#(unspecified but like. in case that sort of thing‚ well‚ bugs you.) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gingersnapwolves · 3 years

Text

The Untamed, a brief summary [Part 5/6]

Part One: Sword Wizard School

Part Two: The Search for the Yin Iron and the World’s Worst Summer Camp

Part Three: The Fall of Lotus Pier and the Sunshot Campaign

Part Four: The Downward Spiral

Part Five: Mo Manor, Hungry Sabers, and Yi City

Ext, Mo Manor [I … actually have no idea where this is geographically.]

16 years have passed. A mysterious guy whose face we don’t see sits in an inn while a dude enthusiastically tells stories about the horrible Yiling Patriarch (Wei Wuxian’s title before he died.)

Wei Wuxian wakes up. He is confused, as dead people tend to be upon waking up.

ENTER A MENTALLY ILL CHARACTER WHO DESERVED BETTER

He hears the voice of Mo Xuanyu, telling him that he had no choice but to summon him, and now Wei Wuxian must take revenge for him. He has four curse marks on his arm, one for each target.

A sidebar: in the book, Wei Wuxian is summoned into Mo Xuanyu’s body, which makes way more sense. In the show, however, they didn’t really want to change actors halfway through, which I dig, so he’s in his own body for Reasons Never Made Clear. Because of this, they give him a metal mask to wear, saying Mo Xuanyu was a weirdo who wore a mask all the time and nobody has seen his face in years. We all love Xiao Zhan and don’t want him replaced so we accept this.

ENTER THE DUCKLINGS

Here are two young cultivators from the Lan sect, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi. The former is sweet and kind, the latter is ‘fight me’ in a fun way.

Wei Wuxian has no idea what’s going on but decides it’s time to Cause Problems. He figures out that Mo Xuanyu is yet another one of Jin Guangshan’s illegitimate sons. However, Mo Xuanyu’s mother was a member of the gentry, so he got to study at Koi Tower until he got thrown out for unspecified bad behavior. Everyone says that Mo Xuanyu was a lunatic.

Wei Wuxian meets the Lan ducklings, has flashbacks to Lan Wangji, and decides to hide in his room and play sad music on a blade of grass.

An angry sword spirit shows up and kills a bunch of people. The ducklings call Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian hides before he can be seen. Lan Wangji wraps everything up and subdues the angry sword spirit but doesn’t know what’s going on.

Three of the four curse marks on Wei Wuxian’s arm vanish, indicating that the three members of the Mo family who were killed were three of the four targets of revenge. Wei Wuxian steals a donkey and runs away.

The mystery man from earlier throws a chunk of gold to the storyteller.

Ext, Dafan Mountain [Yiling]

Wei Wuxian argues with his donkey a lot, and it’s pretty funny.

ENTER A TRUST FUND BRAT

Jin Ling is now 16. He is a huge brat and we like him anyway. Given that he was raised mostly by Jin Guangyao and Jiang Cheng, he’s actually more well-adjusted than he has any right to be. Of course, the bar for ‘well-adjusted’ in this show is sitting on the ground (and half the characters have gone to get shovels). Jin Ling has set up a bunch of spirit capture nets in the forest, and they capture a bunch of cultivators instead. Wei Wuxian cuts them down, and he and Jin Ling get in a fight. (Wei Wuxian doesn’t know who he is, because why would he?)

Wei Wuxian calls him a little punk and pins him to the ground with a talisman. Jiang Cheng shows up and is pissed. Wei Wuxian runs away again.

Turns out everyone is there for some sort of night hunt. Lan Wangji and the ducklings show up. Lan Wangji is a petty bitch who no longer speaks to Jiang Cheng, and it’s great. He’s destroyed all the spirit nets Jin Ling placed for pretty much no reason other than that he can. Jin Ling is pissed. Lan Wangji puts the silencing spell on him because he’s being a brat. Jiang Cheng decides this isn’t worth getting into a bitch fight with Lan Wangji over and huffs off with Jin Ling.

They all end up at the mountain where the statue from the first arc was. It’s eating people again, or something like that. Wei Wuxian talks to the ducklings, who listen to him because he helped them with the sword spirit at Mo Manor.

The statue attacks, and it’s chaos! Wei Wuxian decides that now is the time for some demonic cultivation. He starts playing a new flute (poorly, because he just carved it out of nearby bamboo). Wen Ning shows up. Everyone, including me, goes “WTF?!?!” because we all thought Wen Ning had been destroyed by the Jin sect.

Wei Wuxian realizes this is more trouble than he can handle and uses his flute to get Wen Ning to leave. But it’s too late. Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng have seen him. Lan Wangji grabs his wrist. They stare at each other for like a solid 30 seconds and it’s great.

Then Jiang Cheng ruins everything, because he assumes (correctly) that someone playing the flute and controlling Wen Ning is, in fact, Wei Wuxian. He hits Wei Wuxian with the lightning whip. A fun feature of the lightning whip is that, if an evil spirit is possessing someone, the whip will smack them out of the body. This doesn’t happen to Wei Wuxian, since he was summoned by Mo Xuanyu himself. Jiang Cheng gets a little confused by this and Lan Wangji takes the opportunity to grab Wei Wuxian and bounce.

Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Wei Wuxian wakes up in Lan Wangji’s room. He says, ‘if I said I didn’t know where I was these past 16 years, would you believe me?’ and Lan Wangji says ‘yes’ without hesitation. I cry again.

Ext, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Lan Wangji is down in the cold springs. Wei Wuxian decides, like a gremlin, to go bug him there. But he sees Lan Wangji shirtless and he’s got a bunch of scars and it freaks Wei Wuxian out so he doesn’t hit on him.

Lan Qiren has been trying to suppress the sword spirit but it attacks him. Wei Wuxian plays his flute (badly) and the ducklings all wonder why the hell he’s even here. They figure out the sword spirit is trying to lead them somewhere.

Ext, Yueyang [Qinghe]

The sword has pointed them here and strange things are afoot. Wei Wuxian asks a guy if there’s some reason the sect leader isn’t taking care of it. He finds out that Nie Mingjue died in the intervening years while he was gone, and that Nie Huaisang is now sect leader and keeps telling people to please not ask him to fix problems because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Nie Huaisang remains the most relatable.

They run into Jin Ling, who’s there with his adorable dog for night-hunting reasons. Wei Wuxian freaks out because he’s afraid of dogs. Lan Wangji leaps in to defend him and Jin Ling looks like he just found out gay people exist.

Ext, the forest [Qinghe]

There’s a weird tomb full of coffins with sabers in them. Jin Ling has broken in and nearly gets swallowed by the building. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian rescue him. He now has a gnarly curse mark on his leg. When they get outside, someone’s been watching them. Lan Wangji goes after him while Wei Wuxian gets Jin Ling back to the city. Lan Wangji only gets a scrap of fabric but recognizes the pattern.

Int, an inn [Qinghe]

Jin Ling freaks out when he wakes up because he thinks Mo Xuanyu is nuts. (One must presume he knows Mo Xuanyu better than the ducklings, since Mo Xuanyu is technically his uncle, and Jin Ling lives at Koi Tower a lot of the time so they would have encountered each other.) Wei Wuxian lets him go.

Int, a different inn [presumably] [Qinghe]

Lan Wangji has dragged Nie Huaisang in for a little chat, because he knows Nie Huaisang was spying on them in the forest. Nie Huaisang tries to plead ignorance but then admits that the Nie sect has this problem where their swords are so bloodthirsty that they have to be buried like people and fed criminals occasionally, like one would if they had a particularly large python for a pet. Wei Wuxian clearly wonders how, in that case, they had any right to criticize him for a little light necromancy.

Ext, Yueyang [Qinghe]

Lan Wangji leaves to … shit. I don’t remember. Well, he goes to do something, presumably important, leaving Wei Wuxian on his own. Wei Wuxian promptly gets spotted by Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling, and Jiang Cheng captures him. He says he doesn’t care that the lightning whip didn’t expel him, he knows he’s Wei Wuxian. He’s super pissed but doesn’t actually kill Wei Wuxian or even really hurt him, clearly conflicted about the whole situation.

Jin Ling suddenly ‘remembers’ important information about something that happened earlier to send Jiang Cheng on a wild goose chase. It’s likely that Jiang Cheng doesn’t actually believe this but he leaves anyway. Jin Ling sneaks Wei Wuxian out. Wei Wuxian tells him he’ll be in trouble because Jiang Cheng thinks he’s the Yiling Patriarch. Jin Ling scoffs because Jiang Cheng is always finding ‘Yiling Patriarchs’ in an ongoing search to find his brother.

Once in the forest, Wei Wuxian knocks Jin Ling out. He then transfers the curse mark from Jin Ling to himself because sixteen years of being dead didn’t teach him any self-preservation skills at all.

Int, the spirit-eating saber tomb [Qinghe]

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian bring the sword spirit to the tomb. It tells them they did a good job and then points them somewhere else, like some sort of spiritual scavenger hunt or an extremely intense game of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. They theorize that the sword spirit is probably Baxia, Nie Mingjue’s sword, and it’s trying to lead them to wherever his body is. Nie Huaisang looks pretty upset about this, which seems reasonable. Our heroes promise him they’ll figure out what’s going on and return his brother’s body to him if possible.

Lan Wangji gives Wei Wuxian more details on Nie Mingjue’s death. The Nie sect has a history of ‘qi deviation’, which is sort of like a magical backlash. This is, they now figure, likely due to struggling to control these violent saber spirits. Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao were both working to try to help Nie Mingjue avoid qi deviation but failed, and he had a violent fit, ran away, and was never seen again.

Ext, Yueyang [Qinghe]

Continuing in the vein of ‘shit, a lot happened while you were dead’, Lan Wangji tells Wei Wuxian that Xue Yang turned up a little while afterwards and Jin Guangshan made him a member of the Jin sect. Nie Mingjue wanted him executed for the murder of the Chang clan, but the lone survivor suddenly recanted his testimony, and not long after that, Nie Mingjue died/went missing. Xue Yang ended up in a pretty good spot. Wei Wuxian basically says ‘what a world’ and Lan Wangji takes his drink and knocks it back.

By the way, Jin Guangshan is now dead too, having died ‘in bed’ a little while after Nie Mingjue disappeared. I can’t remember when Wei Wuxian finds that out. But good riddance anyway.

Now drunk after one shot, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian have a touching moment or twelve. Lan Wangji admits that he regrets not helping Wei Wuxian in his last life, and Wei Wuxian tells him not to worry about it. After Lan Wangji falls asleep, Wei Wuxian goes outside and uses his new flute (which Lan Wangji has fixed up a bit) to summon Wen Ning. He finds that they’ve put nails in his head to suppress his consciousness, and removes them. They reunite and it’s emotional.

