder to pin down and control. My visual snow looks an awful lot like this but mine is calm - all the images people make to show how it looks are running at 60Hz compared to my 2Hz speed. My snow drifts around, changes colors, and shifts more lazily than falling snow on a still day. Mine's also more transparent than that, it's hard to even notice it if my eyes are open unless I'm looking at a bright solid color background.

    If I close my eyes, I get what's more like HPPD static but again, vastly more calm than that image implies. If I try to focus on a scene, sometimes the snow will swirl over and around what I'm trying to imagine in waves that flow from the edge of my vision to the center. It's as if you took the pixels on a video you were watching and set them free to flow around all over the screen, but they have to follow the slopes and shapes of things even though they've now lost texture and all turned into shifting rainbow colored sand. Then they rebel and abandon the forms they were briefly following and I lose the image. It's really quite pretty but not useful. :P

    I can't pin down a size for the individual snowflakes/pixels either, which I've always thought was peculiar. It's as if they shrink when I try or are somehow infinitely small to begin with, like I'm looking at plank-length flecks of light. Pixels on a monitor are gargantuan compared to the ones making up my static.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    I highly recommend it - just the one season, but it ends up parked at a great spot that could be picked up again kinda like Stargate Universe did. It's the closest thing I've seen to perfect...

    I highly recommend it - just the one season, but it ends up parked at a great spot that could be picked up again kinda like Stargate Universe did. It's the closest thing I've seen to perfect cyberpunk on the silver screen. Great story, top tier acting, brutally dark humor that had me rolling, and it hits too close to home for comfort if you've worked in corporate America before. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had a guaranteed hit on their hands here, but as is their wont Syfy's people bungled the marketing. It was cancelled before anyone even knew it existed.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    That's interesting. I've stayed awake for a little over five days at a time before (non-stop Babylon 5 marathon with friends) and towards the end of it, my color vision was washed out almost to...

    That's interesting. I've stayed awake for a little over five days at a time before (non-stop Babylon 5 marathon with friends) and towards the end of it, my color vision was washed out almost to black and white. Never knew sleep deprivation lead to hallucinations before you mentioned it.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    Yeah, I'd qualify those results as ready for prime time, good enough to be a version one product!

    Yeah, I'd qualify those results as ready for prime time, good enough to be a version one product!

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

  11. Comment on New ‘Stargate’ TV series ordered at Amazon from ‘Blindspot’ creator Martin Gero in ~tv

    Amarok
    (edited )
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    If it were up to me... *Spoilers for Stargate : Universe* I'd always assumed that they'd eventually walk the tone of SGU back towards the original SG1 and bring the hope back - not that I mind the...

    If it were up to me...

    *Spoilers for Stargate : Universe*

    I'd always assumed that they'd eventually walk the tone of SGU back towards the original SG1 and bring the hope back - not that I mind the gritty, I just get tired of the dystopian. I'd have had them slowly uncovering the ship's secrets and restoring it piece by piece until it was back in great condition again throughout the series alongside the various episodic plots. That ship represents humanity's lost legacy, it's the story and the prize while they ride it around the galaxy. Eventually at the end I'd have liked to see them return the ship to Earth after finally getting it under control. It's Stargate's 'starship enterprise' in a sense, and it'd make the finest flagship for Earth's forces anyone could ever wish for. Great way to do a surprise evening of the odds if humanity finds themselves outgunned by events in the new series.

    SGU's saving grace is that they left it parked perfectly to explain large time gaps and changes in the casting - though if Robert Carlyle isn't brought back as a recurring guest I'm going to be miffed, he's always been one of my absolute favorite actors and he was brilliant in SGU. I'd expect them to try to gate to the ship again if they can find a planet with a suitable quantity of naquadria to power the connection... hopefully this time without detonating the planet (which was a really tacky way to strand them on it at the beginning - do better this time). Also let's not blow the damn ship up either, Star Trek got into the habit of blowing up the enterprise all the time and that was also tacky as hell. Only done right once imo, in Star Trek III.

    They could pick up something along these lines and weave it into the new series.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on New ‘Stargate’ TV series ordered at Amazon from ‘Blindspot’ creator Martin Gero in ~tv

    Amarok
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    I'd agree with that assessment. I'd only rank it above TNG because there are more top tier Stargate episodes than there are top tier TNG episodes. There's so much Stargate, and now we'll get even...

