Jürgen Hubert's LiveJournal

Turning Multiple HTML Files into a Hyperlinked PDF?

2009-12-01T14:28:52Z

Christmas is approaching, which means it's time for me to start fiddling with self-created Ebooks again. I want to create a new ebook version of the TV Tropes Wiki to reflect the changes of said wiki in the last year.

However, this time I want to use a different format. Last time I converted the many HTML files of the wiki into the MobiPocket format (.prc) to read them on my Kindle. But the deeply nested structure of the TV Tropes Wiki doesn't display well on the Kindle, so instead I want to read them on my iRex DR1000S. Unfortunately, this device (unlike the Kindle) doesn't permit annotating .prc files, so I want to use a format where annotations are possible - and that means PDFs.

So, does anyone know of a program that allows you to take multiple HTML files (we are talking about more than 10,000 here - the TV Tropes Wiki is huge) and turn them into a single PDF complete with working internal hyperlinks?

Recently, on YouTube

2009-11-21T12:47:50Z

Google Wave - First Impressions

2009-11-13T17:46:35Z

So far, Google Wave looks intriguing - it certainly has potential. It reminds me of forums with tree structures - i.e. forums where replies to a specific post are added below that post instead of at the end of the thread. But its superior editing features allow Google to be far more flexible, and make it possible to successively make a particular Wave (discussion/document) more streamlined and coherent.

To my mind, the main drawback of Google Wave is that it becomes both slow and unwieldy once it grows beyond a certain size - let's say 150 individual posts (or "blips"). It takes a long time for the entire Wave to load, and at some points when I tried to add new text I watched the words appear at a rate of one letter per 5 seconds. Hopefully they will add more servers to the system in the future to make it run more smoothly.

I think Google Wave is ideal for relatively short and focused brainstorming sessions involving multiple participants - especially since everybody always has access to the document later on and can edit it as time progresses.

Oh, and speaking of which - I have created a Wave of my own which is dedicated to the discussion of Urbis. If you have your own Google Wave account and are interested in gaming, check it out!

Musings on the Cthulhu Mythos

2009-11-12T17:51:03Z

A recent RPGNet thread (login required to view) has made me contemplate how to make the Cthulhu Mythos work in a modern-day or near-future term. Some claim that the Mythos loses its horror as notions of living in a vast, uncaring universe become common. I disagree, and thus I present two approaches through which the Mythos can be brought into a new focus for modern times.

One approach is to emphasize the concept of memes. Let's say that the human mind is an emergent phenomenon arising from the memes which have "infected" the relevant brain - something which some proponents of the concept of memes have actually argued. The memes someone has accumulated over the span of one's life determine one's behavior to a large degree.

And the influence of some of the Great Old Ones also spreads as memes - and they are detrimental to the human mind, either rendering them into sociopaths or causing highly atavistic behavior. This is how cults arise and spread. This is also why Mythos tomes are so dangerous - they cause Mythos memes to propagate.

Now, it's possible to have some measure of resistance to Mythos memes, depending on your current personality (=current accumulation of memes) and the strength of exposure. However, being an open-minded person actually weakens your memetic defenses. If you readily accept ideas and concepts from other cultures, then Mythos memes have a far easier time to get a hold of you.

The implication is clear: Being a close-minded reactionary is actually your best defense against the Mythos! This seems to be in line with the original stories, since Lovecraftian horror was always a reactionary one - with the added advantage that we can ignore the blatant racism in his stories.

And now, thanks to globalization and the spread of democracy and the internet, the whole of humanity becomes more and more open-minded - which in turn makes the Mythos memes easier and easier to spread. By being progressive and tolerant, we are only embracing the End Times faster.

My inspiration for this was the introductory fiction in Delta Green - the final transmission of (retired) Major General Reginald Fairfield. In addition to warning of the dangers of the Mythos and its willing patsies, he also rants about MTV and "filth on television". And this doesn't make the fiction any less evocative, even if you disagree with his politics.

I think my point is that to truly effective, the implications of the Cthulhu Mythos must offend our sensibilities and values in some way. In Lovecraft's time, this worked via invoking a vista of a vast, uncaring universe and denying humanity the status as a special snowflake. But today, among many of us with a non-religious bend, a vast, uncaring universe where humanity is nothing special is already pretty well established and thus loses its horror.

But a lot of us pride ourselves in being tolerant, progressive, and open-minded - open to new ideas. Thus, it is these values that the Cthulhu Mythos must show as being wrong and dangerous to be effective in a modern setting.

Another approach works via Transhumanism. Old Castro said that as the End Times approach, "mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy". This could represent not only a merely behavioral change - perhaps mankind is changing itself on a more fundamental level.

We might think now that we can modify humans a bit to become stronger, smarter, and longer-lived yet still remain essentially "human" like we understand it today. But what if this isn't true? What if even small modifications radically alter human thought patterns, and turn them into something altogether... stranger?

We needn't even turn to genetic engineering. After all, aren't we already pumping our bodies full with drugs to be more "competitive"? And giving our children medications to make them more docile - accepting or ignoring the fact that their brains might be permanently altered in the process? And just what will the pharmacorps come up with next to "improve" us?

Imagine that you are an old man who once had a happy family, but whose wife and children died and most of whose grandchildren don't visit any more - and those who do visit do nothing but throw parties at his house with their gangster buddies, wreck his furniture and mementos, and mock him for his old-fashioned ways. And he can't keep them out of the house because they have keys and simply break in even if he changed the locks. His mind is fading, and he only survives on the meager scraps left by them, and he lives in filth and vermin because there is nobody who cares about him enough to keep him clean and fed and healthy. He contemplates suicide in his few moments of lucidity, but he has become too weak for even that.

This old man represents normal human beings as the End Times approaches and more and more humans are changing into something else.

So, what do you think? Do these approaches for the Cthulhu Mythos work for more modern times and settings?

I have a Google Wave account

2009-11-11T10:04:31Z

Now I have to figure out what to do with it...

Interesting Gaming Idea

2009-10-28T15:35:10Z

In this RPGNet thread, poster "Bailywolf" had an interesting concept for a game setting.

Imagine that there was some powerful entity offering various people vast power with which to change the world - but in return it would transform them bodily into grotesque monsters. Furthermore, it will tell those it makes the offer to that there is a fixed total number of people it will transform - so if you refuse the offer, it will go to someone else instead who might be less inclined to use his power ethically and responsibly.

You were going to use your power responsibly - right?

