Author Archives: Silver Arrows

Emergencies, Phones and Tablet Drivers

You know, as someone with object empathy, I tend to hang on to stuff for ages, usually forever. Trade in my DSi XL for a 3DS XL? Are you kidding? Ain't gonna happen. But of course there comes a time when one has to let go.

First of all, there is my phone. Now let me tell you, I've had this baby a long time. 9 years to be exact. September 2003: I still remember the day. You wanna know the model? It's a Nokia 3310. It's silver right now. But at other times, it's variously navy, red, blue, green or yellow. They disconnected my SIM in 2010 because I didn't top up for 2 years. What I'm saying is, it makes no sense for me to splash out on a fancy new phone every year, when I hardly ever use it. That's asociability for you. Why do I even have a phone, then? For emergencies. And here is the problem.

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Mysterious Wreckage in Space

This was taken directly from a book called Mystery, Intrigue and Suspense (Chancellor Press, 1992). I think it's a compilation of previously published titles. I know the unsolved crime chapter has already been published in The World's Greatest Unsolved Crimes. The rest may have been published elsewhere.

Anyway, this is one I haven't been able to find much info about anywhere else. Maybe the whole thing was one big hoax — a lot of the cases in this book have proven to be. It's interesting nevertheless. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

The following text is copyright Chancellor Press and I don't really have permission to quote it, but what the heck. Fair Dealings/Fair Use is a thing.

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Ruby Redfort — Look Into My Eyes


I can see two obvious things that are wrong with this book, just from the cover:

  1. The first Ruby book is supposed to be called There was a Girl Called Ruby
  2. The Ruby books are supposed to be written by Patricia F. Maplin Stacey

Reading further in:

  1. Ruby Redfort is 13. She is supposed to start her spy career at age 11
  2. I'm sure there were one or two more, but I've forgotten

Now, you see, whenever I read Clarice Bean's talking about Ruby Redfort, I shall feel slightly disorientated that she is reading a different set of Ruby books from the rest of us. It's a shame.

On to the book itself. Continue reading →

More on Alignments

I mentioned this in my last post, but here is the breakdown:

Chaotic Neutral

A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn't strive to protect others' freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer).

A chaotic neutral character may be Continue reading →

Align Thyself!

I'm getting utterly quite confused about alignments these days. It's strange, because I always thought of myself as being a goody-goody Lawful Good. Certainly at work I'm trusted to do things and know things which I would not normally be authorised to do and know.

So I was doing this quiz the other day What D&D Character Am I? and surprisingly, I'm a Chaotic Neutral Elven Ranger/Mage (what rules are they playing by? Elves can't multi-class as ranger/mages). So I knew already that I'm an elf, but Chaotic Neutral? Really?

You see, according to the official AD&D 2e definition:

Chaotic neutral characters believe that there is no order to anything, including their own actions. With this as a guiding principle, Continue reading →

Feralian Profile

feralians
Background: ~struckdumb/~pureplayas529 | Phoenix's hand refs: here and here

Appearance: Feralians are similar in height and build to humans. The obvious difference is their rich-brown wings. When in non-winged form, only the eye colour gives it away; their eyes being bright orange or, very rarely, silver. Their hair ranges from dark brown to almost black, and both sexes wear it long.

They favour simple, utilitarian clothing, having little time for adornment. It's a custom for everyone to wear an armband with their name.

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Chapter Five — The Icarus Army

Kiki kicked out as someone grabbed her foot.

"Yaieeee!"

"Get off me!"

"Kiki!"

"Get off!"

Pit grabbed hold of Kiki's wrist and pulled her back towards the gates of the Children's House. "How many more times, Kiki?"

Kiki remained tight-lipped.

"You can't go on like this. You know you're forbidden from leaving the house after dark."

Kiki refused to respond and looked away, scowling.

Pit continued. "And the fruit in the orchard does not belong to you."

Here Kiki replied. "It belongs just as much to me as it does to everyone else there!"

"And it belongs just as much to everyone else as it does to you. This is the third time this week you've sneaked out at night to steal fruit. Yes, steal, Kiki."

"You — you just be quiet!"

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Shadows — Chapter Two

ferys-zephy

There would be another hour until the gates of Fartemple were opened. Ferys wondered why they bothered with gates — a pathetic, half-baked town like this.

"It's probably more to stop people getting out."

Ferys accepted this explanation without question. What he wanted to know now was why he hadn't managed to shake off this insane elf yet.

"So... this person you're looking for..."

"Mind your own business."

Of course, Zephyr was undeterred by this. "This person you're looking for — it is a friend, or foe or neutral third party?"

"Shut up. Stop asking me questions."

"Is it someone you've to kill?"

