I recently finished reading Earth's Children by Jean M. Auel. On the final analysis I both liked and hated this series.

I liked it because of the detail and setting background and the interesting situation that was developing. And I hated it because the interesting situation was never resolved and the writing style got progressively worse from book to book. It is small wonder then to learn that several of the books struggled to find a publisher.

We start in "Clan of the Cave Bear" with a great fictional situation where a young human girl is growing up with a group of Archaic Homo Sapiens of realy undetermined species. Nominally they are Neanderthals however their way of life would be primitive even by Neanderthal standards, and they are missing quite a number bit of the sophistication that we would have expected in actual Neanderthal culture.

In any case its an excellent story with a strong protagonist, and a strong antagonist. Occasionally the writing does drift a little and fall into paragraphs of narrator description that is overly technical, but this is rare.
The next two books are still good, though the amount of archeological detail progressively increases. We also start getting overly detailed flashbacks to the previous books and a few too many, also overly detailed, sex scenes. Some of the sex scenes are actually important to the story, but these loose their impact due to the constant repetition.

Its however when we get to the fourth book that the real truble starts. Here there is an overly simple story of getting back home, with a few episodic adventures along the way. If anything the flaws of the first books become amplified. Ayla nad Jondlar's sex life is revisited in tedious detail again and again. Flashbacks likewise increase in frequency and duration and the descriptions of scenery mutate into academic descriptions of Ice age ecology that go on for pages and pages, only to be repeated almost verbatim several chapters later. At least the author does maintain a good paragraph structure, which makes it easier to skim the teduious bits, and I certainly did do a lot of skim reading in this book.

Possibly the most interesting event being the encounter of the tribe who's name starts with A'. Later they are retconed into being of largely mixed stock. And its a pity that this idea is not obvious in this book as it would make an interesting counter to Ayla's general desire to reconcile the two species of human. All in all Plains of Passage was still a reasonable book.

And then we get to the last two books, and for me at least, massive disappointment. It took Jondlar one and a half books to get over his racism and fully accept that the Clan are humans. And yet for most of his people this seems to be almost a non-issue. Which makes me wonder how Jondlar came to have views so much stronger then the rest of his people.

The next problem is that there is no credible antagonist. Instead we have a motley crew of the jilted woman who no one particularly likes. The cave drunkard, and 3/4 cast who's very existence makes no sense, really you'd think that his mother, who was considered to be an abomination, would have been exposed especially as her mother didn't survive the birth. And finally the old adversary of Jondlar's who is now a rather inept acolyte shaman. The problem is that all of these adversaries are already at the periphery of their society, sure they may hate Ayla but there is almost nothing they can do about it.

After all the buildup in previous books this is an extreme letdown. Instead Jondlar should have returned to find an altered situation where his enemies, who are now Ayla's as well are in positions of power and his friends and relations have been reduced. This strange woman's arrival should have been that catalyst that almost started a civil war among the Zelondoni. At least then Ayla would have had something to do which is slightly more interesting then having a baby and looking at some caves.

And then there is the other anticipated conflict that never arrived, that between the modern humans and their more archaic predecessors.Heck this one was even been hinted at as recently as the fifth book, and it never arrived. THe clan was hardly mentioned in the final book. Instead what we got was more flashbacks then we knew what to do with. Worst yet some of them actually contradicted the original book. Such as the claim that the Marmut of the Lion Camp was first, when he most definitely wasn't.

Instead of the promised racial conflict we get a tour of various archeological sites. And Ayla going public with her revelation about sex. What is even more frustrating is the relatively small amount of conflict this generates. You'd think that this if nothing else would have caused some kind of break, with some subgroup of the Shammen refusing to make it public and taking their caves away, we already had the Zelondoni of the 14th cave set up as a potential adversary, but nope, she shuts up and accepts the news along with everyone else. Heck by the end of it when we get the internal monolog of Ayla's few detractors fuming about how she was able to waltz in and change everything, I found myself agreeing with them.

So I finally got the the last page of the last book, and then I turned it looking for some kind of closure or climax to the story. Is this is? I asked myself. I may have enjoyed most of the journey, but the destination was really not worth it.

Harry Potter

So I finally managed to get through the last book. Looking back on the HP journey and really it has been mostly fun. Mostly we have a cast of great characters on all sides. And some great stories to boot. However it is not all a bed of roses and the later books too seem to suffer a bit form lack of editing. The biggest points being that The Half Blood Prince doesn't seem to have much in the way of a major plot. Its just a several subplots merged together, so much so that it feels like a one year filler in the story. And the last book has long periods of extreme drudgery between, interspersed with some truly awesome scenes.