This kind of campaign framework could be very interesting for a supers campaign, as it can come with a lot of pathos. The characters might start out with noble intentions - accepting the transformation so that the power won't go to outright villains who could wreak devastating havoc with it. But they will be shunned and rejected by society for their appearance and for the crimes of their brethen who are monstrous in mind as well as body - and how long can they maintain their nobility under such circumstances?

For some further ideas, maybe the power of the transformation works like the Essence shards in the setting of Exalted - there is only a limited number of them, but they are basically indestructible and when one carrier dies it immediately seeks out the next host. Thus, there will be a race to kill the "bad guys" in possession of this power so that the power can migrate to "worthier" hosts - while the "bad guys" will want to get to newly-erupted monsters in order to recruit them to their side for protection.

I guess I won't be buying THIS book...

2009-10-27T10:41:17Z

Some time ago, I read "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, and enjoyed it a lot. However, their new book "SuperFreakonomics" has attracted some rather devastating critiques on their chapter on global warming, such as this one.

I guess they jumped the shark the same way Michal Crichton did with his State of Fear.

More on the War On Science

2009-10-22T05:35:41Z

Article on Wired:

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

Basically, there appears to be a rather large movement of people convinced that vaccination causes autism, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence supporting their claims. And their refusal to vaccinate their children causes plenty of children to die - not just their own children, but also others they come into contact with.

I guess I can put this up in line with "Evolution is a Fraud", "Global Warming isn't happening", and "Abstinence-Only Sex Education works!".

Using the Random Nations Generator, Part II

2009-10-19T19:17:26Z

Continued from this post.

Now we come to the major ongoing projects the city has running. With a solid base of 25 seeds, I choose the maximum of 5:

Now, there aren't any nuclear weapons as such in Urbis (though see The Hole), so I have to get creative here. But aren't nukes seen as a "hellish" weapon? Maybe instead of using conventional, safe Golem technology, maybe they are using devices powered by devils (keeping in mind the warlocks and devils already lurking in the city). Possibly they are digging some canals in the region, since that was one of the proposed projects for the peaceful use of nuclear weapons as well (no, I'm not kidding).

While the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program would be a cool patron or antagonist for adventurers, I've already used it as a source of inspiration elsewhere in Urbis (in Hogenrood and the infamous Mine Shaft 23, respectively) and so I'll just skip this. The "impossible space drive" is more interesting - in Urbis, there is already some exploration of the local Solar System, which was pioneered by the city of Bodenwald and the Astromantic Society. Basically, you have to get to an equatorial mountain range from which teleportation rituals to other planets are much cheaper than from elsewhere on this world, and from there you can establish further colonies. But each interplanetary teleportation is still very expensive - so any city-state which could improve on this project would have an enormous head start in interplanetary colonization (and exploitation) over the others. So, what could Nimdenthal attempt? How about an infernal stargate powered by devils that avoids the use of expensive ritual materials entirely but which can be keyed to pretty much any location the operators want? Really, what could possibly go wrong with this?

And the next entry gives us an idea just where this infernal stargate will be built, as it describes a convention center planned for the United Arab Emirates which looks pretty much like the Death Star (no, I'm not kidding - look up the article with the associated images). Now, using exactly the same appearance would be silly - but placing the "Hellgate" into a vast, circular building would be entirely appropriate in my opinion...

The Mind Control Project described in the article isn't that impressive in Urbis, as this can already be done with golems to a certain degree. So let's say that the good folks of Nimdenthal have developed a way of using "mind control helmets" to control devils as cannon fodder. Entirely appropriate for what other hell-tech the city has created, and it does nothing to help their popularity - just like intended.

Next up is the "Major Personalities" category, which translates into important NPCs dwelling in the city. Out of 24 seeds I'm choosing 8 and get:

A Robin Stephens figure would work well as a major investigator/interrogator of the more benevolent remnants of the pseudo-KGB agency - someone determined to root out the corruption of the city without succumbing to corruption himself. He could make a good ally or patron for a group of like-minded PCs. Homer, in contrast, doesn't really fit into the relatively "modern" ambience of the setting as a living poet. But maybe there is a major center of literary research in the city that centers on a particular (fictional) "classical" poet? And to make it more relevant to adventurers, what if his works are examples of Coded Myths which contain secrets of powers for those who can decipher them - including (of course) how to summon otherworldly entities?

Douglas Corrigan doesn't work for Urbis, as there is no real artificial flight except for spells and some very rare prototypes, so I'll just leave him out. P. T. Barnum, on the other hand, would work well - and to make his equivalent more important to adventurers, it might be a good idea to make him a major underworld figure, with the Grand Circus of Nimdenthal a neutral meeting ground for all underworld factions. Naturally, the circus has a few supernatural defenses of its own - including (of course) Monster Clowns.

The Henry Okah equivalent works well as another major underworld figure (we are piling them up here, aren't we)? He's likely active in the Protectorate, possibly in connection with all those horse gangs terrorizing it and keeping a major protection racket going there. Given how important the city considers its self-sufficiency, he will be seen as a major threat to the established order. Bertie Wooster, on the other hand, will work as a comic relief character - a rich heir who gets constantly into trouble and whom the PCs might have to rescue from it.

Fafnir, if we ignore the dragon form, is a dwarf who killed his father to gain his gold. So let's say the richest dwarf in Dartmouth is the son of the former Hidden King (the secret ruler of the dwarf population within a human city) who secretly murdered him to inherit the gold. He is not the new Hidden King - he is considered too shifty for that by the other dwarfs - but he might put his money to use as an underworld loan shark. Like Homer, Abraham doesn't really seem to work here as a living, active personality. But maybe a number of the Protectorates are descended from an Abraham-like figure - representing a splinter sect of one of the established religions which is popular within the region.

We already have lots of political issues apparent in the city so far. But as there's a separate generator with a whooping 107 seeds, we might as well more. Most of these are based on various real world news items, and let's see how we can make them relevant to our city. I pick the maximum of 10 seeds and get:

OK, let's see what we've got here. The first article is about the exploitative way Wal-Mart treats its labor. But Wal-Mart is very much a 20th century American company, so it wouldn't quite fit here. That being said, mistreatment of labor is certainly appropriate for an Industrial Age setting. Maybe there's some company which has recently fired most of its human staff and hired goblins instead, because they are the only ones willing to work under such poor conditions for so little money? Meanwhile, the piracy near the Suez canal can be translated into piracy along the rivers and canals near the city - presumably sponsored by our Henry Okah-like figure.

