Of Zeroes And Heroes

There is absolutely nothing to report on the NationStates front right now, unless you wanted a list of things we'd forgotten about (with the obvious exceptions of the task- and issue-list). But nevermind.

At least I managed to order the complete second season of The Legends of Treasure Island! Yar, me mateys, that I did. As a favour to the guy (the hero in the title - words cannot describe how grateful I am) who's done this for me, I'd ask anyone who reads this to contact me if they've copied any episodes of two old TV series this guy's a-hankerin' after: 'The Dreamstone' and 'Bravestarr'.

Anyway, toodles for now.

Lancre Cup XII

Once again, it's time for more zany Lancre football, and also, once again, we have a new organiser. Yesnono has bravely taken up the job of working out everyone's scores, writing up match reviews, keeping everyone interested et cetera and I says good luck to her. It's a tough job, and it needs a tough mind to control it or you'll just flop forward with your tongue rolling out.

So yeah, if you want to know more, check out the thread here: http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?topic=445504

Cartography

If there's one thing that I know NationStaters would give their right arms for, it would be decent maps. Well, actually they'd probably prefer war, trade, allegiances, and more descriptive control of their nations, but if you asked them if they'd like good maps, I'm willing to wager they'd give a resounding 'yes'. Or 'aye'. Or 'whatever'. Or maybe just 'I'd prefer war, trade, allegiances, and more descriptive control of my nations'. They're a mixed bunch, NSers.

Anyway, I'm just going to tell you that there is a great way you can make a map of your nation or region (only an idiot would try to make one for the whole NS world) and even make photorealistic shots of it (and not just from an eagle-eye point of view either!) and make all your friends go 'ooh' and 'aah' as you show off the great mountain range of Silly Sausage, or the blue rippling waters of Loch Dead Baby. Good taste is optional when it comes to naming these things.

But how do you all this? With Terragen of course! I mentioned this very briefly a few months back I think, but it really is too good a program to ignore. My region Lancre used Terragen and we had the images on our website until it was sadly disabled by server trouble.

If you really want to impress people with your up-and-coming region, or you're just a delegate or founder looking for a new way to improve the morale, or maybe you've got an NS friend with a birthday approaching (or maybe you're just bored and like maps), give it a shot. You won't be sorry.

Oh, and it's free! Have fun!

Another Milestone

We've just passed a massive forty thousand tasks in toto reviewed by the mods. Phew. Makes me wonder whether the others have been getting any sleep at night. I know Fris hasn't - he's been demolishing the list with almost inhuman consistency and I think he's just trying to make the rest of us look bad. Damn you, Frisbeeteria, and your wily games!

Lake District And Yorkshire

Yes, I have returned from my four-day trip to England. I would have written about it on Monday, but I couldn't be arsed.

Anyway, did I enjoy myself? Yes, I do believe I did! On the first day I visited the White Scar cave near Ingleton and it was pretty amazing. I did keep bashing my head against the ceiling though, and there were some passages where you have to bend double to get through. It was one of the few occasions where I was happy being just five foot ten!

I also went to Malham Cove and admired it muchly. There was not a chance in Hell I was going near the edge though. Just seeing another visitor looking over the side gave me the jellies. Brr. As if Watloe's Valley hadn't been bad enough.

I stayed at a hostel in Grasmere which was all very well and good, it was very comfortable and such, until I suddenly got food poisoning on the last day from a suspect vegetable bolognese. Ooh, God, it was horrible. I was shivering, hacking, and sneezing all the way home. Ah well. Can't win 'em all.

Trip To England

I'm going on a three day trip down to the Lake District and Yorkshire, England, starting today. So I won't be back until Sunday. I'll be visiting Limestone caves, taking a good look at the surrounding karstic scenery, and, I suppose, be enjoying myself.

So, be back soon. I won't have any pictures, so you'll just have to endure my graphic detail. Ah, well. See you later.

Fresh Blood

I've got some good news for those wanting more issues - I've started teaching Euroslavia, one of our forum mods, the basic methods of editing issues. I don't want to get into the complicated stuff to quickly or his head will implode and I'll have to find someone else to bully and cajole.

The system works like this:

1. Give the mod a choice of three issues to edit, each sealed in a golden envelope. Once the mod chooses one, I strap him into a chair and the torture begins.

2. I give the mod some basic directions on how to edit (this took me the best part of two hours with Euro, but there's a lot you need to know!) and telegrammed him a copy of the issue (with a few preliminary edits by me to prevent code warping the editor screen - sometimes just one misplaced bracket can have bizarre effects like enlarging all the text and turning it orange). He then edits it to the best of his ability and telegrams it back to me.

3. I send the issue back pointing out all the things he did wrong, things he did right, and things he has yet to do. He edits and sends back.

