Death To The World

Death May Die

There are some people out there with time on their hands, and twitter has become their medium to be standups amongst the crowd. I thought I would drop a list of choice ones, along with some examples.

@God_Damn_Batman gives us the Dark Knight’s inner monologue.

@FeministHulk shows us that the green machine has a softer side, and really hates the partiarchy.

You can gain real insight into the future of Irish Government finances with @RealBLenihan

@DrSamuelJohnson provides COMMENTARY and WIT in ye form of DEFINITIONS suitable for the GENTRY:

Lord@darthvader will choke you if you don’t RT him.

Leprecon was fantastic, even though my work schedule interfered with any actual gaming other than the pub quiz. (We came in second place, but it was a good and fun pub quiz which is the important thing.) I finally made it to Goldsmith hall Sunday evening long enough to do a circuit around the main room then head across the street for a quick dinner with friends. After that I broke from the Leprecon party and hashed out the future of my weekly game, then met up with Himself for the walk home.

As far as cons go, I know nothing about how well it went or whether it was a Good Con. My part was essentially attending a party that went on for three nights. I love going out with my friends on “normal” nights, but there’s something extra special about the con setup where everyone in an extended social circle is in the same pub, and you can drift from group to group. I know none of this is news to people who have been here all their lives, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a Dublin con (9 years!). I got to hang out with lots of people I wish I could spend more time with, and that’s a good thing.

Crossposted at DixieStix.

Friday night I attended a staff meeting, my first with This is Knit. We went over the stuff that needed going over, then we broke out the wine and pizza and crochet hooks. Our all-star crochet teacher had agreed to come and teach us to crochet, as most of us weren’t that familiar with the technique and we decided it was time for all of us to broaden our horizons. They were duly broadened.

Saturday night we had belated birthday pints for the Wanderer and cb, who share a birthday. I hadn’t seen cb since Christmas, so it was great to spend time with him and the clutch of other friends who showed up. I think everyone had a good time; I know I did, and I’m pretty sure both birthday boys did. I don’t go out as often these days as I used to, but nearly every time ends up being a great night. This is one of the many reasons I was so excited to get back to Dublin.

I’m very close to being done with the third log cabin block for my sock yarn leftovers blanket. I never photographed the second block, but I finally draped this one over a chair and took a picture for y’all:

The next block will be dominated by Koigu in the middle, as I’ve been swapping sock yarn bits with a friend. I’m excited about getting it started, and about retiring this block. It saw me through my thesis writing, and a lot of the stress of moving here. It deserves to rest a little while with the first two blocks.

I haven’t been blogging as much on Cobweb lately; when I end up blogging things that aren’t solely about knitting, I’ll crosspost them here. Otherwise, I’ll sequester them away at DixieStix so those who are not fibre-inclined don’t need to wade through endless knitting content.

http://twitter.com/wilw/status/6066780142

I am shocked, shocked. The stalinist show trial will follow.

In preparing for the zombie post apocalypse, what era should one plan to? I mean, modern ‘Green Zone’ planning, where its just precast concrete barriers, razor wire and the ‘fortified’ bit is the fact that its stuffed full of GI’s doesn’t suit. Go back and there are genuine hard-to-effect entry things like the Flaktowers of Berlin, but those were again mostly tricky because they were stuffed with motivated soldiers.

Hm… I’m seeing a theme here. I will in fact require a militia. Or a bunch of sentry guns. I’d expect ammo to get scarce after a decade or two but if I haven’t come to an accord with the local warlords (possibly by looking in the mirror) then I should have tried harder. The wizard in his tower doesn’t work against the pitchfork wielding mob. Best defense is a good offense as ever.

Self contained complex, something with a biodiesel still, a windmill, some sort of water purification that would be a good hardpoint to work out of, but its no point sitting behind walls waiting for people to leave you alone (not without beam weapons and a willingness to pull a Sauron). The provision of services/assumption of the roles of the state is textbook 4G insurgency so – prepositioning is the trick here.

Though… a decent mix of renewables running one of those origami forges and a 3D plastics extruder would be able to make flocks of drones. Hm. But explosives would be costly as would chemicals for nerve gas and the like – ah! unless I could figure out some sort of venom harvesting from things that would eat things that live out near Hazelwood – (provisional plan would be to fortify Church Island – Loch Gill being a big damn moat) so… etched graphite circuits on folded cellulose (wood, I will have) dive-bombing poison drones. Though really, if we’re going to sustainable weapons systems, then it has to be biowarfare.

Though a spare tank or two of VX to dump into the lake should it become necessary do deter restless locals would be handy. Wouldn’t be able to go out in warm weather after that, probably wouldn’t be good for the fish either. Not the best end game, really, sitting on an island in the midst of a poison lake of death.

On the basis of all this, really it would be far simpler to take over an existing pharma factory and repurpose it than try to build a combined chem-bio labworks at a new location. And so we return to the militia.

Pfft, this needs work.

On the other hand, it really sucks that people are willing to come in and trash our site, and like before the attack included an attempt to insert trojans into our visitors.

There’s a whole debate about whether it is smart to be hosting your own software any more. Has the internet just become too dangerous? These sorts of attacks are almost fully automated now. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that even the big boys lose too, sometimes.

Stay safe out there.

Dublin and I have been dating for a very long time. The first blushes were heady with all the excitement of young love, and the lengthy separation had all the drama of a long-term, long-distance relationship. Finally, Dublin and I are moving in together. It’s good and exciting, and I think Dublin is as excited as I am that we can be around each other all the time. We’re certainly in a sort of honeymoon period, and I realize that immediately afterwards is the time when we discover each other’s embarrassing habits , dirty laundry, and so on. But it’s been good so far. Surprisingly so.