Category: Geekery

New Year, Same Fear

Happy new year folks!

I’ve been working on a number of projects lately (should be ready to reveal one in a few weeks) and as such have been neglecting the Wyrmlog a bit. But I figured I should jump on and let people know I’m still alive.

So let’s see…

Trump has invaded Venezuela and kidnapped their president. I have reached the point where I am no longer surprised by anything the maniac in the Whitehouse does – each new atrocity just makes me feel even more tired and even more sad. Maybe the mid-terms will castrate the orange monstrosity, or maybe we’ll be stuck with him wielding absolute power until 2029, who knows?

The Bondi terrorist attack. Appalling. Just fucking appalling. And what’s worse is all sides of politics jumping on board to exploit the hell out of it. I think it’s fair to say that Albanese has made a major fumble by not calling a Royal Commission and has now been painted into a corner where the opposition can tear him to shreds for resisting a Commission, or tear him to shreds for ‘flip-flopping’ if he does call a Commission. Zionists and pro-Israel Fascists are jumping on the attack to label any criticism of Israel or support for Palestine as antisemitic, while the genuine antisemites are cackling with glee over dead kids and shattered families. And the Jewish population are caught in the middle and living in fear. The whole thing is utterly fucked, which is of course why the unspeakable scum that carried out the attack did it.

(For the record. Disliking Israel because they’re Jewish – antisemitism. Disliking Israel because they’re behaving like a bunch of cunts – not antisemitism.)

On less serious matters, a major storm swept through Perth (on the Sunday of the attack as it happens) and knocked out power to huge areas of the state, and the city, including my complex. I was standing at my window just after 4:00 in the afternoon watching the horizontal rain switch back and forth when the power went out. I didn’t mind so much at first as it had been a disgustingly hot day and the storm pulled the temperature right down. The initial estimate for restoration (checked on my phone) was only a few hours so I did some reading, then got the bus over to Morley (which still had power) and had dinner at Varsity. I then decided to kill even more time by walking home.

Walking through the suburbs as it got darker and darker, with fallen branches and occasional uprooted trees everywhere was distinctly eerie (I tried to capture the mood with some photos but my stupid phone lightened them all). The weirdest bit was when I passed a guy doing some work in his yard by the light of LED lamps mounted on his ute. I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to go and sit in the light to get relief from the oppressive darkness – a feeling I suspect dates back 2 million years to the African Savannah when we’d huddle around the fires to stay safe from the lions and hyenas.

By the time I got home they’d revised the time to restore power until the early hours of the morning, so I went to bed and without my fan and CPAP machine slept extremely poorly. I eventually crawled out of bed at around 5:00am, and on noting there was still no power had a cold sponge-bath and caught the bus into work.

Power was restored mid-morning, but my fridge had been off for about 18 hours, so I had to throw out a whole load of food I’d only just bought on Saturday. Thankfully I was able to claim $120 from the power company for it, so all’s well that ends more-or-less well.

Oh, and the rather lovely tree that the council spent so much money moving from the train station to the library to save it from redevelopment was snapped clean off at the base, so that’s sad.

On another matter it has come to my attention that the Wyrmlog has lost all styling. This is what happens when you modify a Theme directly rather than creating a child theme (because you have no idea what you’re doing) and then maybe ten years later absentmindedly turn on automatic Theme updates, causing your changes to be overwritten. I will get everything re-styled when I have a minute, which could be any time between today and the Unix Timestamp Epoch (did I mention that I have been semi-officially diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD?).

The second season of Fallout has dropped and I’m very much enjoying it. So far it’s not quite as good as the first season, but it would be insanely difficult for it to be (in my opinion the first season is just about the greatest TV series ever made). I can’t help wondering if the two Mr Houses are a way to keep Mr House alive after the events of New Vegas – the Courier may well have killed a Mr House but did they kill the Mr House? Time will tell…

I have voted in the Hottest 100. Expect a post about my choices soon.

That’s about it I guess. Go make your own entertainment!

Operation Sunburst

The Fallout fan film Operation Sunburst is pretty good!

The dialogue probably needed another round of editing to handle exposition in a way that doesn’t have characters telling other characters things they should already know, calling rocket-launcher armed troops ‘sappers’ seems odd, the mutant qilin cavalry are a bit silly (and why are they using cavalry to attack a fortified building?), and it’s weird that the NCR don’t seem to have reinvented the mortar, but overall really well done! Highly recommended for any Fallout fan!

Roll on the 17th!

Ozostium Aranthus Welcomes You

You may well accuse me of seeing Dagoth Ur everywhere, but you have to admit that the new Ozostium Aranthus model for Necromunda has serious Dagoth Ur energy.

Moon and Star I’m Ozostium Aranthus and I’m a god there’s no escape,
Ur, Dagoth Ur, Dagoth Ur, Dagoth Ur, Dagoth Ur, Dagoth Ur, Dagoth Ur, Dagoth Ur….

(‘serious Dagoth Ur energy’ is not a phrase anyone should ever have to type)

Car Park

A recent online conversation with a friend of mine in the UK…

Friend: [Son] keeps pestering me to see whether you’ve been to various liminal spaces in Australia. I tell him Australia is very big so it’s unlikely.

Me: I would be intrigued to know what liminal spaces might be available here. I didn’t know we had enough of them to count as ‘various’.

Friend: He was particularly interested in a car park in Melbourne!

Me: Well I have been to Melbourne a few times, so it’s theoretically possible that I’ve at least walked past the car park in question.

Me: Hang on, he’s not talking about the South Lawn Car Park at Melbourne University is he? Because if he is, then I have actually visited it!

