I have recently seen an instance in which a single female character was portrayed overreacting to something. The scenario was played for laughs, and while a good amount of time could be spent going over the joke itself and why it was or was not funny, a more important issue is some of the criticism that the joke received - that having this character, who was female, overreact in an emotional manner, was sexist. That it implied the attitude that all women were prone to overemotional reactions.
One thing that bugs me, and which I hear a lot from people looking at drawings or playing Minecraft, is the tendency to look at anything that's been done well, and remark that they would never be able to make something as good as that. This is especially irritating in Minecraft, where we're all working with the same cubic-meter blocks of material, and thus there is no really good reason to think that any particular piece of work is impossible for you to match. The idea of someone being natural
So, I found the most adorably stupid Daily Mail article today - yes, I know, that's a tautology, but bear with me. The article, you see, was about the Greenland Shark, a large, cold-water shark most closely related to dogfish, that looks like this; Now, most of what the article said in describing this "fearsome creature" isn't factually incorrect - they have indeed been found with the remains of polar bears, reindeer, and seals in their stomachs. The article just failed to mention one thi
It is hardly a secret that worldbuilding is my favorite part of writing. I don't care much for plots until I've got, at the very least, a detailed map of the relevant planet's ocean currents. I won't design a single character until I know where the tallest mountain is and whether it casts a significant rain shadow. I could go on, if I had no other responsibilities, for years, figuring out how a fictional world ticks. Once the planet is done, the ecosystems come in. Here I could get lost forever,
More Technic fun. I went tromping off through the Nether Portal I set up in a Siege Castle I captured a while ago, taking only weapons and food, with the intention of acquiring a few Blaze Rods so I could craft an Ender Chest or two... well, exactly two. Thaumcraft plans. Knowing that a Nether Fortress would be the best thing to find, I set about the task of wandering aimlessly until I found one - finding, instead, this cheeky little pigman in a funky robe who immediately started setting me
My luck in Minecraft has an interesting flavour to it lately - I set out from my home on a savanna plateau, hoping to find a mesa from which to get hardened clay for use in the construction of my house. I did not find a mesa biome. Instead, I found three villages and five desert temples, leading to quite the collection of enchanted books, horse armor, diamonds and other goodies... and a rather low food supply by the time I turn back - or think that is what I am doing. This results in me ge
I've finished my exams for the semester, and to celebrate, it's time for this month's Musician Spotlight. This month, I'd like to start things off with a clarification of the term "winning." Winning does not look like this. This is what torpedoing your career and ruining your life looks like. That is not the face of a victorious man, in any sense of the word. This is what winning looks like. If you want a slightly more accurate version, look up the videos of one of the songs from his album
Yeah, yeah, I know - there wasn't a Musician Spotlight for January. I'm sure all -3 of you that read this thing were livid. Ahem. Anyway, I'm probably going to have some more business - sorry, busy-ness - so from now until April 3rd - or, until I update the Musician Spotlight again, whichever comes first - the Spotlight will be focused on Ian Anderson's new album, which is to be released as a direct sequel to the legendary Thick As a Brick... err, 40 years late. I've heard lots of good thi
Every month, I've decided, I'm going to put a shiny little spotlight on a specific musician, generally one who also composes (or composed, I've nothing against dead guys), give a brief description of them, and recommend a small sampling of their work for curious listeners to get started on. This month, it's the father of ragtime, Scott Joplin. Scott Joplin is widely considered to be one of the most important composers of ragtime, and, indeed, the innovator that basically created ragtime. Ra
Alright, alright, I know how to take a hint. No response on something generally means it's been weighed, measured, and found wanting. Really wanting. Thus, the other thing has been discontinued. That being said, I'm still doing goofy things in Minecraft. Finally returned to the home continent, and ended up starting on a fortress that relies oh-so-much on projectile-based defenses. Currently working at a testing range I dug into the permafrost to ensure I've got the splash potions that will be
As of today, I'm starting a little diary detailing odd moments in my Minecrafting experience, from my character's point of view. The first of these will come in a batch, while the rest are likely to come one at a time. ---Entry 1, January 16th It is now a week since I became sick of the sight of snow, and, in a fit either of brilliance or madness, abandoned the mainland in my small wooden boat - a boat I had not built, much less used, until about an hour before I pushed off from the shore.