But before much can happen, Lan Wangji wanders drunkenly from the inn. Wen Ning goes to hide, and Wei Wuxian ends up babysitting drunk Lan Wangji again and it’s hilarious. Drunk Lan Wangji tries to steal chickens for him and also graffitis a random house.

When they get back to the inn, a masked man shows up and tries to steal the sword spirit. Even black-out drunk, Lan Wangji beats him, but he seems to have inside knowledge of the Lan sect fighting style. Then he uses a teleportation talisman, which hardly anybody has the skill to use.

Ext, Yi City [Hell, as far as I can tell]

Listen. I’m going to be honest with y’all again. This arc messed me up. I have no desire to revisit it in detail and it virtually never comes up in my fics. So I’m going to be very, very brief here.

Xue Yang tricked Xiao Xingchen into killing a bunch of innocent people, including Song Lan, who is now a fierce corpse under Xue Yang’s control. Xiao Xingchen found out what happened and killed himself. Xue Yang freaked out because he either a) actually loved Xiao Xingchen in his own messed up way, or b) was having a tantrum like a little kid who broke their favorite toy by playing too rough with it. Your mileage may vary and a thousand fanfics have been written about this issue. Since then, he’s been hanging out in Yi City, which is full of dead people and poison.

The really important part is that Xue Yang has been using yin iron to do all this stuff.

The ducklings followed a bunch of clues here, along with Jin Ling. Wei Wuxian herds them around while Lan Wangji fights Xue Yang and eventually kills him. The same masked man shows up, grabs the yin iron off Xue Yang’s dead body, and teleports again.

They find a headless body in a coffin underneath Xiao Xingchen’s, and the sword spirit reveals itself to be Baxia, indicating that it is indeed Nie Mingjue. Song Lan, now released from Xue Yang’s control, takes Xiao Xingchen’s sword and a spirit pouch with his fragmented soul and goes to be a wandering cultivator. It’s really depressing.

Ext, some city [I don’t remember]

Everyone’s kind of shell-shocked by the fuckery that was Yi City, so they’re trying to chill out. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian have a tender moment watching the juniors shopping. Wei Wuxian says, ‘If A-Yuan had lived, he’d be about their age now.’ Lan Wangji looks at him like he just realized he left the stove on. Meanwhile Lan Sizhui is fascinated by a stand selling toys just like ones Wen Yuan had at the Burial Mounds. Hm …

Lan Xichen has arrived. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji show him Baxia and he’s really sad since he and Nie Mingjue were bros. Wei Wuxian (still pretending to be Mo Xuanyu) says that at this point, they know whoever killed Nie Mingjue and hid his body is a) friends with Xue Yang, and b) familiar with the Lan sect fighting style. He points out that this sounds a lot like Jin Guangyao, who had a ‘complicated history’ with Nie Mingjue.

Lan Xichen says it can’t be Jin Guangyao, because Jin Guangyao has been with him every night talking about important matters for the last week or so. Also, the use of the teleportation talisman has a negative effect on one’s health and he can personally attest that Jin Guangyao shows no signs of having used it. Another two thousand fanfics spring into existence.

At the end of the conversation, he calls Wei Wuxian by his name. Wei Wuxian takes off his mask and says ‘Damn, I should’ve known I couldn’t fool you.’ Lan Xichen pulls that whole ‘oh I didn’t actually know until you confirmed it just now’ trick but let’s be real there is absolutely no idea Lan Xichen didn’t already know, given that his brother has only ever tolerated one (1) person in his entire life.

Int, the inn [wherever they are]

The ducklings are fighting, mostly because Jin Ling is mad that Lan Sizhui said something halfway complimentary about Wei Wuxian, who he hates for killing his father (and causing his mother’s death). The other ducklings are like “bro, chill”. Jin Ling will not chill. Jin Ling will NEVER chill. Wei Wuxian is sad because his nephew hates him.

Lan Sizhui tries to explain that he only meant maybe they should have all the facts before they condemn someone. Jin Ling continues to not be chill. Lan Wangji buys Wei Wuxian some booze to cheer him up.

Despite Lan Xichen’s words, they’re still convinced Jin Guangyao is involved, and make plans to go to Koi Tower and look for Nie Mingjue’s head. Lan Xichen comes back in and tells them he’s thought about it and if they find evidence, they should bring it to him. They agree.

~end of part 5~

#gonna try and finish this up this weekend!#liveblog #the untamed

54 notes · View notes

sailor-cresselia · 6 years

Note

How much have you thought of the ex aid timeline?

Probably a bit too much. Here’s what I’ve worked out so far. Keep in mind that I’m not including anything from Mighty Novel X, any drama cds that may exist, or the two stage shows - I don’t have access to them, so I can’t source them.

2000: Kuroto (age 14) discovers the Bugster Virus, and soon proceeds to infect Emu (age 8). Later in the year, the car accident happens. (shhhh i know what the novel says i don’t care it was an accident shhhhhh)

Late 2010: Genius Gamer M collapses from exhaustion and a long term case of the game illness. Happy Birthday, Parad. If this was OOO you’d be getting a cake.

2011: Taiga becomes Snipe, and after what appears to be several months The Thing With Saki happens. I’m still unsure if this is Zero Day - They mentioned the term a few times in show but never specified what it actually was, IIRC.

August 2015, in the world of Build: Parad finds himself on the other side of a wormhole.

early 2016: Ghost and the 100 eyecons movie. I have no idea what goes down, but apparently there’s an ExAid cameo. I need to watch it, but I’m pretty sure that the cameo can be ignored?

April 17, 2016: Over at a previous season, some stuff goes down, Takeru comes back to life, etc.etc. Kuroto (As Genm) goes and practices his Shakariki Sports stunts on some Ganma mooks. (Kuroto has An Aesthetic and it is Zombies and these jerks are ruining it for him.)

Some unspecified time in between, when Takeru is celebrating his birthday: Takeru meets his future son! (aka Surprise Future 3: the surprising. Takeru hates time travel almost to the same level as Shinnosuke now, and is probably worried that he’s going to be a terrible father.) This is the next appearance of both Genm and Ex-Aid - but I DON”T KNOW WHERE IT FITS. I don’t want it to be on Takeru’s original birthday, but if it’s shortly after his revival, then it is physically impossible for Ex-Aid to appear. I just don’t know.

October 2016: Game Start. Emu becomes Ex-Aid.

Early December, 2016: Ex-Aid & Ghost. Technically, outside of Zaizen, his cronies, and Parad, Takeru manages to be the fourth person overall to find out about Emu being Patient Zero. Numbers one and two are Kuroto and Masamune, presumably in that order, and number three is Kiriya. Emu doesn’t remember a thing about the last part of that battle.

Christmas 2016: Episode 12. That is really all there is to say on the matter.

February 2017: Beast Rider Squad

March 2017: Okay, Parad, this is the definition of ‘cool motive, still murder.’ (AKA Kuroto dies.) Later in the month, ‘Chou Super Hero Taisen’ and the Gorider special occur.

April 2017: Kamen Rider Chronicle Begins

May 2017: oh. hey there kuroto. “welcome back” (also the proper introduction of Masamune / Cronus)

June 2017: Oh! Hey there Kiriya! Welcome back!

Early to Mid August 2017: Kamen Rider Chronicle Ends. (and so does the Season.) That Other Build appears, presumably from his 2015, and takes off one of Kuroto’s remaining lives.

I figure about a week passes between Masamune’s defeat and The Press Conference, maybe two weeks. No more than that. Enough time to get things done, like Taiga’s clinic being made official, Nico to graduate, Hiiro to get some new students, etc.

Late August to early September 2017: True Ending, wherein a terrible father is actually able to try and redeem himself for once in this franchise.

Here’s where it gets tricky.

In the True Ending post-credits scene, That Other Build appears, again presumably from his 2015, takes Ex-Aid’s power, and accidentally takes Parad along for the trip back through the wormhole. Parad is stuck in Build!2015 until Build!2017, aka Heisei Gen Final, at which point he and Sento hitch a ride with Kouta (the overpowered little–) back to the Main Timeline.

Build & Ex-Aid (Heisei Generations Final) is, with regards to the Main Timeline, canonically “one year after True Ending”, which would put it somewhere in the second half of 2018.

I. Don’t like putting this film a full year after the season. It doesn’t fit with any of the other Movie Wars - most are at most set six months post-series.

(Well - most of the other Movie Wars.)

(We are studiously ignoring OOO & W for the purpose of comparison, because W’s final episode is set one year after the rest of the series, and the movie really requires that to have happened. To say nothing of the OOO section… *shudder*)

(And the Ex-Aid & Ghost film has no choice but to be in December, because of Certain Events In Late December, so it’s by necessity 8 months after the conclusion of… most of Ghost’s storyline.)

But putting Heisei Gen Final in 2018 makes several things awkward.

First: one year? really? Again, an unusual time gap. I just don’t like it.

Second: It screws with Sento and Ryuuga, who I maintain landed in the Main Timeline. I know I rag on Zi-O, and there are all sorts of problems and unreliable narration going on in there, but this has nothing to do with that. This is largely consolidation of characters. I assume that time stayed ‘synced’ when Enigma was shut down, so they landed in Mid to Late July 2018. (season finale time dilation in action, folks!)

IF Heisei Gen Final is in 2018, as canon claims, then there would be two Sentos and two Ryuugas running around at the time. Three people with the same faces, technically, because of Sato Taro and the black-haired Ryuuga.

That’s just mean and there’s too many paradoxes going around in Rider right now.

Also, Final being in 2018 will probably wreak havoc with the currently upcoming Heisei Generations Forever.

All of that to say that I personally put Final in December 2017, just to keep things nice and consistent.

The Another Ending trilogy in August 2019, two years after the series finale. (As is the Para-DX HBV.) That’s unavoidable. Two years post-finale is a good time span.

I can’t tell what the time span of the four is, though. They follow pretty much immediately on each other’s heels, but I think it’s… maybe a week, week and a half total?

A very, very long and tiring week and a half.

I have no earthly idea how far off Kiriya’s revival is, and that bugs me.

(… heh. bugs. like bugsters. i’m so sick of these puns you guys.)

Doing math like a normal human tells us that Another Ending is 2019 - they SAY two years after True Ending, but Rider Wiki insists it’s in 2020 - two years after the ‘technically canonical but really really dumb’ date of 2018… for Heisei Final. Normal Human math means that Mighty Novel X, canonically ‘three years after Another Ending’, is thus 2022, as oppose to where Rider Wiki lists it - 2023.

That’s as far out as I can go, so yeah. Little too much thought. I’m desperately trying to figure out the Heart and Mach specials for Drive - I know they’re here in 2018, but I’m not sure WHEN in 2018. (Mach Saga is going in November for the (re)United verse, no two ways about that, but I dunno about canonically.)