The clash involving police and religious factions at Iraqi cult sites can easily be converted to the Nimdenthal guard cracking down on certain cults operating within the city - some of which are likely in league with devils (such as our Lilith-analogue). But are the guards hitting the right sites? And even if they are, are they willing to deal with the uproar of the overall religious establishment within the city? The "North Korea Has A Mission" article describes the decaying state of the nation's special forces. The same could be true for the special forces of Nimdenthal - during the time of the previous dictatorship, they were widely feared in the region, but now they are suffering from poor funding and poor morale.

"Mayor Resigns, Claims Abduction By Satan Worshipers"... well, that just fits perfectly in our overal infernal theme for the city, doesn't it? But what's the true story here? Was the mayor an innocent victim of a devil cult? Or is he a former member and the cult was unhappy he turned on them? And when he was "rescued" - was still the same soul inhabiting the body as before? And what impact will that have on the government of the city - and its future?

The "Nazi hunt" can be translated into a hunt for the worst criminals of the old regime. This might not just be a matter of bringing villains to justice (though this might be enough to motivate player characters) - it could also mean finding the people who know where the bodies are buried, and burying them next to said bodies so that nobody else learns about them. Player character bounty hunters might get involved in a very lethal web of intrigue if they pursue this - and will have to wonder if they were ever intended to get the bounty in the first place after finding and eliminating their targets.

The tough drug laws of Dubai could translate into equally tough drug laws here - after all, many of the Flannish Cities are very firm on "public morality", or at least pretend that they are. It is more likely, however, that this is nothing more than the natives protecting their turf and getting the guard to cooperate with them. If foreigners who come here to seek out forbidden pleasures, are stupid enough to get caught, and don't know how to properly bribe the authorities... well, there is no helping some people, is there?

If there is a city in the region where you'd expect witchcraft to manipulate a sports event, then it's probably Nimdenthal from what we've learned. I haven't made up my mind if it's soccer or some other game that was manipulated, though - since I haven't really put any thought into the sports world of the setting. Soccer actually would be appropriate for the period I am aiming for, so maybe I should leave it like it is.

As a young "democracy" and generally very corrupt place, vote fraud should generally be expected here. And who was likely the biggest beneficiary of such fraud? The Mayor - who, as we have learned above, may or may not be under the influence of infernal forces...

We've already learned that Nimdenthal has its own way of approaching the fledgling space race of the setting. But maybe the city has already made a splash - perhaps a prototype Hellgate already exists, but it is still fairly unstable and can only open a connection once per day or so. Still, this is enough for a proof of concept and might make it possible to establish some first colonies on other worlds - giving the city some much-needed infusion of wealth, and allowing it to get the funding for the much larger and more stable Hellgate in the future Death Star building. Just as the devils have planned it...

"Dominant Terrain" is inapplicable here - I already know that Nimdenthal has a Central to Northern European climate. The "Economy" section suffers from far too few seeds to be useful yet, so I will skip it at well. This brings us to "Famous Locations", with 71 seeds. I choose the maximum 5 and get:

So Nimdenthal has some famous educational institution. It would be very appropriate if this represented a school for warlocks in particular, since there are so many of them around (and just what would Hogwart's look like if its students were all would-be devil summoners? Hmmm...). The "Big Well" could be an aborted attempt from an earlier age when the rulers believed that Sheol, the home plane of the devils, was located deep within the planet. But of course, all they were able to reach was Terra Profunda...

The Palisades Rathouse was always one of my favorite locations listed in the Arcana Wiki (a bunch of crazed old women seeing it as their religious Christian duty to feed millions of rats? How cool is that for an adventure seed!), and here it ties in nicely with the rat kings I rolled up earlier. So there is one major rat king spymaster who is attended to by old twin women who worship him and obey his every command - this should work nicely to unsettle visitors. Presumably, the rat king itself will be hidden by a curtain from behind which it sends its telepathic voice...

A "Bad Guy Bar" is, of course, a perfect fit for a city so full of Bad Guys. It will likely be known far beyond the city's protectorate, and serve as a neutral meeting ground for all sorts of shady business. I just need to come up with some sort of unique shtick to make it stand out...

On the other hand, an equivalent of Tara, the old seat of the High Kings of Ireland, doesn't fit into the city itself very well. But it works better for the Protectorate, as the ruins of an old center for the Henge Culture (see the "Regional History" section of the Flannish Cities entry) that dominated the region before the goblin hordes decimated it. Now, perhaps, it has been claimed by a more modern cult (one of many within the protectorate) who have rather fanciful motions about what really happened back then...

Now we come to the final part of the generator - the history of the locale.

A Yasukuni Shrine equivalent is easy to establish - a location that serves as a memorial of the "heroes" of the previous regime which is still maintained despite that regime's atrocities. Similar parallels can be found among modern-day Russians glorifying the times of the Soviet Union, despite the many atrocities during that period. The new people in power might not like it, but they fear backlash should they openly move against it. Thus, the memorial endures and serves as a rallying point for the reactionaries - including many former "Oprichniks" (the fourth random entry) who would have been the thugs death squads of the former regime.

Two of the results revolve around meteorites. Let's tie this together with the "Doomsday Cult In Cave Stand Off" article, and we get the following: A few decades ago or so, a then-14 year old boy gets hit by a meteorite. But instead of giving him 15 minutes of fame, he gets strange powers - including the power to control the minds of others. He slowly builds a cult base (one among many) within the Nimdenthal Protectorate, and manages to turn agents of the former regime into his brainwashed slaves. The agencies of the regimes wise up when it is almost too late, but the witch hunt for the mind-controlled traitors is fierce and the final raid on the cult compound saps much of their remaining strength. Thus, they cannot maintain control and the city-state undergoes a revolution where a new government steps into the power vacuum.

Using the "Californians are sinking themselves" article, it can be assumed that the new government is not able to create a balanced budget - and that the citizens are also spending their money like there's no tomorrow. Quite possibly because they believe there is not going to be a tomorrow...

The "Peshtigo Fire" equivalent could be a historic event which was caused by some powerful devils running amok - in other words, it wasn't just a big fire that destroyed much of the city and the surrounding areas, but actual hellfire. You think the people of Nimdenthal would learn not to meddle with devils...

The "Curse of Tippecanoe" refers to how many American presidents who were inaugurated in certain years died in office. For Nimdenthal, I think I'm going to do something more direct - since the defeat of Negroth the Doombringer, the then-current leaders of Nimdenthal were gruesomely murdered in every thirteenth year. While gruesome murders are in itself not surprising for the city, given its sordid history and character, and many of the murders weren't in any way directly related to the work of some infernal cult, rumors do persist. The one exception was - last year, when the current mayor was abducted by an infernal cult (and everyone assumed that he was as good as dead) but managed to escape. But did he really manage to break the curse? Or did he come back... differently? Again, rumors persist...