4. I point out some more stuff, make suggestions, give him some casual verbal abuse, and send it back.

5. Wash, rinse and repeat.

6. Finally, when I'm satisfied, I give the whole issue a do-over, show Euro what I did and explain it, and then put the issue in the game. The issue will not acknowledge the mod as the co-editor, but I do record it. I'll mention it in this blog, too.

I won't be able to put any issues into the game just yet of course. Not until the new code's been installed.

I'm vaguely aware that Euroslavia's been looking forward to the whole issue-editing process, so we should be able to expect a lot of output from him, which is fantastic. We'll be over the 200 issues mark in no time!

Busy Busy Busy

You may be wondering where the Hell I've been recently. Well, it's quite simple. I've been busy. Very busy in fact. I've had little time to visit NationStates, and haven't been able to do any editing at all. I feel strung out and tired, and if that wasn't bad enough I've got a Radiohead song called 'I Froze Up' stuck in my head. It keeps going round and round and repeating like a zoetrope. It's a beautiful song, but quite frankly it's turning my brain into cottage cheese.

I hope I might be able to get more things done next weekend. Build up a bunch of completed issues (though recently it's becoming more and more of a chore to concentrate myself on doing these things).

And, dammit, I've got to accompany (on piano) a violinist who's a friend of mine. The song's 'Fix You' by Coldplay which has a mercifully slow and easy accompaniment so it shouldn't be too bad. Complicated and fast accompaniments are the devil's craft and it can take ages to master them properly if you're not totally at home with this most treacherous of arts. But hey, I'm learning.

Everyday, and in every way, I'm getting better. And a tad more sleep-deprived.

Somnolence

Nothing new. I feel sleepy. Progress on new issues up to speed. Asked Sal about the new issue code. He said 'later'. Scotland beat Norway. Good. Northern Ireland beat England. Also good, in a totally non-sectarian way.

But mostly, I just want to sleep. Wake me up if anything interesting happens.

Issue Ideas

If you're stuck for inspiration, here's some ideas we don't have issues on yet:

Gay adoption
Terrorism (GOOD terrorism issues. I've seen plenty of issues on terrorism, but they've all been absolutely terrible - think carefully about how you structure this issue)
Military coup (again, think carefully about how you do this one)
Public transport strikes (bus drivers? Airline workers?)
Nuclear meltdown
Coastal erosion
Lack of healthcare
Territory expansion (someone claiming part of your land, or your claiming of theirs, either will do)

There's an infinite number of other ideas if none of these appeal to you. All you have do is look!

Rallentando

Well, there's still no news on the new issue code, or anything yet. Not even the new UN proposal categories I mentioned ages ago. News of any kind seems to be coming to a gradual halt. I haven't received many new e-mails or comments in ages, and even my usual flow of telegrams has dropped a bit.

All very mysterious.

Maybe I should heckle Salusa some more.

X Marks The Spot

You may remember that I mentioned a while back that I was having problems finding episodes of an old TV series called The Legends of Treasure Island. Well, I'm pleased to say that I managed to purchase a video set with all the episodes from the first season on it! It took a while of searching, but it seems that the series must have been bought by an Australian TV channel at some point. I don't know if they ever put the second (and final) season onto video but I'd very much like to find out!

Thankfully, I do have the episode where they actually find the treasure on an old video, so I won't be too horribly frustrated if I never get these episodes. It's a shame I don't have the very last episode, but I can remember what happens so ah well.

Poor old Captain Smollett, he never deserved what happened to him.

It's A Girl!

What better way to celebrate your hundredth blog article than to also celebrate the arrival of new life? Max Barry has just hit fatherhood, and I can't express how very happy I am for him! A big congratulations and much well-wishing for him and Jennifer, I know they'll be stellar parents. You can see Max's blog on the subject here: http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/08/30/news.html#finlay.

Sirroco, The Bastard Moderator From Hell

A long time ago, Reppy created a thread where mods could expound their frustrations and neuroses with fictional writing. A thread Where we could do all the mean nasty things we'd never do in real life (or don't we...?) and where we could take the piss out of anything we liked. It was great fun, and has proved enormously popular with the members of the forum. I don't really have much to write about because, of course, I mostly deal with daily issues, and there's not much malice you can inflict on people with issues. Chaos and destruction, yes, but not much malice.

Anyway, I decided to give it a shot anyway, and submitted my contribution to the new thread here (don't worry about missing any, the first thread is linked in the first post): http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=384991.

If you're wondering why my bastard moniker is 'Sirroco', it goes way back to when I used to complain loudly that people always spelled 'Sirocco' wrong. In retaliation people started calling me Sirroco, Siroco, Siraco, (or even in extreme cases Sirccocoocococo) and other such variants. Ah, irony, it gets you everytime.

