Mar. 27th, 2004 @ 07:32 am [Misc, Supernals] Busy Night
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elric
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Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Grey Ghost - Songs of the South - 08 - I Wandered Today to the Hills [4:43]
I managed to get my squiddy tentacles on trial versions of both Corel Ventura and Adobe FrameMaker tonight and I've putzed around with them a chunk.

I honestly don't know how anyone can enjoy using FM. Sure, it looks much simpler, and doesn't have four-billion little pull-down twiddly controls, but its ... shallow. And the help system! Don't even get me started on the help system! Just trying to figure out how to create a straight-forward set of self-numbering chapter / section / subsection / subsubsection headers of the format I've been using in Supernals so far was a bitch. More accurately, I never got such a beast actually working. A damn sight frustrating for a guy used to just looking at software and understanding its intimate bits.

Ventura, at least, I could understand. OK, so its not intuitive, but its got a nice, solid, task-oriented help system, one straightforward enough I figured out how that if I wanted a title page and front pieces, I could just create them as stand-alone chapters. Brilliant! There you go and Bob's your uncle. Create a tag style for Title, one for Author, one for Publisher that bumps to the next page automagically --- this is almost understandable. Next chapter, create a Table of Contents file, tuck it in, run forward. Zoom. Sensible, if tedious. Lots of control, though.

I'm going to have to see if I can't get my hands on some more trials and keep checking out styles.

Oh, and if folks have a few free hours to spend thinking about things, could you look at Supernals and give me some feedback on the damage system? Hardest part of a system to get right. Bloody thing.

Thanks.
Mar. 27th, 2004 @ 02:16 pm [Meme] I'm no lemming, but ...
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threat, existentional, warning
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Current Mood: cranky
What would your Anime life be like? by hearthlight
Name:
Gender:
Your looks:Very colorful and winged.
Your best friend:A human looking robot.
Your powers:Everything.
Your beloved:A villain.
Your occupation:Wanderer.
Your ending:Tragic...everyone dies.
Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0!


I'm deeply amused by being colourful. I suppose black is a colour.

Nothing beats waking up to a frigging lawn tractor outside your window kicking pollen into your lungs. Yum, boy.
Mar. 27th, 2004 @ 10:49 pm [News] OK, Enough With the Enryu, Already
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ryu
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Sheesh, there's not a day that goes by that I'm not getting email or messages about the Enryu rescue robot, though I actually posted about it months ago and have a site which shows it in action.

While this thing's not going to be a useful battle-chassis anytime soon, there are certainly other military uses for it. Put on some light small-arms/fragment denying armour, and drop the limb speed governor, and you could have a deeply badass military engineering vehicle. It needs a shoulder-mount cannon for breeching berms, etc, but the flexible grab-lift of those arms could be a totally new asset on the field. Barbed and concertina wire would suddenly be less of an issue by far. Throw a small Bobcat blade on the front, and I think you might have a useful platform for support roles.

Of course, if you want an urban superiority vehicle, one that's not quite as big and bulky as a HUMMV or Bradley, and a bit more maneuverable, but still can provide mobile cover for infy while disabling IEDs or other fun toys, I think we might have something. Again, up-armour, and mount the guns (probably an HMG with belt feed and a grenade launcher, same) on opposite arms, each of which has a camera mounted near the hand. Corners? We can shoot around corners. And we giggle at anything short of RPG fire.

Ah well, sadly, the military doesn't hire me for my brilliance in Land Warrior system design.
Mar. 27th, 2004 @ 11:12 pm [Misc] Anzai!
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threat, existentional, warning
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Just in case anyone ever gets curious, if you go ahead and pull down the Corel Ventura 30-day trial, you can go off to Anzai and buy a basic and advanced Ventura courseware package for $40 total, including two rather nicely laid out courseware books and all the example files you could dream of. Basically, each course is laid out as a two-day workshop, including "You Do This" projects, etc.

In short, the perfect training set-up for me, a guy whose pace runs faster than most and learns by doing.