I just saw a flag on a "welcome to the site; here's our tour"-style comment from somebody who wondered if this sort of thing should be a prerogative of moderators. I can't reply to the individual flag, but I wanted to pop in here and say: please, continue to welcome and guide folks! No, it's not something that should be restricted to moderators or high-rep users or anybody else. When I see our users helping and guiding our new users it makes me smile. Our strength is in our community.
@SCPilot Neon makes the sky orange, but how? This is a new one on me. On the other hand, the light from red dwarf stars, and presumably orange dwarfs too, will still appear white and the skies of their Earthlike planets blue. So what does neon do?
@TrEs-2b Shouldn't that be the Terminator and Count Blackula crossover movie? Go to www.IllBeBlackula.com
@Green That's not my call. Some people like that info, and if the podcast was going to look for sponsors it would be very valuable to say "we reach N number of people every episode."
But it's not mandatory
@MonicaCellio I think that's a pretty nerd focused show. Still pretty fun
@Green There are of course other methods besides sponsors, or possibly with sponsors but where numbers aren't needed. Audible for instance might even be a good fit. I can see there being a book recommendation portion which would be fun. Other methods are things like Patreon, and let the listeners support the show. Even if it only brought in a couple $ a month it might make the editing less of a chore. And there might be other ways to get statistics even using archive.org...
You can use a URL shortner with google analytics, so host the stuff on archive, and put the shortened links to the files in the RSS feed.
Thru Google API I am creating programatically short URLs. This works fine. On my API console I can see the stats showing, for example, the number of requests as "urlshortener.url.insert" several dozens since I started using this API last Friday.
Now I would like to know how many clicks were done...
what I like about it is that it actually makes the wizards weaker. If there's an appreciable difference between an Istar and a Maiar, it makes everything Gandalf did that much more impressive
Though that kinda makes that one scene a little weird, where most of the surviving fellowship are fighting at the gate to be a distraction so the two hobbits can finish their quest. So out comes a huge horde of orcs, and they are like "well, we're probably going to be over run and die, so lets make this good." and here's Gandalf who could probably wipe out all the orcs single handedly, just kinda holding back and potentially letting a lot of people be cut down by the orcs...
I suppose it could just be that he knew that the hobbits were very close, and would get to their destination before the orcs could kill them all...
Worldbuilding has a somewhat active chat that's maintained decent levels of participation since the start of the site. We're lucky; that's not the case with all sites. I thought we could take advantage of that to use chat as a tool to figure out site problems, get to know the users here - especia...
@DaaaahWhoosh But revealing himself in all his power would be a pretty big threat. It might even have looked like a bigger threat because Sauron would know that Gandalf would know he couldn't match Sauron power for power, unless Gandalf had the ring, and so if Gandalf is coming to the gate solo then he must feel like he has an ace up his sleeve.
@DaaaahWhoosh just because someone/thing is no longer human and no longer a member of the equivalent of the 'order of wizards' doesn't mean that they're no longer a wizard...
@AndyD273 I guess at that point, Sauron would probably have to come out and fight Gandalf one-on-one. So the army would be there specifically to fight the orcs, so that Frodo and Sam wouldn't have to
but he did reveal his power against the king of the Nazgûl and at helms deep, and so if Sauron had been looking he would have seen that something was different. He didn't have to hold back when they were at the gate.
Huh, I wonder what middle earth would look like if it progressed into the modern age? I mean, the Elves have left, the wizards are disbanded... would any of the fantastic things survive, or would it look exactly like our world, with the amazing things fading into myth and legend?
I guess the dwarves would probably survive, and there might be orc holdouts in the remote mountains and deep caves
@AndyD273 I'm thinking dwarves would fade away from lack of women, orcs would fight each other to death or interbreed with men. It'd end up being mostly men, with some traces of a more magical past being quickly swallowed up by time
@DaaaahWhoosh As far as I know the reputation league is updated once a day so it is possible for it to get a little bit out of sync. I have no idea why two leagues disagree.
Boss: Can you get me this report? Me: Yes! *click, click, click* Here you go! Boss: Thank you very much! Me: Well there was a good days work, time to nap.
A particle-beam weapon uses a high-energy beam of atomic or subatomic particles to damage the target by disrupting its atomic and/or molecular structure. A particle-beam weapon is a type of directed-energy weapon, which directs energy in a particular and focused direction using particles with negligible mass. Some particle-beam weapons are real and have potential practical applications, e.g. as an antiballistic missile defense system for the United States and its Strategic Defense Initiative. The vast majority, however, are science fiction and are among the most common weapon types of the genre...
This is better as a separate answer. It allows the up/down voting on two very different poisons. It also avoids commentary on one getting confused with the other. — SRMFeb 8 at 6:49