The Factory Floor

Green

4:06 AM

@HDE226868 Seconded. I saw science-based as the halfway point between hard-science and do-whatever-you-want-with-magic

bilbo_pingouin

9:57 AM

@PavelJanicek your nukemap link is plumbing my productivity... ;-)

Pavel Janicek

@bilbo_pingouin sorry. But I had to include it to the question

BTW, already bombed Prague several times to see if I would survive several attacks :)

bilbo_pingouin

oh yes! It is highly relevant...

but now, I'm trying to find the spot with the highest casualities with a 20kt bomb...

Pavel Janicek

The question clearly stated Hiroshima type

bilbo_pingouin

572,340 fatalities...

Pavel Janicek

and it apparently had "only" 15 kilotonnes :)

bilbo_pingouin

10:00 AM

yeah hiroshima was 15kt according to the site. I took nagazaki... 20kt

Pavel Janicek

best fun is with Tsar bomba

that thing is scary

bilbo_pingouin

well with the same location, but "only" 15kt, I still get to kill more than half a million people directly

506,610

Pavel Janicek

World's Most Powerful Neclear Bomb - Tsar Bomba [HD]

►

bilbo_pingouin

with 15kt, I don't think I'll get better than that...

Pavel Janicek

Discovery Channel - Ultimates - Explosions - Tsar bomb segment

►

bilbo_pingouin

10:08 AM

Either way, I don't think that this question fits WB...

but with 5, I'd try to have one to kill many people. And the others to hit symbols. So NY, Paris, London... I'd space them in time to give more feeling of insecurity.

And finally I'd keep one to be able to react to any arrangements being made

Pavel Janicek

I would wait for some world leaders summit and detonate it here

given assumption I can teleport the bomb, I just created huge panic using just one bomb

bilbo_pingouin

yep, but that's why... first you kill as many as possible. Then the UN HQ in NY.

then you can hit one or two other symbols

and thre response will be deorganised

Pavel Janicek

then I teleport self :D

bilbo_pingouin

so you wait and see how they are trying to reoganise... and hit again.

Pavel Janicek

yep

but in my scenario, I am killing mostly just politicians

giving clear statement of no one is safe

bilbo_pingouin

10:15 AM

tactical killing with nuclear bombs... not sure.

Pavel Janicek

Thats why I saiid mostly politicians

When you start playing with nuclear bombs, you have to know that things can go awry very quickly

Serban Tanasa

1:30 PM

that's gotta be a lotta politicians if you need a nuke for them

bilbo_pingouin

@SerbanTanasa this stemmed from Dr Evil who's got a teleport machine and 5 nukes on his hands... a question on the site.

Serban Tanasa

Yeah, i saw it it's on hold

bilbo_pingouin

I don't think it's a good fit for main... but it's a good topic for chat :)

especially with Pavel's map (comment on the question)

Serban Tanasa

I'm thinking about a locally flat world -- i.e. a world surface so large that a sailing ship would never make it past the horizon

bilbo_pingouin

never != local

Serban Tanasa

1:34 PM

trying to think about heating requirements. Probably a dyson sphere around a black hole to get my 1 g

local orbiting suns to warm the outside

might turn it into a question, but it's mostly about grabbing pen an paper and calculating...

never, given the speed of a sailing ship and the life expectancy of a human

observer

bilbo_pingouin

that would be a huge world indeed...

Serban Tanasa

dunno if two questions about a) its actual size b) warming requirements would be on topic

enough

bilbo_pingouin

just reading roughly... 18th Century ships could sail 8 mph roughly...

you talk about the life of a person, let's take 20 years of frequent checking

that'd make 1,402,560 mildes travelled

now I would need to know how that relates to curvature of the planet...

gone googling

Serban Tanasa

well, if you're already looking it up, i'll turn it into a question

bilbo_pingouin

wikipedia, and all... that makes a $1.3\times 10^15$ km radius planet

if I did not make any mistake

if you do, you might consider separating the two questions

Worldbuilding Meta

1:50 PM

0

Q: "Serial voting reversed" - meaning and response?

This message showed up in my inbox. I had to do a little research even to know what it meant. As far as I understand it, this means that someone went through and systematically up-voted a big stack of my answers to various questions, and it happened in rapid enough succession that the script caug...

Serban Tanasa

dunno what tags to put on, heh

world-building?

0

Q: How large would a world have to be for a sailing ship to never make it past the horizon?