My view on the overarching plot would be as follows :

* It was disappointing how little time in the spotlight Ginny got, especially once the Harry - Ginny romance was established. I would really have expected her to tag along on the final mission, by accident or design.

* More hints about Dumbuldore's dark side should have appeared earlier. In the end he turns out to be rather a Machiavellian character who even managed to shock Snape at one point. The whole limbo scene was rather annoying in this regard, and the and I had a hunch that you might survive anyway line seemed rather shallow and annoying. In my opinion the Christian allegory here feels like something Rowling stuck in to mute some of her critics, rather than something that was intended all along.

* By the same token as the above Snape should have become the Headmaster at
least one book earlier, so that Harry would then have to deal with Principal
Snape for a while. Actually seeing how Snape, who navigates the waters
between appearing to be on Voldamort's side and at the same time trying to
protect the students of Hogwarts from him at the same time. A who killed
Dumoldore mystery where Harry suspects Drace would have been a better story
than the one we actually got in the Halfblood Prince.

But really the plot is not the thing that threw me out of the story the most. What really made suspension of disbelief difficult was the world building. Building a plausable society is hard, building a plausible shadow society that somehow exists in parallel to the very day is even harder. So far the following points have bugged me:

Didn't do the maths
Having just one teacher per subject puts a real limit on how many students could be at Hogwarts. And claiming it's the only magic school in Britain buts a major limit on magical population. Really having 600 students at Hogwarts would have been pushing it.


Having established a small magical population the Ministry of Magic seems unbelievable large. there just does not seem to be enough witches and wizards to warrant such a huge and sprawling public service, especially considering how little they actually provide. For instance the only public utility is the floo network.

Gringots, the wizards Bank also seem kind of large for the amount of Economic activity that actually takes place. Ditto for extreme specialists such as Olivander. Wands don't seem to wear out. A careful wizard might buy 1 wand in their entire lifetime. 99% of Olivander's business would then be the before school rush of first year students.

Modes of transport

At the start of the series we have wizards riding broomsticks and using Owls to deliver things. Under those circumstances using a train for longer journeys, when you have a lot of baggage, kind of makes sense.

Then we get the floo network and all of that breaks. Why go to Kings Cross station to catch a train that then has to get to the Scottish Highlands, when you could use floo powder to take your kids directly to their common room?

Indeed considering that floo powder can get you for place to place near instantly, why bother with a boarding school at all? Children could just as well live at home and commute to school. The floo network is a telephone and rapid transport system all in one.
Why give your letter to an owl that could be intercepted, or killed by accident, when you could just pop through the floo network and drop your letter or parcel off in a couple of minutes.

And then we get teleportation. At first it seems like a dangerous and difficult trick that only the most experienced wizards attempt, which is not so bad. Then we learn that it is as common in the Wizarding world as driving is in ours. Really Young witches and wizards going for their Teleportation test is kind of cheezy. But the big problem is that it completely breaks everything that went before it, suddenly the night bus and the floo network, not to mention owl post nolonger make sense. Even the broom becomes something that no one would really use for anything other than recreation.

In my opinion teleportation should not have been added to the Story. At least not for the ordinary wizard. It should have been a feature of the Dark mark, something that Voldamort developed. By virtue of having some of Voldamorts Soul, let Harry pull it off in an emergency. But that's it. And to prevent House Elves replacing the Owl post, make it so that they explicitly cannot take anything with them. Picture the added mirth of Harry first seeing Dobbie wearing one of Aunt Petunias best tea towels as a toga.

Portkeys on the other hand are a neat idea, and in the absence of teleportation
do seem to make sense when large numbers of wizards need to travel. The one
plot element I did not like was the ease with which Dumboldore could make one.
In any case you'd think that the only magical Hospital in Britain would be on
the Floo network.

Restictions on Underage Magic

Well, you could set up enchantments to monitor every child between 11 and 17, 24 hours per day to make sure that they don't do any unothorised magic outside of school. Or you could just put their wants in a magically sealed locker. Really why are young wizards allowed to run arround with wands if they arn't allowed to use them?

As others sites have pointed out the sheer amount of magical surveillance involved in policing these restrictions is very Orwellian. And once you've established that there exist spells that can achieve infalable survalance the idea that anyone can hide from the ministry becomes rather implausible.

A registry of Wands and the ability to forensically determin who's wand cast
what spell in a given location, much like real world police can match a bullet
to a particular gun, would have been much better. The trick to avoiding capture
is then to avoid using magic. Forcing our heroes to use muggle forms of
transport during book seven would have been rather interesting, especially for
Ron.


Armed and Dangerous

I don't think there is any real way to fix most of this bit, as it does seem to
be an integral part of a magic school. But I'll note them anyway.