Friend: Ah yes that is the one! He will be very excited!

Now what are the odds of that?

The Oksos Bekatalùn

The Oksos – The Zùrvàr Alphabet

The Oksos Bekatalùn was created by the Zùrvàr scholar Cufà Bekatal Kuvàravik in -ST0281 (1781 CE) and adopted as the official standard for written Zùrvàr at the second conference of Wácuràda in -ST0139 (1839 CE).

Prior to this a number of writing systems, mostly borrowed from other cultures, were used by the Zùrvàr, however none were particularly well suited to the language, almost all being abjads and few differentiating between voiced and unvoiced consonants. After several attempts to adapt existing systems Cufà resolved to create his own from the ground up, although he leaned heavily on the Latin alphabets native to numerous alternate Earths.

In addition to resolving the issues around vowels and voicing Cufà assigned a mnemonic to each letter to aid memorisation. This made a major contribution to the rapid adoption of his oksos by a number of influential Houses and is regarded as the chief reason the Oksos Bekatalùn won out over the rival Oksos Màdi created by Malik Màdi Fìelisavik in -ST0290 (1790 CE).

Notes on Usage

Direction: In standard use Zùrvàr is written from left to right, although the reverse or even boustrophedon is used by some smaller Houses.

Final Va: Va is conventionally pronounced as /ə/ at the end of words, rather than /æ/.

Ru vs Ŕu: At the time of the oksos‘s creation the Zùrvàr language had a distinction between trilled and untrilled ‘r’. As such, Cufà included a distinct glyph for each. In the ensuing centuries this distinction has been almost completely lost, and Ru is now almost always used for both phonemes. Ŕu remains in the oksos but is used only for a small number of obscure words, or to create a sense of faux archaism, similar to the ‘ye olde’ style of English writing.

Þu vs Ðu: In casual Zùrvàr writing it is standard to use Ðu to represent both /θ/ and /ð/ with the reader relying on context to determine which is intended. The only common exception is the word yþỳsan (“respected/admired”) which is always written with Þu to avoid confusion with yðỳsan (“covered in fronds/stubs/fingers”). More formal writing and most printed materials maintain the distinction.

The Perth Quiz Challenge

It occurred to me the other day that if I were running a quiz night here in Perth I would not be able to resist the temptation to irritate everyone by including a round of questions about the city itself.

To prepare for this eventuality I have devised 10 questions that can be shoved into any quiz night you might be thinking about organising, and that you can challenge yourself with right now, should that be your idea of an enjoyable time.

(Answers supplied at the end)

1: The Perth CBD is located on the country of which Aboriginal nation? For an extra point, what is the indigenous name for Perth?

2: The natural spring at the foot of Mount Eliza is named after who?

3: What is the oldest building still standing in the Perth CBD?

4: What is the indigenous name for the Swan River?

5: In April 1993 Gary Hayes broke into the Irwin Barracks at Karrakatta and did what?

6: Why is Perth called “The City of Lights”?

7: What two cities rival Perth for the title of most isolated major city in the world?

8: In 1979 a series of plaques commemorating prominent Western Australians were placed along St George’s Terrace. Who’s plaque was removed in 2014?

9: What year did the Narrows Bridge open? For a bonus point what was it originally planned to be called?

10: The postcode 6161 covers what location?

Ready for the answers?

1: Perth is on the land of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation. 1 point for ‘Whadjuk’ or ‘Whadjuk Noongar’. Half a point for just ‘Noongar’. The indigenous name for Perth is Boorloo.

2: The spring is named after Governor Sir Edward Kennedy. 1 point for any mention of Kennedy, unless they clearly meant President Kennedy which gets no points!

3: The oldest building in the CBD is the Old Court House in Stirling Gardens.

4: The indigenous name for the Swan River is Derbarl Yerrigan. Any spelling that is clearly meant to be ‘Derbarl Yerrigan’ is acceptable.

5: In April 1993 Gary Hayes stole an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC). An APC is not a tank but we’ll be nice and accept ‘he stole a tank’ as correct.

6: Perth is “The City of Light” because everyone left their lights on in 1962 for orbiting American astronaut John Glenn. As long as they get this story broadly right they get a point.

7: Honolulu and Auckland rival Perth’s claim to be the world’s most isolated major city. Half a point for each one.

8: Rolf Harris’s plaque was removed in 2014.

9: The Narrows Bridge was opened in 1959. For the bonus point it was planned to be called “The Golden West” bridge.

10: 6161 is the postcode of Rottnest Island.

There you go. How did you do?

On the Palustiquendi

The Eldar named them ‘Palustiquendi’ – which is ‘Shelf Elf’ – from their habit of perching in dark and unexpected places to better their spying

The Palustiquendi are the descendants of escapees from the hellish chambers within which Morgoth created the first orcs from captured Elves long before the rising of the sun. Although appearing much as other Elves – Morgoth not having wrought much harm upon their bodies – their minds were twisted by his sorceries long ere their escape, rendering them scheming, suspicious, and duplicitous, quick to anger and fast to seek power by the accusation of others. Indeed, some believe the Palustiquendi did not escape, but were released by Morgoth to serve as spies and agents among the Elves, although any such scheme was doomed, as the ignoble behaviour of these piteous wretches swiftly marked them out among any untainted Eldar they encountered.

The Palustiquendi were all but wiped out during the War of the Jewels in the First Age, with few – if any – surviving the destruction of Beleriand in the War of Wrath. Legends persist however – even unto the present day – of these foul and treacherous creatures pledging their questionable allegiance to those desperate for spies and informants.