Monthly Archives: August 2014

Change Log of August 8th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • The feature I tried yesterday didn’t work properly, so I accidentally published the post. I’ll try again next time

 

~ George

Funny Knight Names

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, ,

I once played a game called Adventure Quest Worlds (AQWorlds, for short), and one thing that I thought was funny was that many of the knights in the game had funny titles, like Sir Junn, the doctor.  So I decided to try to make a list of all the commonly recognized words that could combine Sir and a surname (ha ha) to make a word. I also decided to add suggestions of what the knights personality/job would be, next to a bunch of the names:

  • Sir Prize (a prankster)
  • Sir Plus (quartermaster or farmer, maybe a grocer)
  • Sir Ten (idk, a logician?)
  • Sir Vive/Sir Vival (wilderness-guy)
  • Sir Cumstance
  • Sir Gent (a sergeant, of course)
  • Sir Up
  • Sir Kull (maybe this guy is a mathematician. Slight name change from “Sir Cle” to “Sir Kull thanks to suggestions in the comments 🙂 )
  • Sir Vant (butler, perhaps?)
  • Sir Loin (a butcher)
  • Sir Cher (a detective)
  • Sir Pent (traitor)
  • Sir Rogate

Those were all of the names that I could think of without looking anything up, many of which were names from AQWorlds. After making that list I decided to finally look in the wiki for AQWorlds, and found a few more names:

  • Sir Pass
  • Sir Render (a cowardly fellow)
  • Sir Rated
  • Sir Kuss
  • Sir Junn (a doctor)
  • Sir Ver (the name of one of the game’s servers)

I decided that I could find more words than that, so I looked at www.scrabblefinder.com, and I searched for words starting with everything from Syr to Cir, and managed to find a lot more words (although that did take a while):

  • Sir Fur (a surfer)
  • Sir Real (maybe a madman or mystic)
  • Sir Round
  • Sir Mount
  • Sir Face
  • Sir Name
  • Sir Vey (A surveyor, or maybe a critic)
  • Sir Mise (a thinker)
  • Sir Lee (a surly man)
  • Sir Tificate (a game show host?)
  • Sir Tify
  • Sir Ene (a monk)
  • Sir Inity
  • Sir Mon (a preacher)
  • Sir Cumferance, the person who built King Arthur’s Round Table (suggested in the comments)

It was pretty fun to make this list, although I think that a lot of the names would be too weird to use (like Sir Face). Either way, I hope you found this list amusing. Leave suggestions for occupations and/or names in the comments!

~ George

Highlighted Post: You have just found the fabled Genie of the Lamp. Do you know The Ultimate Wish?

Spherical Properties

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

I was reading the Wikipedia article about the eleven properties of a sphere (I can’t remember why, but I do stuff like that a lot) and I noticed the first property, which I’ll quote:

The points on the sphere are all the same distance from a fixed point….

The article then says:  “[This] is the usual definition of the sphere and determines it uniquely.”

The fixed point described is, of course, the center of the sphere, and the article says that only the sphere has the property described there. What I was wondering was, what if there is a fixed point for every shape from which the distance between it and any point on the shape is the same? I’d imagine this would have to involve curving space and some sort of 4th spatial dimension (not including the ones predicted by string theory). This would have to include everything from planes toruses (doughnut shaped, and yes, I Googled “what shape is a doughnut”. The Wikipedia article has some cool pictures in it :).

~ George

Change Log of August 6th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • I’m testing the blogging feature that allows posts to be set to be published in the future, so hopefully there will be a post showing up about noon tomorrow 🙂

 

~ George

Change Log of August 7th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • Story Idea: Benedite popped into my head I think earlier today. It fascinates me to think of what a world like the one described in the post would be like
  • Story Idea: Useless Magic also seems like an interesting world, although it doesn’t have much of a plot yet

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • none

 

~ George

Story Idea: Benedite

George, Idea Polish Level: 3, My Ideas,

In a world where goodness is a deplete-able resource, what happens when it runs out?

In many stories, there is a special power source that makes whoever has it super powerful, but at a cost. Often, the more the person uses the power, the more evil/selfish/uncaring/crazy he becomes. Examples that come to mind include the Epics in Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart, which are extremely powerful yet disregard human life as worthless, and the scepters in the Eric Rex series (by Kaza Kingsley), which are nearly all-powerful yet drive the user mad.