So that’s what I’ve been using for the Ex-Aid Timeline. Why do you ask?

#sailorcressy says #i will ride this inspiration train until it runs out of track #kamen rider ex-aid #i spent an hour typing this #i need to sleep now goodnight #Anonymous

6 notes · View notes

journeysintowebcomics · 6 years

Text

Worm Liveblog #66

UPDATE 66: Benign Villain

Last time was the last of the interludes! Bonesaw was the last one to be introduced and went to torment Panacea, actually succeeding even if she didn’t join the team. Now it’s time to return to the main story, so let’s do that!

‘Plague’, is the name of this arc. Maybe it’s related to how the Undersiders are taking over parts of the city like a plague, or maybe it’s a description of the Slaughterhouse Nine or Cauldron’s activities. I guess I’ll know for sure once this arc is afoot.

Looks like it’s a moment of peace and relative calm. Taylor is doing origami with a few beetles, while Charlotte and Sierra watch and provide commentary, it seems. Charlotte in particular finds creepy how the beetles are moving in such an organized manner, the opposite to how mindless bugs usually are. Bugs shouldn’t be like that, she says!

“They’re so organized and human. Bugs shouldn’t act that way.”

“I don’t really believe in thinking that way anymore,” I said, absently.

“What way?”

I had to stop to compose my thoughts. I glanced at Charlotte, and Sierra, who was standing by the fridge, silently eating her breakfast. “I don’t believe in shouldn’t, like there’s some universal rules about the way things should be, the way people should act.”

Well it’s easy to think that when you and a lot of people you know have powers that lets you and other beings act in ways they shouldn’t act. I think it’s the kind of mindset you get from watching everyday facts like the laws of physics be treated as an optional thing. You get…this feeling like anything’s possible, maybe? Taylor has adapted quite well to having powers and being involved in a superpower-filled environment! Hard to believe this is the same Taylor from the start of the story. Character development, I love you so much – and there’s still a long way to go.

“So there’s no right or wrong? People and animals should do whatever?”

“No, there’s always going to be consequences. Believe me when I say I know about that. But I do think there’s always going to be extenuating circumstances, where a lot of things we normally assume are wrong become excusable.”

“Like rape? Are you going to tell me there’s a situation where rape is okay?” Charlotte asked. I would have thought I’d touched on a hot subject if her voice wasn’t so level.

Oh, sweet baby Jesus. I hope you didn’t sprain a muscle with that particular flailing thought, Charlotte. I thought what Taylor said implicitly explained there are things that don’t become excusable, I mean—how did we get to this from beetles making origami? Things escalated in five seconds flat!

Taylor was only talking about bugs, anyway. So what’s she making here?

I directed a housefly into one hole and settled it inside, then fed a braided length of twine through the holes. I handed the result to Charlotte and ordered the bugs to start making another.

“A necklace?” Sierra asked.

Ah. I thought the box the beetles were making was…much larger. It’s a box just large enough for a fly to be inside, Sierra and Charlotte each will have this box in some sort of item with them, as a tracker and an alert button of sorts. If they’re ever in danger, all they have to do is crush that box, and a swarm will arrive in a minute or less. It may be good to have it as a necklace, if you have it hanging from your wrist there’s some risk you’ll crush it accidentally and hanging it from your keys has the same danger. It’s a clever way to use her power, that’s for sure. I never stop being amazed at the practical uses of her power.

She’s even making a rudimentary symbol system to alert them if there’s any danger like weapons, or to tell them how many people there’s nearby. That reminds me, what are Sierra and Charlotte going to do? It’s unlikely Skitter would send them to mess with people from dangerous rival groups, so I think it’s possible they’re going to stay here in the territory. Given what the Merchants did, people coming to attack is a possibility.

I drew three lines that crossed in the center, using the flies and beetles that were working on a cube for Sierra.

Asterisk. The word is asterisk.

Just as I hoped, it doesn’t take long for me to find out what these newly-minted henchmen…henchwomen, I guess…are going to do.

“For now, just door to door. I’m going to mark the places you should visit, where there are families or groups of people. I need the info I can’t get with my bugs. Who are the people in my territory? What do they need: Maybe medical care, clothes, more food, maybe someone’s giving them trouble? You find out, take notes, then pass that information to me.”

So basically, they’re going to do logistic and administrative work. Just like Taylor promised, they’re not going to do anything criminal. It’s a good induction into Taylor’s budding quasicriminal control over the area, and it should go without any problems given its simplicity.

…

Twenty bucks they have to crush the cube before the arc ends.

For now this is the only task they have to do, they’ll continue making their signal system later. Now it’s time for what most people want to hear about when it’s about working: money. I’m sure they’ll be pleased to know about their payment, being a villain here in Brockton Bay seems to give you quite a lot of money if you have connections, and Taylor here has connections. I’m sure she can spare enough money to give them a very good salary.

“We’ll try for six to eight hours a day, five days a week, but consider it flexible. Not to spook you or anything, but I’ll know if you’re slacking. I’m thinking two hundred and fifty dollars a day, and obviously it’s under the table, so you’re not getting taxed on it.”

…two hundred and fifty dollars a day, that’d be $31 per hour, more or less, and $5000 per month, supposing you work twenty days a month. Huh. Can I get hired too?

One of the lessons Taylor learned from Coil is to make your employees want to work for you, and that’s achieved through a good payment and a good work environment suited to you and what you do. Part of these two recruits’ job is also be a moving Human Resources office, looking for people to join the organization and referring them to Taylor. After all, wouldn’t you want to join a place where the employees are paid well and genuinely look happy?

…okay, them wearing masks and most likely looking sinister isn’t going to make a crowd of eager young people gather to take part in this shebang, but maybe that’s for the better.

Ah, Taylor has been doing what she said she’d do! She’s working on costumes and masks for the rest of the Undersiders! It’ll all have the same protections she has, and although it’s not easy, she’s doing her best. She’s using the fabric of the failed attempts to make the masks for her employees.

Charlotte took a black mask that would cover her eyes and the lower half of her face, adjusted it until the eyeholes were in place, and then set about fixing her hair

I’m…having a bit of a hard time picturing that mask. Also, are they wearing uniforms of some sort? I hope they are wearing uniforms! Because it’d be harder to believe a random person with casual clothes and mask is working for Skitter. Just something to keep in mind.

Once Charlotte and Sierra get going to do their job, Taylor returns upstairs to take a breath and reflect on how it’s like to be the new villain boss of this place.

I missed staying at the loft, when things were easy and I was free. I was happy with how things were going with my new recruits, but I was realizing that living with them would mandate changes to my lifestyle. There were appearances to maintain, and I couldn’t be seen slacking off or being a slob. I couldn’t sleep in or put off my shower until later in the day. I couldn’t let myself collapse in a sweaty heap after a hard morning run. I’d woken up at six in the morning to be sure that I could run, shower, dress and look like I was on top of things by the time they were up. After a late night, it left me feeling a little worn around the edges. I harbored some concerns about my ability to help Dinah if this kept up.

Wow do I know how that feels. I miss the days I could sleep in whenever I wanted. But yeah, most of the changes and new behaviors Taylor has to learn is all about keeping appearances, because even if they’re people of her age that I’m sure would understand the feeling of wanting to slack off, you just can’t show such things to your employees. Luckily that all is the kind of stuff you can get used to, except the not being able to sleep in part. That’s something you can’t really get used to, you’re doomed to feeling sleepy when you’re not 100% doing something.

It has been an unspecified amount of time since Bryce’s rescue, and I think it’s a few days, maybe a week. What happened with Alec, Cherish, Rachel and the Siberian was all in the same day, or two days at most, I noticed the visit to Panacea happened at the same time than the Siberian’s visit to Rachel. Taylor was worried Charlotte and Sierra would denounce her to the Protectorate, and spent those days ready to defend herself in case, say, Miss Militia burst in with a grenade launcher, but nothing happened, they returned, willing to be part of Taylor’s work. Nice!

Taylor’s work this morning is mostly working on the costumes, and watching over Sierra and Charlotte, making sure they wouldn’t be in danger, and monitoring them to some extent. Some people ignored the girls’ attempts to talk with them, something Taylor decided was fine for now. Better leave them to get used to the new situation, only if they continue to ignore her attempts to reach out she’ll take charge of that problem.

Apparently overwhelmed with the requests from his various rulers of the Brockton Bay territories, Coil had started delegating some of his people to act as intermediaries.

I wonder how many people are under Coil’s payroll as rulers of territories, other than the Undersiders. I doubt the Protectorate would allow him to take control of the city by installing rulers everywhere, but there must be enough for this to be a big step in the right direction, as far as his plans are concerned, right? The Travelers aren’t ruling any territories, and I don’t think there’s abundance of parahumans to work for him, but there may be a few unnamed ones working in other places of the city.

I got in contact with Mrs. Cranston, the intermediary he’d designated to me, and outlined what I needed. Waste removal was a big priority, as was clearing out the storm drains so the water could drain from the flooded streets. I let her know that my services were available if she wanted help identifying where the blockages were, or if the trash removal teams needed protection from interference.

So basically, the rulers of the territories are expected to do most of the work when it’s about improving the conditions of their places, as if they’re the mayors of tiny cities. That’s kind of neat. Some of the Undersiders will do better than others, that’s for sure – I can’t picture Rachel calling anyone to tell them about blockage in the storm drains.

Some time passed, and Taylor receives a call from Charlotte. There are two families leaving because of a rat infestation.

Of course. The trash would offer a steady diet to vermin, and the flooding would deter many of their natural predators. The rodent population had exploded, and it could easily be getting to the point where it was interfering with people’s daily lives.

Must be one of the problems Taylor described, those that stem from the waste removal need and the clogged storm drains.

There’s something mundanely awesome about Taylor taking this in her own hands. She goes to clear a rodent infestation, wearing her costume and all! It’ll deliver the message she’s ready to help the community here, even with problems as seemingly menial as a rat infestation. Already attacking the rodents with her insects, Taylor steps out of her hideout and walks there. Will there be any rats left by the time she gets there? I’d be more concerned about them returning. It’s a possibility, I think.

On the way there, Grue calls Skitter, telling her he’s on his way to talk with her.

So he was already on the way when he called? I wasn’t sure what to think about that. It suggested it was a social call with the assumption I would be okay with it, which I didn’t mind, but that didn’t really fit his personality. More likely there was something that he wanted to discuss with me in person.

Eh…it’s true things are more or less okay between Skitter and Grue now, but I still have a bit of a hard time imagining him going to see her just to shoot the breeze. This most likely is related to some urgent matter. It could be about the visit Regent and Heckpuppy received. That’s definitely something the rest of the Undersiders would want to hear about.