Well, that's it for the basic framework of ideas and concepts that the generator has provided - and I have plenty of material now that I can flesh out further now. I hope you enjoyed the ride - and if you have any ideas and suggestions for the Random Nations Generator, I am all ears!

Using the Random Nations Generator

2009-10-11T05:52:15Z

This series of posts is intended to demonstrate how to use the Random Nations Generator at the Arcana Wiki to flesh out a locale. My goal is to both show the usefulness of this tool as a source of inspiration and to encourage others to contribute to the Arcana Wiki by adding new entries which feed into the generator.

For this demonstration, I will use the city-state of Nimdenthal as an example, which I developed for my own Urbis campaign setting. For the record, Urbis uses many of the tropes and elements of fantasy - especially D&D - but combines this with social and technological elements of Industrial Age Western Europe via a magical industrial revolution which continues to transform the world.

So far, I have written the following about Nimdenthal:

"Population: 723,510

This city is infamous for surrendering to the invading armies of Negroth the Doombringer without a fight, and is still hated by the citizens of the other Flannish cities as a result, which suffered far more under his brief reign than Nimdenthal did. That the army of Nimdenthal was hardly able to withstand the might of Negroth's forces on their own is conveniently forgotten. Many other cities still levy large tolls against the goods from Nimdenthal, or boycott them outright. As a result, the people of Nimdenthal take an almost perverse pride in being self-sufficient."

"Negroth the Doombringer", for the record, was one of the last of the stereotypical Evil Overlord types in the setting, and his defeat resulted in a shift from the traditional pseudo-medieval feudal society to a more modern one - complete with revolutions that chased the aristocratic rulers away. However, all this was more than two hundred years ago within the timeline of the setting, and the other people in the region likely wouldn't be able to keep a grudge against Nimdenthal for so long if the city hadn't found new ways of aggravating them - and thus reminding them of their earlier "transgression" of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys against an overwhelming military onslaught. I'll keep this in mind as I interpret the results of the generator.

So, let's proceed to the generator itself. The first category is "Type of Government", which currently has only 6 seeds (i.e. entries from elsewhere in the Arcana Wiki which are called up in the random generator) - not much, but since this is the first time I am using the generator for this I don't have to worry about repetition yet.

I pick a single type of government for starters, and the result is:

Cosociational State

That means that the city has a number of very different factions - political, cultural, religions, or even racial - which all rule together in some power-sharing arrangement made so that no single faction can dominate the others and no faction is kept out of power. The precise nature of most of these factions is something I will determine with the help of later results. However, keeping in mind my overall goal of having Nimdenthal alienate its neighbors, I already have an idea for one of them - goblins! In most of the region, goblins are second-class citizens at best - even when they are tolerated within a city, they are often forcibly sterilized, and when they aren't tolerated they are forcibly transported to a reservation where most of them starve. So having goblins as a more-or-less equal political group within Nimdenthal is sure to offend the other city-states in the region - and might make the city more sympathetic to the player characters, despite all the other problems the city might have.

Speaking of other races, next up is the generator for the major races or species. This generator will likely not be terribly useful - for one thing, it only has 14 seeds at present, and for another it is based on creatures from all sorts of myths, fiction, and so forth while Urbis already has a fairly firmly established group of races based on D&D. Still, I'm picking 5 random races - let's see if something inspiring results from this:

Monopods are entirely inappropriate for the setting - they are a particular medieval form of silliness which doesn't work for Urbis. Mermaids do exist, but a look at the map of the region shows that Nimdenthal is too far from any large body of water to justify their presence.

"Reptilian Humanoids" is a fairly vague term. But it's close enough to describe dragonkin, my equivalent to the dragonborn of D&D. So I'll just note that they have a major colony there, and worry about the details later.

Devils... are an interesting matter. In Urbis, devils are extraplanar parasites which feed on humans in the throes of particularly strong emotions and passions, possibly even their souls if they die while experiencing those emotions. Needless to say, they aren't accepted openly in any civilized nation, and Nimdenthal is no exception in this. However, maybe Nimdenthal is home to an especially large number of warlocks - those are mages who overpower devils with their strength of will and then steal their powers to cast spells. This is a far quicker road to power than traditional academic wizardry, but also much more dangerous - and while not illegal by itself in most places in the region, it carries a significant social stigma. Furthermore, not all such attempts to control devils succeed, which means that there might be more than a few devils lurking around in the shadow of the city and influencing politics and society - making handy foes for player characters. And the warlocks could represent one of the major political factions of the city - further alienating the city from its neighbors.

Onocentaurs don't exist in the setting so far, but maybe there is a small colony of their close conceptual cousins the centaurs living near the city. I can't really see many centaurs living in the city itself (which is more built for humanoids), but maybe there is a small colony of centaurs living in the protectorate of Nimdenthal who are descended from former slaves Negroth the Doombringer brought with him and who were unable to return to their homeland. They could work as border guards, or on the plantations of the city where their great strength and carrying capacity would be useful and their size less of a hindrance.

Next up is the category for the "Significant Creatures" - the non-civilized or organized beings (intelligent or otherwise) which might be encountered here. As the number of seeds for this category is a much more robust 41, I pick ten and get:

Squids might seem inappropriate for an urban, inland setting, but I've already created an equivalent creature for Urbis that could work here - the Sewer Squid. Still, it is strange that they should show up so far from the coast. Maybe there's a story here...

I have some doubts about how well trapdoor alligators works for this location, especially since the habitat of normal alligators is that much further to the south - Nimdenthal has a Central to Northern European climate. And the old "alligator in the sewers" urban legend seems to be too simple. Maybe there is some strange, reptilian monstrosity with illusion powers living in the sewers and the poorer areas of the city - possibly one of fiendish origin, accidentally or deliberately summoned by the warlocks? I'll think about this later.

Nagas probably exist within the setting, though I hadn't given them any thoughts so far. The geography of Urbis is roughly analogous to the real world, so there is likely an equivalent to South-East Asia, the region on Earth where the myths of nagas come from. But how did the nagas get from there to far-off Nimdenthal? Probably together with an expatriate community of people from that region, but I'd expect such expatriates to congregate in port towns such as Dartmouth instead of a relative backwater like Nimdenthal. There is a story here which I need to explore. Furthermore, this expatriate community could represent one of the many political factions within the city.

