Erratica Reduex

Just wanted to take the time to let you know that I'm really happy I'm your friend. Have a wonderful time, and I wish you a coming year full of love, happyness and success!

I would totally read every Wonder Woman comic published if they were written and drawn by Kate Beaton, of Hark a Vagrent.

Best Wonder Woman Ever.

If you ladies are still strapped for costume ideas at this late date, well, there's this original idea from a Japanese designer:





This is one of a collection of 15 chemograph plates from Military Costumes in Old Japan, by Kazumasa Ogawa, published in 1895.

In an online discussion recently about the Transfomers and G.I. Joe movies, it was brought up that there was at one point in the comics a crossover between Transformers and G.I. Joe. It was also pointed out that the Transformers existed in the standard Marvel Universe, even doing a crossover with Spider-Man. therefore, by the associative property of Crossovers, G.I. Joe also exists in the Marvel Universe.

At this point, I had to chime in with Godzilla. As a kid, I owned a copy of the Godzilla comic book, that had Nick Fury of Shield casing the big lizard around America. So that's right, Godzilla is part of the Marvel Universe too, I kid you not.

So true believers, what does this mean? It means we could potentially have a movie that is a Transformers/G.I.Joe/Nick Fury of SHIELD/X-Men/Spider-man/Avengers/Godzilla crossover. The geekiness level would be so high that it would literally cause true fan's heads to explode. Theater owners would have to hire people to be on geek brain detail.

Well, maybe in some other universe. I would just be happy if someone just drew the movie poster for it.

It's enough to warm a former drafter's heart.

So there's this guy out there who is doing engineering schematics of various Star Trek vessels. That is, not blueprints, but those computer diagrams you saw on the show that showed a side view, along with a list of major systems, done up as futuristic graphics.  Like for instance, The Enterprise:



But that's not enough for him.  he had to tackle NASA as well. And this is my favorite:



One really has to appreciate the amount of effort and skill someone put into this project.

Wishing you good things, notonly for today, but for everything else in your life right now.  Good luck, your friends are rooting for you!

And you deserve to be rooted for, because you are a seriously awesome person!  See?  You even get the "serious awesomeness" tag!

When I was in college the first time, we had a neat ecological simulator that ran on the primitive Mac's we used. It charted the ecological balance between deer, wolves, and the carrying capacity of the area, and it was really tricky to find parameters that resulted in an even set of population increases and decreases, not a population explosion and die-off of both deer and wolves.   Too many wolves or too few deer, and the wolves eat all the deer, and die off.  Too many deer or too few  wolves, and the deer would multiply past teh carrying capacity, then die out, and the wolves would follow.  Bummer.

Those programs are still around, and even more sophisticated. Sophisticated enough that they can compute pressing questions like: how many vampires can Sunnydale sustain?

There's basically two models: the Twilight model, and the Buffy model.  Not surprisingly, the Twilight model assumes vamps are an apex predator, and interestingly enough, ANY number of vampires will result in the vampire population exploding.  This means the maximum number of allowable Twilight vampires is zero.  With the Buffyverse model however, the vamps have a snarky teenager hunting them in turn, and with a jiggling of parameters, you get a sustainable population of vamps/humans/slayer: 36,346 humans, 18 vampires, 1 Slayer.  Which seems to add up to the numbers in Buffy pretty well.

Isn't computer modeling neat?

Really, in the dream last night, I should have spent less time inspecting the framework mechanized Tyrannasaurus Rex for points where a gun could disable it, and more time wondering at the other centerpiece of the convention, the 30 ft. tall mechanized  Godzilla. 

At least I had he presence of mind, when the Godzilla went on its rampage, to divert the attention of the hidden mastermind operating it, through shouted insults.  Then it was a simple matter of trying to figure out how to disable it AND trace the operator, while being chased around campus by a Godzilla operated by a madman intent on bloody revenge.  Sadly, a dunk in the pool, just proved it was waterproof....

Puttering in the garden can go a long way toward making a weekend with no parties, excursions, movies or visits with friends seem completely worthwhile.  heck, I didn't even get much written. 

We did however, get an ugly blue waterproof tarp established over the flooring of the porch, and bought a bunch of herbs, veggies and flowers, along with some pots and a lot of potting soil.   We then spent Sunday afternoon, until well into twilight, planting, planning, and setting up nets and hanging baskets.  So we now have containers of:
Mint
Peppermint
Spearmint
Lemon Balm
Basil
Lettuce
String Beans
Tomatoes
Habenero Peppers
Cruel Thai Peppers
Bell Peppers (desultory, more out of tradition than any expectation of result)
Nasturtums
and a few other plants.

No wonder we were exhausted that evening.  There's still a lot of arranging to do, but at least things are off to a good start.

Have you ever thought how close civil war re-enactments are to LARPing?  Have you ever thought what it might be like to be a history postgrad, trapped as a civil war performer while the rest of your friends get real jobs?  No?  Of course not.  Neither did I.  In fact, I had no interest in the whole "recreate the Civil War" scene at all.  But "Dovecoat Crest" is enough to make me reconsider. 

The story: Charlie Grant is fresh out of college, and has spent the last year performing with a civil war reenactment troupe at the site of an obscure Civil War battle.  She's frustrated, because not only has she "wasted" a year not doing "real" historical work,  but the guy she likes is so shy that whenever he gets close to saying something personal, he can only retreat to relating obscure facts about the Civil War to her.  Even the pair's friends aren't helping that much, especially when they DO help.  And what's going to happen when Charlie gets a chance for a real historian-style job?

Seriously folks, this is a well drawn, extremely well written webcomic, that's worth looking at even if one has no interest in history.  The characters and the relationships are all  deftly handled, and the humor comes both from the frustrating relationship, and the oddities of modern people pretending to be people from a previous century.  In this manner, it's a little bit like Geebas on Parade, with it's detailing of the back scenes of a fantasy game.  the art itself is worth noting for the framing of the comic inside a  19th century broadsheet, as well as the portrayal of the characters in the style of old photos.  The characters themseles are simply yetexpressively drawn, and the coloring and shading is very subtle.

Charlie herself is a refreshing character; unlike most webcomic females, who pretty much exist only to hang around a male character endlessly, she has her own life she wants to get on with, and is not about to put everything on hold for a guy.  As a result, again unlike most webcomics where the author tries to string things along forever, the tensions actually come to a head at a reasonable point in the comic.  The result actually gives us the feeling of reading a slice-of-life story that really IS a story, not an interminable sequence of episodes.

Bottom Line: I love the characters, both male and female, and the art is excellent.  And best of all, it uses Civil War trivia in an amusing way to actually advance the story.


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