…say, I hope Skitter will make her bugs move away the hundreds of dead rodents somehow, because that’s a huge biological danger. I thought she was making them run away, not outright killing as many as she could – although that will make it harder for the rodent population to grow again, yeah. All the owners of the house can do is watch the clouds of bugs hover and get into the house.

If I thought Skitter was the mischievous sort, I’d think she was all stealthy while arriving just because she wanted to mess with them, hah.

“Is this some sort of game to you!? We were prepared to leave, and you keep us from getting our things? Add another infestation to the one that’s already there!?”

Apparently they weren’t convinced by Charlotte’s arguments that she was going to help, and I can’t say I blame them – the way this was described, it was almost like the stuff of nightmares, clouds of insects hovering over your house and what not. I’ll give this man credit, he has guts, challenging Skitter to a fair fight. I hope it won’t come to that, that they’ll see all Skitter’s doing is helping them – not that the impromptu rat extermination will guarantee they’ll stay, I think.

To gain some time to show what she’s doing, Skitter makes a kid count to one hundred, and hurries up the work, gathering the dead rats and carrying them out of the house, parading right in front of the family and all. Quite a morbid thing to see, but it’ll get the message across about what Skitter just did.

I knew I wouldn’t quite have enough time to clear out the entire house of the rat corpses, so I cheated by hauling the rats through the walls, into the unoccupied neighbor’s residence and out the kitchen window at the back of that building.

Hah! I’m glad it was unoccupied, or else Skitter would have more irate people wanting to punch the daylights out of her.

The last of the rat infestation was carried out when the one-hundred count was over, at which point Skitter turns to the angry patriarch and tells him they can fight if he wants. Having see what she had done and that the vermin complaint was gone, he doesn’t, although I doubt he likes Skitter more than he did before.

One of the mothers was the one who asked for help, so Skitter talks with her about what there’s to be done now. Sterilize everything! Oh, yes, please do. I like rats, but I sure would sterilize the heck out of the house if I had found out there used to be a few hundred nesting there. The problem is that this family doesn’t have the means to do all that, nor the money to replace everything that needs to be replaced. Good thing Skitter is here! She’ll get things in order.

Living in this situation has been a major ordeal for everyone here. Not only they have no utilities, all they have is rainwater and rice, and the propane tank they had received is almost depleted. It’s possible other neighbors nearby are in the same situation. Major respect for everyone here, I know I’d be so restless in such situation. Skitter is going to get them supplies and clothing, and even doctors to check them just in case. Leptospirosis isn’t something to take lightly, yeah.

The mother, bless her enduring soul, is worried about having to pay back for all this help, so of course Skitter tells her it’s all okay – she’s not here to make herself be some sort of loan shark.

“Thank you,” she said, again. I felt bad for feeling the way I did, but I thought her gratitude was a little muted for what I was giving her.

Oh, come on, Skitter, what did you expect? Did you think she’d fall to her knees, open her arms to the sky and bellow ‘oh, thank you so much! Thank you, thank you, thank you!’? Who would do that?

Since all is fine here, Skitter is finally free to go talk to Grue, who’s watching from nearby, and is amused that Skitter is being an exterminator. She defends her actions by saying doing this will help solidify her powers, making the people want to support her. That’s depending a bit too much on people’s gratitude, but eh, there’ll always be some people who will want to make amends and get rid of the proverbial red in their ledgers, just so they’re not indebted to Skitter anymore.

Grue thinks that man is resentful towards Skitter because he wanted to protect the families, and then this ‘little girl’ arrived and got rid of the problem in, what, fifteen minutes? It’s egg on his face, from his perspective. When Skitter muses about recruiting him so he’d have the power to help his family and other people – no way he’d accept – Grue says he’d be intolerable, that he’d question her every move and overall be a pain in the neck. Hm. Good analysis.

As expected, every Undersider is taking their job as rulers in a different way each.

“Regent and I are going on the offensive. I’ve got Aisha and I making constant, coordinated attacks against enemies in my territory, terrorizing groups with attacks from the cover of my darkness, or from someone they can’t even remember fighting. Regent’s got a squad of Coil’s soldiers with him, and he’s tracking and kidnapping the leaders of enemy groups and gangs, using his power to control them and then having them sabotage their own operations, or start fights with other groups that leave both almost totally wiped out. Then he cleans up the mess.”

“And us girls?”

“Lisa’s running the shelter, and she says she’s doing it to get more info, but I think she doesn’t mind how it connects her to the community there, either. You, too, are almost nurturing in how you’re treating the people in your territory. And you’re acting like you’re getting that aspiring superhero thing out of your system. Or entrenched deeper into it. I can’t tell.”

He’s not kidding, that’s definitely being on the offensive. I’m sure it’s very effective, too. Tattletale’s way of dealing with her territory isn’t too different from Taylor’s way, Rachel’s way is...uh...well she’s not interested in ruling over her territory, I’m sure all she wants is to be left alone with her dogs. The people in her territory are still very unlucky.

Also yeah! She’s being nurturing, and it’s because that’s just how she is, she has standards. She’s not going to force a reign of terror unless the people in her newly-claimed terrain forces her to. Skitter will be ruthless towards her enemies, no doubt about that, so why not to be kind and ‘nurturing’ to the residents of her territory? It’ll work better this way when it’s recruiting time.

Grue thinks the differences is because of the genders, Skitter thinks it’s because of the powers. No, I’m pretty sure it’s because of the personalities. Grue takes good care of those he cares about and it’s not like he has any reason to care about the civilians in his turf. Regent is a sociopath to some extent, so of course he doesn’t care about improving their living situation. Heckpuppy is...uh, well I think that one’s pretty obvious. Tattletale’s a rather empathic person, thanks partly to her power and partly because she can actually be rather nice. I don’t think I have to explain how Skitter is like, but yeah, this all fits her.

“Maybe. But… no,” he changed his mind after thinking for a second. “I think both you and Lisa could be a lot more aggressive. It kind of worries me that you aren’t.”

They started recently, I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone to make big power moves. Grue and Regent are moving pretty fast, and Skitter is already doing well in terms of repelling hostile forces from outside, judging by what happened with those thirty-or-something Merchants from an arc ago. I’m sure when it’s needed they’ll get aggressive. This isn’t the only concern Grue has, though, he’s also worried Skitter won’t get profit from her territory.

“He has his own money. Money that he has to devote time and attention to earning. If your territory never starts earning for him and just becomes some black hole that sucks up tens of thousands of dollars of his money each week, you think he’s going to be okay with that?”

I don’t think there’s anything to worry about on that regard. Coil’s controlling and stuff, but he’s not worried about getting loads of money. Sure, he’s not going to be happy about throwing cash into a bottomless well, but he can get even more loads of money anytime he wants. Skitter may want to look for ways to get money, though. Just in case. No peddling drugs or asking protection money, I doubt she’d do such things.

“I can get all of the people in my territory onto Coil’s side. And I have over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars I can put towards infrastructure here.”

I don’t mean to demean Skitter’s efforts, but I really doubt the people in this territory will be onto Coil’s side, ever. Not only he’s this nebulous mastermind figure that if he showed himself in front of everyone he’d become the poster boy for those villains you would immediately distrust – skintight black faceless costume with a snake print from head to toe doesn’t scream ‘nice guy’, you know – I’m sure everyone would immediately assume he has some ulterior motive. It’s easier to trust Skitter because she’s getting involved, she’s doing things with her own hands, Coil wouldn’t do such thing.

Also, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars is nothing when it’s about infrastructure. That money’s going to be gone in no time.

Once Grue points out Skitter’s plans won’t happen quickly at all, she has to acknowledge that, and feels dejected. Coil isn’t going to let Dinah go over a start, that’s for sure. Nor...once the territory is already going well. The only time he’s going to do it is once the city is under his control, and it’s not like he has any intentions of doing it. She may be putting a bit too much stock on Coil’s , uuuuh, sense of honor? Not going to work.

Anyway, onto more grave matters! And it’s just what I expected, it’s about the Slaughterhouse Nine visiting them. Okay, it’s not exactly what I thought, but it’s close enough. There’s no mention of Rachel getting visited, and they know someone in Coil’s headquarters and Hookwolf got contacted too. I should have guessed they’d have this much information, what with Tattletale being so good at gathering information. It’s only matter of time before they find out about the Siberian’s visit, thanks to Tattletale and because I doubt Heckpuppy will hide that wolf.

“And at the PRT offices? Shadow Stalker?”

“As good a guess as any. We’re not sure where she wound up.”

Good question. I had completely forgotten about Shadow Stalker! Now that I think about it, if I had remembered her, I’d have thought the Slaughterhouse Nine would try to recruit her, but they didn’t. Last time I knew anything about her, police had arrived to her house after her life was thoroughly destroyed. Maybe she’s not in Brockton Bay anymore. Well, no surprise there, Regent threatened her quite well, unbeknown to everyone except him. If she’s somewhere in the city, he’d know. Heck, she was extremely zealous regarding her role as a vigilante-y parahuman, but I don’t know if she’d join. Not that her personality and stuff would stop her from getting a visit, if that group truly wanted to.

“So what does this mean?”

“It means Hookwolf is calling together a meeting of the local powers that be. Crook, criminal, mercenary and warlord. We have to decide if we want to go.”

Ah, he’s taking action! Good for him, he wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to have to get help. Maybe this way they can know who was visited, perhaps that information could be useful in some way? Not that the Undersiders immediately agree about going – it may be a trap, or a way for Hookwolf to get rid of the competition. They’re wrong, but there are lots of reasons to be wary.

The problem is that if they don’t go, they’ll miss information they should know, and asking secondhand through Coil – if he goes – or anything like that doesn’t guarantee they’ll find out anything, because whoever they talk to may withhold information. Iiiiii can’t decide if going has more benefits than not going, honestly. I should go, if only to have the information.

...if Coil wants them to go do they really have any option? I don’t think Coil would take kindly to them not going. Better spare yourselves the trouble and just go. Besides, as Skitter says, the powers of everyone who would be present could work together to defend and attack back to some extent. But, you know, with all this talk about the Slaughterhouse Nine maybe attacking, now I’m thinking maybe they will. It’d go a long way into establishing them as major threats – not that they haven’t been plenty of established as a threat yet, you know what I mean.

“But if Tattletale is right, and Hookwolf isn’t on the side of the Slaughterhouse Nine, if we can trust Skidmark to have the basic common sense to back the rest of us up if they attack-”

Ask Dinah what are the odds of Skidmark backing you and everyone else up. I’m almost certain it’s an amazingly tiny percentage.