Every high school kid is running around with a loaded weapon, that can fire an
unblockable death curse if you get them angry enough. Sure most injuries can be
fixed in the hospital wing fairly quickly, accept for the instantly fatal ones
that is. Note that sport of choice does not seem to have anything in the way of
safety precautions at all. You'd think the helmets might be used, and perhaps
some enchantment to catch any player unfortunate enough to fall off their
broomstick.

And then we have potions which for some reason are not regulated anywhere near
as heavily as wand usage. Mind control, pain and death spells are unforgivable
curses. Yet you can legally buy mind control potions at the local joke shop. And
as for the rest, there's probably a recipe for them in your text book, or
failing that in the school library. This includes the infamous polyjuice
potion which can be misused in so many ways.

The Land of Mists

Proffesor Challanger is a major chacter in several of Author Connan Doyle's books. He is a man of utmost scientific regiour and reason. WHich makes the last book he appears in all the more puzzling as in it he, following the Authors footsteps accepts and embraces the reality of mediumship.

One key event within this book sees a not so well of, but very well meaning medium get entrabed by undercover police oficers who come to him with a conncoted story aimed at exposing the fraudulent nature of his abilities. And indeed where this the real world said abilities would have been exposed when ti was revealed that the name the young police woman mensioned was not her fiance but her dog.

Unfrotunatly in the real world self proclaimed psychics are freqently very wealth and at the same time very rarly investigated by the authorities. And where a private citizen tired to do so, even a jurnalist, he is almost asured of being dragged through the court system, on charges of liabel. So it is good to know that a few still dare to investigate the mediums of today.

The real world method seems quite similar to that used by Doyle 100 years ago. Put down a name of a person who does not exist, because he is a dog, or just a sufficently obscure fictional character, and the deception will be revealed.

Roleplaying Games we may never see.

Atriums and Ardvarks
Baths and Bandicoots
Corridors and Crocodiles
Dugouts and Dingos (Adventures in the Australian Outback)
Escelators and Elephants
Foyers and Fauns
Gorges and Gargoyles
Houses and Humans (of this one is called the Sims)
Iglus and Iguanas
Jails and Jaguars
Kitchens and Krackens
Locations and Lurkers (the most generic system ever)
Moseliums and Mummies
Nests and Narwals
Opisthodomos and Octopuses
Palaces and Pelsiasours
Quaries and Quails
Roofs and Roosters
Saunas and Salamanders
Turrets and Turtles
Universities and Unicorns
Vestipules and Vipers
Warrens and Wearwolves
Xystums and Xenomorphs
Yachts and Yetties
Zoos and Zebras (I guess this woudl be sim Zoo)

And we have an entire alphabet though really Opisthodomos and Xystums are a bit of a strech.

Mere Christianity

Answering a challange from a redditor to read this book. And here is what I found.

In rhe Preface there is an interesting tangent about words loosing their descriptive meaning, and becoming mere terms of praise or condemnation. Lewis is wrong in suggesting that Non believers would be eager to use the word 'Christian' to mean a good person /r/atheism has many a post proving that atheists do not like this usage any more then Lewis does. So far However I can say to agree with the argument.

We then get to the main thrust of this book. I can only say that after the preface I was dismayed to see Mr Lewis immediately ignore his own advice and attempt to water down the meaning of "Natural Law". A Natural Law is a law that cannot be broken, simply because it is how the universe works. There is no grounds for saying that a natural law, as applied to rocks is how they do behave but when applied to Humans means how they ought to behave. Even the claim that this definition is standard in philosophy is demonstrably false. I only have to go back as far as Sir Thomas Hobbs to get a counter example. Sir Hobbs describes the State of Nature, or how Humans behave when there is no social constrainst up on them, and it really does boil down to kill them before they kill you.

I also suspect that there is an implicit argument from design hiding here. Really the only time you can get an ought from an is, is when you envoke design. If X is a watch then X ought to tell the correct time. So if there is a way Humans ought to behave then it follows that they where designed to behave in some way. To me the fac that they don't suggest that either there was no such way, or that the designer really wasn't particularly good at his job. Refering to God as He is yet another thing that Lewis slips in with no justification. However I suspect that his sencibilites, having a strong hint of white colonialism about them, made this an intierly unconcious act.

Lewis then goes to argue the point that there is Some idea of Moral right and wrong which goes beyond our instincts and is universal to all humans across all tiems and places. And yet history seems to furnish an inexhaustible supply of counter examples. Lewis does attempt to address this on two fronts. Firstly by arguing that we often confuse custom with moral imperative and that the majority of such examples are really about custom and not morality. He supplied clothing as an example. I find this Ironic considering how strongly some religions feel about what the moral way to dress is. Indeed in Lewis' own faith, the taboo against nudity was pretty well the first sign that humans had learned about good and evil.

