room topic changed to Universe Factory: A room for those involved in Worldbuilding's blog, Universe Factory. medium.com/universe-factory [blog]

I'll invite all our contributors to here.

Here's a list of recurring posts (i.e. series) I know about:

Best of Worldbuilding: monthly, based on topic challenges, @ArtOfCode

Some sort of spotlight on Worldbuilding: monthly, specific questions or non-challenge tags, Monica.

Habitable planets (not the real name): 1-2/week, @HDE226868

@James, @bilbo_pingouin, @knave, @Liath, @Samuel, and those already here. This is the blog chatroom, where we can organise blog-type stuff and not saturate the main room.

@knave mentioned a possible series on conlangs here.

(Other topics mentioned there are not necessarily series. We want those too; I'm listing series not to exclude but to get a sense of the bigger moving parts.)

I'm going to onebox that post because it's got a load of ideas in:

So my plan for my first article will be titled: World Building - or So you want to play god

topic will mainly cover the world building process at a high level with follow on articles covering specific topics.

Nice.

Catchy title.

Curators: you've got edit rights, use 'em! If you want to change something about the publication, just go ahead (within reason, preferably no name changes without some discussion). We can have featured stories, which I've currently set up with the intro post featured - you can change these, and please do.

I have a line in mind that makes me laugh, "If you believe that a deity created our world, do you suppose that after a while he just started phoning certain locations in after things got repetitive?"

I've got a post in mind about the math behind generating fractal terrain. If anybody would be interested in writing something about applying that to software, that would be cool.

@HDE226868 I could try... depends what sort of thing your post is

@ArtOfCode Do you know if we can create tags on Medium? I haven't had much chance to play with the admin functions.

@ArtOfCode I was thinking of a basic tutorial on it, although I'm not quite sure what format that would take.

@All: does it make sense to have a weekly blog planning meeting, where we discuss our possible aims for the week and form some sort of publishing schedule plan?

@James I haven't been able to, when I tried. Most are already there, though.

@ArtOfCode I vote yes for that.

@HDE226868 Definitely a good idea.

IN fact, while we all seem to be reasonably well around, how about the first one now? Thursdays, 1600 UTC work for most people? Or what other times would suit better?

@ArtOfCode Not good for me. School starts next week, and 1600 falls right in the middle of the day (just after lunch). I can re-read the transcript later, though, and ping with any comments.

@ArtOfCode I am not sure setting a time will work the best just with our international-ness. Maybe just use this chat room and say we will discuss topics on Thursdays? I dunno that has its drawbacks too...hmmm.

@HDE226868 Ack, timezones. I'm back at school already, and 1600 UTC is about right for me.

@James That's actually a good idea. If we say Thursdays people drop in here, drop their ideas in for the week, and people can comment whenever, that works.

@ArtOfCode Ah, right, you're in the UK.

@James I like that. Although I never could get the hang of Thursdays. :-)

Aye

@HDE226868 Reference. Approve of it.

@ArtOfCode agreed. Thursday is blog-planning day; come by when you can.

@HDE226868 all the more reason to try now. :-)

@MonicaCellio You get the reference? Just checking.

@HDE226868 of course. :-)

@HDE226868 lol thursday is a weird day. Is it the weekend, is it not?!? Mass confusion :)

There we are. Event added: blog planning day, every thursday for "1440 minutes"

Well all right; I shouldn't say "of course" because that's rude to anybody who didn't. "Of course" in the sense that I've been around long enough...

Ok all, what articles do you expect to be able to write between now and next Thursday?

Topic: World Building Process Intro.

I've got one written from yesterday, topic: Writing Meta-Stories for Others to Use (based on worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23861/…)

I should be able to get the next planet thing written this weekend.

@ArtOfCode How in the world did I get 19 upvotes on that answer?! World-Building makes me scratch my head some days...

I expect to get another one maybe two written this week, though I don't know what topics.

So we have 3 minimum articles this week, possibly 4 or 5 so far

I'm away Friday-Saturday, so I may or may not be on the site, and I probably won't be able to get at the blog.

Ill be out of town this weekend too but maybe that means I will have time to do things since I won't be working around the house and whatnot...we shall see.

I'm thinking about writing something arising from the question about people with fur, because I think the answers there really bring out that what you think is just a cosmetic change to make your people "exotic" has wide-reaching effects. I want to riff on that.

@MonicaCellio Is that likely for this week?

@ArtOfCode yes.

+1 to the count. 4 definites.

Of those four, one is written already (Art's). So we can use that to tide us over a lull if we're facing one.

Another idea: if you've got topic ideas, drop them in here so others can write them if they're lacking inspiration

James and HDE are aiming for this weekend. So am I. And Monday is a civil holiday in the US, so that helps.

I certainly am right now.

Drop topic ideas in here sure, but also consider dropping them on one of the existing meta posts for longer-term consideration. Things can get lost in chat, so if nobody takes your idea and runs with it, try meta. (We have existing questions; don't need a new one.)

So I think I am finally done with the wiki for world-building process...

worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/tags/worldbuilding-process/info

@ArtOfCode Does Medium support LaTeX?

@James Impressive.

@HDE226868 Not a clue :) Might need to be in images if not

@James A bit long for a tag wiki, but great nonetheless.

@HDE226868 lol, yes, yes it is.

But it will make writing my blog post a simple matter ;)

@HDE226868 long for a typical tag wiki, but long, comprehensive wikis are a good thing. There's one on SO (I forget which tag) that's an excellent introduction to its programming language, for instance.

