FrankL

The thing is that this world once started magic the very same way. Just after several itterations/generations that basic knowledge got lost.

It became easier to use and learn the "precompiled" spells, then learning how to programm in magic-assemble (massembler? ass-magic?).

 

The bad thing is that nobody would help him debug those spells. So if his incantation of clean room has a bug that accidently summons a horde of fire demons, he would have to look long and hard to find it. Except this time around bugs can eat him and devour his soul.

 

Magic is a compiler with no documetnation. That might also behave differently based on unknown factors (like phases of the moon). The first step in debugging would require to get some form of human readable output (with meaningfull measurements). I somehow doubt magic has a decent ToString() function build into objects...

And you've just described the plot of book 2 in the series. People are trying to modify Wiz's new spells to make them deadlier (a spell Wiz wrote to make magical creatures uncomfortable within a given area is modified to kill all magical creatures in a given area). Wiz's girlfriend calls in a team from Wiz's world (she finds them at a Ren Fair) to rework the compiler with better debugging, automated error checking that rejects spells with malicious behavior*, and proper documentation. Since every new spell has to go through the compiler, this will work for going forward. To make people stop using the old spells, they introduce "customer service" to the pre-established communications channel that all wizards and witches use to communicate with the council when spells go wrong. Then they send out virus demons to ensure that modified spells misbehave. The casters then call their old help line.

"Council of the North. Thank you for holding. What seems to be the problem today?"

"Besides that terrible music I had to listen to while waiting an hour? I've always talked to a wizard immediately!"

"I'm sorry. We have been experiencing a higher than normal call volume. Why did you call?"

"My spell misfired and summoned singing gnomes. Oh, that one's mooning me!"

"Which spell were you using?" (chewing sound as helpdesk operator snacks)

"DDT."

"That is not a known behavior of DDT. In fact, nothing in the code would lead to that. Are you sure it was DDT?"

"Well, I'm really using the variant, demon debug begone."

"Oh, yes, we are very familiar with that spell. It seems it was hacked together and there is a 10% chance that instead of killing it will summon creatures. You're lucky. You've only managed to summon an annoyance. [whispers] We had one village summon a fire demon, but don't mention that to anyone. We will teleport you a scroll of DDT 2.0. It will banish the singing gnomes. And in the future, only use spells featuring the 'Approved by the Council of the North' seal."

*One step of which is three demons named hear-no, see-no, and speak-no. If any of them see a problem in the spell they're scanning, they break into a Stooge Fu fight. If the spell has no problems, they sing as a trio.

Hedy Lamarr. Seriously. Her work in jamming radio controlled torpedoes laid the groundwork for Bluetooth and WiFi.

And "The Buick Eight" is live! Note: Even if you are doing a Twilight Zone style story, don't use "Twilight" in the keywords. Too many results, and the Amazon bot will bounce you and say try again.
 

 

Special through the end of Monday night (at least). The first story in the companion series to the Pawn Shop is available for free! Get "Crazy Moon" here. Please download, read, and review!
 

It's a 1951 straight 8. The story is in review and should be live tomorrow. I'll post a link then.

I recommend the Wizardry series by Rick Cook. In it, programmer Walter Irving Zumwalt (Wiz to his friends) is abducted to a land where magic works. He has only the most rudimentary magical ability. Magicians there write very complex, elaborate, specialized spells that hinge on numerous variables. The spell changes based on the phase of the moon or how far from the equator the spellcaster stands. Wiz decides the only way for him to live in this world is to become a magician. He approaches the problem like a programmer. What is a spell? A spell is a series of magical instructions that produce a desired outcome. Wait. That sounds like a computer program: a series of digital instructions that produce a desired outcome. He sees that instead of writing one complex spell, he can write a series of small spells that when chained together would produce the desired outcome.

He then begins to write a spell compiler and names his scribing demon EMAC.

Tonight or tomorrow, I will be uploading a short story to Amazon. I just need to write the blurb and keywords. This is the cover which I made myself.