What if, instead, the power makes all who use it even better, as well as more powerful? Let’s call the resource Benedite (which turns out to be a real word in Italian), after the Latin word for Good (bene), and make it mine-able like coal is. In fact, let’s make benedite even more like coal and say that it’s plentiful, non-renewable, and, importantly, deplete-able.

For centuries, everyone buys and sells this benedite. Everyone who uses it is a nicer person (not necessarily naïve, though), and much stronger to boot. Civilization makes huge leaps, because everyone can more quickly finish their work, and there is very little conflict. After all, everyone is nice and happy. The richest, those who can afford the most benedite, are also the most charitable. Poverty and crime are virtually non-existent. Then, benedite starts running out. Not stolen or anything like that, just used up.

The first signs that benedite is running low would probably be found in the food industry (assuming benedite is edible). I’m sure that at some point some genius would think to start selling benedite enhanced food to the people to boost sales (like we sell vitamin enhanced food). People might still have to take benedite pills (or whatever), but having all of the food contain benedite would make getting it even easier. Perhaps junk food would be food that has no benedite in it (after all, it probably helps you heal faster too). Slowly, as the cost of benedite starts going up, the amount of benedite in each piece of food would go down, until foods that have high quantities of it are seen as luxury foods. When the announcement comes that no more benedite is being found, even the junk food with very little benedite would suddenly rise in value.

Benedite, which had been almost free only a few months (or years) before, suddenly rises in value, leaving only the richest with any left. Now the population has to deal with crime and poverty for the first time in hundreds of years, and they are totally unprepared. Those who still have the benedite are forced to decide what to do with what’s left. Do they give it to the people, only to make it run out faster? Some do, perhaps because they think that it’s the right thing to do, or perhaps because they broke under the pressure of the riots that would surely have come. Others decide that it would be in the best interest of everyone if the benedite was kept to a select few who would be used to keep the population safe, sort of like the Justice League. The benedite enhanced “cops” would, after all, want nothing more than the good of the people, and they would be much stronger than the average man. This would preserve the benedite longer. There are some programs which are set up to help wean the people off of the benedite and set them up so that they can survive without it.

But there is, and it turns out, has always been, corruption, even with benedite. There are a few far secluded countries that hadn’t even heard of benedite. There are those in the civilized country that deliberately avoid using benedite, for a variety of reasons. Note: there are very few of these people; after all, benedite has been around for centuries and has no harmful side effects, but plenty of good effects. Some avoid it because of personal belief, but most who avoid it are those who are trying to take advantage of other people. Many who never use benedite are afraid that if they use it they will turn themselves in for their past crimes. It is very hard to be bad in a civilization like this, but some are.

Rich people might buy a lot of benedite to make themselves seem trustworthy, but never use it, and some people would deliberately not use it so that they can work as mercenaries. Working as a mercenary without benedite would be hard, though, because the average person would be much stronger than you, and the average important person would be even stronger. Perhaps the benedite-less would primarily attack the other benedite-less.

Above all that, there is a very very very small group of people who are immune to the effects of benedite, whether immune to the strengthening effects, or, even worse, immune to the purifying part, allowing them to commit terrible acts without weakness.

Another part of this is the fact that the entire world has been built to accommodate these super strong, super nice, (maybe super smart,) people. For example, none of the doors would have locks, because no one would ever even think to steal anything.  Also, much of what would have been easy is now next to impossible. You can imagine how different the world would be if everyone was super powered. Everything would be designed to be used, and run, by people with super strength, super speed, maybe super brains, etc. Not only would the world be short on goodness, it would also be short on just about everything.

I think I would really enjoy reading a book based on this, and I’ve grown to really like this idea as I’ve typed it. I’m sure there is much more that can be fleshed out of this idea, but so far this was fun. I wonder what the science industry would be doing, trying to replicate/create benedite in a lab. In the story, would Earth ever get benedite back?

~ George

 

 

Change Log of August 1st, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day that I change something, I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • Finally I’ve got an Idea Polish Level: 4 published with the post Type-able Lewis Dot Structure. I started the draft months ago, but it turned out to be a much harder concept to explain than I thought.