Lewis' second approach is to argue that other examples are not confusion about the moral things to do but confusion about the facts of the world leading to actions that in retrospect appear evil, but seemed right at the time. By this example our witch burning ancestors where not acting immorally, but where simple confused about the facts, and believed in witches. As opposed to the Nazi's who where truly evil. This to me is rather extreme special pleading. One could just as easily argue that the Nazi's (who where predominantly Christian) where also merely confused about the facts. Indeed they justified genocide in exactly the same way as previous generations justified the burning of witching. Namely by arguing that the targeted group was responsible for every problem that the society of the day was facing, Indeed that the targets where so evil that they desrved to be destroyed.

This argument, that the enemy is so degenerate that they do not deserve to be treated as a human. Was exactly the same one that Christians used to justify the practice of slavery throughout the colonial period. And is also the exactly same argument used in the Old Testement when Moses ordered genocide in God's name. I find it interesting to Compare Moses and Hitler. They both had the same goal, namely to establish a homeland for the chosen people, and they both ordered similer sorts of atrocities. Including the clensing of the Chosen people by killing anyone who disagreed with them, followed by the extermination of other "non Chosen" people.

Along the way we have the claim that Selfishness has never been admired. That no successfully society has ever been built that uses self interest as an ideal. Well no society other than the modern free world. Indeed the idea that individuals have the right to the pursuit of happiness is what make our society different from every form of Theocracy and Dictatorship that can be found in the pages of history and in the world today. Here again I find Lewis to be wrong. He argues that fact that we can rank societies on a moral scales shows that there must be some external we are ranking them against. But in really all we are doing is comparing the apparent morality of others to our own ideal of what a moral society should be. And indeed My ranking on this issue would be very different to that of a Fundamentalist, irrespective of what ideology he happens to follow.

At one point Lewis builds a destinciton between the Matirialist and the Relgious point of view, leading to the standard position that Science can only answer question about How things work but not questions about why things are. Lewis' account of the materialist position is to me an illustration about why you should never try to argue form the current state of scientific knowledge. He spends a rather long paragraph summarising a model of solar system evolution which no modern day physicist would subscribe too. A modern account of our solar system would be different in every detail, and yet the religous verison continues to be a longwinded way of saying "God did it".

The thing is that Sicnece can have a stab at explaining why all humans seem to agree about a lot of moral questions. And that is our evolutionary heritage as a social animal, predisposed to co-operating in small groups. And to this we add social learning. And indeed among humans social learning seems to account for the bulk of our moral values. And if we look back at history we see that almost every single time two vastly different cultures have met, both have expressed dismay about the moral standards of the other.

In in all Lewis failed to convince me that his exter external moral law is an objective reallity. And having failed there the remainder of the argument falls appart even if the chain of logic was at all reasonable, which it isn't, as it does seem to make some pretty impressive leaps.

The Burzynski Clinic

So the blogosphere has been awash with reports of the Buurzynski clinic which has been getting money out of desperate people for about as long as I've been alive. Really can you get any worse then giveing false hope to the parents of terminally ill children?

Fore more check out Pharyngula: or just google it.

Dice Rolling Mechanic

One thing I don't really like in Dice rolling is the potential open ended roll, such as the Exploding dice used in Mini Six. So I've developed my own alternative. Rather then rolling an unknown number of extra times, why not just count sixes and assume that on a succesfull roll, more sixs means a higher degree of sucess.

To stop things getting out of hand I'm placing a limit of 6 dice on my players. If anyone has more than that additional dice get converted to +3s. Futher 5 sixes and six sixes are so rare that I'm not bothering with them. Which leaves me with four possible degrees of success. Here's how it works in an attack roll (I'm using static defences by the way):

0 or 1 six

A normal succesfull attack

2 sixes

If the target is using a sheild its ignored for purposes of soak

3 sixes

The hit was really lucky, and armour is ignored entierly.

4 sixes

A Critical hit, Target is treated as having a Soak total of 0.

Note that this scheme places natural limits on this in terms of unskilled characters, if you don't have 4 dice to roll, then your character has no chance of getting a Critical hit. While at the top of your game (rolling 6 dice) you will manage this slightly less then 1% of the time.

On the other side of the coin if all your dice are 1's then you have botched. And any time you only roll 1 dice that will happen 16% of the time. So make sure to spread your skill points around a little.

As futher encouragement to use skills I'm toying with the idea of setting seperate dice pool limits on attributes and skills, inorder to counter the Mary Sue effect of the unskilled but high attribute character who is good at everything. It all depands how cinamatic you want your compain. For gritty realism, and lots of fumbles you could rule that unskilled attempts only get 1d, though I think 2d (and a fumble rate of 2.7%) might make for a less frustrating play expirence.