I find the situation hilarious, to be honest, in a very dark way.  People have this annoying tendency to conflate heredity, nationality, culture, and religion, call it "race", and use it to discriminate against each other.  Race is meaningless.  The president of the United States is black, right?  No, he's at least as haole as he is black, genetically, yet somehow he's considered black because he got the hair and the melanin.  Where I come from that's not black, that's hapa.  There are numerous examples of black parents having children who could pass for white, and white parents having kids that could be mistaken for black.  I personally have been mistaken for six different races.  Yet you humans continue to insist on making instantaneous judgments based on appearance.

 

The saddest part for me is what's about to happen to this lady.  It's incomprehensible to me that a white American would choose to be black.  All that gets you is second-class citizenship and brutal police treatment.  Yet this girl was obviously fascinated by black people and black culture, went to a mostly-black college, married a black man, ran the local NAACP chapter and by all accounts did a fine job.  To use an awful term, she turned Indian.  Then she got publicly outed by her own family, earned the hatred of African-Americans nationwide, and lost her job.  So far. 

 

But one thing she did do was blow up this whole stupid "race" idea.  Kudos to her for that.

I am quite happy to say that my two boys, ages 5 and 7, think of skin color as no different than a person's hair color. Two of their best friends have a Philippine mother and an Irish father. They don't care. For them, racism makes as much sense as disliking someone based on their choice in hats. And I mean that literally. We watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie. In one episode, Pa and Mr. Edwards get a job transporting "blasting oil" for the railroad. They are in a team of 4. Them, plus an Irish rookie, and a veteran transporter who is black. The Irish man is bigoted until the black guy's knowledge of the oil saves his life. They get on the train to go back home, and the conductor tells the black man he is not allowed to buy a ticket and has to ride on the flatbed with the cargo. Pa and Mr. Edwards go with him. The Irishman joins them a minute later. "He don't like Irishmen either."

My 7yo (6 at the time) said, "why did he kick him out of the good car?"

I'm thinking, "How do I address this? How do I break the innocence?"

The 5yo (4 at the time) said, "It was his hat."

I looked at the four characters laughing together on the flatbed. Sure enough, the black guy had a distinctly different style of hat from the other three.

Got home from a family lunch today needing to mow the yard. Last week was vacation Bible school in the evenings, so it wasn't done. Yesterday had plenty of errands. When I got home at 2:30, I checked the forecast. 5% chance of rain from 3-7. Great! I helped my wife with some things in the kitchen and then got into my grubbies to mow.

I stepped outside and felt a drop. "Tis but a sprinkle. At worst, a cloud burst. I'll move the things that need to be moved for mowing while it blows over." I looked across the neighbor's hay field and saw it was really coming down. "Of all the times to roll a natural 1."

Yesterday was an awful day. Today has been much better. The programming task that refused to work yesterday was completed today (with some help).

I met a missionary to Mexico once who was told before he went that the village he was moving into was preparing a feast in his honor. For politeness, he was required to eat everything they put on his plate. At the feast, the village ladies brought out a roasted goat and started serving it up to everyone. He thought, "Okay. I can handle that." After a few bites of leg, "This is like lamb only stringy. No problem!" Then one of the ladies brought out a platter with the goat's roasted head on it and set it in front of him.

He made it through, but he said the tongue was the worst part.

Prayers for you both. Glad your going to better situations.

Finished D. Rus' AlterWorld and The Clan. I bought them both on the strength of the reviews and most regret that the return time expired before I had begun the second. I will not read the next. I left 1-star reviews on Amazon for the interested. To put it simply: there is no struggle in the books. The Main Character gets things handed to him and just ascends through the ranks. His love interest has more struggles than he does. I did read the Look Inside of book 3 because book 2 ended in a cliffhanged. Knowing that Rus will not leave Max in danger, I estimated resolution quickly. I was right!

On the other hand, One Bright Star to Guide Them rocked!

I came to work this morning with 3 things that I hoped to accomplish be end of day. One was completed at 2. The next at 3:45. And the third at 4:25.

Some people prefer to stand and curse the darkness instead of lighting up a flame thrower and dispelling the darkness.

