Obdormio.com

I was working on the next and possibly last Red Dwarf adventure for my group, and I was puzzling out some ships, when it struck me that there seemed to be some small inconsistencies regarding ship sizes and numbers of crew or passengers. I’ve just been through all three books, making myself some statistics, and here’s what I found:

There are five categories of size in the Red Dwarf RPG; Small, Medium, Large, Bloody Huge and Immense. As far as I can see, no official vessel has been put in the Immense-category.

For Small ships, the absolutely lowest number of passenger capability is 1, and the highest is 8. For Medium, the lowest is 4 and the highest is 40. For Large, the lowest is 9 and the largest 2000. Yeah, I was shocked, too. For Bloody Huge, the lowest is 150, and the highest is 5000.

The reason I began this count was because I kept seeing Large ships, with wildly different numbers, and I started wondering if any ship could be squished into Large with a bit of imagination. Certainly, these overlap.

Looking at required crew, there is little more to gain. For Small, not counting automated pods, the lowest requirement is 1, and the highest 2. Medium is exactly the same. Large has 2 as lowest and 4 as highest, and Bloody Huge has 3. As both highest and lowest.

Obviously, these numbers are not the most important factor in determining size. Red Dwarf is Bloody Huge and houses 1169, because much of it is cargo space, docks, ship bays, shops, recreation areas, and all the other things needed to form what is essentially a flying city. Enlightenment, on the other hand, houses 2000, but is classified as Large. It has no use for cargo decks, but does have a deck devoted entirely to sports and sexual recreation. Bloody Huge Leviathan houses a mere 150, but is mostly made up of cargo decks, being a transport ship. There is logic to this.

The ships I question are the likes of the Centauri, the Nova 5 and the Hermes. They don’t seem like they should be in the same size category as the Esperanto and the simulant ship from Gunmen of the Apocalypse.

The real problem though is with Blue Midget, White Midget and Starbug. Each of these need a minimum of one pilot, and can house up to four people. And they’re all classified as Medium.

Come on. Even before the season 7 warping, Starbug is magnitudes bigger than Blue Midget. Blue Midget is a car! A tiny little cab, barely room for four to sit up in the cockpit, probably a small luggage compartment, and then the engines. That’s it. That’s Medium, according to this, along with zeppelins and personnel shuttles with room for forty people and their luggage.

White Midget seems to be slightly larger than the blue type, but it’s in the same series, and the differences seem to be mainly cosmetic.

Starbug is a home for four people, beds, small kitchen, cargo bay, medibay, three decks, for crying out loud! It does not belong in the same size category as Blue Midget. Problem is, it doesn’t belong with the Nova 5 either, and definitely not with Enlightenment.

You might say that this is all totally irrelevant, and that it only matters if you’re in space combat and want to be boringly accurate about movement, and well, you’d be right. It has little to no impact on the actual gaming. Even so, it bothers me. I like things, even inconsequential things, to make sense. That’s why I made my own rules for hologram simulation. Compared to the madness of the original hologram rules, this is nothing, but I’m still considering writing myself some clearer guidelines. Maybe put in a new class between Medium and Large, or put a new Tiny class at the beginning, redefining Small and Medium.

Anyway, it can wait, I just wanted to rant about it for now. The adventure is as good as done, and I think I’m finished with everything I absolutely needed to do, leaving tomorrow and the rest of today off for things I want to do. Like pine for Dreamfall. Joy.

The anthology is here at last! Wohoo! After so much work and waiting, it hardly seems real, but there it is, in all its glory!

(Yeah, I know, the title is … yeah. Nothing to do about it now.)

I wish I had time to just sit and read it, but there are too many unpleasant tasks I should already be finished with by now, so it will have to wait. Sadly.

You know what I want to see? Or rather, hear? An a capella orchestra.

I think that would be seven shades of cool, hearing classical music made for symphonies preformed a capella. Think about it, if you got together a sufficiently large group of good voices, and had them all produce the sounds the different instruments would have made, it would sound awesome.