Skitter wants to go, and part of the reason why she wants to go is because going would heighten their reputation as villains to fear, and whatever’s said in that meeting will be useful. Guess that’s settled! This is where this arc is going to now!

“Why do I get the feeling your decision here is motivated by your rushed attempts to get more control, more rep and finish this phase of our territory grab as soon as possible?”

“Because it is.”

I kind of have the feeling what Grue said to Skitter may have influenced it too. Grue would have decided not to go, if it had been up to them, and he’d have used this time to make sure the territory that belonged to him would be alright. But since it’s not up to him, and the situation is critical, well, better go, yeah?

The meeting is tonight. And since I’m not going to be able to read more for today, I better leave that for next time.

Next time: in seven updates

#worm #worm liveblog #book liveblog #story liveblog #liveblog

8 notes · View notes

sheminecrafts · 5 years

Text

Minecraft Earth makes the whole real world your very own blocky realm

When your game tops 100 million players, your thoughts naturally turn to doubling that number. That’s the case with the creators, or rather stewards, of Minecraft at Microsoft, where the game has become a product category unto itself. And now it is making its biggest leap yet — to a real-world augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon GO, called Minecraft Earth.

Announced today but not playable until summer (on iOS and Android) or later, MCE (as I’ll call it) is full-on Minecraft, reimagined to be mobile and AR-first. So what is it? As executive producer Jesse Merriam put it succinctly: “Everywhere you go, you see Minecraft. And everywhere you go, you can play Minecraft.”

Yes, yes — but what is it? Less succinctly put, MCE is like other real-world-based AR games in that it lets you travel around a virtual version of your area, collecting items and participating in mini-games. Where it’s unlike other such games is that it’s built on top of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, meaning it’s not some offshoot or mobile cash-in; this is straight-up Minecraft, with all the blocks, monsters and redstone switches you desire, but in AR format. You collect stuff so you can build with it and share your tiny, blocky worlds with friends.

That introduces some fun opportunities and a few non-trivial limitations. Let’s run down what MCE looks like — verbally, at least, as Microsoft is being exceedingly stingy with real in-game assets.

There’s a map, of course

Because it’s Minecraft Earth, you’ll inhabit a special Minecraftified version of the real world, just as Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite put a layer atop existing streets and landmarks.

The look is blocky to be sure, but not so far off the normal look that you won’t recognize it. It uses OpenStreetMaps data, including annotated and inferred information about districts, private property, safe and unsafe places and so on — which will be important later.

The fantasy map is filled with things to tap on, unsurprisingly called tappables. These can be a number of things: resources in the form of treasure chests, mobs and adventures.

Chests are filled with blocks, naturally, adding to your reserves of cobblestone, brick and so on, all the different varieties appearing with appropriate rarity.

Mobs are animals like those you might normally run across in the Minecraft wilderness: pigs, chickens, squid and so on. You snag them like items, and they too have rarities, and not just cosmetic ones. The team highlighted a favorite of theirs, the muddy pig, which when placed down will stop at nothing to get to mud and never wants to leave, or a cave chicken that lays mushrooms instead of eggs. Yes, you can breed them.

Last are adventures, which are tiny AR instances that let you collect a resource, fight some monsters and so on. For example you might find a crack in the ground that, when mined, vomits forth a volume of lava you’ll have to get away from, and then inside the resulting cave are some skeletons guarding a treasure chest. The team said they’re designing a huge number of these encounters.

Importantly, all these things — chests, mobs and encounters — are shared between friends. If I see a chest, you see a chest — and the chest will have the same items. And in an AR encounter, all nearby players are brought in, and can contribute and collect the reward in shared fashion.

And it’s in these AR experiences and the “build plates” you’re doing it all for that the game really shines.

The AR part

“If you want to play Minecraft Earth without AR, you have to turn it off,” said Torfi Olafsson, the game’s director. This is not AR-optional, as with Niantic’s games. This is AR-native, and for good and ill the only way you can really play is by using your phone as a window into another world. Fortunately it works really well.

First, though, let me explain the whole build plate thing. You may have been wondering how these collectibles and mini-games amount to Minecraft. They don’t — they’re just the raw materials for it.

Whenever you feel like it, you can bring out what the team calls a build plate, which is a special item, a flat square that you virtually put down somewhere in the real world — on a surface like the table or floor, for instance — and it transforms into a small, but totally functional, Minecraft world.

In this little world you can build whatever you want, or dig into the ground, build an inverted palace for your cave chickens or create a paradise for your mud-loving pigs — whatever you want. Like Minecraft itself, each build plate is completely open-ended. Well, perhaps that’s the wrong phrase — they’re actually quite closely bounded, as the world only exists out to the edge of the plate. But they’re certainly yours to play with however you want.

Notably all the usual Minecraft rules are present — this isn’t Minecraft Lite, just a small game world. Water and lava flow how they should, blocks have all the qualities they should and mobs all act as they normally would.

The magic part comes when you find that you can instantly convert your build plate from miniature to life-size. Now the castle you’ve been building on the table is three stories tall in the park. Your pigs regard you silently as you walk through the halls and admire the care and attention to detail with which you no doubt assembled them. It really is a trip.

It doesn’t really look like this but, you get the idea

In the demo, I played with a few other members of the press; we got to experience a couple of build plates and adventures at life-size (technically actually 3/4 life size — the 1 block to 1 meter scale turned out to be a little daunting in testing). It was absolute chaos, really, everyone placing blocks and destroying them and flooding the area and putting down chickens. But it totally worked.

The system uses Microsoft’s new Azure Spatial Anchor system, which quickly and continuously fixed our locations in virtual space. It updated remarkably quickly, with no lag, showing the location and orientation of the other players in real time. Meanwhile the game world itself was rock-solid in space, smooth to enter and explore, and rarely bugging out (and that only in understandable circumstances). That’s great news considering how heavily the game leans on the multiplayer experience.

The team said they’d tested up to 10 players at once in an AR instance, and while there’s technically no limit, there’s sort of a physical limit in how many people can fit in the small space allocated to an adventure or around a tabletop. Don’t expect any giant 64-player raids, but do expect to take down hordes of spiders with three or four friends.

Pick(ax)ing their battles

In choosing to make the game the way they’ve made it, the team naturally created certain limitations and risks. You Wouldn’t want, for example, an adventure icon to pop up in the middle of the highway.

For exactly that reason the team spent a lot of work making the map metadata extremely robust. Adventures won’t spawn in areas like private residences or yards, though of course simple collectibles might. But because you’re able to reach things up to 70 meters away, it’s unlikely you’ll have to knock on someone’s door and say there’s a cave chicken in their pool and you’d like to touch it, please.

Furthermore adventures will not spawn in areas like streets or difficult to reach areas. The team said they worked very hard making it possible for the engine to recognize places that are not only publicly accessible, but safe and easy to access. Think sidewalks and parks.

Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation

Another limitation is that, as an AR game, you move around the real world. But in Minecraft, verticality is an important part of the gameplay. Unfortunately, the simple truth is that in the real world you can’t climb virtual stairs or descend into a virtual cave. You as a player exist on a 2D plane, and can interact with but not visit places above and below that plane. (An exception of course is on a build plate, where in miniature you can fly around it freely by moving your phone.)

That’s a shame for people who can’t move around easily, though you can pick up and rotate the build plate to access different sides. Weapons and tools also have infinite range, eliminating a potential barrier to fun and accessibility.

What will keep people playing?

In Pokémon GO, there’s the drive to catch ’em all. In Wizards Unite, you’ll want to advance the story and your skills. What’s the draw with Minecraft Earth? Well, what’s the draw in Minecraft? You can build stuff. And now you can build stuff in AR on your phone.

The game isn’t narrative-driven, and although there is some (unspecified) character progression, for the most part the focus is on just having fun doing and making stuff in Minecraft. Like a set of LEGO blocks, a build plate and your persistent inventory simply make for a lively sandbox.

Admittedly that doesn’t sound like it carries the same addictive draw of Pokémon, but the truth is Minecraft kind of breaks the rules like that. Millions of people play this game all the time just to make stuff and show that stuff to other people. Although you’ll be limited in how you can share to start, there will surely be ways to explore popular builds in the future.

And how will it make money? The team basically punted on that question — they’re fortunately in a position where they don’t have to worry about that yet. Minecraft is one of the biggest games of all time and a big money-maker — it’s probably worth the cost just to keep people engaged with the world and community.

MCE seems to me like a delightful thing, but one that must be appreciated on its own merits. A lack of screenshots and gameplay video isn’t doing a lot to help you here, I admit. Trust me when I say it looks great, plays well and seems fundamentally like a good time for all ages.

A few other stray facts I picked up:

Regions will roll out gradually, but it will be available in all the same languages as Vanilla at launch

Yes, there will be skins (and they’ll carry over from your existing account)

There will be different sizes and types of build plates

There’s crafting, but no 3×3 crafting grid (?!)

You can report griefers and so on, but the way the game is structured it shouldn’t be an issue

The AR engine creates and uses a point cloud but doesn’t, like, take pictures of your bedroom

Content is added to the map dynamically, and there will be hot spots but emptier areas will fill up if you’re there

It leverages AR Core and AR Kit, naturally

The HoloLens version of Minecraft we saw a while back is a predecessor “more spiritually than technically”

Adventures that could be scary to kids have a special sign

“Friends” can steal blocks from your build plate if you’re playing together (or donate them)

Sound fun? Sign up for the beta here.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://tcrn.ch/2VP2LKx via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

0 notes

technicalsolutions88 · 5 years

Link

When your game tops a hundred million players, your thoughts naturally turn to doubling that number. That’s the case with the creators, or rather stewards, of Minecraft at Microsoft, where the game has become a product category unto itself. And now it is making its biggest leap yet — to a real-world augmented reality game in the vein of Pokemon GO, called Minecraft Earth.

Yes, yes — but what is it? Less succinctly put, MCE is like other real-world based AR games in that it lets you travel around a virtual version of your area, collecting items and participating in mini-games. Where it’s unlike other such games is that it’s built on top of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, meaning it’s not some offshoot or mobile cash-in; this is straight-up Minecraft, with all the blocks, monsters, and redstone switches you desire, but in AR format. You collect stuff so you can build with it and share your tiny, blocky worlds with friends.

That introduces some fun opportunities and a few non-trivial limitations. Let’s run down what MCE looks like — verbally, at least, since Microsoft is being exceedingly stingy with real in-game assets.

There’s a map, of course

Because it’s Minecraft Earth, you’ll inhabit a special Minecraftified version of the real world, just as Pokemon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite put a layer atop existing streets and landmarks.

The look is blocky to be sure but not so far off the normal look that you won’t recognize it. It uses OpenStreetMaps data, including annotated and inferred information about districts, private property, safe and unsafe places, and so on — which will be important later.

