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So if any of you remember, I got a skin biopsy a few months back. I thought they would have been well done with the sample by now, but they're still testing it, and it's ACTUALLY SHOWING STUFF UP DO YOU KNOW HOW GOOD THIS IS!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? It's complicated, but how I understand it so far: They've found my metabolism isn't breaking down fatty acids properly, which my doctor is excited about because apparently it explains so many things. Poor energy, difficulty exercising, muscular discomfort, stress on the liver, the need to eat often, they all make sense if I'm unable to properly break down fatty acids. I'm not getting an important source of energy and it also causes stress on other parts of the body. The whole thing is confusing and there's much more to it than I can do justice, but you get the idea. It's a huge step forward and I'm really, really happy that we finally have a clue what's going on. It's going to take more time for them to determine exactly where in the metabolic processes things stop working, but in the meantime, they're putting me on medication in the hopes that it will aid my metabolism. It's unlikely to be the cure, but it'll hopefully be a boost/help until they can pinpoint exactly where things aren't working. I've waited so many years for this. I'm so happy.

Bionifight Ultimate has reached 98 pages - it is officially the largest game in the Games & Trivia forum, overtaking Bionifight 4: Hyper Fighting, which ended at 97 pages. It took Bionifight 4 about 4 months to get 97 pages. It has taken Bionifight Ultimate less than two. Just some interesting facts. If the latter game can continue to sustain such high activity... well, let's just say that I dare to dream.

Almost two years, in fact. Lately I've been playing a lot of Titanfall, which led to me reading a lot about it, which led to me finding out that K'nex are going to be making Titanfall sets, which somehow led to me cleaning my email, which led to me finding out that Mega Bloks is going to be making Assassin's creed sets (Which I've also been playing a lot of recently) , which led to me looking at MB's current stuff, which led to me getting nostalgic about the Halo stuff, which led to me deciding that tonight was nostalgia night, which led to me coming here for old times' sake, which led to me reading through my blog and finding that comparing Lego Universe's "constant worlds" to me never getting up before noon was hilarious because I've been consistently waking up at 10 AM for the past year. I also realized that I made a lot of unintentional puns back in the day. It's also been kind of sad seeing BZP so inactive (It's still kind of morbidly funny that the hot topics list on the front page just broke one day and never got fixed) , especially since There was a solid 6 years where my main site was here. Not to mention that BZP is pretty much responsible for A: Immensely improving my writing skills. B: Effectively introducing me to the internet, and, in hindsight, it was probably the best place to do that, because the internet is dark and full of terrors. C: Being where I created the name that has stuck with me as my internet alias for years now. And D: Being the best source of information for what was essentially my first love when it comes to media properties, I'm still proud that I own such a large percentage of Bionicle sets. I took a peek into S&T earlier, and it kind of worried me that I didn't recognize half the character names, when even a few years ago I could probably identify every character in Bionicle and their dog by name. It's still kind of a sore spot for me that Bionicle died such an inglorious death, fading away unfinished instead of going out with a bang. In fact, I think reading the letter way back in november 2009 (It's crazy that I still remember the month, though not the day, I want to say the 9th?) was probably my first instance of dealing with loss. Even if it really didn't matter, Bionicle was pretty much the dominant force that took up most of my free time as a kid, and I'll always remember it for that.