And one of the Campers was eaten by a Bear!

Actually a lot of them where and that was with two handed swords to boot. The campers not the bear. What I actually did is simulate the combat mechanic from the Mini Six ruleset. The combat setup takes a fairly standard starting character (Might 3D Weapon Skill +2D) and pitts them against the Bear as stated in the rule book.
On average the Bear (who hit first) would make a tasty meal of our camper 71% of the time within 5 combat rounds. And most of the remainders 27% ending with both of our combatants unconcious. Our camper escaped only 2% of the time.

Granted it is a pure slugfest that I'm simulating here, with no attempts to escape or do anthing other than hit the opponent. And Really the average of 5 rounds should give the player plenty of time to do something inteligent.

Giving our camper some armour helped a lot. Giving them an average of 29 rrounds to try an escape and an 18% chance of winning outright. The Bears odds of getting lunch also dropped to 56%.

With evently matched oponents there is a significant first strike advantage. The fighter who starts winning 46% of the time. The Second striker wins 24% of the time and there is a draw the remaing 30% of the time. Combat howerver takes a more respectable 7 rounds on average. Adding Armour seems to even this off and add a couple of rounds to the combat.

And finally Our fully equiped hero against a lowly guard with lower quality equpment, he will manage to win out 71% of the time, and only stands a 1% chance of actually looseing. Which is as it should be.

So all in all I'm happy with the calibration of the system. Though I find the high freqnecy of mutual unconciousness a little suprising.

Yet another Futurist Project

Personally I'd love to see a high speed train network in Australia. It dosn't look likely at the moment but if It does happen I bet that the trains will not look like this.

This really has to be one Ugly, and wowfully inpractical designs I have ever seen for an inter city train. First of all why all the curved window frames, it doesn't look that good, all it will do is increast the cost of manufacture and wastage beause all the windows have to be custom cut into funny shapes.

But my biggest gripe is there proposed seating where 1/4 of the seats have no backrest and more then half of them don't face the direction of travel. And really on A trip of several hours I expect to be able to sit facing forwards. (Due to a propensity to motion sickness the alternative is not an option). But then again suppose that in the real world economic factors will nix that idea quite effectively. Seriously what operator is going to put that crap in when they could put twice as many regular seats in the same space?

In any case building the train is not the economic hurdle. Building the track is the economic and engineering challenge. Find a way to do that faster and cheaper then conventional steel track and then you'll have something noteworthy. And the real challenge in a country where the hottest summer days every year are sufficient to cause track buckling. Really solve the hard challange first and leave the interior design for later.

Yet again when I want to comment on the Sydney Morning Herald, comments are disabled. Newsflash, childrens stories are repleat with sterotypes we don't like. In this case the article is talking about smurfs.

But really this is par the course. What about Thomas the Tank Engine. His world is World is every inch the communist dictatorship. In this case with the Engines doing the bidding of The Fat Controler. A character who cannot be questioned and is always like, how very big brother of him.

Then again what about the messages in Kunfu Panda. A movie which in clasic Greek tr tradition rewards thouse who follow the dictates of Fate and punishes thouse who chalanges. Really look at it from the point of view of the supposid Villan of the piece. Here we have an orphan pushed ruthlessly by a bad guardian towards one particular goal. Is it a wonder then that he becomes enraged when the one thing he has been taught all his life to strive for is denied him. And then to add insult to injury after years of discipline and training he is beaten by a fat panda, who really earned nothing.

When it comes down to it I liked smurfs when I was a kid, I didn't mind my Kids reading Thomas stories, and I enjoyed watching the Fat Panda bungle his way to success. All of them have undercurrents and messages I don't agree with, but then again I really didn't bother to analyse them to this level at the time.

I may be guilty of this in the case of Avatar, but that's completely different, that movie was completely over hyped and hence deserved to be over analysed.