Ferys shot him a scathing look. "I'll kill you in a minute!"

Silence.

Zephyr sighed. "If I have to be killed by anyone," he smiled, "I'd want it to be you, Ferys."

"Argh!" Ferys pounded his fists on the ground. "Now I'll never kill you, just to give someone you hate the chance to do it!"

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Shiawase no Hako English Translation

Salyu — Iris — 幸せの箱


I know there are a few of these floating about the interwebz, but this is my translation practice. I'm still a beginner, so the translation is probably very literal and full of mistakes. I'm happy for anyone to tell me where and why I've gone wrong and so on. Enjoy!

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あなたの方が知っていた 私が大事にしてたもの

また会えることを信じて 約束もせずに手を振った		 You knew better about the things I was cherishing.
Believing that we could meet again, we waved farewell without promise. [1]

So No Two Snowflakes Are Alike, Huh?

Dr Karl was talking about this some time ago on Up All Night, I just forgot to gloat about it earlier.

Anyway, this is something that has bugged me since I first heard it. No two snowflakes are alike. How could they possibly know, considering the billions and billions of snowflakes that have fallen since the dawn of time. You're telling me not even one single flake had a twin at some point in time? Not even one..?

I don't remember which episode it was, but he has a written version online. I will quote some of it here:

Wilson A. Bentley, a farmer who was born, lived and died in the small town of Jericho in Vermont was called "The Snowflake Man". He supported this "all snowflakes are different" theory. Around 1884, at the age of 19, he became the first person to photograph a single ice crystal, by cleverly marrying a microscope to a camera, using an adjustable bellows mechanism. In 1920, the American Meteorological Society elected him to the state of Fellow. They also awarded him their very first research grant, in recognition of his "40 years of extremely patient work" - for which they gave him $25. He continued working in this field until his death in 1931, by which time he had taken 5,381 "photomicrographs" of individual snowflakes. Towards the end of his life, he said that he had "never seen two snowflakes alike". And so the story arose that all snowflakes are different.

But in 1988, the scientist Nancy Knight (at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado) was studying wispy high altitude cirrus clouds. Her research plane was collecting snowflakes on a chilled glass slide that was coated with a sticky oil. She found two identical (under a microscope, at least) snowflakes in a Wisconsin snowstorm.

They were hollow hexagonal prisms, rather than the classical six-spoked star-shapes – but as far as snowologists are concerned, they counted as snowflakes. But if you want to be pedantic, they probably weren't identical if you were to look at the actual molecules – but at this level, is anything identical?

Since the earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, about a million million million million million snowflakes have fallen – but Mr. Bentley made his pronouncement of the cold hard facts after looking at just over 5,000 of them.

See ABC Science for the full article.

All I wanna say is: nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaaah.

Natural Eyesight Improvement and Accommodation

I contacted Quackenbush about a comment he left on Amazon, viz:

The Bates Method has never stated that accommodation (focusing near and far) occurs by the cornea changing. Dr. Bates believed the external eye muscles produced accommodation. This is mostly wrong; but is irrelevant. The lens is the primary mechanism of accommodation. It is controlled by the ciliary (internal) eye muscle. If this muscles is not functioning normally, then accommodation will likely not occur. (There are some reports of lensless accommodation.) Who cares what the mechanism of accommodation is when people improve their eyesight naturally?

Because you know, in his book, he says definitely he agrees with Bates that it's the external muscles and not the lens, and that the purpose of the lens may well be something else besides accommodation. But what he replied was:

I do not agree with Bates. The primary mechanism of accommodation has been reverified by modern instrumentation showing that it is definitely the lens.

In any case, on a practical level, it doesn't really matter to me or many others. Improving vision naturally is the most important issue for most of my students.

Okay, fair enough, but this leaves so many questions. This is not something my brain can allow to slide!

Let's start at the beginning. Orthodox theory states that those with myopia (we will just concentrate on myopia for now) have eyeballs that are too long and the lens cannot cannot compensate for this and as the lengthening of the eyeball is permanent and genetic, it cannot be reversed naturally.

Bates spent two years trying to prove that this was correct, but failed. He found instead that the abnormal lengthening of the eyeball is caused by the external eye muscles pulling the eye into this longer shape, and that relaxation of the mind causes relaxation of these eye muscles, returning the eye to its normal, round shape.

See, now what I don't get is, if Bates's theory is wrong, and the orthodox theory is right, how on Earth does relaxation do anything at all? If the lengthening of the eyeball is genetic and irreversible, then no amount of relaxation should do anything to improve the sight. And yet it's been shown that it can and does.

So I'm stuck. I'm willing to accept that the orthodox theory is in fact the correct one after all, but only if someone can explain this discrepancy to me. Because right now, it doesn't make any sense.