One of my friends recently showed me a video of a song from a live performance Metallica did in San Francisco in December of 2011, citing it as evidence that Metallica has "a breakthrough on the way". Intrigued, I listened to the song, and found myself gravely disappointed. From the beginning, the song failed to sound noticeably different from other songs Metallica has done. Now, I'm not expecting them to suddenly become an entirely different sort of band, or for James Hetfield to pull a flute
Some of you are probably aware of the Minecraft server that caters, in part, to BZP members. Most of you who are aware of that probably frequent the Minecraft topic in COT, and thus may be aware of the recent server crash. What you might not be fully aware of is the reason for this crash. A small group of players, led by Madufruit42 (The Invisible Noob) with some assistance from myself, MTMerrick (thoron) and a handful of others, were working on building a railway from Ga-Koro (not an exact
Gets a whole lot less intimidating when you realize that, with a quick enough draw, Gilderoy Lockhart could have won a duel against him. What's that? Most powerful Dark wizard in living memory? That's impressive. Shame he can't remember which way is up.
So I've got a piece of music that's been sitting unfinished on my computer for something like two years. The current list of instruments is as follows- -Flute -Alto Saxophone -Electric Guitar (Jazz) -Electric Bass (Fingered) -Drumkit -Timpani The first section went along fairly smoothly, with a four-measure ostinato primarily played by the flute and saxophone... the only problem is that, at this time, there isn't actually a lead instrument. Nothing's actually playing a melody over this, whic
So It's been a while. Things have gotten... kind of weird, since the last time I made a blog entry. I haven't composed a new piece of music in more than a year, thanks to my computer's speakers and headphone jack breaking - followed, back in May, by the computer itself. About to go ahead and install a couple of programs for that on this borrowed computer, once I can verify that the owner is cool with that. In less aggravating (but probably more important) news, some of you might have notic
So, a few months ago, I tried to find some reference on the medieval Chola naval vessel known as the Thirisadai - essentially the equivalent of a battleship. At this time, I posted a blog entry, requesting aid in finding these references - the request was unsuccessful, which is hardly shocking; BZPower is not exactly a community built upon a shared fondness for naval history, nor is a high proportion of the site's population comprised of historians. Anyway, I let that project rest for a while,
For a personal project, I find myself needing to know what ships of the medieval Chola Navy looked like - my particular interest rests with the Thirisadai and Vajara classes. My own searches on the topic have come up empty, for the most part. Accordingly, I am asking you to assist in this search, in the hopes that you might have better luck finding good sources than I have. To be useful, pictures of these ships should show them from the side, front, back or top. A view of the ship from beneath
Found myself in a Deep Ocean biome for the first time, and it's honestly kind of scary, swimming at the surface, looking down, and not being able to see the bottom. They need to add ocean-going hostile mobs now, just so you can get the experience of having a great white shark come rushing out of the depths, or even just see a faint hint of movement down there, and start fearing for your life. And once they add hostile ocean-going mobs, they need to give you an update or two to wait and be af
This is it. The thing absolutely none of you were waiting for. The thing even I wasn't waiting for. Because I had no idea it was happening until literally five minutes ago. Also because I'm a little slow up top. But yeah. The First Ever Madman-With-A-Box Drawing Contest, to be held from this point onward at no specific time interval. Basic Idea: Combine two animals that should never be combined, in a way that makes it clear that yes, they totally should be combined. For examp
So, umm... In some alternate universe, a lot of people are wondering why I'm a spoon now. They're also wondering why and how I developed the technology for gazing through the void, into the living rooms of people living an another universe. The answer is not available to you at this time, alternate-universe commies. Instead, I leave you with the greatest question ever asked. Why aren't you a spoon instead of some antennae-faced alien hippie?
You know that incredibly weird moment when you're trying to talk to the chief of a neighboring village, and you shoot him in the face instead, and he doesn't even get mad?
So today I took my shiny new diamond pickaxe down into a cavern to mine some obsidian (and maybe more diamonds, because hey, I'm an optimist like that). Instead, a group of skeletons decided it was high time for me to take a good long time-out in a column of lava, beginning today's adventures in messy death. Next, I went back into the cave, recovered what I could (which did not include the diamond pick, because of course it didn't) and set out to mine some more - this ended with me using wat
So here I am, hiding, terrified, in a shack I hollowed out of a rubber tree, when I see some dude with really long, thin legs marching around in diamond armor, carrying a diamond sword, and kind of walking like a chicken. It's night, so I figure he'd probably stab me if I went outside, so I just watch him through one of the windows. This goes on for five minutes, until I realize that the only piece he's missing from a full set of diamond armor is the pants. This disturbs me greatly, until I
As I sit here, listening through The Whirlwind for the first time in a couple of years, it strikes me that the vocals on this album compare rather unfavourably to those on Thick As A Brick 2, Ian Anderson's follow-up to Jethro Tull's legendary single-song album, released forty years late. It's not so much anything about the quality of the voices involved - years of smoking certainly were not kind to the pipes of Ian Anderson - but the technique of the singing. With Transatlantic's 70+ minute o