Interestingly, the Patasola is also from South-East Asian legend - it's a type of vampire that can create the illusion of a beautiful woman to lure men, but which is a hideous one-legged creature in its true form. But is it truly "one-legged", or is it in fact tailed? Could the Patasola in fact be an undead naga? I will likely use this interpretation here - one powerful villain living in secret in the city will be an undead naga (possibly with several spawn), and they hide within the expatriate community just like the ordinary nagas are doing. Perhaps there is some shadow war going on between the living and undead nagas...

The Aufhocker exists in Urbis as a creature of Faerie, but I've always envisioned him more as a creature home in the mountains and foothills of the Siebenbund Alps and the surrounding areas. And I'm showcasing the fey in enough other places in Urbis and thus don't need them complicating affairs in Nimdenthal - unlike the Immortal Elves of Shadowrun, my faeries aren't supposed to be behind everything ;). Therefore I'll just skip this one.

Sasquatchs aren't very appropriate here either - a creature of the American Pacific Northwest doesn't fit into this reason. But maybe there is a single, hairy humanoid of indeterminable origin lurking in the forests near the city - perhaps the result of some arcane experiment. Maybe the centaurs know more of this creature... I will see if I can make something interesting out of this later. In contrast I don't know how I can make bunyips work here, so I won't even try - there are only so many cross-mythological transplants one location can endure.

"Nephilim" is what I wanted to call the Urbis equivalent of the devas of D&D - immortals who are reborn again and again into new bodies with only hazy memories of their past. I guess I need to write up details for them now - and come up with an explanation why Nimdenthal is important for them.

Rat Kings are entirely appropriate for the setting, and tend to appear at locations where is a lot of filth and waste for rats to thrive in. So the city will likely have one or more neighborhoods where such conditions are common. They might even be secret power brokers - as I envision them, Rat Kings have telepathic over lesser rats, and thus could develop a very effective spy network.

As lichs are very powerful individually, I think I'll just describe one of them - one who doesn't control any of the public political factions but who is politically very powerful nonetheless in the underground.

The next generator lists cultural influences - cultures which might provide inspiration for building fictional societies. I'm not really satisfied with that part of the generator yet - not because of the number of its seeds (a respectable 55), but because most of the linked entries are stub articles with little or no cultural information added to them. Nevertheless, I choose three cultural influences and get:

While there is a Switzerland analogue in Urbis already - the Siebenbund - this still works because Switzerland is a good example of a Cosociational State (as the country has four different language groups), and it might be useful for me to read up on how these groups divide political power in Switzerland among themselves. I have no idea yet what to do with the Czech Republic result - I guess I should read up assorted Wikipedia entries on the nation. If anyone here has useful suggestions, I am all ears.

Israel, on the other hand, has all sorts of tensions which are very messy in real life, but makes things very interesting when it comes to gaming. While the occupation of the Palestine territories is hard to transplant in this case - Nimdenthal doesn't strike me as powerful enough to do that - the tensions between secular and religious groups would work. And maybe there are Kibbutz-like settlements in the protectorate of the city...

Next up is religion. I haven't actually gotten around to typing up any entries for the type of worship (Monotheism, Polytheism, Dualism etc.), so no results for this category. Urbis also already has its own pantheon, so the 10 entities used as seeds in this generator likely won't be very appropriate. Nevertheless, I'm choosing three deities. Let's see what we get:

Heimdall is a god of vigilance. Looking at the Urbis pantheon, a reasonable approximation would be Bucatar, a god who protects civilization against the wilderness - whether the wilderness without or the wilderness within. And given how wild some parts of Nimdenthal seem to be, with rat kings, naga vampires, liches, warlocks, devils and so forth, it's easy to see how such a god might be popular. Jörmungandr is more difficult to place, as most of the deities of Urbis are fairly antropomorphic in popular imagination. But perhaps there is a relation to the illusion-casting reptilian monster in the sewer? Perhaps a cult consisting mainly of goblins worships it... Lillith, on the other hand, fits in well with the devils and warlocks mentioned above. She could represent a devil lord worshiped within the underworld of the city, and who can command devils feeding on lust and related emotions.

Now we come to powerful organizations operating within the city. There are 26 seeds for this generator, so I'll pick eight of them to avoid too much repetition with future uses of the generator. I get:

An equivalent of the "Royal Navy" just doesn't work here as Nimdenthal is land-locked, so I'll just skip this entry. The Real World "Russian Business Network" is an organized crime group specializing in cybercrime. Urbis doesn't have computers and the internet yet (though it does have optical telegraphs), so I'll create a group specializing in forging paperwork instead (of which Urbis has lots). The next group is also involved in organized crime, but instead of forging paperwork they are criminal mercenaries with some nice elements of a death cult in the form of Santa Muerte worship. This translates into a cult of Cryelis (the local deity of death and the underworld) for Urbis. And I must say that Nimdenthal is slowly shaping up into the Urbis equivalent of Gotham City in my mind - a city that's barely functional and full of grime, corruption, and madness. Does the city also have its own Dark Avenger? That is probably up to the player characters to decide...

Something like the International Peace Mission Movement probably wouldn't fit in very well in the sinful city itself, but they could live on one of the kibbutz-like settlements dotting the Nimdenthal Protectorate - in fact many of these settlements could be home to their own cult or sect. Such as the Spring Seeds, a cult of halflings who believe that their race is "divinely chosen" and regard it as their sacred duty to multiply as quickly as possible until they crowd out the other races...

But there's more going on in the protectorate. Obviously, there are no motorcycles in Urbis, so Biker Gangs and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs can't exist there as such (the two terms are of course overlapping somewhat - which is unavoidable with such a relatively grainy generator, so I will just have to live with it). But maybe there is an overabundance of horses in this region, causing many young people to own them and riding in large groups through the countryside. Some are harmless "joyriders" while others will use their mobility to harass travelers and plunder farms - and it's hard to distinguish these groups from each other...

A further group is based on the KGB. But given how chaotic the situation in the city is, I don't think the KGB as it existed at the height of the Soviet Union would be appropriate. For our purposes, maybe it would be better if there used to be an organization as powerful as the KGB while the city government was more dictatorial. But perhaps a decade or two ago the city underwent a more or less democratic "revolution" that swept the old guard out of power and caused the KGB-equivalent to be disbanded. But the old members of the organization still keep in touch and are often involved in organized crime, and many have risen to prominent positions in the new administration. These might form the basis for the "Deep State" equivalent, the secret masterminds hiding behind the public face of the government who want to remain in charge.

To be continued...

World's Creepiest Pillow

2009-10-09T12:05:20Z

So this is what happens when you add robotics to pillows...