    I'd agree with that assessment. I'd only rank it above TNG because there are more top tier Stargate episodes than there are top tier TNG episodes. There's so much Stargate, and now we'll get even more. :)

    1 vote

  13. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    Not so surprising that some hyperfantasics self selected it either - fewer visual distractions here than on places like reddit or X because nothing is embedded, no ads or images to leak unbidden...

    Not so surprising that some hyperfantasics self selected it either - fewer visual distractions here than on places like reddit or X because nothing is embedded, no ads or images to leak unbidden into your visual canvas. Perhaps we should add 'most differently neuro-divergent community' to our accolades. Somehow we've managed to exclude the middle and focus on the extreme ends of the bell curve. :P

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
    (edited )
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    This immediately made me wonder if we'll ever manage to get a helmet that can pick detailed images out of someone's mind with some training. I'll skip on the direct brain implants, but I'd dip in...

    I just realized that hyperphantasia is probably why I'm not a great teacher. As others mentioned here it's as difficult to imagine the lack of a vast sensory library as I imagine it would be to contemplate the presence of one. If I'm constantly expressing myself in terms that not all the students are equipped to imagine (there's that word again), of course the lessons won't connect.

    This immediately made me wonder if we'll ever manage to get a helmet that can pick detailed images out of someone's mind with some training. I'll skip on the direct brain implants, but I'd dip in with a helmet or circlet for a brain computer interface - like the ones that were shown in the Three Body Problem. We're a lot closer to this than most people realize.

    For someone like you, one day in the not so distant future you might be able to broadcast your mental images directly out of your own head through that sort of interface and have a clever AI throw it up on the screen for everyone else to see. Perhaps even download something like architecture blueprints through the interface into an AI that can instantly make the plans real engineering diagrams. That might catapult your teaching skills into a category that no one has ever seen before. ;)

    This is the sort of AI application that outclasses either human or AI output by synthesizing the two into a real time feedback loop. I see it as a category of careers that don't exist yet, but will still be keeping people employed in the future to replace some of the jobs it's automating away.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on New ‘Stargate’ TV series ordered at Amazon from ‘Blindspot’ creator Martin Gero in ~tv

    Amarok
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    The only scifi show I'd rank above it is Babylon 5, and not by much. It's better than all of the others, has the best groundhog day episode of all time, and with 3 series at 10/5/2 seasons...

    The only scifi show I'd rank above it is Babylon 5, and not by much. It's better than all of the others, has the best groundhog day episode of all time, and with 3 series at 10/5/2 seasons respectively, the whopping total of 354 episodes and six movies will keep you entertained for a long, long time. ;)

    3 votes

  16. Comment on New ‘Stargate’ TV series ordered at Amazon from ‘Blindspot’ creator Martin Gero in ~tv

    Amarok
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    I'm so in for this, and with modern budget and effects it'll make for quite the spectacle. Hopefully they'll tie up the loose ends from Atlantis and Universe. I'm still ticked that they canned...

    I'm so in for this, and with modern budget and effects it'll make for quite the spectacle. Hopefully they'll tie up the loose ends from Atlantis and Universe. I'm still ticked that they canned Universe just when it was threatening to turn into the best of the three series. Stargate is just too big and rich, a reboot would be a total waste of a mountain of delicious canon. A continuation is just what the doctor ordered.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech

    Amarok
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    Obligatory video covering Gemini 3 from AI Explained. The short version - this AI embarrassingly beats the pants off of all other AI models on every benchmark, and Google is now in the lead where...

    Obligatory video covering Gemini 3 from AI Explained.

    The short version - this AI embarrassingly beats the pants off of all other AI models on every benchmark, and Google is now in the lead where he expects they will remain for some time.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
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    Damn, how many aphantasics do we have on Tildes?! I'm one too. Best I can manage is a dim wire frame that pops into my mind for about the duration of a camera flash in a pitch black room, and I...

    Damn, how many aphantasics do we have on Tildes?! I'm one too.

    Best I can manage is a dim wire frame that pops into my mind for about the duration of a camera flash in a pitch black room, and I can't flash that camera more than once every couple of minutes for any given scene. No colors or textures, just vectors, shapes, edges. I can't remember dreams at all, not even a tiny fraction of them.