I have a sailing ship. It leaves port. As it goes away, it grows smaller and smaller. In our world, it eventually is hidden by the curvature of the Earth, such that the top mast stays visible longer. I want it to simply grow smaller and smaller and smaller, but (from the perspective of a human wi...

science-based planets

bilbo_pingouin

planet

Serban Tanasa

@bilbo_pingouin, I'll ask about the plumbing and heating tomorrow

bilbo_pingouin

ok :)

I am answering the meta post and then I'll put back what I had to answer your question

Hi @AndreiROM

AndreiROM

@bilbo_pingouin hi

just got in to work. Made a cup of coffee and munching on banana bread

nothing better than answering WB comments and catching up on chat while munching banana bread

Serban Tanasa

1:57 PM

yum. need coffee

AndreiROM

and now I have to put 2 new systems and 3 existing, but modified, ones through their paces

i love developing new systems, but I hate testing them

sigh

Serban Tanasa

haha, I have recently developed a document that uses a metric based on a report that is filtered by a metric that is filtered by a set of custom groups that is defined by a set of prompts

all of which are being continuously subjected to compounding

Green

Good <appropriate>!

Serban Tanasa

I love testing other people's builds: "what, you never considered that someone might paste the contents of War and Peace into your answer text box?"

Green

@SerbanTanasa Yeah, those are fun things to try. :) Or what happens when I ask for -1 of those things to be made for me?

Serban Tanasa

2:17 PM

@Green indeed, it's often fun to make use to quirks of JS automatic type conversion

Green

@SerbanTanasa As much as testing can be (but isn't always), I'm very happy to be doing architect work now.

AndreiROM

idk .. i never enjoyed the nitty gritty bug hunts

yes, I like seeing a well polished validation system pop up an error when someone tries to subtract -10a03 from inventory

bilbo_pingouin

raah... I was too slow you answer your question, @SerbanTanasa... but for me your human has a perfect view :)

AndreiROM

but figuring out why that one loop ends up outputting blablabla in that one textbox .. omg

Serban Tanasa

@bilbo_pingouin, seems like he can see at sub-angstrom wavelenghts, too, haha.

good answer, now have to figure out how big that number is

Green

2:29 PM

@AndreiROM I was lucky enough to be able to simply say "There's this problem, with these properties, on this page, gotten to in this way....go fix it." and the devs would have to figure out their own code and fix it.

AndreiROM

@Green see, I'm that dev

lol

Green

@AndreiROM HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!! Er, I'm sorry. Gee that sucks for you :)

AndreiROM

I'm still early in my career. Intermediate experience

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL. Re: question -- I am happy to have air be a factor, i just think limiting it to naked eye is too little

Mike L.

@SerbanTanasa air is not a factor if you have a perfect detector, that's the thing.

AndreiROM

2:31 PM

this job I'm at now is very slow paced, very relaxed, and an excellent learning opportunity, which is why I'm not working in say ... Toronto.. for a bucket load of money and a lot more stress

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL. While specifying a limit to how good optic instruments are feels arbitrary

Mike L.

It's the same as stealth in space question; if you have ideal instruments, you can always detect everything. If you have realistic ones, only then there are limits.

AndreiROM

the down side is I have to hunt bugs for weeks on end sometimes :(

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL. so I don't want a perfect detector

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndreiROM I personally love a good bug hunt, as long as it has a happy ending

there's one bug in a game I made, though, where one friendly unit always turned evil for no reason... I still never figured out why, I just wrote code to change him back

Mike L.

2:35 PM

@SerbanTanasa No, you need to figure out a detection limit somehow.

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL., what would be a reasonable limit

To preempt the question, yes, advanced optics are available, so the visual acuity of the human observer is not the issue here, assume that as long it it can be reasonably detected and distinguished from the sea background using light, you can assume that it will. So no magic detectors, but imagine a high-performing scope, well built, but subject to the problems real optic instruments have -- air attenuation was pointed out in comments below. I'll assume the sails to be white, if that helps.

The emphasis should be on reasonable

added details on ship size

51 meters seems at the high end for a 1750s large ship

Mike L.

@SerbanTanasa True, but it's also a nice round number.

Serban Tanasa

yup

Mike L.

The best way to do this would be to express the sensitivity of your sensor in percent, I think.

there are numbers you can look up for space telescopes, but you can basically calculate the visibility of an object by distance if you know air turbidity (which I'm trying to google right now)

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL. man, had no idea this would be so much fun

@MikeL. are we talking photon sensitivity (i.e. 1% of photons captured)

Mike L.