Technically, it's not NSFW, but it certainly has some rather disturbing implications...

It's Official: Obama Wins The Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T09:40:14Z

Story here.

I have to admit, this decision mystifies me. I mean, as much as I like the guy, he's only been in office for nine months - and his most important foreign policy accomplishment is that he's not George W. Bush.

Which is a huge accomplishment, don't take me wrong - but still, is it really worth a Nobel Peace Price? Shouldn't they have waited a few more years of his work in office before making such a decision?

Kindle International

2009-10-07T06:16:35Z

On the upside, Amazon is finally making the Kindle available around the world.

On the downside, people outside of the USA apparently have both a more limited selection and have to pay significantly higher prices for Kindle ebooks.

Oh, and for anyone who lives out of the USA and has used the old gift certificate trick to get around the geographical limitations: That trick does no longer work. As I've discovered this morning.

So say hello to a more limited selection and higher prices...

"What May Happen In The Next Hundred Years"

2009-10-06T13:48:34Z

Interesting article from the year 1900.

All in all, fairly accurate too. Though it's a shame about the pneumatic tubes...

For the RPGNet Members here...

2009-10-06T04:58:58Z

The Tangency Open RPGNet sub-forum (which requires login to view) has recently started using a new tag for certain very special topics:

Pleasing To The Ebon Dragon

This amused me greatly, though you have to be a fan of the Exalted RPG to understand it...

"Unseen Academicals" by Terry Pratchett

2009-10-01T03:25:52Z

I have it.

I bought it yesterday afternoon in a local bookstore. And today I'll be going on a 7.5 h train trip as I cross Germany from West to East. Plenty of time to read it...

German Federal Elections - The Day After

2009-09-28T08:50:46Z

As a followup to this entry:

Well, the preliminary results are in, and they are about what I expected - though I'm not exactly happy about them. The results break down as following:

CDU/CSU: 33.8% (of which the CDU gets 27.3% and the CSU gets 6.5%)
SPD: 23.0%
FDP: 14.6%
Linke: 11.9%
Grüne: 10.7%
Piraten: 2.0%

Let's look at what this means for the individual parties (again, compare with my previous entry).

- CDU: They are down a bit from 27.8% during the previous elections - which is historically very low for them, but they still get to be in charge of the new government (with Angela Merkel as the Once and Future Chancellor), so they aren't really complaining very loudly. And they can now ditch the SPD as a coalition partner (which they were never really happy with) and instead form a coalition with the FPD, which they have done often enough (most notably under Helmut Kohl). The more interesting question is how they are going to deal with their coalition partners - read on.

- SPD: This is a historical, devastating loss for the party, down even from their dismal showing of 34.2% during the previous elections. For the foreseeable future, the party will likely be preoccupied with finding a new direction and new leadership. Every high-ranking SPD member who participated in the previous government will be hopelessly tainted by this loss, so new leadership will likely only emerge from one of the SPD prime ministers of the various German states. The only one who springs to mind is the mayor of the state of Berlin, Klaus Wovereit, who has been leading a government coalition with the Linke since 2001 - but that would likely require the western parts of the SPD to shed their current inhibitions about any cooperation with the Linke. But I suspect that they will jump that fence in time. Not that I consider it a good idea to make the Linke part of a federal government, mind you...

- FDP: They are riding strong, having improved their percentage from 9.8% in the previous election. Guido Westerwelle, their leader, is looking very smug at the moment, and who can blame him? He will likely become Germany's next foreign minister, after all. This might have been a bit more amusing if the Bush administration had been still in office - I would have loved seeing all those conservative American politicians having shake hands with someone who is openly gay. But really, I am worried more about the future economic policies of Germany. Mind you, I agree with the FDP that lots of economic subsidies are unnecessary (like all those "rescue efforts" for the German car industry, especially Opel). But I'm deeply worried that they will let all those investment banks and other financial institutes do whatever they want (they are among the FDP's main sponsors), and wasn't that kind of attitude what led to the current financial collapse in the first place? Well, maybe they will at least be more serious about individual civil liberties and stand up to our current Minister of the Interior Schäuble (who has a hard-on for things like snooping on citizens and sending the German army into Germany for what should be police work) and our Minister for Family Affairs von der Leyen (who wants to introduce Internet Censorship that doesn't really work for its declared purpose, but would give the government a heavy-handed instrument for regulating Internet sites - all in order to "Protect The Children!"). One can hope.

- Linke: They reached their stated goal of sucking off large numbers of disaffected SPD voters, improving from 8.7% during the previous elections. But I don't really see them ready for the responsibility of being part of the federal government - the party masks too many internal divisions to create a coherent policy. And any serious government work would only showcase those divisions, which means they are probably quite happy with their opposition role right now. Whether they will make further gains will largely depend on whether the SPD gets its act together or not - and how spectacular the internal fights of the Linke are going to be. I don't want to see them as part of the federal government - I consider their economic policies dubious (taxing the rich won't get as much money as they think, and economic protectionism is poison to an export-oriented economy like that of Germany), they are far too cozy with various dictatorships like Cuba or Venezuela (and a few have even voiced their support for Ahmadinejad during the recent unrests, buying his claims that these unrests were instigated by "the West"), and far too many members seem to pine back for the Good Old Days of East Germany before the Wall came down.

- Grüne: They improved their votes from 8.1% during the last elections, but not so much as the other small parties - and now they have to ask themselves what to do next. The party base strongly prefers a coalition with the SPD, but that seems unlikely for the foreseeable future due to that party's weakness. Maybe, in four more years they will be more ready to enter a coalition with the CDU/CSU (especially if the FDP loses some of its shine during its time in the government). I hope they do - time is running out for a number of environmental issues, especially Global Warming, and I don't see any of the other parties being as serious about this. A government with the Greens in it might help establish Germany's leadership in environmental technologies (and furthermore influence EU policies in that field), and that's really something that's more important than avoiding particular possible coalitions because of dislike for the other party.

- CSU: They are the other big losers of this elections, climbing down from 7.4% during the previous election. This translates into only 41% of all votes in Bavaria, which is a historical low for them. It also raises the question of how many ministers they should get in the government. In previous CDU-CSU-FDP coalitions, they insisted with parity with the FDP - which was credible since they also tended to have a similar number of votes during the elections. But now that the FDP has more than twice the number of votes, this argument no longer holds, which contrasts with their self-image ("Yes, we are a Bavaria-only party - but we are also important at the federal level in Berlin! No, really - stop laughing!"). It also doesn't help that prominent CSU members couldn't resist making frequent pot shots at the FDP. The coalition negotiations are likely to be vicious behind those closed doors...

