Zorua

Auto-correct has the weirdest suggestions. In the Zelda series, one of the many races is the Gerudo. See how it's spelled? My phone auto-corrected this to "Fetus".

More Zelda: After a lot of mining, trading, raiding the castle, and sidequests, I ended up with a massive horde of gems to sell whenever I want. Probably sitting on twenty-thousand Rupees worth of gems. I bought a set of armor in a northeastern town and then went further north to buy some Ancient Arrows (which are Super Effective against Guardians). So I got to the place... Stopped... Turned around and headed south. I can't buy arrows without Rupees. :P

It's totally Bender. The other two, on the other hand... Any ideas? I know the left one isn't R2-D2; the head isn't domed enough, but other than that, I got nothing.

It still takes a while to cross the map, but that's part of the appeal. Keeps the world big. The horse I eventually did get was the Royal Stallion. I named him Sleipnir. Funny enough: in our group save file, the first horse we registered we named Rolf. Because that's my horse. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take a picture of a laser spear.

Right down to the wire... So my brother rushed to beat Calamity Ganon in time for the new Mass Effect, and he's rushing through that before the next Dark Souls DLC comes out. Meanwhile I'm playing Zelda on a bit of a challenge run. 3 hearts, no stamina upgrades, no fast-travel. I was also not updating the map nor registering a horse, but it got frustrating not knowing the easiest path to where I was going and having to walk was too slow. I'm also spending too many Rupees on clothes. I have eleven Hylian Tunics, almost all dyed in different colors. I'm gonna go broke because of clothes!

My youngest brother is in middle school band, playing percussion. I'm at my old high school waiting for the concert to start. His school plays first, so they get to practice in the auditorium. They're doing warm-ups and rehearsals right now. So it seems like all three of us are musicians. I play piano sometimes, the middle brother played saxophone, and the youngest plays percussion. We could start a family jazz band! ...probably won't, but still.

So my mom made the mistake of inviting me to play Star Wars Trivial Pursuit...

So my brother bought Breath of the Wild for Wii U via eShop. The game uses music sparingly, only for tense moments or quiet ambiance, just to punctuate a scene. For example, when riding horseback during the day, you get this: And riding horseback at night gives you this: The little riff at the end of both plays when you dismount the horse. I have yet to hear a piece of music from this game I don't like. Also, the Video Games thread. I really, really want to gush about this game, but the Video Games thread is months past the necromancy expiration date. Should I...? Wait, hang on. Gimme a sec.

Depends on the cat, really. But... but unexpected kittens are adorable!

I woke up at about two-thirty this morning to a kitten on my chest. I dunno if he got in through the door or someone let him in and put him there, but it was cute. He sat there for a bit, laid down and slept for a bit, played around chasing my fingers under the sheets, and just generally being adorable.

The theme song for the Wonderful 101. THE theme song for the Wonderful 101. There's two versions: The one from the beginning of the game, "The Won-Stoppable Wonderful 100!"... ...and the one from the end of the game, "The Won-Stoppable Wonderful 101!"

Question. Is Barbara Dunkelman on the list?

ST01: Roll Out, Wonderful 100!

"I before E, except after C" ...unless you're planning a feisty heist on your weird beige foreign neighbor. Also, 'read' and 'lead' rhyme, and so do 'read' and 'lead'. But 'read' doesn't rhyme with 'lead', nor does 'read' with 'lead'. And "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a valid sentence. And don't even get me started on the entirely valid (if wordy) sentence that contains the word 'and' about twenty-three consecutive times. English is weird.

This just in: science disproves the "I before E, except after C" rule.

Just watched my brother beat the final boss in Splatoon. Fun boss. Awesome boss. And, more relevant to this thread, awesome music. Especially the final phase: Calamari Inkantation.

Star Wars. You know that Rogue One movie that came out last year? The sequel's already out!

I got a comment on my Powers story. Man, is it a wall of text. Very few capitals, next to no punctuation, and no paragraph breaks. I still read it through, parsing it in Notepad and doing some touch-ups. I wanted to reply and not look like the Wall of Poorly-Punctuated Text scared me off.