2:46 PM

@SerbanTanasa If we're talking a digital device, than it's basically the smallest increment you are able to detect.

which relates to detectability by how much energy is necessary to trip the next increment on your CCD

so if you're trying to detect something against a background, you find out how much energy is radiated by the background and how much energy is radiated by the object

But for atmospheric attenuation, there is an exponential relationship. Essentially, every metre of atmosphere absorbs/disperses x% of the light

So after a certain distance, you only get a tiny percentage of the radiated energy.

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL. yeah, i recall discussing it in the context of a solar-system-sized atmophere

forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=109407

Mike L.

And the reflected energy off a ship is going to be approximately the incident radiance from sunlight.

The sails have an albedo of something like 0.5 which we can for convenience round up to 1.

Serban Tanasa

maybe the sails should be red

Mike L.

@SerbanTanasa Doesn't really make a difference.

Serban Tanasa

or have a bright red beacon on the mas, heh

"the red light half value layer is about 33 light days"

I mean real air will have particulates, water, etc

Mike L.

2:53 PM

@SerbanTanasa Note that the surrounding material will have approximately the same albedo.

Serban Tanasa

Albedo

Albedo (/ælˈbiːdoʊ/) or reflection coefficient, derived from Latin albedo "whiteness" (or reflected sunlight) in turn from albus "white", is the diffuse reflectivity or reflecting power of a surface. It is the ratio of reflected radiation from the surface to incident radiation upon it. Its dimensionless nature lets it be expressed as a percentage and is measured on a scale from zero for no reflection of a perfectly black surface to 1 for perfect reflection of a white surface. NOTE: Since it is the ratio of all reflected radiation to incident radiation it will include the diffuse AND the specular...

it was trying to link to water

and then the angle of the incident sun(s) would be relevant

Mike L.

And atmospehric perturbations might become a problem even before attenuation does.

Serban Tanasa

oh boy

Mike L.

@SerbanTanasa Not much. You're trying to detect a difference between a ship and the ocean around it, incident angle affects both.

Hm, I can't seem to find the attenuation coefficient.

@SerbanTanasa I'll just drop it for now and if I have time, I'll try to look some more when I get home. If you can come up with a detection threshold, that would help.

Serban Tanasa

@MikeL., thanks!

James

3:12 PM

101 dalm...bronze badges

DaaaahWhoosh

I'd prefer dalmations

bowlturner

@James nice!

DaaaahWhoosh

wait... were there no songs in 101 Dalmations?

James

@DaaaahWhoosh Just the cruella deville one I think

DaaaahWhoosh

huh... I was searching my memory for a scene where a puppy is singing, but couldn't find one, now I think I need it

or, at least I need to watch that movie again

I remember recently being very impressed by the animation

AndreiROM

3:22 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh is this game available to download?

101 dalmations was awesome

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndreiROM nah, it was more of a hobby. It is really fun to play though, maybe I should see about putting it up somewhere

AndreiROM

speaking of which, 101 dalmatians would be a heck of a lot of work

@DaaaahWhoosh you totally should

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndreiROM well, in-universe, they were highly intelligent dalmations, so maybe they could manage themselves

AndreiROM

@DaaaahWhoosh I still think you'd be scooping up about a truck load of poop / day

when it comes to choosing a pet I always look at the poop scoopage specs

and that it's not a cat.

DaaaahWhoosh

is 'not a cat' a good thing?

AndreiROM

3:29 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh oh, yes. A very good thing

cats are out to get me

DaaaahWhoosh

ah. I kinda like cats, but I would never want to put down any money on one

plus I'm probably allergic to them

AndreiROM

@DaaaahWhoosh I am allergic to them. Horribly, deathly allergic

plus, it's a well known facts that cats are minions of Satan

DaaaahWhoosh

they certainly don't seem to have our best interests in mind

Green

@AndreiROM I really like that metric.

AndreiROM

I rest my case

Green

3:36 PM

I live with two cats and they're definitely not out to get me, unless it's meal time then they are only annoyingly persistent in attempting to shift my attention to feeding them.

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndreiROM Is that ink on paper? What comic is that from?

AndreiROM

@Green are you sure you haven't noticed them enjoying human suffering in any way, shape, or form?

@DaaaahWhoosh i just photographed a comic off my cubicle wall

I forget where I got it from originally

but you could try running a google image search ...