- Piratenpartei: Getting 2% of the vote at their first try is impressive for the Pirate Party, especially since the Greens only got 1.5% at their first federal election, back in 1980. They won't get a seat in the Bundestag (the German parliament), since they failed to get at least 5% of the vote (or a simple majority in any single voting district). However, as they received more than 1% of the vote they will receive reimbursement from federal funds for each vote they received, which should allow them to continue operating for a while. Now they have to figure out how to continue operating and what they want to stand for. If they can continue to establish an Internet-enabled community of party members and sympathizers that continues to attract younger people, they might have a future. It all depends on the future leadership of core party members whether they can keep their momentum going or fall into infighting.

Oh, right - there's an election going on...

2009-09-27T06:28:20Z

Today, there are federal elections here in Germany. But somehow, there isn't any excitement about them in the air. I mean, electoral campaigns in Germany tend to be much, much shorter than in the USA - only 8 weeks or so, although politicians tend to make potshots at each other long before that. Even so, the whole campaign seems subdued this time. Heck, the German media had far more comprehensive reports about the American elections than about ours.

Part of the reason is that the two largest parties - which usually drive the election - have actually been together as a government coalition in the last four years. So they can't criticize each other too harshly, or else others will ask: "Why didn't you do anything about this issue, then?"

But anyway, let's look at the parties involved in this election:

- Christlich-Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union, "CDU"): The main "conservative" party, as the word "Christian" in their name indicate, although they are screaming hippie liberals by American standards. They are somewhat pro-market, but they have few problems with massive subsidies and assistance to favorite industries (such as the German car industry) as long as it gets them votes. They also like to cast themselves as the "Law and Order" party, and their minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, is responsible for any number of atrocities against civil liberties. They are currently the largest party, and will likely remain so - so you will probably continue to see Angela Merkel as our chancellor meeting with your head of state or government in the next four years. The main question in this election is whether they and the FDP (see below) will get enough votes to form a new coalition together (which would be their preferred option), or if they will have to form a coalition with the SPD (see below) again.

- Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, "SPD"): The current junior coalition partner of the CDU, the SPD has been in steady decline during the last decade and it shows in the polls. The previous SPD-Green (see below) coalition under Chancellor Schröder has instituted many necessary reforms which boosted the economy again but alienated many members of the party base, many of whom skipped to the Linke (see below), and they have enormous troubles attracting new young people to their party. Furthermore, their party members have traditionally been factory workers, miners, and other people from the more industrial parts of the German economy. With those fields in decline (the mines are no longer worth it, and manufacturing is increasingly automated), their base is crumbling. It is likely that they will continue to decline unless the Linke breaks apart again.

- Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party, FDP): This is the main pro-business and pro-civil liberties party - essentially, what many American small government conservatives wish the Republicans would be. Their calls for reductions of taxes and subsidies are frequent. They also are strong proponents of individual civil rights and have no deep connections to any religious establishments (unlike the CDU) - in fact, their current leader, Guido Westerwelle, is openly gay. The eleven years they've been out of power have been good to them, and they are now the third largest party. They hope to form a coalition with the CDU but have openly refused to form a so-called "traffic lights" coalition (with the Social Democrats and the Greens).

- Die Grünen (Greens): The existence of the German Green party is probably one of the main driving forces behind Environmentalism becoming mainstream in Germany - all parties at least pay lip service to it, and no one really disputes Global Warming. They are doing reasonably well in the polls at the moment, but their problem is that they are unlikely to become a member in the next government coalition. While in some states and cities the party has formed a coalition with the CDU, the party base is too strongly opposed to doing it at a federal level - so a so-called "Jamaica Coalition" (CDU/CSU - FDP - Greens) is unlikely to happen. And they won't get enough votes with the SPD alone - and there is strong resistance to any coalition with the Linke in both SPD and the Greens, even if this three-party coalition could get enough votes.

- Die Linke (Leftist Party): This party formed recently out of the remnants of the old East German Socialist government party and disgruntled former West German SPD members (most notably Oskar Lafontaine, who stepped down from his position as a finance minister under the Schröder government over a hissy fit with Schröder). The losses of the SPD has been the gain of the Linke, and they are doing very well in the polls. However, even if members of any other party could stomach sitting in the same government as Lafontaine, the party has major internal divisions which could prove problematic once they are a member of a federal government. Their East German blocks have now been part of state governments often enough to be able to work as a member of a team, but there are too many remnants who are still far too fond of old East Germany. Their West German members tend to range from disgruntled anti-capitalists to outright deranged would-be utopians, and thus likely incapable of doing serious government work. And the party as a whole is far too prone to praising all sorts of dictators, like Ahmadinejad or Ghaddafi - you don't really get the impression that their commitment to democracy is more than skin deep. And if they become a coalition member, many investors will flee the country, and many companies will think twice about expanding their business here. The solution of the Linke for this problem? Tax the rich!

- Christlich-Soziale Union (Christian-Social Union, CSU): Similar to the CDU, with the difference that the CSU is strictly limited to Bavaria (which the CDU stays out of). They form a voting block with the CDU during federal elections (called the "Union"), and they always insist on having a number of important ministries in any coalition in which they are a member. Their power derives from the fact that they have held a choke hold on Bavarian politics ever since WWII (and Bavaria is the second most populous state of Germany), reliably getting an absolute majority during elections. Throughout all this they have maintained an atmosphere of folksy, paternalist corruption which somehow still managed to make Bavaria the most prosperous state of Germany. However, they are in trouble lately - after the state elections in Bavaria last year, they were forced to enter into a coalition with the FDP for the first time, and they need a better voter turnout to justify their prominence in federal politics in the future.

- Piratenpartei (Pirate Party): The newest party to arrive on the scene, it is unlikely that the pirate party will make it to the federal parliament - this time. They are unlikely to get the minimum 5% of the vote this would require. However, they do seem to be fairly effective at reaching out to the youngest voters, as the issues they stand for - mainly free and uninhibited use of the Internet and all its opportunities - strikes a chord with them. It also doesn't help that the establishment of the other major parties is demonstrably clueless about the Internet (they are too old to have grown up with it and rarely use it), and tend to react to any new challenges with further regulation and legislation. Maybe the pirate party can make it at the next elections...

Is Putin a Bond Supervillain?

2009-09-15T09:17:48Z

This article on the Russian apartment bombings of 1999 was originally published by GQ magazine, but they decided not to publish it on their website. They are also not selling their current issue in Russia. Understandably perhaps, as it has quite a few allegations that the current Russian government can't be glad to hear aired in public.