[ tumblr ya] Treatise: Translating the Avohkii : Part 4 : Whoa, hold on! It’s dangerous to go alone! First, read this, then this, then this. All done? Good – let’s get moving. Here’s the full transcription of the Avohkii-text once again: The bolded part of the transcription has already been translated in the previous posts. To recap: Mapaku ke-whenu-ka kitu ak-ila ... “Reader, seek out an individual originating from within a secret underground (place)” This portion of the passage seems reasonably self-sufficient, and I have chosen to analyze it as an independent clause: it contains a verb, its arguments, and their modifiers. If we start from that assumption, it stands to reason that the rest of the passage will form its own unit/clause, separate from the first clause but presumably still related in meaning. We can start by identifying already-familiar terms in this portion of the inscription. We actually have an easier time of it than before. Makuta is pretty self-evident, as is taka. The relevant entries are as follows: makuta |n.cmpd.| 1. master of knowledge; 2. higher knowledge [mult. potential etymologies; one proposed etymology is makuta < ma-akuta, from ma(t) “mastery, control” and akuta “knowledge”; another proposed etymology is makuta < mai-akuta, from mai “up, upward, above” (variant of mi, see entry) and akuta “knowledge”] taka |n.| firelight, torchlight, illumination; heat [taka < ta-ka, from ta “elemental fire” and ka “power, force, ability”, yielding a sense of “light cast by fire/torch; light that leads the way”] Alright, now that we’ve identified some familiar terms, let’s continue with the same line of reasoning we used for the first clause: if this section of the passage is a clause in itself, we’d expect there to be a verb and some individual(s) involved in the action of the verb (subject, object, etc.). How do we go about identifying the verb? Well, one aspect of Matoran syntax that hasn’t come up much yet in this discussion (but probably should) is the fact that, according to the only example of a clausal-unit that we have, it appears that verbs in Matoran stand as the final element in a sentence. The example that we have is the phrase Manas zya, translating to "Attack the monster!" The verb is zya "(to) attack", while the object is manas "monster". This is an imperative (command) clause, so technically we can only determine that verbs appear in final position in simple imperative constructions – other clause-types might be different for all we know. Then again, for all we know, the verb-final pattern might be a strict rule for independent clauses in Matoran. For what it’s worth, verb-final patterns show up in ~40% of human languages, so Matoran wouldn’t be all that strange as a non-human language. Well...let’s see where the verb-final logic leads us: Based on its clause-final position, we might assume that taka is the verb. Does this make sense? Hm...taka doesn’t necessarily look like the only example of an actual verb that we have – zya "attack" – but of course morphophonological similarity isn’t a requirement, even if that’s pretty much the only thing we have to go on. It really depends on the categorial status of taka. Do we know anything about that? Possibly, yes. Taka shows up in Takanuva. Nuva means "new". It’s clearly an adjective in its other uses (Tahu Nuva, Gali Nuva, etc.). If we assume that nuva is generally an adjective, that would imply that taka is not verbal, but nounal. Then again, an argument could be made that nuva can modify nouns or verbs, or that Takanuva is an exception based on the fact that nuva appears to be morphologically incorporated into taka, rather than a syntactic modifier as in the other cases. All of these arguments are equally legitimate. This is kind of a sticky situation. On one hand, we’d rather not violate the only potential syntactic rule we know of by looking elsewhere for the verb. On the other hand, it’s iffy to just define taka as a verb. How to decide? Ultimately, the decision should be made based on its overall consequences. If we decide to redefine taka as a verb, that will entail making a variety of alterations to our understanding of Matoran etymology (how modifiers work, the categorial status of nouns and verbs, etc.). These are things that, to some extent, are already "established". In contrast, if we assume that Matoran is not strictly verb-final, we aren’t actually violating any established rule, since we’re simply postulating that there’s more syntactic variation than the single piece of evidence we have suggests. The second option is far more appealing to me, so I’ll run with it. Taka is not the verb – something else is. Where do we go from here? Let’s look at the other candidates for verbhood: We can probably cross out makuta, since that has a pretty well-established nounal status. That leaves ahano, nano, and atuana. Previously, I’ve already hinted that I think atuana contains a variant of toa, so I’ll cross that off as well. That leaves nano and ahano. Hm...time for some more educated guesswork. If Matoran is not verb-final, are there any syntactic patterns that we can observe at all? I’d rather not jump to the conclusion that Matoran word-order is completely free, since that would leave us without any direction whatsoever. Instead, we might come to the more conservative position that Matoran is verb-final in independent imperative clauses. Think about it: Manas zya is an independent imperative clause and the verb is in final position. Furthermore, I’ve also translated the first part of the Avohkii passage as an independent imperative clause, and the verb happens to be in final position there. That’s a convenient match, go figure! So if we say that the verb-final syntactic pattern is restricted (at the very least) to these types of clauses, we are free to postulate a different pattern for other clause-types. Specifically, I will propose that the clause under discussion (the second half of the passage) is not independent, but is instead dependent upon (or "subordinate to") the first clause. This is because of the status of the first clause as a command or instruction: do X. If the first clause is defined in this way, what is its relationship to the second clause? It makes sense that the second clause would describe something about how/why the command of the first clause must be performed. For example, we might interpret the relation as cause-effect: do X so that Y. Alright, so the second clause is subordinate. How do we apply this to the translation? Well, if Matoran is verb-final in independent imperative clauses, a simple pattern that could be used to mark dependency is to reverse the standard order, i.e. to place the verb at the beginning of the clause: verb-initial. This is actually pretty milquetoast when it comes to human languages – different syntactic patterns are used to mark dependency-status all the time, so I don’t have many qualms about postulating it for Matoran. However, this does lead us to a specific conclusion with respect to choosing between candidates for the verb: ahano is the first word in the clause. If we adopt the assumption about syntactic patterns above, ahano would be the verb. This is progress! Very small progress, but progress nonetheless. Even so, this post has been really wordy, and it’s getting a bit too long at this point, so for now, I’ll leave you with a recap of the translation. It’s a slow crawl, but hopefully worth it by the end: Mapaku, ke-whenu-ka kitu ak-ila ... “Reader, seek out an individual originating from within a secret underground (place)” ... ahano nano atuana makuta taka. "(so that) VERB ... [smthg. related to Toa] Makuta light/illumination." Still on the to-do list is determining a translation for ahano, as well as nano and atuana, and we also have to flesh out the relations between these elements and makuta and taka. It’s a daunting task, but I think we’ll make it. Next time.

It's not wrong, it's just that extra pi is always a good thing.

@Vox Whoops, bad choice of words. I meant to say that there would be less of a rush to upgrade fighters, not a general lack of activity. It seemed like players tended to get caught up in boosting stats and ended up pretty exhausted. In answer to your question, I assume you did it because you enjoyed it? I don't know why else anyone would play the game...

That would make the circular area more difficult, since it would be (tau/2) * r^2. And I prefer pi when thinking of one half of sin or cos equations, but maybe that's just a personal preference. Also, Tau doesn't sound like a type of desert food in english, so there.

... wait it is. well isn't that a thing.

What better entry to be your 42nd, right? =P

tl;dr Well, not all of it anyway. Srsly though. Now I really want pie. Takuma Nuva

I HENCEFORTH DECLARE THAT PI DAY SHALL BE CELEBRATED WITH TWO PIES INSTEAD OF ONE! If you usually do multiple pies anyway, then multiply that by two.

YES.

IM SO HAPPY FOR YOU BRO IM GOING TO RUN ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN TO GIVE YOU A BROFIST

That's awesome news! Congratulations!

YAY

Finally! Great news, Brickeens! Keep your head up! --KK17

a name change

I don't think it has gone far enough!