Green

@AndreiROM Nope, they're unusually dog-like cats.

AndreiROM

@Green they're upped their game.

we're doomed.

Green

@AndreiROM I'm just glad they aren't tool users. I'm okay with my chances as long as they don't start making their own tools.

AndreiROM

3:49 PM

@Green to the nuclear bunkers!

Serban Tanasa

4:00 PM

@bilbo_pingouin, 3e16 km ~ 300 ly

not 4

bilbo_pingouin

oups... it was $9.4607×10^{15}$ m and not km...

Green

Has anyone spent any time thinking about the relative merits of the various ways to order subject-verb-object when writing a computerized command language?

I'm designing a command language right now and I'm writing the grammar. I can't decide if it's better to go with 'verb, adverb, [subject], object' or 'object, [subject], verb, adverb' (The subject may be implicit and thus can be excluded, some times.)

bilbo_pingouin

what do you mean command language?

Green

There's a system that needs to be managed. The method for managing that system is a set of commands. Something like IBM's MQSC command set.

bilbo_pingouin

essential first... the verb

Green

4:07 PM

I'm not reimplementing MQSC (that'd be crazy) but what I want to do is very similar to that.

I thought so too but I've noticed that in combat radio communications for fighter aircraft, they will often use subject-object-verb. But I think in those cases they use the SOV ordering because it's most important to know who is talking to who. Establishing that is most important.

bilbo_pingouin

see it in another way... what will you always have in your sentence? that should go first. What will you less often have? That should go last

Mike L.

I'd suggest [subject], verb, object, adverb, pleading/threatening

Green

I will always have a verb and an object. A subject may be included.

@MikeL. "Pleading/threatening" BAHAHAHAH! Nice. :)

bilbo_pingouin

that's true it depends how it goes... in most communication protocols, they start by saying who they are and then to whom the talk

but if the communication path is clear then verb first

Mike L.

OTOH, subject-verb-object helps prevent accidentally mixing up subject and object, since they presumably are both identifiers.

bilbo_pingouin

4:10 PM

if you type in a prompt for the computer to react, the communication is clear from you to the computer

Green

Wikipedia has some really interesting things to say on the ordering and which are most common.

Mike L.

@Green You really don't want to base this on natural languages, IMO

bilbo_pingouin

nope... because the rationale is different

with a verb at the end, you keep the attention until the end of the sentence...

Green

@MikeL. True but a knowledge of how natural language does it shows possibilities of how it can be done then I can evaluate an ideal solution.

bilbo_pingouin

computers don't have problem of inattention...

yet

Green

4:14 PM

I've also noticed that CLI interfaces use verb-adverb-object* since it's implicit that the OS is executing the verb.

er, rather it's implicit that the user is the subject.

You've all been most helpful, thank you.

Mike L.

@Green No problem. I'm not procrastinating, my debug code is running!

Green

@MikeL. Like this? xkcd.com/303

Mike L.

@Green Yep. Graphics can get computationally heavy.

DaaaahWhoosh

4:35 PM

@Green what does the order matter to you? You want it to be human-readable, or easy to implement?

I may be late to the conversation, but I still want to contribute

Tim B

5:15 PM

a few interfaces I've seen recently basically emulate programming syntax

i.e. object.object.object.verb() or object.verb(object)

that's clear and intuitive to programmers....dunno about non-programmers :)

but why are you writing a CLI? the 80s want their interface back....

Green

6:12 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh ideally, both.

@DaaaahWhoosh I'm happy to get any and all input I can get.

Mike L.

@TimB wouldn't that be subject.verb(object)?

Serban Tanasa

woho, 200 bronze.

Mike L.

@TimB Because CLIs are scriptable, I'd wager.

Green

@TimB I had this idea to make an RTS imagined in the days before GUIs but with enough CPU to make an interesting game out of it. I'm implementing in Erlang which gives me that ability to have lots of things going on but in a manageable way.

Mike L.

That's what I use them for, anyway. Quite helpful when you need to run 200 instances of something.

Green

6:15 PM

@MikeL. Precisely that.

Partly, I want to explore what happens when an RTS depends less on actions per minute (as in the case of Starcraft II) but depends more on a player's ability to automate things.

@DaaaahWhoosh I think I can achieve both.

Mike L.

@Green That's a really intriguing idea. I've been toying with something similar myself, although for me it was more about tweaking unit AI so that you can abstract things.