The fantasy map is filled with things to tap on, unsurprisingly called tappables. These can be a number of things: resources in the form of treasure chests, mobs, and adventures.

Chests are filled with blocks, naturally, adding to your reserves of cobblestone, brick, and so on, all the different varieties appearing with appropriate rarity.

Mobs are animals like those you might normally run across in the Minecraft wilderness: pigs, chickens, squid, and so on. You snag them like items, and they too have rarities, and not just cosmetic ones. The team highlighted a favorite of theirs, the muddy pig, which when placed down will stop at nothing to get to mud and never wants to leave, or a cave chicken that lays mushrooms instead of eggs. Yes, you can breed them.

Last are adventures, which are tiny AR instances that let you collect a resource, fight some monsters, and so on. For example you might find a crack in the ground that, when mined, vomits forth a volume of lava you’ll have to get away from, and then inside the resulting cave are some skeletons guarding a treasure chest. The team said they’re designing a huge number of these encounters.

Importantly, all these things, chests, mobs, and encounters, are shared between friends. If I see a chest, you see a chest — and the chest will have the same items. And in an AR encounter, all nearby players are brought in, and can contribute and collect the reward in shared fashion.

And it’s in these AR experiences and the “build plates” you’re doing it all for that the game really shines.

The AR part

In this little world you can build whatever you want, or dig into the ground, build an inverted palace for your cave chickens or create a paradise for your mud-loving pigs — whatever you want. Like Minecraft itself, each build plate is completely open-ended. Well, perhaps that’s the wrong phrase — they’re actually quite closely bounded, since the world only exists out to the edge of the plate. But they’re certainly yours to play with however you want.

It doesn’t really look like this but you get the idea.

In the demo, I played with a few other members of the press, we got to experience a couple build plates and adventures at life-size (technically actually 3/4 life size — the 1 block to 1 meter scale turned out to be a little daunting in testing). It was absolute chaos, really, everyone placing blocks and destroying them and flooding the area and putting down chickens. But it totally worked.

Pick(ax)ing their battles

Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation

Another limitation is that, as an AR game, you move around the real world. But in Minecraft verticality is an important part of the gameplay. Unfortunately the simple truth is that in the real world you can’t climb virtual stairs or descend into a virtual cave. You as a player exist on a 2D plane, and can interact with but not visit places above and below that plane. (An exception of course is on a build plate, where in miniature you can fly around it freely by moving your phone).

What will keep people playing?

In Pokemon GO, there’s the drive to catch ’em all. In Wizards Unite, you’ll want to advance the story and your skills. What’s the draw with Minecraft Earth? Well, what’s the draw in Minecraft? You can build stuff. And now you can build stuff in AR on your phone.

Admittedly that doesn’t sound like it carries the same addictive draw of Pokemon, but the truth is Minecraft kind of breaks the rules like that. Millions of people play this game all the time just to make stuff and show that stuff to other people. Although you’ll be limited in how you can share to start, there will surely be ways to explore popular builds in the future.

MCE seems to me like a delightful thing but one that must be appreciated on its own merits. A lack of screenshots and gameplay video isn’t doing a lot to help you here, I admit. Trust me when I say it looks great, plays well, and seems fundamentally like a good time for all ages.

A few other stray facts I picked up:

Regions will roll out gradually but it will be available in all the same languages as Vanilla at launch

Yes, there will be skins (and they’ll carry over from your existing account)

There will be different sizes and types of build plates

There’s crafting, but no 3×3 crafting grid (?!)

You can report griefers and so on, but the way the game is structured it should be an issue

The AR engine creates and uses a point cloud but doesn’t like take pictures of your bedroom

Content is added to the map dynamically, and there will be hot spots but emptier areas will fill up if you’re there

It leverages AR Core and AR Kit, naturally

The Hololens version of Minecraft we saw a while back is a predecessor “more spiritually than technically”

Adventures that could be scary to kids have a special sign

“Friends” can steal blocks from your build plate if you’re playing together (or donate them)

Sound fun? Sign up for the beta here.

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2VP2LKx ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

#Technical Solutions #SEO #Online Earning #Youtube Marketing #Android Developer

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 5 years

Link

First, background checks at startups, then Huawei’s finance chief is arrested, SoftBank’s IPO is subscribed, and I am about to record our next edition of TechCrunch Equity. It’s Thursday, December 6, 2018.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at [email protected]) if you like or hate something here.

The dilemma of continuous background checks

My colleague John Biggs covered the Series A round for Israel-based Intelligo, a startup that provides “Ongoing Monitoring” — essentially a continuous background check that can detect if (when?) an employee has suddenly become a criminal or other deviant. That’s a slight pivot from the company’s previous focus of using AI/ML to conduct background checks more efficiently.

Background checks are a huge business. San Francisco-based Checkr, perhaps the most well-known startup in the space, has raised $149 million according to Crunchbase, driven early on by the need to on-board thousands of contingent workers at companies like Uber. Checkr launched what it calls “Continuous Check” which also actively monitors all employees for potential problems, back in July.

Now consider a piece written a few weeks ago by Olivia Carville at Bloomberg that explored the rise of “algorithmic auditors” that actively monitor employee expenses and flags ones it feels are likely to be fraudulent:

U.S. companies, fearing damage to their reputations, are loath to acknowledge publicly how much money they lose each year on fraudulent expenses. But in a report released in April, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners said it had analyzed 2,700 fraud cases from January 2016 to October 2017 that resulted in losses of $7 billion.

Here’s a question that bugs me though: we have continuous criminal monitoring and expense monitoring. Most corporations monitor web traffic and email/Slack/communications. Everything we do at work is poked and prodded to make sure it meets “policy.”

And yet, we see vituperative attacks on China’s social credit system, which …. monitors criminal records, looks for financial frauds, and sanctions people based on their scores. How long will we have to wait before employers give us “good employee behavior” scores and attach it to our profiles in Slack?

The conundrum of course is that no startup or company wants (or can) avoid background checks. And it probably makes sense to continually monitor your employees for changes and fraud. If Bob murders someone over the weekend, it’s probably good to know that when you meet Bob at Monday’s standup meeting.

But let’s not pretend that this continuous monitoring isn’t ruinous to something else required from employees: trust. The more heavily monitored every single activity is in the workplace, the more that employees feel that if the system allows them to get away with something, it must be approved. Without any checks, you rely on trust. With hundreds of checks, policy is essentially etched into action — if I can do it, it must meet policy.

In China, where social trust is extremely low, it likely makes sense to have some sort of scoring mechanism to substitute. But for startups and tech companies, building a culture of trust — of doing the right thing even when not monitored — seems crucial to me for success. So before signing up for one of these continuous services, I’d do a double take and consider the potentially deleterious consequences.

If I was a startup employee, I would think twice (maybe thrice?) before traveling to China

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Last weekend, Trump and Xi agreed to delay the implementation of tariffs on Chinese goods, which led to buoyant Chinese (tech) stocks Monday in Asia time zones. I wrote about how that doesn’t make any sense, since delaying tariffs doesn’t do anything to solve the structural issues in the US/China conflict:

To me the market is deeply misjudging not only the Chinese economy, but also the American leadership as well.

And specifically, I wrote about constraints on Huawei and ZTE:

In what world do these prohibitions disappear? The U.S. national security agencies aren’t going to allow Huawei and ZTE to deploy their equipment in America. Like ever. Quite frankly, if the choice was getting rid of all of China’s non-tariff barriers and allowing Huawei back into America, I think the U.S. negotiators would walk out.

So it was nice to learn (for me, not for her) that the head of finance of Huawei was arrested last night in Canada at the United States’ request. From my colleague Kate Clark:

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer and second-largest smartphone maker, has been arrested in Vancouver, Canada on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran, as first reported by The Globe and Mail.

Huawei confirmed the news with TechCrunch, adding that Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, faces unspecified charges in the Eastern District of New York, where she had transferred flights on her way to Canada.

If you wanted to know how the Trump administration was going to continue to fight the trade war outside of tariffs, you now have your answer. This is a bold move by the administration, targeting not just one of China’s most prominent tech companies, but the daughter of the founder of the company to boot.

China has since demanded her return.

Here is how this is going to play out. China is preventing the two American children of Liu Changming from leaving the country, essentially holding them hostage until their father returns to the mainland to face a criminal justice process related to an alleged fraud case. America now has a prominent daughter of a major Chinese company executive in their hands. That’s some nice tit-for-tat.

For startup founders and tech executives migrating between the two countries, I don’t think one has to literally worry about exit visas or extradition.

But, I do think the travel security operations centers at companies that regularly have employees moving between these countries need to keep very keen and cautious eyes on these developments. It’s entirely possible that these one-off “soft hostages” could flare to much higher numbers, making it much more complicated to conduct cross-border work.

Quick Bites

SoftBank’s IPO raises a lot of dollars

KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

Takahiko Hyuga at Bloomberg reports that SoftBank has sold its entire book of shares for its whopping $23.5 billion IPO. The shares will officially price on Monday and then will trade on December 19. This is a critical and important win for Masayoshi Son, who needs the IPO of his telecom unit to deleverage some of the risk from SoftBank’s massive debt pile (and also to continue funding his startup dreams through Vision Fund, etc.)

SoftBank Vision Fund math, part 2

Arman and I talked yesterday about the complicated math behind just how many dollars are in SoftBank’s Vision Fund. More details, as Jason Rowley pointed out at Crunchbase News:

In an annual Form D disclosure filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning, SBVF disclosed that it has raised a total of approximately $98.58 billion from 14 investors since the date of first sale on May 20, 2017. The annual filing from last year said there was roughly $93.15 billion raised from 8 investors, meaning that the Vision Fund has raised $5.43 billion in the past year and added six new investors to its limited partner base.

I said yesterday that the fund size should be “$97 billion or $96.7 billion with precision, assuming this $5 billion reaches a final close.” So let’s revise this number again to $99 billion or $98.6 billion with precision, since it seems the $5 billion did indeed close.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: [email protected].

Thoughts on Articles

Hopefully more reading time tomorrow.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

the-fitsquad · 6 years

Text

Laptop Workstations And Desks

With inexpensive property office furniture supplied in contemporary, conventional and casual designs, Coaster Fine Furnishings has almost everything needed to put together a functional home workspace. Presently, most desktop computers are equipped with two major hardware solutions – the monitor and a casing inside which is stored the central processing unit (CPU), the motherboard, the graphic card, storage devices, buses, energy supply and so on. OK, straight right after posting I thought I might do the sensible thing and have a look at the Gigabyte Help pages and lo and behold there were the driver’s I needed. With potent throughput to maximize NVIDIA GPU processing, the ioFX will slash application wait times in HP WZ Workstations to accelerate both the hardware and software vital to skilled digital content creation. Generally at the heart of any functioning workplace or study is a solid wood desk exactly where the most time is spent and business done in the course of any working day.