The “Four Seasons” sung by well trained voices. “Jeux d’enfants”, hummed. The “1812 Overture” preformed without instruments. They could do the cannon by jumping simultaneously or something. If they all had tap-dancing shoes.

All right, there might be a few kinks to work out, but even so, seven shades of cool!

I’m really jazzed about this idea now. A capella symphony! I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet! Maybe it has been. It should have been. And I should get to listen to it.

My new cell phone is an LG F2300. It has a built in digital camera, two colour displays, sends and receives MMS, 40 polyphonic ringtones included and it supports java.

These aren’t selling points by the way, they’re grievances.

There appears to be no way to disable the picture backgrounds of the displays. After an hour or so of looking at some annoyingly colourful fishes, I took a picture of a grey wall and set that as the background.

I freaking hate the thing. It makes idiotic noises whenever I press something, the keyboard layout makes no kind of sense, all the shortcuts are useless and the only ringtone that’s even remotely bearable is a butchering of Vivaldi’s “Spring”.

But it was cheap. 1 krone ($0.153787, €0.12700223, 2461.93₫), and an affordable and reasonable subscription.

A much more welcome recent purchase is the complete first season of “Scrubs”, which of course must be devoured as quickly as possible. Between the new living room floor, Robin Hobb and Scrubs, Uru suffers, which is bad. I should also get started on Oracle Night soon, time is running out oh so quickly, and I really need to write that Red Dwarf adventure.

No progress on the time machine so far.

Do you know the definition of the word ‘fluent’? I’m fairly certain that you do. Even if you don’t know the exact wording of the dictionary, you know the meaning. You should, anyway.

The particular meaning I’m after here is the one which applies to languages, the one you use when you say “I’m fluent in English”. For the record, here’s the definition from answers.com:

Able to express oneself readily and effortlessly.

Despite evidence to the contrary, most people I’ve met on the Internet have claimed fluency in English. Several people I’ve met in real life have claimed fluency in English and other languages. I don’t agree with them.

One of my teachers once said that if you can’t describe every single detail of the room you’re sitting in without having to get help translating, you’re not fluent. That’s a test I like. It tells me I’m far from as fluent in English as I sometimes like to think.

Let me take an example of a Norwegian word I don’t know how to translate, and I doubt many do. It appears to have no English equivalent at all. The word is “saft”.

Now, one, absolutely correct, way to translate that would be “juice”, which is the word all dictionaries I’ve seen give. But that only applies when “saft” is used in that particular context, e.g. the juice of an apple. That context is easy, but the other (in my experience more common) use is harder.

A glass of undiluted … thingy.

There exists a certain beverage we name “saft”. Depending on the brand, it is either made from mixed fruit extracts or synthetically. It usually contains heaploads of sugar. It is concentrated, and has to be mixed with water before drinking.

No, it isn’t “lemonade”, that word is too narrow.

Diluted saft. Tasty.

Now where did I leave my point? I’m sure I had one. Oh, wait, look, there it is:

If somebody was to put me in a room with a glass of the stuff, I would fail the fluency test. I’m not fluent in English. I suspect most people who claim to be aren’t. The word “fluent” is overused.

And it bugs me.

I was going to post a long and serious post announcing what people who keep their eyes open and read the comments already know, that Loki is now an irregular contributor to this blog. But then, Robin Hobb stole my sleep, and my spare time too, so I’m making it simple.

Loki now has posting privileges, and will hopefully use them every now and then to say something profound and/or entertaining.

More likely though, is that there’ll be more of the nonsense posted below.

Did you sleep well, sir? Did you sleep at all? You really should sleep, you know. Did you have a good read? Would you like a cup of freshly boiled morning cyber-tea?

We do hope you’re satisfied with your tea, and please, do not hesitate to inquire if you would like a light cyber-breakfast. We are here only to serve, sir, and we are proud to do so.

With the outmost respect,
your collective staff.

Loki is a very wise man.

I should totally get him to write for this site, and leech of his abilities.