I know how orbit works. Thing I was saying is if the line blockers are ground-based (and how big they are may enforce that), and they have a maximum effective range, gravity will kick in once the rocket leaves that range. Like in your example, getting to 30,000 feet and then firing that downwards rocket. Which might not be a factor for different reasons entirely... Holding it in place until it built up enough thrust sounds like flooring it in a car with the back wheels suspended in the air. The Mythbusters tested that one (the "hit the ground running" idiom), and it didn't work. I think only a few seconds of restraint is enough to get the engines flooring it before releasing the clamps. Not too significant a difference. The thing is, if you have the tech to turn gravity off, why bother with conventional fuel? You are not limited by weight here. Therefore the size of the craft and how much fuel it can carry is irrelevant. No matter how large a line blocker is, and how big the ship would have to be to carry one, it can weigh pretty much nothing. And the line blockers affect all four fundamental forces, giving you inexhaustible resources (strong nuclear force) to build with (think the replicators from Star Trek, and inexhaustible energy (weak nuclear force, electromagnetic) to power it all. At that point, I think cost is irrelevant once you have the first few blockers built. Just 3D print the whole rest of the thing, turn gravity off, 3D print some plasma in controlled directions, and you'll be in space in no time, and then you can worry about orbit at your leisure (it's not like you're gonna fall back down if you take too long, right?). The only cost is paying people at that point. Now, if this novel is set early enough to where they haven't figured that out yet, all this about cost and fuel and momentum is still valid.

In trying to look at cost and such, we're overlooking one crucial detail: acceleration. When you launch a rocket from the ground and get it to, say, 30,000 feet, it spends all that time burning the engines and accelerating. So when it's at 30,000 feet it's already going at a significant velocity and has significant horizontal thrust already, giving a good start to a stable orbit. If you started at 30,000 feet, though, it's velocity at 30,000 feet is: 0. Meaning it has to make up for lost time by burning the engines, getting the rocket up to the velocity and acceleration it should already be at that altitude, and then trying to get to orbital velocity. So you're going to need the same amount of fuel just to get it to the right velocity, in addition to the line blockers. But since the line blockers are out of range at this point, they can't keep gravity from affecting the rocket. This adds the wrinkle of a deadline to the launch: the rocket has to reach sufficient velocity to stay in orbit before the gravity of Earth causes the rocket to crash. And since the rocket lacks that initial thrust that in ground-based launch would have given it, and since it lacks a stable platform to start from zero at, this basically means that as soon as the engines ignite, the rocket is going to start falling, giving a bit more work for the engines to do before the rocket gets to orbital velocity and altitudes. Now, whether or not the fuel consumed in overcoming the downloads acceleration is balanced by the fuel saved by starting in the thinner atmosphere is a topic for people for people who are way better at math than I am. Having a line blocker on the ship might lessen the worries about falling, but the fuel is still needed to reach orbital velocity, so depending on how big the blockers are, that might not be feasible (too large, and we're gonna need a bigger fuel tank). And we'll I can't calculate the thrust versus atmospheric friction issue, I can calculate this much: we have to spend the same amount of money on the fuel, in addition to the cost of the line blockers. It would not be cheaper.

Here's four pieces of music that make me cry for one reason or another: 1) Emotion (Pokemon Black and White, 2010) 2) Forbidden Friendship (How to Train You Dragon, 2010) 3) Married Life (Up, 2009) 4) Requiem for the Brigadier General (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, 2009)

That reminds me of one of the Achievement Hunter's Let's Plays. They were playing Quiplash, where you have to answer questions they give you and hope it's funnier than the other guy's answer. One question they got was "What is the most annoying way to spell Mississippi?" One of them (I think Ryan) answered "Correctly". (the answer Jeremy gave won't get past the site's censors. suffice to say, it involves seeing people next Tuesday) Me, I don't know if it's funnier to interpret that as spelling Mississippi correctly, or spelling Mississippi C-O-R-R-E-C-T-L-Y.