@ArtOfCode and others, just fyi, I've been out for the last week due to moving in to my new house (with my new wife!). I'll be out the next week due to eye surgery (PRK). I've not abandoned the cause! I will return.

@Samuel Good good, no worries

@Samuel Congratulations!

@Samuel Geez where are your priorities!

@James very nice!

@Samuel congratulations on your wedding and new house! Good luck with the surgery.

@Samuel Congratulations!

@MonicaCellio javascript tag on SO

@Samuel congrats on the new wife and new house! :)

and meetings without time set on Thursday is good for me. Usually, you are very active when I'm not here... so a common time would be challenging...

@bilbo_pingouin You in Europe by any chance? Your active times are pretty similar to mine.

@ArtOfCode yes I am... 1 hour ahead of you :)

Success.

@James nice job

@ArtOfCode not bad... but Serban got my native language on a first try... ;)

@bilbo_pingouin You live in Luxembourg?

Damn, no I'm wrong. You live in Germany.

I was going to ask why Luxembourg...

IP ?

Your first language is not German. It's French.

not bad

actually, a google search on bilbo pingouin would tell you all of it ;)

@bilbo_pingouin Not that I did one :)

anyway, you're right :)

on all counts

I can also tell you your real name, a (slightly) more exact location, your IP, your email...

@ArtOfCode lol

@bilbo_pingouin Nope, the IP DNS lookup doesn't resolve to Lux. Oh, and your ISP.

I was wondering why you came to Lux. Sometimes IP might be misleading...

@bilbo_pingouin Looking through your answers on Economics, you picked Lux out of thin air in one of them, which made me wonder

I mean it was wrong and if you just went to guess, why would you guess luxembourg was beyond me

Then I got bored and cheated

Hey @HDE

@ArtOfCode Hey ho.

I think I understand the fractal-generating method now.

@HDE226868 I haven't looked into any of this stuff yet :)

@ArtOfCode that was to choose a populated and not so-rich country to a less populated rich country... luxembourg sounded like a reasonable extreme case.

@HDE226868 Conceptually, it is quite simple...

the problem is to parametrize the whole thing

by the way any idea about that program thing?

@bilbo_pingouin Yep. It's the matrices behind the fractional Brownian motion that take some time.

@bilbo_pingouin Which one?

Talk about the blog in this room, for the Map Factory, come over to Universe Software

Someone might want to pin that ^^

@ArtOfCode sounds good. You might want to move some messages from here to there, too.

Aye

(Just so you'll have it all in one place.)

→ 153 messages moved to Universe Software

There's some gone. Not all of them, but enough. Chat's not playing nice, so I'm not doing any more :)

No worries -- I suggested it as a convenience for the people working on the software project. I don't care; it'll disappear into the mists of transcript time before long. :-)

Heh, true

the history of those chat isn't kept as long as the chat is being used?

Suggestion for blog authors: when you're ready, create your post and then submit it to Universe Factory, even if you have editor privs and could publish it to the blog directly. We can decouple the writing and the publishing, to let us spread the publishing over time a bit. Sound good? It sounds like we have four definite articles for the coming week and we might get some others, so we're looking at one posting every day or two.

@MonicaCellio I can help out with proofreading things if anyone wants :)

@Zizouz212 cool! Are you signed up with Medium already? (If not, an OpenID login will fix that.) We can add you as an editor once you have an account.

Nope, but I'll do that right now :)

@MonicaCellio I can't actually find a way to do that, which may be a product of being the owner. Can you tell me what the workflow is for you?

@ArtOfCode I had a "submit to publication" menu option or some such. Hmm, maybe as the creator you're different in that regard.

@MonicaCellio Hmmm... possibly. I couldn't find one

So the workflow was: create story; publish (assign tags), which adds it to your own page; submit. I did that the first time; for the second one I just published directly.

@MonicaCellio Yeah, I definitely didn't have that - I just had a publish in publication button, presumably in place of the submit button you had.

Oh, hang on -- I just experimented and it's counter-intuitive (but I remember this now so it is what I did). Screen shot coming.

That is so not obvious...

@MonicaCellio Your paint skills are amazing!

(thanks for the info)

@MonicaCellio Hmm. That's what I did - but it just published.

@ArtOfCode if you don't do that last step (should've numbered, sorry -- lowest one on the page), it publishes to your personal blog-space. People will see it if they click on your name. But it won't be in Universe Factory yet.

@James Paint got a lot easier once I noticed that I could type text instead of writing it longhand with a mouse. :-)

@MonicaCellio Aye - but when I publish to UF, it just publishes without putting it in the submission queue

@MonicaCellio lol yeah thats a big one

@ArtOfCode huh, ok. Revision of what I said before: everybody except ArtofCode, do this...

lol

Oh, @ArtOfCode, what happens if you choose "create story" from your own page, or somewhere else on Medium that's not the Universe Factory blog page? It seems odd that owning a publication would bar you from posting things elsewhere, after all.

@MonicaCellio It doesn't. I can publish to my own blog space, or to other publications presumably.

Oh wait, I see -- that "add to publication" link isn't submit; it's an add, and any editor can do it. Hmm, how did I submit the first post for somebody else to approve?

@MonicaCellio shrug

Um, no idea. Ok, first person who (re-)figures out how to submit a post instead of directly publishing, please share!

@MonicaCellio Yay! We r smrt peoepl.

heh.

...I apologize if I make no sense today, I am really really tired.

James! Go to sleep!

@Zizouz212 Its only 1600...I'm still at work...

@James Ha, work :P

I've got that everything is funny cause I need a nap desperately thing going on.