Is it just me, or does Vladimir Putin seem more and more like a supervillain from a James Bond movie?

Just saw this on YouTube

2009-09-10T17:22:10Z

Yet More Impressions of the iRex DR1000S

2009-09-08T15:05:52Z

Continued from my previous posts on this topic.

- I've discovered that the iRex makes a noise while it is on - a very slight noise just at the edge of hearing, but a noise nonetheless. It sounds somewhat like the noises of an operating fax machine, only at a much lower volume. It drove me nuts during a few evenings when I wanted to sleep and couldn't figure out where the noise was coming on. My alternate theory was that somewhere in my apartment there was an old bottle of juice with a not-quite-closed cap whose contents were slowly fermenting and generating gases...

- Yesterday, I tested how long a full battery charge lasts, and I discovered that it lasts not quite long enough for a lengthy conference - you need to plug it into a power source. I had bought an USB charger for this purpose (the device recharges via its USB port), but wasn't able to do that for long enough during the conference. So on the train journey back to Aachen, I plugged the iRex into the laptop to recharge it (which I had been able to recharge fully), and probably looked pretty silly doing so.

Ironically, the conference was about a major German research initiative about improving the performance of Lithium Ion batteries - the same type of batteries the iRex uses. So you could say I have a direct personal stake in this project. And the iRex made for a nice conversation piece at the conference...

- It is likely that one of the reasons the battery discharges so quickly is its stylus-sensitive surface. You can switch that off, but you have to muck around with the settings to do that. It would be much more convenient if you could do this with a simple button click in the main menu...

- A "standby mode" would also be nice to have. The Kindle has this - you press two buttons simultaneously, and it doesn't react to any input until you press those two buttons again. You can leave it in this way for days without its battery charge decreasing significantly. The iRex is either on or off - and in the "on" mode, its battery drains like crazy...

- One very nice feature of the iRex is that you can open several documents simultaneously - they appear as tabs on the right side, and a simple click with the stylus (or with some further clicking in the main menu) you can switch between them. The Kindle doesn't permit that - if you want to switch between two documents, you have to close the old one and then find the new one in the main document list on your Kindle - which, as I have mentioned, doesn't permit you any way of organizing them into subfolders. And if you want to switch back to your previous document, you have to do all that again.

- Unfortunately, you need this feature to deal with a rather annoying bug. When I try to open relatively large documents (I have tested this frequently with the 41 MB Eclipse Phase RPG), then after the device attempts to load it it simply returns to the folder without displaying it either on the screen or on a tab. The only way around this which I have figured out is to wait five minutes or so, and then try to open one or more smaller PDFs. Eventually, the large PDF will show among the tabs as well.

I've pointed out a large number of problems with the iRex in this and my previous posts. Does this mean that I regret my purchase?

In a word, no. It is still highly useful for reading all sorts of documents which I use both at work and in my free time. The stylus-based annotation function is very useful indeed. But I can only recommend this device to others if you can not only justify purchasing this device now, but also believe that you will have the available budget in two years or so to purchase a newer, better model.

Perhaps iRex will address some of these issues with future software updates. But right now, potential buyers need to be aware of them before making their buying decision.

In Other News...

2009-09-07T16:49:32Z

There was a notification in my letterbox today which informed me that there is a certified letter which I can get from my local postal office tomorrow.

It was addressed to "Dr. rer. nat. Jürgen Hubert". I guess that can only mean one thing...

Bomb Scare!

2009-08-31T17:39:52Z

When I walked home from work, I discovered that one of the main traffic knots of Aachen, the Hansemannplatz, was cordoned off by the police. Apparently, there was a bomb threat in one of the buildings surrounding the place.

But it seems to be over now. Apparently, it was just some loser who got into a knife fight in a nearby street and then ran off to hide in his apartment. He threatened to blow up himself and threw down random objects into the street until the Spezialeinsatzkommando (German police special forces) forced their way in and arrested him.

Further Impressions of the iRex DR1000S

2009-08-26T11:57:35Z

Continued from this post...

- This is likely because I am mostly reading large, graphics-intensive PDF files (such as Scientific American), but the iRex runs a lot faster through its battery charge than my Kindle. Which is not really surprising - rescaling high-resolution graphics require a lot more processing power than merely rescaling text. Still, having to plug in the device every day is fairly annoying, especially since it takes several hours to fully recharge (and the lithium-ion rechargeable battery the iRex uses is a type which you should try to keep close to its maximum charge to prolong battery life).

- I'm also wondering why they made the design decision not to permit users replace the battery on their own (without losing warranty) - instead, you have to send the device to their service center to do it for you. Not only does this mean you can't use the device for possibly several weeks (and their customer service hasn't exactly impressed me so far), but it also puts a lot of strain on the work resources of iRex Technologies. Why couldn't they have made the battery separable so that customers could buy and replace new batteries on their own?

- Sometimes when trying to move on to the next page in a PDF document the device gets "stuck" - nothing happens even if you wait for several minutes. Clicking on the menu button and then closing the menu usually helps you unstuck it. Usually. But a few times only a reset has helped...

- On the plus side, the zoom function of the device is rather nifty. I dragged the zoom symbol from the menu to the task bar, and when I click on the symbol I can encircle a portion of the page with the stylus and the display zooms in on that portion. When I click on another symbol, the page reverts to its original size. Simple and powerful. I wonder how the Kindle DX handles zooming...

- Drawing on the device with Xournal takes some time to get used to. It's similar to drawing with a biro or a permanent marker - without adding any pencil sketches first to help you with the drawing. Sure, it is possible to undo individual strokes, but using the menu with the stylus takes so much time that I rarely bother with it. Here is a first landscape sketch I made on the iRex. Let's see if I get better in the future...

Scientific Materialism: You're Next!

2009-08-23T11:52:00Z

I've mentioned the activities of one William Dempski at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary before. Here is some new information on his courses - some of his exam questions, to be specific. Apart from the usual demands of arguing for Intelligent Design, I found this part to be particularly interesting:

"You are the Templeton Foundation's new program director and are charged with overseeing its programs and directing its funds. Sketch out a 20-year plan for defeating scientific materialism and the evolutionary worldview it has fostered if you had $50,000,000 per year in current value to do so. What sorts of programs would you institute? How would you spend the money?"

Personally, I think that if this question is more than hypothetical, it would make the Templeton Foundation into an awesome villain for Heroic Scientist PCs in a near-future RPG campaign to oppose.

And we need more Heroic Scientist PCs!