Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Tuesday, 5 February 2002

# 11:30 PM

bureaucracy

I go to hand in my Concurrent Enrollment form and am told by the clerk that it must be signed by the head of department—fine, I'd forgotten—and the dean of the School of Engineering. They didn't make me do that last semester. Grumble.

silliness

For no good reason, I present the lightsaber as a Shadowrun spell.

Category: Elemental Manipulation (Light)
Duration: Sustained
Target: 4
Drain: +1(S)

This spell creates a light beam of finite length from the caster's hand, which may be wielded as a blade weapon so long as the spell is maintained. It does Force+3(S) cutting damage, ignoring all armor except armor specifically designed to be reflective, which works normally. Critters (including metahumans) resist damage at normal Body; objects, at half their normal damage resistance. The blade can be blocked only by another such blade (always) or an astral barrier (if it wins a standard barrier-defeating contest, using the spell's Force).

You need an appropriate swordfighting skill to use the blade effectively. Good idea to spell-lock this one...or bind it to an anchoring focus, if you know how.

The beam can be any color you like. Double-ended blades or other custom shapes (yes, you can have a light-scimitar) require modifying the spell formula.

# 6:15 AM

Once again, why am I still awake?

Quote from my summary of another HCI paper:

It does not matter to a discussion of modelling techniques whether the model communicates with the system by sockets, Lisp funcalls, or carrier pigeons.

Furrfu, you would think people who write published papers should be able to tell what is relevant to the subject and what isn't.

# 5:45 AM

Feeling a bit better now, well enough to go to work. Thank-you to Sumana for the get well note. (Hmm, I should add anchor points to the markup here.)

I've finished my brainstorm list for ways to improve cvs annotate. Please read and comment.