    I've got the omnipresent visual snow and tinnitus to go with it, though the migraines stopped once I was out of my 20s. Even magic mushrooms and LSD hit my mind like a brick wall - I don't think it's possible for me to have hallucinations, I've tried on several occasions. The closest I get is some washed out almost transparent pastel rainbow stripes if I stare at a bright white wall while under a heavy dose. I do get enhanced color perception and the 'breathing' visual effect while tripping, but no trails.

    Never seemed to bother me when reading books, doing calculus or physics, or various engineering tasks. Never bothered me on the art either, but then I don't imagine an image and try to draw it, I just start plopping things down onto the paper and working with them once I can look at them. I'd say the only thing about it that bothers me is the reflexive irritated eye-roll I do every time I hear someone say the word "visualize" when trying to explain something. That technique is utterly useless to me.

    My audio memory is probably better than normal, though. If I listen to your voice for about five minutes and we don't talk again until twenty years later on the phone, I'll recognize you from just your 'hello' even if your voice has changed. Using this to freak people out is kinda fun. I can play back complete songs I've heard in my head like there's an embedded mp3 player in there if I've heard it enough times, though it's not instantly memorized and I do forget them over time.

    I was doing some digging on this out of curiosity some time ago and found some anecdotal evidence that Ayahuasca and DMT can 'cure' it for some people - and not just while high, I mean permanently after one dose. Doesn't work for everyone, but apparently the heavy psychedelics do work for some people. Haven't tried either of those yet myself. In fact being able to remember everything I'd seen before seems like hell - all that visual crud in the brain would clog up and slow down my thinking like a Tildes front page full of cat pictures.

    I also found some meditation techniques that presented a method for training that visualization process. I tried it out of curiosity and after some practice it did seem to work - I could lift a small image off a page and keep it around like the tiny spot you'd see from staring at the sun, and lasting about that long. Didn't bother keeping up with it though, as I said it doesn't seem useful to me.

    11 votes

  19. Comment on Twenty-five movies, many stars, zero hits: Hollywood falls to new lows in ~movies

    Amarok
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    You need one police officer around to supervise the public and the shooting location, but now you've got to pay for ten because codes, that sort of thing. Expect to have to pay for many times the...

    You need one police officer around to supervise the public and the shooting location, but now you've got to pay for ten because codes, that sort of thing. Expect to have to pay for many times the manpower you require. Loads of people who make movies have been complaining about it forever, and it's a major reason why film is leaving California. Goes back at least as far as New Line building an entire alternate film industry for LoTR in NZ including WETA - it was about more than just the gorgeous location. Even in the spaghetti western days it was cheaper to shoot in Italy and avoid Cali's bureaucracy.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Twenty-five movies, many stars, zero hits: Hollywood falls to new lows in ~movies

    Amarok
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    If they'd gut the budgets down to 20-50 million apiece, they'd have few genuine flops. Wasteful spending (and usually double the budget in marketing) is what has destroyed it all - well, that and...

    If they'd gut the budgets down to 20-50 million apiece, they'd have few genuine flops.

    Wasteful spending (and usually double the budget in marketing) is what has destroyed it all - well, that and the lack of any writing above the level of a pre-school. Cinema is now a bloated, union-laden, nepotistic industry that is so choked on its own legacy bullshit that it's suffocating.

    They keep beating dead horse franchises (guaranteed losers) rather than making dozens of smaller productions for the price of that one tent pole property. Time was you made every movie cheap as you could in the hopes that one of them would run away at the box office and fund the next fifty films. Now they think they know which ones will run away to a billion ahead of time - that's pure arrogance.

    That's alright, though. Hollywood is in its final death throes and it is never coming back, good riddance. Cheaper productions can increasingly be done by anyone anywhere with no need to cater to California's bullshit unions, institutions, or politics. Good cinema will live on, the tiny region of the world that has had film in monopolistic chains for decades will not.

    Doesn't look so good for the theaters, though. Hollywood hasn't got the writing talent or the acting chops to fill every seat in them every single weekend like they once did. In fact, that's been the case for so long that at least two younger generations of people don't know why they would ever bother going to a theater in the first place. Once that habit's broken, it's broken. Took decades to instill it the first time around. Good luck bringing that back.

    I'm still waiting for dinner theaters to become more common, and for my theater ticket stub to get me a rebate on the blu-ray. I can only assume no one is genuinely serious about solving this problem. :P

    7 votes