Bishops move

So the Catholic Bishops of NSW are opposed to the greens.

http://www.parra.catholic.org.au/news---events/latest-news/latest-news.aspx/the-green-agenda--a-message-from-catholic-bishops-in-nsw.aspx

Not surprisingly I can't agree with any of their points:

• No you don't deserve special exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. they are their because we as a society hold that it is wrong to discriminate period.
• Yes your indoctrination centers schools are getting more than their fair share of public money. And yes the government should spend more on public education.
• Drug use. Yes it should be treated as a health issue. I have to admit to being a little more hesitant here, but on balance treating the addiction should be preferred to punishing the addict. I'm not sure about what should be done with those who refuse treatment.
• So when legislation enshrines moral codes you don't agree with (IE anti discrimination laws) you cry religious freedom. But when it enshrines your values, that's perfectly OK. What about the religious freedom of people who don't agree with your definition of marriage? The hypocrisy is rather striking on this one.
• Again the church is OK with their beliefs being enshrined in legislation. Yes their are both good and bad reasons for abortion, and it is not an as black and white area as the church would like to claim. What about cases where the fetus is know to have little if any chance of survival, what about rape victims? Personally I would like as few unnecessary abortions taking place as possible, but they should never be seen as a crime. As to the personal views of Doctors and Nurses? On balance I thin duty of care trumps your personal religious views, especially in the Public health care system.
  
• Euthanasia. In all honestly I don't know where I stand on this one. It is difficult.
  

On balance the Bishops letter is a stated position of a special interest group trying to look after their own interests, and perpetuated their prejudices being enshrined in law. What they fear is that in the end the Majority of Australians do not actually agree with them , even if they profess to be members of the Catholic faith.

Why does his opinion Matter?

So cardinal Pell, is speaking out against human caused global warming. In all honesty his opinion here matters far less then it does in his normal field of preaching morality.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/pell-row-with-climate-scientist-heats-up-20110313-1bsx6.html

And as usual the Sydney Morning Herald has chosen to not allow comments on this story. Probably for fear that the "good" cardinal would be well and truly roasted in them.

For what my opinion on the subject matters, Which is very little, I have been a skeptic for a very long time. However I think that the position of climate change skeptic is getting more an more tenuous and unscientific with every passing day. And the reality that there is hard scientific evidence for climate change is now well and truly beyond reasonable doubt.

D&D Essentials In review

So I've read through both Players Books and the Dungeon Masters book. On the whole I like how 4th Edition (and Essentials in particular) works and how it plays. I've run several encounters with my Boys and a friend of theirs (aged 6 - 8) and they all enjoyed it immensely. Heck in the last game they actually started working together instead of just attacking things at random, and my 6 year old actually had his Cleric character use healing word on his brother's character without being prompted to do so. Up next is another encounter and then a Skill Challenge, which should be interesting.

That said I have a few comments on the book themselves. First up, obvious cut and paste jobs are not what I expect in a book I pay money for. The Dungeon Masters book has at least one of these where it refers to the monster section later in this book. This is obviously pasted from one of the Fast Play Rules books (which indeed had a monster section), while the Dungeon Masters book does not.

Now a Word about the Rules Compendium. I have seen a lot of good reviews about this book, but I really can't echo them. Having just bought the rest of the essentials line I now have 90% of what is in this book, and really I'm not going to pay again just to get a page each on Mounted Combat, Aquatic Combat and Disease.

What I would have like to change about Essentials

1. Dump the Slayer build to make room for other stuff.
2. Dump the Scout build, to make room for other stuff.

Now that we have some extra space in the Hero books add the following:

1. Add a Paragon path to each race.
2. Make the class paragon paths work based on Power Source. so that Fighter and Rouge can pick each others (and you end up with a slayer paragon path). Ditto for Cleric and Paladin, Wizard and Warlock, Ranger and Druid.
3. Put in Skill based utility powers
4. Each book should have 2 rather then one Epic Destines, one geared to Lawful Good and the other towards Unaligned characters.
5. if we still have room left add some more feats.

Assuming you get both books this would end up with a subset that has 2 builds for each role. Each character now has a choice of three paragon paths (one based on race and two on class power source) And 4 epic destines. And with skill based utility powers has a range of options to choose from.

House Rule
As somewhat of an old school player the idea of magic items that have no mystery about them rubbed me the wrong way. So my house rule here is that Arcane checks are required to work this out. The DC being based on the Items level. Say Easy to work out that it is definitely enchanted, Moderate to work out the basic bonus penalty. And Hard to work out each additional power the item has.

The biggest advantage of this is that it allows me to bring back the idea of cursed items. Which is really part of the fun, even if it just requires an application of a remove curse ritual now and then.

Dungeons & Dragons

Well, it looks like Wizards of the Coast have lost me as much of a customer, just as they where about to win me back.

1. I like the Essentials book format. Which now appears to be canned for all future releases. so that's an end to that then. The digest size is lighter, and frankly more convent.
2. I like the idea of downloading 1 or 2 PDFs per month for the articles. but that is finished now. So I'll probably get a D&D Insider membership long enough to get what already exists and then forget about it.
3. I might get future Monster's vault products, providing they come with tokens. But I would hope that they come with digest sized soft cover books.