That is funny! I'll see if the story helps. I feel I'm the one going mad at this point. The boy only napped for 30 minutes today. He usually sleeps for three hours. It sucks that stay at home parents don't get paid time off. Lol. I guess I'll eventually get that break I've been longing for in about 16 years, after they both graduate from high school. Maybe. : \

Surely Pariah can take the kids for a day. He's a teacher, they have nothing to do in the summer anyway. Or after 3pm either. Tell that man he needs to start pulling his weight!

Vincent Price serves up The Specialty of the House.

Lead a bunch of gamers? It's worse than herding cats.

Or take the youth group to winter conference. Great fun. I counted a lot. All the time, in fact.

You know, suddenly, Chad's repeated lack of pants makes more sense.

I liked that scene. First, she does the unexpected. Instead of passively accepting the "for your own good" line, she gets angry, and justifiably so. She's a grown woman and doesn't like being treated like a child. She clearly has a sore spot about being lied to, and clearly has a bit of a temper. Oh, but she's a woman, so that temper is catty, right? ("...then the claws come out.") Bull. She has every right to be angry, and every right to express that anger. So, she takes a bit of her own agency back and lays down the ground rules for the relationship -- with everybody. Eddy gets it, Joe gets it, Barry gets it. Everyone gets the Wrath of Iris . . . and they deserve it.

I agree that she has a right to be angry and to express it. The combo of acting all nice and calm before expressing such anger is when my dislike of Iris came to the fore. Eddie, standing in front of her, reading her body language, appeared to think she was accepting Barry's reasons.

If you're angry about something with someone, don't act in such a way as to deliberately make them think everything is ok.

 

Thoughts on the final episode:

 

 

That was a great episode. He showed real personal turmoil for Barry. It showed great character growth for Eddie and Iris. I was so happy to see them holding hands. And I hoped that it would last. But since Reversy didn't disappear immediately, part of me knew it couldn't last. 

 

The final moments with his mom were great. I am curious why Future Flash warned Current Flash to not interfere. I get why that happened from the comic's side, but I would like it expanded on in the show. 

 

The show ended with an extreme Time Paradox. No Thawnes equal no Reverse Flash. No Reverse Flash equals no dead mother and no Particle Accelerator accident. So, how is everyone going about things the way they are? I think this will be where Cisco's new found power comes into play. But maybe I am wrong and they will completely ignore this point: wouldn't be the first time Time-Travel Paradoxes are resolved by never referencing them ever again. ^^

 

 

 

All in all, I look forward to the new season. 

 

La Rose. 

 

Agree. I started disliking Iris and Barry sometime back and began actively rooting against her (and anyone) when she had the scene with Eddie where she told him "Barry gave a personally reasonably, logical, and good reason for you to keep your job secrets away from me." She was being so nice right then. And then the claws came out in the next sentence. "But I don't care. If you love someone, you tell them everything."

I almost shed a tear when

Also loved when Jay's helmet clattered to the floor.

Speaking as a GM I find TVtropes to be a valuable resource when trolling for ideas.  

I can see using it for that. When I was writing a humor piece a couple of years ago, I used it to sharpen my lampoons and make sure I was getting the cliches in the right place. But when I'm in more serious fiction, it hindered more than helped.

CinemaSins is like TV Tropes. I really dislike deconstructionism when it comes to my entertainment. It really robs the enjoyment out of the product. So I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. In fact, I would extend that "less" to "no."

Agree wholeheartedly with no. In fact, I had not heard of Cinema Sins until today. When I first found, TVTropes, I read a few pages and laughed. Then I realized I was starting to analyze what I was reading for enjoyment according to the pages I had read. Once I stopped reading TVTropes, I started enjoying fiction again. Others may read TVT and still enjoy their entertainment. Like Nolgroth, I don't want it deconstructed.

Moreover, for every trope there is a subversion. These subversions are also considered tropes by some. So you can't win. Everything is considered a trope, and thus all works are unoriginal and boring (according to some critics).

Tropes and cliches are in fiction because they work and let us know what to expect. Don't try to write to the trope. Don't try to write to avoid the trope. Just write the story the way you, the author, think it will work best. Consumers will decide if they like the way you handled it or not.

Good thoughts on the series and the way Supergirl has been handled in the past. Wow, this guy is a major geek!

I will be praying for you, OM.