Green

This is my list of verbs so far: Add
Delete
Display | List
Create
Destroy
Start /*Starting a service*/
Suspend
End | Stop
Run | Execute /*One time execute*/
Alter
Clear
Define
Move
Ping
Recover
Refresh
Reset
Resolve
Set
Kill

Mike L.

It pisses me off to no end how the individual soldiers are so irredeemably dumb in RTSs, so much so that the games are less about strategy and more about babysitting.

And it's even more pronounced in the so-called "squad-based RTSs", where they're equally big idiots, but they're synchronised in their idiocy.

Green

@MikeL. AI programming is difficult so I want to put that off for as long as possible. I figure that if I can give the player a robust state-machine with hooks, then they could make their own AIs tailored to their needs.

@MikeL. That bugs me too. And, you're stuck with whatever verbs and objects the game designers give you.

Serban Tanasa

I can't wait for 300 Bronze, one should get a gold medal -- "This is Spartaaaa"

Mike L.

6:20 PM

@Green And no possible way to really delegate anything.

I remember that Earth 2140 used to have a feature where you could hand off groups of units to AI generals, and I thought that was quite neat.

Green

For example, I'd love to see a "Guard this area" command. I've seen it in older games like Total Annihilation but nothing newer (admittedly, I haven't played a ton of RTSs recently so it may be in there, I just don't know about it.)

Mike L.

I was thinking of something to the effect where you could do that, and then give orders to those generals.

Green

I also love brevity code, so a bunch of autonomous/semi-autonomous units transmitting their status to a scrolling status window seems super cool.

Wait, wait, wait. What we're discussing is the difference between imperative and declarative programming. RTSs are usually imperative in that they require the player to state "Do this; do this; do this; do this;" whereas a Declarative RTS would be "achieve this goal" then the game/unit figures out how to do that.

So my game will require you to supply your own implementation for a specific command.

Clearly, the appeal of this game won't be very broad.

@SerbanTanasa Nicely done!

Mike L.

A friend of mine is getting married. Today I got an e-mail from the organiser of his bachelor's party, saying that we will be doing a "Viking retirement ceremony".

What confuses me and makes me doubt the authenticity of that claim is that the program doesn't seem to involve either longships, or setting shit on fire.

Green

@MikeL. What is involved in a Viking Retirement Ceremony?

Oh, that kind of viking retirement party.

Mike L.

6:31 PM

@Green From what I know of vikings, I assumed we'd put him on a longship and set it on fire. But apparently that's not what's happening.

Green

@MikeL. Well, if that's how it went down, I'm sure the bride would be pissed.

Mike L.

@Green Maybe the logic was that if he can't get out of it, he's not fit to get married.

DaaaahWhoosh

maybe they're putting the bride on the longship

Green

@MikeL. That's an interesting test of marital fitness.

@DaaaahWhoosh Maybe the test is to see if the groom can save her? maybe?

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green I was just making a 'marriage is a bad idea' joke

Mike L.

6:36 PM

@Green Despite her stature, in this case the bride is a significantly better swordsman than the groom.

Green

@MikeL. He's gonna have to work on his skills then. According to some gender stereotypes, getting saved by your wife is not a good thing.

@DaaaahWhoosh Yeah, I know. I sometimes go literal when interpretation was supposed to be figurative. No harm done I hope. :)

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green Nah, sometimes when I think up a joke I don't develop it enough for other people to fully appreciate it

that's always the hardest part about jokes for me, actually forming the necessary words to fire the right neurons in other people's brains

Green

@DaaaahWhoosh that is every comedian's greatest challenge. Not to minimize your struggles, but its a very common one.

DaaaahWhoosh

6:52 PM

yeah, as I wrote it I realized that it's a pretty broad problem

probably one of the main obstacles between us and telepathy

Green

I wonder if telepathy would be a binary based or text based protocol?

DaaaahWhoosh

well, text can be transmitted in binary

I'm imagining the signals would try to closely mimic the participants' brain waves, so rather than using words you'd try to think of the things you're saying

but I guess if you're just 'talking' that could be easier to understand

Green

That sounds like a nice, speculative what if question. What if telepathy were possible, would data transmitted between minds be in analog, binary? If binary, would the format be regular text or some binary format?

DaaaahWhoosh

I'm thinking if it's not text, it would probably take more practice, you may have to take a few tests so they can map your brain patterns

btw I just asked my first question in a long time, about weaponizing LSD

I feel like it's going to get closed, but I don't yet know why

Green

7:14 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh Did that have anything to do with my weaponized frogs?