Its depressing really. As a casual gamer I embraced what they released for casual gamers. The hard core faction poo pooed the idea to the point that it won't be continued. I'm disappointed by this, but I guess if I'm in the minority then so be it. I;'m sure with a bit of online digging I can invent the bits that are missing, such as the Autumn and Winter varients for Essentials Druids.

So I've read all of the Anne stories

Yes I've gotten though every single one, thanks largely to project Project Gutenberg, as the library copies seem be on the move more often then not, and that's with two library chains at my disposal.

After a while the characters, though appearing under different names, do get a little repetitive. After all one can only contend with so many old men who are really quite nice under their ogarish exterior and terrifying matriarchs who have been on their death bed for 20 years or more and still manage to make everyone lives miserable day in and day out.

Overall I have to say that which the child Anne was endearing the adult Anne was just too perfect in every way. Small wonder then that as the stories wore on the spotlight shone on other characters more and more.

In the end I'd say that The last book, Rilla of Ingleside was was the best of the books. Still managing to hold humor despite its dark background, and having a somewhat less idealized heroin in Rilla Blythe. I'm not sure the book could stand on its own, as it does presuppose that you already know a bit about many of the characters, but it certainly most intense, of the lot.

The two later additions written to plug gaps in the chronology where however disappointing, mostly as they where completely lacking any central plot or problem but where rather a serious of unrelated events. The first of these, Anne of the Windy Poplars, presented a near goddess like Anne who made everything better by her mere presence. And then we had Anne of Ingleise, a similar sequence of random events, but one in which Anne played almost no roll at all, while being overshadowed by her young children. (I have to admit I didn't finish this one). In any case afterwords the practical Mary Vance, and baby disliking Rilla made a very pleasant change.

PS After a little more reading Jane of Lantern Hill, is by far my favorite Montgomery book. I think I'll stop here as Montgomery's story lines (while quite enjoyable) are a tad on the repetitive side, though I may read more at a later date.

No Comments Allowed

One thing really bothers me about newspaper sites. And that is how the choose to enable comments for some stories but not others. Looking at some recent stories on the Sydney Morning Herald website there does seem to be some very strong religious bias here.

Contentions stories about Islam almost always have comments enabled. But ever time Cardinal George Pell goes and says something stupid, this feature is conspicuous by its absence. Take this resent article for example Faithless are coarse uncaring and without purpose

What Amazes me the most is the utter ignorance behind the Cardinal on every single point, which has been rgurgatated again and again, even though all of them have been addressed and debunked by Atheists.

THE lives of people without faith have ''nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss''

Um sorry, who is confecting myths to cover up the abyss? Is it rally skeptics who insist on evidence before they will elevate a hypothesis to the status of theory. Or is it those who say that the one truth is contained in a book written thousands of years ago. A book, which is true, ulike all the other books written thousands of years ago.

''A minority of people, usually people without religion, are frightened by the future,''

As far as I can see most of the impending doom, moral degeneration and end of civilization senarios are perpetuated by theists, not atheists. This is inverably followed by a call to renew faith, which will somehow solve all the worlds problems. Yes there are real problems, that require real action, and real solutions. But Faith will not solve them.

''It's almost as though they've … nothing but fear to distract themselves from the fact that without God the universe has no objective purpose or meaning.

No Cardinal I don't accept that your blind acceptance of a particular creation myth makes you objective. Heck even your scriptures don't actually bother to explain why your God created the universe, only that He did, and Liked what he created. Which as far as I can see makes it an experiment or some kind of art project.

An evolutionary perspective might instead say that the purpose of life is to propagate itself, beyond that we, as self aware beings, make our own purpose. What could be grander then realing that their that the question of Life the universe and everything will not be answer by searching, but by invention?

Cardinal Pell said education was not enough to create a civilised society, that faith was necessary too. He cited the example of 20th century Germany

How Ironic. That he would site a movement steeped in religious language, Lead by a baptized Catholic, who if anything saw himself as a new Messiah. A regime that rose at a time when antisemitism was the normal position of the catholic church, who prayed that the Treacherous Jews would see the light. This Particular prayer was removed at Vatican II, but has now been reinstated (admittedly the new version drops the word Treacherous).

''Australian society will become increasingly coarse and uncaring … if Christian principles are excluded from public discussion.

Yet another absurdity to claim that Christianity has some kind of exlusive claim on emotions that we are all capable of merely for the fact that we are humans, evolved from primates that lived in social groups.

The most glorious statements of the rights of Man we have did not come from any religion. But from secularists who knew what it was like to live under boot heels of religion. I am of course referring to the US deceleration of independence. It was secular society that first said we are all equal, and none will be placed in power by right of birth. It was secular society that said that slavery was wrong. Now that secular society is here all of these things seem obvious to us. SO my question to the good cardinal would by, why didn't your God reveal these ideas thousands of years ago, when your church had control of the Roman Empire, and in essence control of Europe?