After The Storm

Well, everything's fixed now. Looks like it's gonna be a happy ending! Just a few minor niggles to fix and then we'll be back on the road to reliable servers. Not that NationStates has ever had a particularly good record in this regard!

Worry Ye Not, Help Is On The Way

People trying to log into NationStates will notice that the site is throwing up a hell of a lot of weird stuff and that you can't create a nation. This because we've run out of disc space again, which is pretty bewildering I know as I thought it had been fixed. But it looks like it got botched. Ah well.

But the simple message here is to NOT WORRY. We have everything in hand. As soon as Sal or the boss get the time to do anything, everyone's nation will be restored to the last time we backed our files up. What will this mean? Well, there will be a population drop, and any changes to your nation and all the issues you answered will have been undone. That's because your nation stats will revert to our backup file (don't panic though - it won't have been too long ago!).

It's advisable not to log into your nation as doing so kills it (as I found out after I'd attempted to log in about ten times...), but if you have already it doesn't matter, it'll be fixed soon.

Though the game is down, the forums are not, so you can still enjoy yourself sharing your disbelief at what's happened with others.

Here's some amusing threads I've noticed to help you pass the time:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=436151
http://www.forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=440356
http://www.forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=440313
http://www.forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=435859

Edit: looks like some things have been cleared up before I could finish writing this...

Earlier today (26 August 2005) our server experienced some data corruption, and the game is offline while we fix this. The fix will probably require restoring from a backup. We do not have an estimate for how long this will take nor when the backups will be from. I promise a status update by 7pm PST. (Unfortunately, I can't take the day off from work to fix this.)

Restoring from backup means, unfortunately, that all nations and regions will lose any changes made in the last 20 hours.

Any status updates will be posted to this page. Thank you for your patience.

Things will be fine. Have no fear! I'm just glad I didn't put any issues into the game in the last twenty hours. That would have been incredibly annoying...

Chinwagging With Karma

Today, I downloaded the latest wonder in communication that is Google Talk at the behest of Karmabaijan. And it's quite frankly amazing. Today I had my first international call (not including ones which have been routed through India and the like) and it was FREE. ALL FREE! Which I considered quite fine and dandy. One of the other things that I was happy about was the fact that I could clearly hear what Karma was saying. I was half-expecting to hear a static-garbled mess, like what you get from cheap walkie-talkies.

However, the experience was not without its drawbacks.

First of all, you need a microphone to be able to talk to someone. Otherwise, as it was with me and Karm, you're just listening to the other guy breathing like an ominous shadowy man in an alley. I did eventually find a microphone which had laid dormant in an old box for the last two years but when I put it in it didn't work. I haven't figured out why yet, but I'm optimistic. I'm positive it's in the right port. It was the little picture of a microphone next to it that supplied the clue.

So, as for the actual chat, you wouldn't be interested. Most of it was just Karm coaxing me on and puzzling about feedback while I frowned at the computer screen a lot.

Only those with a gmail account can use Google Talk, so if you want to be able to use it and don't have one feel free to e-mail me. I've got 50 invitations I've never used; I might as well put them to good use.

Oh, and by the way, Karma's got a really creepy laugh. Brrr...

New Issue Under Construction

But it's a total secret! It's quite a bit different from many other issues, so I'm still puzzling on how to use it. Should be a blast, anyway.

If you're looking for something to read, check out this blog: http://tnpblogger.blogspot.com/. It's an interesting insight into the strange power-struggles and debates that make up the Pacific regions. This is only for The North Pacific, but that's not too bad because it's the most interesting one politically.

One Square Forward

I learnt last night that [violet] had forwarded my issue-code to SalusaSecondus who said "If I get bored and remember I may do it". May not sound like much, but it is promising and it looks like we may have the new features in much sooner than I expected!

Still on the subject of issues, I noticed a rather interesting idea for an issue in a thread here: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=439362. We could do with more issues on gambling, and this is a good premise. The arguments are a bit thin, but hey, nothing's perfect.

The Siroc & Newsted Saga has started again after another lengthy interval of silence. You can view it here: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=280357.

And last, but not least, I have drawn a picture of a flightless hippo using Microsoft Paint here: http://img376.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sirocco9sz.jpg. Why did I do this? Because apparently the people doing the musical I mentioned in a previous blog want to turn it into an animation. Pretty cool, huh? With any luck we'll see this monstrosi- ah- delightful image I've constructed shuckin' and jivin' on our computer screens some day representing yours truly.

Hmm. I should have made the wings white.

Stockpiling

Still no news about the new issue code, but I'm not too surprised. I'm going to get busy editing new issues so that I have plenty to put into the game when I'm given the all-clear.

And... that's all I have to report really. Same old, same old.