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green I don't think so, I think those were later

I don't remember now

Green

@DaaaahWhoosh No worries. The two were related so i was just wondering.

DaaaahWhoosh

no, now I want to remember, how did I get to be thinking about this?

ooh, right, it was LSD cats

Green

@DaaaahWhoosh Nice! Still one of mine :) Oh gosh, what am I doing to this place?

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green all good things, I assure you

Green

7:19 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh Thank you for the reassurance. Sometimes I wonder.

DaaaahWhoosh

oh yeah, your LSD cat comment followed from your weaponized frog comment

so you were right

AndreiROM

@DaaaahWhoosh that again?

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndreiROM well, I finally asked my LSD gas question, so yeah, that again

Universe Factory

Universe Factory — Medium: What do you celebrate?

posted on March 10, 2016 by Monica Cellio

Enriching your culture with unique holidays, and perhaps snowball fights and fondue Continue reading on Medium »

2

DaaaahWhoosh

I wonder, can we change this chat room's color scheme?

Green

7:25 PM

I've got an answer for the LSD question though it's crazy crazy basic.

DaaaahWhoosh

I just realized I don't understand how gas works

Green

That LSD question might be a HNQ candidate.

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green if not, I'll ask a follow-up with marijuana

Green

@DaaaahWhoosh :) I haven't touched physics in a serious way in almost 10 years. No chemistry in almost 20.

@DaaaahWhoosh You totally should!

DaaaahWhoosh

what I'm thinking now is that regardless of molar mass, a gas should be able to be lighter than air, provided it is hot enough

so unless LSD turns to plasma before it gets light enough, there may be a temperature where it works, at least until thermodynamics kicks in

Green

7:32 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh But as a plasma, it's not LSD anymore. It's just elemental nitrogen, carbon and oxygen.

I don't know how you could get LSD light enough unless it's suspended in a non Earth atmosphere.

bowlturner

Actually heat and light break down LSD. and so does moisture

Depends on the delivery system. Small particles of sawdust can be suspended in the air for hours.

Can you get enough of it to actually affect the soldiers

Green

@bowlturner Tons of factors would go into answering that question. On a hunch I'd say, "No, it's really difficult to get enough into a human to make a significant difference."

bowlturner

Well I was under the impression it doesn't take much LSD to affect someone, and I would think breathing it directly into the lungs would speed up the process

But, I'm not an expert on drug doses

Green

@bowlturner reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/2tycc8/inhaling_lsd For whatever Reddit is worth.

Oh yeah and probably NSFW (drug related).

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green maybe you are doing bad things to this chat

Green

7:38 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh Porn yesterday. Drugs today. Violence will have to wait till tomorrow :)

Perhaps some ultraviolence?

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green I have a few potential questions on torture I could sandbox tomorrow

Green

(I'm not seriously offering that. The pattern just fit.)

@DaaaahWhoosh Oh my gosh, what are we doing?!

Though the analytical part of me really wants to see what you've got.

DaaaahWhoosh

it's mostly based on Prometheus, and how he gets his insides eaten out by birds every day

Green

tangent: Do you think that specifying parameters in the form of -parameter=value or -parameter="value value" is better than parameter(value) or parameter("value value")?

@DaaaahWhoosh Pssh that's totally fine. Prometheus is culture.

AndreiROM

oh, LSD

Green

7:41 PM

the parameter=value seems easier to me.

AndreiROM

still a hot conversation topic 50 years after its invention

bowlturner

ya, it was designed to be give to OUR troops...

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green '=' is one less character than '()'

and you don't have to step over anything when typing

AndreiROM

@bowlturner I need to read up on LSD, apparently

so what was LSD's original intended use?

DaaaahWhoosh

I just realized, '=' looks like a penguin

AndreiROM

7:44 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh that's pushing it

DaaaahWhoosh

I mean with the quotes as eyes

the equals as the beak

Green

@DaaaahWhoosh and I think it will be easier to chunk in my parser. Every parameter starts with a dash and can optionally end with a "='value value'"

bowlturner

@AndreiROM If I was told correctly, it was meant to help soldiers make it on 'little sleep'. They had learned that we needed a 'dream' state in our sleep to keep from going insane. So the drug was to push the dreams in a 'shorter' period of time.

James

,'='

how do I make a comma that goes to the right...

