We’re going to sea today for 8 days. Before I go, here’s one more update. We’ve been working like crazy getting the ship ready for sea and still had time to open the ship for the Seafarers Festival.
Read more...Wednesday was an interesting day. We’re working to get the ship ready for the voyage season. Some of the tasks I was working on:
One of the first decisions I made concerning Z+ is that the display area will be constrained to 80 columns and 25 rows, because that’s how it used to be. There’s a better reason than my nostalgia, though. If I ever make a multiplayer version, it stops higher resolutions from having a huge advantage. Besides, the latest version of libfake437 can scale its display to fill larger screens.
Read more...Earlier this week, the Danish ketch Yukon arrived in Hobart and berthed over behind Lady Nelson. She’s a beautiful old thing built in 1930 and she’s on a world tour at the moment. I think she leaves Hobart on Tuesday. I haven’t had the privilege of going below decks, but apparently she still has a wood-fired stove!
Read more...I have a problem with my personal projects. I start lots of them, but I never manage to finish any. There’s a common thread that runs through my various failures: my projects start with a grand vision, and when I try to implement them I become overwhelmed trying to hold the design and the half-finished structures in my head at the same time.
I’m going to try something different this time: publicly write stuff down. I normally write a a page or two of chicken scrawl and it’s never clear enough.
Read more...I finished another audiobook this morning: Mark Twain’s The Awful German Language. I’m not sure what to think about this reading. I enjoyed the material, but the reader sounds like a German Pravin Lal. It’s good that the reading was done by a native German speaker, especially when Twain makes fun of German compound words.
I imagine it would be a more entertaining piece if I actually knew German. Even so, Twain comes up with great lines like “I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
To my untrained ear, the deadpan reading of the giant compound works makes them sound especially amusing, but the same effect occurs when I instead read the apparent jumble of letters in written form.
Overall, I think it’s worth enjoying, but read the text instead of worrying about the audiobook. Either way, it’s fairly short.
I have finished another book. Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This is the work that introduced the term “undead”, which previously only meant “alive”. The narrative is mostly told through the diaries of the characters, along with occasional news clippings.
At this point in time, everyone knows what’s going to happen. Count Dracula is a vampire. Vampires have sharp teeth, nocturnal habits and bite people. Even though I had been “spoilered” by popular culture, I still enjoyed the read. Stoker does a marvellous job maintaining tension through the later parts of the story.
Worth reading? Probably. RPG players may be particularly interested as a study in storytelling-by-diary. As part of a hypothetical campaign, players could find diary entries as they progress, each fragment answering some questions but opening new mysteries.
Unsurprisingly, the most interesting work is that which involves learning new skills. The newest skill I’ve learned is whipping: wrapping a thin cord tightly around a splice end or line end to stop it from coming undone. The result is quite attractive:
That’s some of my handiwork. The knife’s mine, too, and I tied the knotwork on the lanyard myself. I’ll probably write about that later, once I finish the lanyard set.
It’s been less than two months and I’ve had to switch to my backup pair of Volleys. My first pair have turned into a salt-encrusted mess and I’ve worn a hole clear through the sole. Aside from the durability issue, Volleys work well: they’re flexible, grippy, fast-drying and comfortable. Anyone know of a better replacement?
One of my favourite things to do on my days off is to switch on an audiobook and go for a walk around. There’s a lot of really good scenery surprisingly close to the ship.
Read more...