So far this year, AMD has currently introduced new, higher-overall performance chips in the Ryzen line for typical desktop PCs , a chip named Epyc for corporate servers, along with a revamped graphics chip called Vega. The smartphone is a sort of everyman’s” computational device, much far better fitted for the sorts of easy, every day informational tasks that facilitate each day life and occupy our free time, outdoors of the workplace or college. A common WhisperStation configuration features ultra-quiet fans and high efficiency power supply, internal soundproofing, AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processors, NVIDIA® Quadro® Specialist graphics, and NVIDIA Tesla® GPUs for computation. HP also updated B&H stock with six new Z640 workstations They contain multi-core Xeon processors (with pick models carrying dual Xeon processors), 8-16GB of ECC DDR4 2133 MHz RAM and 1TB difficult drives.

Marvel at a wide range of modular workstations with contemporary artistic designs, sleek finish and smooth texture at laptop workstations UK and get one set for your workplace. Intel mentioned its processors delivers optimized efficiency for workstations by way of combining mainstream efficiency, enhanced memory capabilities, and safety characteristics. The Workstation Specialists WS-X141S is an impressive piece of engineering, with a lot of rendering and modelling performance packed into a tiny, quiet chassis. AutoCAD does not utilize numerous cores so the clock speed of a multi-core chip matters…not the numbers of cores. Typically on a every day basis, excluding weekends and holidays, the compound officer will collect all outgoing mail to be processed for delivery.

When you running a Computer workstation or laptop for your Animal Therapy enterprise you should discovered confident you backup your needful organization files. This spending budget develop requires advantage of the excellent efficiency in the low-end of Intel’s new Kaby Lake processors and a budget case selection to save money. When To Decorate: Altering the look of your cubicle a week or two ahead of the special day is a great timeframe. Amazon buyer service stinks! Even office energy users” will most likely find that an entry-level workstation is a wise investment that enables new capabilities that can support increase productivity, increase reliability, and limit downtime. The MacBook Pro 15.4″ is a great decision if you want a more effective MacBook that on prime of daily tasks and workplace function, can do photo and video editing.

This guide will help you build a Pc that’s ideal for rendering scenes like the a single above, which was created in Maya. For AutoCAD, the video card is what handles displaying the 2D and 3D models on the screen. , often a hacker can crack into the program and steal crucial can even send viruses and other bugs to your system to generate mindful of this and work with only the most secure applications obtainable specially for sensitive data. All our personal computer desks are made to complement our furnishings ranges, so regardless of whether you have a committed room for your workspace, or if it is incorporated into your living room or dining room, your new desk will constantly appear great. NOTE: Z620 systems configured with E5-1600 series or E5-1600 v2 series processors may possibly not add a 2nd processor.

At any rate, you can discover a a lot more thorough discussion of 3D design and rendering software in section four, directly below. I also watched the video for the 1st time these days. Each workstation is equipped to support Microsoft Windows 7,eight, and ten as properly as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Subsequent year, you’ll be able to go larger still with the 8180M processors exact same core count and speeds, but doubling the total memory capacity to 3TB, as lengthy as you want to fill the machine’s 24 RAM slots. Assuming you want to use a devoted graphics card and want extreme efficiency we’ll suggest a single of two CPU, the Intel i7-990x and the i7-960. Pc desks have features that accommodate a stationary pc in your workspace. When it comes to the design and style of this space, it is important for you to think about the functionality offered so you will be confident that it is the right spot that will assistance you to do the right factor for your enterprise.

Current Lumia consumers, however, will have to wait till an unspecified future date to update their devices, unless they want to get early access by means of the Windows Insider programme. Several updated versions of these minitower workstations include a mix of E5-1607v3, E5-1620v3, and E5-1650v3 Xeon processors, eight-16GB of ECC DDR4 2133 MHz RAM, power-effective energy supplies and, now, a Windows 10 Pro 64-bit license (Windows 7 Pro 64-bit is the pre-loaded operating program). Experience a more intuitive, collaborative workflow with new tools in AutoCAD 3D software program that assist you to: – Import the geometry from a PDF file into your drawing as an AutoCAD object. The Software program Licensing Service reported that the product SKU is not discovered.

High-powered processors & specialist graphics alternatives and up to 384 GB of memory give you seamless performance in the course of graphics-intensive function, such as visual effects and style visualization. Read the Autodesk specifications pointed out in the post and make sure your computer is capable fith each hardware and application. The flagship machine is the HP Z820, which boasts the most flexibility when it comes to upgrades and certainly the greatest performance. AutoCAD’s native file format, AutoCAD DWG , and to a lesser extent, its interchange file format, DXF , have turn look at this now into de facto standards for interchange of 2D CAD data. My home office space is set up in a corner of my living room. It really is the purpose why most of the workplace spaces in your neighborhood firms are providing a new look by replacing their boring & old furnishings and like fashionable and excellent furniture, as well as new furnishings within their offices.

A simple tip for Property Office flexibility – the base of the Deluxe workstation is obtainable as a stand-alone piece of furniture with an IsoGuarded© strong oak best surface, which can be used for common filing inside your home, while also blending in as a beneficial basic storage cupboard in the hall, boot area or utility room or even as a tv stand. But, writing desks serve a excellent numerous functions, not only writing, but also for operating, storage, and decoration needs. It comes with eight GB RAM, 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4510U processor, AND Radeon R9 M275 graphic card, and 500 GB Challenging drive. What follows is the cache version of a Webpage which documented the computer to brain interface which the NSA has and continues to topic this author to. And like a lot of other Webpages which have documented this technologies as it applies to some government agency, this Webpage has now also been removed…” – James F. Marino (FASCISM — ‘9-11′ — Mind Control The Mother Of All Black Operations – Intel Continues To Have Sites Documenting NSA Personal computer To Brain Interface Removed From The World wide web).

“Workstations” have been born out of the late 1970s, when synthesizers and sequencers have been combined into a single instrument for the 1st time. The range in expense of these diverse graphics cards will usually be related with the amount of onboard RAM on the graphics cards. Collectively, they round out a good option pool of high-overall performance workstations. File Server Resource Manager could not create a temporary file copy. Our test machine came with a single 512GB HP Z Turbo Drive G2. This PCIe NVMe SSD is really a Samsung SM951, but HP also repackages SSDs from other producers that offer related efficiency and durability qualities. We also style the industry’s highest top quality multi-screen monitors, far exceeding the high quality provided by the companies who imitate us. For each and every client, we bring a passion for good quality.

Altwork is a team of experienced technologies specialists, long-time close friends, and family who’ve worked on every thing from building the world’s fastest recumbent bicycle, to safety application employed by the US Government, to Burning Man art automobiles. four. The cashier is responsible for the guest folio till the guest departs. With a assortment of furniture collections to shop from, you can effortlessly purchase workplace chairs and desks, workplace cabinets, bookcases, shelving and much more. For instance, the Dedicated Hardware profile (separate PAW and daily use workstations) may be unsuitable for an administrator who travels typically – in this case, you might choose to deploy the Simultaneous Use profile (PAW with user VM) for that administrator. The HP Z620 workstation also caters to the Architecture, Engineering and Building (AEC) market, which depend on higher efficiency, expandability, and ultimate reliability in order finish their projects (e.g. BIM and CAD) on schedule.

By the late 1970s, Baudrillard interprets the media as essential simulation machines which reproduce photos, indicators, and codes which constitute an autonomous realm of (hyper)reality and which come to play a key role in every day life and the obliteration of the social. As far as challenging drive, I would just attempt and make your SSD the boot disk, with your important programs on it and tie it into your PCI express with your adapter. Fantastic Table This study table is an excellent piece of furnishings to add to your bedroom, workplace or can accent almost any room or space. File Server Resource Manager global configuration can not be accessed given that it is not installed but. You can go for conventional writing desks or choose from some of the ideal standing desks We have desks with contemporary designs as well as distinctive antique desk s to give your perform space a rustic and antique appear.

On paper, this ought to bring a substantial overall performance benefit to single threaded applications, such as 3D CAD and BIM software. At initial glance, the Precision M3800 could appear much less like a desktop replacement and much more like a lightweight, transportable technique, but this 15.6-inch touchscreen laptop is a powerhouse underneath. Offer restricted to businesses with at least one particular server and ten workstations. Apart from the usual harm, an additional widespread occurrence that can spoil the look and the life of workplace desks is the spilling of meals and drinks. We’re driven to support you succeed, which is why we style our systems off a full-time client use model to match workstation application demands. Windows Central understands that the initial introduction of WCOS will be mobile-focused, and is internally pegged to be ready sometime in 2018.

A pc workstation typically consists of a personal computer sharing a network with other computer systems. If you want the processing power of a workstation-class machine, and the added advantage of ISV certification, why not acquire a accurate-blue workstation? They include higher-finish Xeon quad core processors, up to 16GB of RAM and help for dual mid-variety 3D graphic cards that can energy up to 4 displays. The activation server reported that it failed to insert product important home. The activation server determined the item crucial is not valid. Despite getting an optical drive and getting a powerful workstation, this 15.6″ laptop isn’t too heavy at five.29lbs and is 1″ thick which is fairly excellent. Very versatile and expandable, this powerhouse is specifically designed for higher-finish computing, visual effects, post-production perform, and CAD applications.

The flagship Z820, with dual Xeon E5-26000 v2 series processors, supports up to 24 physical cores and, if you turn on hyper-threading, up to 48 cores. Like 2D CAD drawings, 3D models are normally vector-based, but the vectors incorporate 3 dimensions, rather than two. Our impressive variety of workplace desks has anything for absolutely everyone. Digital Storm’s video editing workstations permit creative specialists to do a lot more in much less time. For sustained use you should contemplate buying an external monitor and external keyboard, preferably with a damaging-tilt keyboard, both, and arranging your workspace to create a good workstation layout. In distant communication amongst offices at distinct areas , an substantial network of microwave or satellite technology is used for the transmission of electronic mail.

Browse our variety of personal computer desks and workstations utilizing the menu possibilities above and buy on the web right now. The laptop is not just a energy-packed machine, but is also a graphics driven a single, which is best for numerous makes use of such as gaming, architecture, designing, graphics processing and much more. The RM1000x in conjunction with the Noctua fans created for an extremely quiet dual Xeon server and most of the time the energy supply was in Zero RPM Fan Mode” which was nice. As laptops become a lot more than just mobile portable computing machines, they are increasingly becoming a frequent option for each day use as effectively as to replace the residence desktop, or even in the workplace. So in order to explore this notion a small additional and in greater detail we will now cover some vital differences among a workstation Computer and a normal personal computer in the CAD workstations – what’s the difference section.

