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Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Daily Archives: February 15, 2010

Why Research Nerds Shouldn’t Write

15 Monday Feb 2010

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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God, but I love my job! Or maybe I shouldn’t.

There is a brief passing reference to a supposed impact crater in Archimago which so far has only been used twice. In my original happy world, the boss powerful sorcerer at the time created it during a killer tantrum. I had envisioned an impact crater in Russia, which my extensive scholarly vague recall of National Geographic remembered as the Kamchatka crater. But (mercifully) I wanted a quick fact check . . .

  • . . . and discovered to my dismay that this particular crater (Kamchatka) was actually a whole chain of them. So . . .
  • I looked up impact/meteor craters in Wikipedia, and fished around until I found one with the right general parameters, but
  • . . . it had already been marked by the local Native Americans, so . . .
  • . . . the Crucio in question had to change ethnicity from Russian to Inuit, which meant that
  • . . . he needed an Inuit name
  • . . . which meant I had to look for one.
  • So when I added it to my spreadsheet, I realized it was all teeny-tiny and spent a frustrating time trying to figure out how to get Numbers to change its row height (Mr. Inspector is Your Friend, as he is in Pages, duh!)
  • And while I was noodling around with that, I came across my District page and . . .
  • went looking (grr) for a (ya’d think?) US outline map that I could edit relatively easily, although the last time I did this some years ago, I couldn’t find one that was any good, and Photoshop and I didn’t speak for a few weeks, so I braced myself for a similar future conversation with Gimp, hoping that Photoshop hadn’t chatted with it about what an unreasonable bitch I am.
  • But maybe the interwebs have evolved, because I found an awesome nifty one (see my links)
  • However, the District page also has the Houses, so it occurred to me that . . .
  • . . . this Inuit Crucio and company needed to be in a separate House (geography is destiny, campers–just play Civilization), which meant it also needed a name.
  • After an estimated two and a half hours of poring through Inuit linguistics (which formed by far the bulk of all this afternoon), I came up with a name, but . . .
  • . . . then I remembered that I also already had a House of  Western US Indians Continue reading →

Stalling Alert!

15 Monday Feb 2010

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

≈ Leave a comment

After four hours of eating breakfast, getting dressed, etc., market research on a Bluetooth headset, other wandering around on the Internet, and getting all my desk supplies together, I am finally about to buckle down. And the crowd goes wild!!!

Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

Categories

  • Blog
  • Fiction
February 2010
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Blogroll

  • Aaaand it's my brand new Patreon page! (Still being set up.)
  • All the Google Doodles
  • And there's even a Google Doodle store!
  • BBC has all these nifty all-about-you tests . . .
  • Free downloadable SF books! Good ones! Really! Legit even!
  • Help transcribe the New York Public Library's menus! Minimal effort required!
  • Lunar Calendar
  • My YouTube favorites, in case you're bored or curious
  • Places to increase your mellow
  • rathergood.com. Well, pretty darn good.
  • The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette. Really. Awesome.
  • The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody
  • The Onion interview with God, September 2001
  • Translate Japanese characters to Roman letters
  • Want a koan? Pick a koan. Any koan.
  • What people of X height look like at Y weight

Stupid Art! doh!

  • Graph Paper of the Gods
  • The Museum of Bad Art

Stupid Writing! doh!

  • By golly, this is a pretty darn good Inuit-family language vocab site!
  • Lunar Calendar
  • Random noun generator
  • Revised Standard Version
  • The Bible

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