But no the truth is that the Church has fought tooth and nail against every single step of the march to the modern world. Denouncing every idea to the last possible moment. Favoring despotism over democracy and censorship over freedom of expression at every single turn. How Ironic that now that they have lost their power to oppress they want to claim that they are all that s stands between civil society and chaos.

Despite the repeated claims of conservative theists the world few of New Atheists is a positive one, not a negative one. New Atheists do not lie and claim to have all the answers, but rather admit that they do not, and that much work needs to be done. And go on to invite every indidual to join them on the quest to find better answers.

Ben Hur

So we took the boys to see the ben Hur spectacular last night. Yes it was big, very big. But it also went a long way to prove that bigger does not necesarily mwan better. And on the whole, while I acknowledge that a lot of people worked very hard on this production, the results where underwhelming.

First of for most of the show the scale was simply too big, and it was all the cast could do to run to their places and while the same music played over and over again.

The first supposidly big scene was the galley fight, only it made no sense as while the romans came in on a galley, the pirates arrived on foot. Watching the one, admididly huge galley being assembled was frankly a little boring. Really why not use smaller ships that can actually move about the stage and have somthing that looks like a real navel battle?

Then we get tot the biggest let-down of the night, gladiators who spend all their time wrestling. The excuse that they could not use weapons for occupational health and safety reasons seemed absurd. I can go down to any toy or costume shop and get reasonable looking weapons (that are considered safe for children), and with their huge budget they couldn't get something made that was safe but looked passable (considerthing the distance that the audience is viewing at?

Then finally we come to the highlight of the night, the chariot race. OK this was a moment of sheer awesome that could not be done any other way. However we are talking about 5 - 10 minutes of awesome out of two hours.

In the end, It was good, but not good enough for me to feel I got my moneys worth.

gofr

Well it turns out that gofr does exactly what I want. so yay to the author, and yay for my little pet project, looks like most of the Yak's will have to be shaved another day.

What bugs me about Go

Putting language design aside entirely, because lets face it every programmer has a different idea of what should, and should not, be in the perfect language, there is one thing that is beginning to really bug me about go.

And that is how poorly documented the command line tools are. Firstly see the Plan 9 docs at http... is positively useless to me when I'm on the train with no internet access. Which is a good percentage of the time.

I've been wresting for several days with trying to set up a build system for a multi package project. The documentation for cgo says see the make file, which was not at all illustrative, especially as the make file does not seem to contain any rules that actually call the cgo! All we seem to get is a lot of messing about with intermediary C files. And trying to dig deeper just ends up at the completely undocumented gomake program.

Then my second problem is that I don't want to install the resultant package globally I'm using it in exactly one particular project. Installing it globally for my system is completely the wrong thing to do, especially as I'll be going back an making frequent changes to it, And my ultimate aim is to produce a standalone executable.

The depressing thing is that in this particular instance even the mailing list seems to be of little help. Searching through the archive suggests that no one has gotten an answer to this question. Every thread I found is filled with people saying yes I have this problem too. And the odd, the I have this problem too so I've started writing a build tool variation. I've started yet another thread about this though, just in case I have better results .

So far the only tool I've found that at least claims to handle cgo is gofr. Sadly it seems to be a little out of date at the moment and won't actually compile at. All in all my pet project is delayed, because I've got a Yak or two to shave...


PS: Yes I know its open source, and I would happily contribute documentation, if I actually knew how to solve the problem. Which sadly I do not.

More NCurses

Since someone actually commented on my original post here is a status update
I've actually moved to starting again from scratch, with a wrapper that is more modern than the one I found (It still had semicolons at the end of each line). My new version is already somewhat more comprehensive though nowhere near complete.

One of the changes I've made is to allow method chaining so instead of adding the move and do X method for every single operation I have a Mv and Color and Set (as in attrset) which return the window you called them on. This allows calls like:

window.Mv(10,10).Set(curses.A_BOLD).COLOR(4).AddStr("Hello World")

or better yet:

fmt.FPrintf(window(10,10).Set(curses.A_BOLD).COLOR(4), "Hello World")

Yes I made Ncurses Window type implement the Writer interface : )

And as to releasing it back. I absolutely plan too. Though I still have a few Items I want to get working first such as:

1. Make my InitScreen take configuration options so that it can set things like CBreak, NoEcho and Keypad for you (I already have it initilising the color system if required.
2. Implement the border drawing primitives though this is just fairly mechanical work.
3. Add basic wrappers for the related panel, and menu libraries. I'm still trying to decide how all this should be packaged.