Priced at a spending budget which can very easily match in your pockets and assembled by experts who understand the want of designing a ideal workstation, we provide all crucial functions necessary in an perfect CAD Workstation. 1) This kind of account allowance decreases a guest’s outstanding balance due to compensation of poor services or rebates or discounts. “CAD Software program Operates with Symbols from” Solution News Network. We are pleased to help you compare functions and costs, and aid you establish no matter whether a wall mount computer station fits your requirements and space constraints much better than a standard personal computer desk or cart. This is my tiny guide for tweaking workstations for the very best performance attainable. “The African(Black) bourgeoisie is as much a creation as is the African(Black) criminal they are both reactionary designs, and each a implies by which folks attempt to deal with their dilemma of White oppression.

Filed under: Tagged: berlin, freie, universitt from KelsusIT.com – Refurbished laptops, desktop computers , servers http://bit.ly/2BsBQ8J via IFTTT

#KelsusIT.com – Refurbished laptops #desktop computers #servers

0 notes

type2diabetestreatments-blog · 7 years

Text

Ask D'Mine: Sick Day Questions

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-sick-day-questions/

Ask D'Mine: Sick Day Questions

Ugh. Some days diabetes is sickening... and some days we just get sick! Welcome to another edition of our diabetes advice column, Ask D'Mine, hosted by veteran type 1, diabetes author and community educator Wil Dubois.

Send us your queries related to life with diabetes — nothing is off-limits here! (except ofcourse specific medical instructions for your own care; that's what doctors are for)

Need help navigating life with diabetes? Email us at [email protected]

Elisheva from Israel, type 1, asks: Do I need to bolus for cough syrup? I'm using Benylin Dry Cough Regular Strength.

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: The answer lies in the name of the product. Cough syrup. What's syrup? Yeppers. A thick liquid sugar. A yummy camouflage to hide the nasty taste of the meds for your dry cough.

Benylin is an overseas brand name for Johnson & Johnson products (who also make Benadryl here in the states). As bad luck would have it, the link on their Canadian website that gives us the contents of the bottle you use is dead, and the UK website doesn't list contents at all. But the "Tickly Throat & Cough" version of the same product has an unspecified "artificial sweetener enhancer," plus sorbitol (a sugar alcohol that has less impact than sugar or corn syrup, but will still raise your blood glucose), and of course red dye number 33 and red dye number 40. I see that it has around 8 calories in five milliliters. An adult dose is 10 mL, so it would be 16 calories. Calories to carbs aren't a clear-cut relationship; but where there's smoke there's fire, and where there's calories there's carbs.

Reviewing everything I could find in the medicine cabinet here at home, and poking around online, I find that most cough products seem to have both high fructose corn syrup and sorbitol, so you can expect them to raise your blood sugar if you don't cover them. Of course the devil is in the details, and in this case the details are how much to bolus.

Here in the U.S., cough syrups come with a "Drug Facts" label, rather than a "Nutrition Facts" label. This lets you see that there's corn syrup in the cough syrup, but not how much.

The drug company's websites aren't too helpful either, but third-party carb sites like Calorie King generally show the carb count of most cough syrups at north of five carbs per dose. You could use that as a starting point and work it out on a trial and error basis from there.

Of course, there're also "diabetic friendly" sugar-free cough syrups from many different companies you could try for bolus-free cough suppression. Any that use sugar alcohols will still need some insulin coverage, but many others, like Robitussin Peak Cold, are sweetened with saccharin and shouldn't require any insulin coverage.

And if it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one under the weather.

Tricia from Massachusetts, brand new LADA type 1, writes: I had a scary stomach flu last night with vomiting/diarrhea (ewww) and didn't/don't know yet how to care for myself as I'm not on insulin yet. I saw my BG's go to 221 before I fell asleep. This morning my BG was at 150, just now I'm 113. I feel so disconnected on how to take care of myself, any suggestions?? Today I've had basically broth, but feel scared to eat/not eat... Thanks!

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Well, it's good news that your sugar dropped overnight, and dropped even more as the day has gone on. The main thing with stomach bugs is to be sure to drink lots of fluids to replace the ones you are losing out of... you know... both ends of your system.

Food wise, it's actually OK to stick to just broth for a couple of days; it'll keep you going. But don't be afraid to eat. Once your stomach isn't so rocky, you can look to low-carb foods for a week or so to keep your blood sugars low while the virus clears from your system. Low-carb food is anything that used to crawl, walk, run, fly, swim, or slither. So any meat, in modest portions, won't raise your blood sugar. Neither will green leafy veggies and most cheeses.

Actually, as far as sick days go, your life will be easier once you do start insulin. Insulin is a blessing because it's the ultimate in scalable medications. If an illness raises your blood sugar for a while, you just increase your insulin dose. As you get well again, you just lower your dose again. It's actually as simple and safe as it sounds!

And speaking of illness and insulin...

Chris from Maryland, type 1 on a CGM and a pump, writes: Within the last week, I have been experiencing quite a few high blood sugar readings and have started bolusing pretty aggressively to combat that. In doing so, my daily insulin uptake has jumped from 25-30 units to 35-40 units daily, and I'm still running on the high side of things. I've rotated my pump sites with no effect and the vial of insulin I'm using is just 2 weeks old.I just got over a bad cold, so I feel that may have caused some abnormally high readings, but it's been a few days since I've experienced any cold symptoms. It sort of feels like a switch went off in my body that drastically changed my metabolism or insulin sensitivity. Is that possible?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Anything is possible. Have I ever heard of an instant insulin sensitivity switch? No. I haven't.

But here are a few things to think about: just 'cause the symptoms are gone, doesn't mean that the cold is. That's actually one of the causes of the new antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria we're seeing out in the world—people stop taking their antibiotics when they start feeling better, and the only remaining bugs in their systems are the tougher ones that survived the initial onslaught of the meds. Stopping treatment early lets these stronger super-bugs reproduce in greater numbers, eventually leading to drug-resistant strains. That's why the bottle has a label that says to finish the whole frickin' bottle, even if you feel better. Now that has nothing to do with you, other than to show that it's possible for a cold to outlive the symptoms.

So you might still be a little bit sick. Enough so that your body is still on high alert.

Or it might be because the moon is in Leo, the wind is blowing from the northwest, and the barometric pressure is rising. Because all things, great and small, can affect your insulin needs.

I recently attended a conference hosted by the Joslin Diabetes Center, one of the themes was brittle-bashing. For those of you who don't know, "brittle" is an old-fashioned and out-of-favor term for impossible-to-control diabetes. Doctors Richard Beaser and Philip Levy who were the seminar's hosts, refused to take brittle for an answer. They felt that for physicians to fall back on brittle was an excuse for not looking hard enough, or close enough, for the real answers.

At first I disagreed with that notion, because I sometimes view myself as brittle. But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself re-thinking. Maybe brittle is a cop-out. And I finally decided there's always a cause behind mystery blood sugar but it may be too remote to view, or too complex to comprehend, or it may be too many little things working together for us to connect the dots.

I don't know what flipped your switch. We may never know. But, you're blessed to have both a pump and CGM. You've already bumped up your insulin. Sounds like an even bigger bump may be in order, at least for the time being.

And in the end, does it really matter what caused the surge? I mean, it would be nice to know why all of a sudden you need more insulin; but you don't really need to know why to do something about it. The simple solution is to keep increasing your insulin until your numbers get back where they belong.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

0 notes

sheminecrafts · 5 years

Text

Minecraft Earth makes the whole real world your very own blocky realm

There’s a map, of course

The fantasy map is filled with things to tap on, unsurprisingly called tappables. These can be a number of things: resources in the form of treasure chests, mobs and adventures.

Chests are filled with blocks, naturally, adding to your reserves of cobblestone, brick and so on, all the different varieties appearing with appropriate rarity.

And it’s in these AR experiences and the “build plates” you’re doing it all for that the game really shines.

The AR part

It doesn’t really look like this but, you get the idea

Pick(ax)ing their battles

Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation

What will keep people playing?

A few other stray facts I picked up:

Regions will roll out gradually, but it will be available in all the same languages as Vanilla at launch

Yes, there will be skins (and they’ll carry over from your existing account)

There will be different sizes and types of build plates

There’s crafting, but no 3×3 crafting grid (?!)

You can report griefers and so on, but the way the game is structured it shouldn’t be an issue

The AR engine creates and uses a point cloud but doesn’t, like, take pictures of your bedroom

Content is added to the map dynamically, and there will be hot spots but emptier areas will fill up if you’re there

It leverages AR Core and AR Kit, naturally

The HoloLens version of Minecraft we saw a while back is a predecessor “more spiritually than technically”

Adventures that could be scary to kids have a special sign

“Friends” can steal blocks from your build plate if you’re playing together (or donate them)

Sound fun? Sign up for the beta here.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://tcrn.ch/2VP2LKx via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

0 notes

sheminecrafts · 5 years

Text

Minecraft Earth makes the whole real world your very own blocky realm

There’s a map, of course

The fantasy map is filled with things to tap on, unsurprisingly called tappables. These can be a number of things: resources in the form of treasure chests, mobs, and adventures.

Chests are filled with blocks, naturally, adding to your reserves of cobblestone, brick, and so on, all the different varieties appearing with appropriate rarity.

And it’s in these AR experiences and the “build plates” you’re doing it all for that the game really shines.

The AR part

In this little world you can build whatever you want, or dig into the ground, build an inverted palace for your cave chickens or create a paradise for your mud-loving pigs — whatever you want. Like Minecraft itself, each build plate is completely open-ended. Well, perhaps that’s the wrong phrase — they’re actually quite closely bounded, since the world only exists out to the edge of the plate. But they’re certainly yours to play with however you want.

It doesn’t really look like this but you get the idea.

Pick(ax)ing their battles

Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation

What will keep people playing?

A few other stray facts I picked up:

Regions will roll out gradually but it will be available in all the same languages as Vanilla at launch

Yes, there will be skins (and they’ll carry over from your existing account)

There will be different sizes and types of build plates

There’s crafting, but no 3×3 crafting grid (?!)

You can report griefers and so on, but the way the game is structured it should be an issue

The AR engine creates and uses a point cloud but doesn’t like take pictures of your bedroom

Content is added to the map dynamically, and there will be hot spots but emptier areas will fill up if you’re there

It leverages AR Core and AR Kit, naturally

The Hololens version of Minecraft we saw a while back is a predecessor “more spiritually than technically”

Adventures that could be scary to kids have a special sign

“Friends” can steal blocks from your build plate if you’re playing together (or donate them)

Sound fun? Sign up for the beta here.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://tcrn.ch/2VP2LKx via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

0 notes