AndreiROM

@bowlturner oh, silly people

James

7:46 PM

cause that would totally look like a penguin

AndreiROM

@James I'm starting to see it

use / \ instead ?

DaaaahWhoosh

,'='.

he's facing right?

AndreiROM

/'='\

hmm. not quite the same, is it? :P

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndreiROM looks a bit like a dog

AndreiROM

@DaaaahWhoosh not seeing it, at all, lol

Green

7:47 PM

I love this place. We go from weaponized hallucinogens to ascii text art in less than 5 minutes. It's an ADHD paradise!

AndreiROM

hallelujah

James

Squirrel!

3

AndreiROM

i have the highest rep on Workplace, and the chat there is soooo dry and boring

when it's not dead

@James I wish I could +1 this comment

bowlturner

@Green they might be more related than you know..

James

lol

I am sure my brain made a perfectly logical if roundabout connection between LSD and ASCI

AndreiROM

7:48 PM

I'm sure it did

backs away slowly

James

I have no idea what it would have been but it probably happened

AndreiROM

runs for the door

Green

Hey James.

James

speaking of scaring people @bowlturner I was working on a couple knives last night.

@Green heya green

Green

Do you have pictures?

bowlturner

7:50 PM

Oh, ya, I put up the rack last night. I have a picture on my phone. Give me a minute

AndreiROM

you guys have cool hobbies.

James

@Green I didn't take any last night...I will have to remember to do that tonight.

Green

@James I'm curious to watch their progression from steel to blade.

bowlturner

AndreiROM

do you guys use metal working techniques such as folding the steel and hammering it into a blade, or do you simply cut the steel into the right "shape" and make it look cool, etc?

Mike L.

8:01 PM

@bowlturner Coat rack?

@AndreiROM Cutting is more of a genuine metalworking technique than folding:)

AndreiROM

@MikeL. i just realized that I'm kinda dissing one technique over another in that comment

bowlturner

@MikeL. actually it's a rack for my C-Clamps, The pic I had with them hanging there was very blurry

AndreiROM

I'm completely ignorant of metal working, i'm just curious how they approach it

Green

@MikeL. what do you mean by genuine? I thought the Japanese made their swords using the folding technique. That seems "genuine" to me.

bowlturner

I heat things up and smack them with a hammer!

AndreiROM

8:03 PM

@bowlturner LOL

Mike L.

@bowlturner Those are some nice, clean twists. Is it just heated up and twisted, or did you help it along with a hammer?

AndreiROM

I've seen machines perform those kinds of twists even with "cold" steel

are those done entirely by hand?

bowlturner

@MikeL. No, just heat, a leg vise and a crescent wrench. (and a little practice)

AndreiROM

impressive

bowlturner

I'm really proud of the leaf, but the picture doesn't show it very well.

Mike L.

8:11 PM

@Green It was used to adjust and even out carbon content, so it had more to do with metallurgy than with metalworking. If your steel is good and homogeneous to begin with, there's no need to do that.

Green

@MikeL. Oh, cool. :) I had no idea it was for that reason. I'd always heard of folding in the context of "Many layers of steel = strong sword"...which makes intuitive sense but I don't know if reality works that way.

DaaaahWhoosh

@Green it also looks pretty sometimes

which apparently factors into some weapons more than you'd think

Mike L.

@Green You win a little, you lose a little. Folding also introduces particles of slag into your ingot, which act as potential failure points and if you just go overboard you may end up with something too brittle or something that doesn't temper properly.

Honestly, the advances in material science even just up to 1900 were so significant that the steel of that time would seem like black magic to mediaeval smiths.

Not to mention that the stainless steel any one of us has laying around in our kitchens would be an Excalibur-level treasure hoard.

Green

8:27 PM

@MikeL. Better living through chemistry. :)

@MikeL. I wish that "A Yankee in King Arthur's Court" had done a bit more with metallurgy.

Mike L.

@Green Eh, I don't really think a run-of-the-mill Yankee would know much about practical metallurgy:)

Green

@MikeL. The Yankee in the store is an exceptional engineer who worked in the factories of Connecticut when New England was a manufacturing powerhouse....I think the time period is mid/late 1800s.

Mike L.

@Green Here's some reading on sword metallurgy from a materials professor at TU Kiel: tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/index.html

Green

@MikeL. Thanks! I'll have a look.

Mike L.

sorry, Christian-Albrechts-Universität

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