Major Changes:

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • none

~ George

Type-able Lewis Dot Structure

George, Idea Polish Level: 4,

After messing up with Lewis dot structures on a chemistry test a while back (I forgot to draw any of the dots. Otherwise it would have been nearly 100% 🙁 ),  so I wanted to come up with an alternate to Lewis dot structures that doesn’t need dots. I still haven’t figured out a way to do that, but at the time I instead ended up with a way to format a Lewis dot structure in a way that you could type it. Note: you must already know how to draw out simple Lewis dot structures and the terminology behind them to understand this post.

Here’s a table to represent the various symbols that you use to type the Lewis dot structures

The symbol for (a)…

  • Single bond is a dash (-)
  • Double bond is an equal sign (=)
  • Triple bond is an equal sign and a dash (=- or -=)
  • Quadruple bond is two equal signs (==)
  • (If you need greater values, combine the dashes and equal signs until you have the number you need)
  • One valence electron is a period (.)
  • Two valence electrons is a colon (:)
  • Three valence electrons is a colon and a period (.: or :.)
  • Four valence electrons is two colons (::)
  • (If you need greater values, combine the periods and colons until you have the number you need)

To help with typing the Lewis dot structures, parenthesis will need to be used around each atom in the molecule. The first set is parenthesis (), the second set is brackets [], the third set is braces {}, and if you need more than either loop back to parentheses or don’t bother typing it. For example, Nitrogen’s Lewis dot structure would be (N:.), with the colon+period representing nitrogen’s three valence electrons. O2’s Lewis dot structure would be [::O=(O::)].

There are two colons next to each O to represent the four valence electrons that each oxygen has, and the equal sign to represent the double bond. Why one atom is in parenthesis and the other is not will be explained next.

A more complicated example would be CH4’s typed Lewis dot structure: [C-(H)-(H)-(H)-(H)]

None of the atoms in this molecule have any valence electrons, so there aren’t any periods or colons. Something more noticeable about it is that the hydrogen atoms, while seemingly connected in the typed version, aren’t connected in the drawn version. The way you get around that is by having the atom that is being connected to outside of the parentheses. The carbon atom has only the brackets around it, meanwhile all of the hydrogen atoms also have the parentheses.

You can even type the Lewis dot structure of a molecule by using all three bracket types, such as C2H3N’s molecule: {C-[H]-[H]-[H]-[C-=(N:.)]} .

Blog - Idea Level 3 - Type-able Lewis Dot Structure - H3C2N

The typed Lewis dot structure starts with the left carbon, showing it with only the braces surrounding it. That means that all of the atoms in the molecule that are only surrounded by both the braces and the brackets are connected to the carbon atom. Any atoms that are also surrounded by parentheses aren’t connected to the first carbon. The second carbon is surrounded by both the braces and the brackets, but not the parentheses. That means that any molecules that are surrounded by the braces, the same pair brackets that the 2nd carbon is surrounded by, and parentheses are connected to it. The nitrogen in the molecule fits all of those criteria, and as you can see in the drawn out version it is connected to the 2nd carbon but not the first.

Unfortunately this form obviously has limitations, such as those that a normal Lewis dot structure has, as well as the fact that the typed diagrams will rapidly get very complex.

Something I’m experimenting with is how to type the structure when it has rings in it, like carbon rings.

One possible way is to use something to communicate a linked section of a sort, like asterisks do for footnotes. So the above’s typed Lewis dot structure, starting with the bottom left carbon and going around clockwise, would be {C-[*]-[H]=[C-(H)-(C-{H}={C-[H]-[*C-(H)]})]}

For fun, and also to test this method of diagramming molecules, I Googled “Large Lewis dot structures” to see what came up, and decided that I would type it out myself at some point. Until I find the time to do what is probably going to be a long and difficult task, here’s the molecule I found:

 

Also, I’m thinking that there is some way to show the molecular polarity (or maybe the proper term is electronegativity) using greater than and less than signs (<>), but until I find my Chemistry book I can’t remember any of the proper terms, so until then just know that there’s more to come.

~ George