Dropping this here because of the controversial nature of alcohol abuse.

So.

I've been off my meds for a bit simply because I haven't been able to go and get them refilled.  WAAAYYYY too much to be done along the vein of, "If I don't do this, I'll become homeless soon."  And I don't dare use the VA's online-order refill-via-mail system because that shit ships all the way from goddamned Dallas, TX.  You'd think that San Antonio would have such a hub for itself, but nooooooooo....  And with something that important?  There is SO MUCH THAT CAN GO WRONG on a 250+ miles long mail route, no matter what the mail carrier's motto says.  It only says it will get there, not how soon.

Don't blame me, blame the system.

That said...  I popped by a convenience store to indulge in something I've dearly missed because I've been on the meds for so long.

Angry Orchard.

Those who know it already know what I mean are probably salivating at the very mention.  It is one of the most delicious mass-produced hard ciders out there.

So, here I am enjoying the nice fuzzy feeling that comes from imbibing a few bottles of my most favorite booze in the world when I get to thinking...  "Hey, waituhminute.  I move a helluva lot more smoothly when I'm a bit tipsy... even taking into account the slight dizziness.  I also feel A LOT MORE AT EASE.  Is there some kind of connection between Autism and Alcohol?"

Short answer?  Yes.

Basically, alcohol "takes the edge off" that makes the world so difficult for people with autism to deal with.  But like with any drug, alcohol can easily be abused.  Which is why people with Autism (And especially people who have Autism and don't know it!) wind up becoming (functional?) alcoholics.

I don't believe that there've been any papers written on the matter just yet, but there is the article where I've gotten my info from...

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-gui...sm-alcohol

The author finishes with this bit...

Quote:Ultimately, in my opinion, autistic people live well when they know themselves, their strengths and their limitations, and are able to navigate a path through a complex social and changeable world without needing to rely on harmful panaceas. For professionals I believe this should be the goal of support, especially in a world where alcohol is perceived as an accepted social tool.

In Sword Oratoria, spells cast by elfs require a magic circle. The setting has Instant Runes, so they don't need to draw the circle, but they do need to concentrate on maintaining it or the spell fizzles. The "Concurrent Casting" technique lets a spellcaster delay the appearance of the Instant Runes to near the end of the casting. As soon as the story's deuteragonist Lefiya learns the technique and is able to move around (or play dead) while casting, she goes from being a Glass Cannon to being Little Miss Badass.

"But that's in that story, and this subforum's about a completely different story," I hear you say.

The basic principle still applies. Immobile mages - and immobile magical girls - are obvious targets. Mobility provides strength.

Consider how many of the Sailor Senshi's canon attacks are of the "pose, point, and speak a trigger phrase" variety, leaving them open to quick counterattacks because they're just standing there. This isn't much of an issue in canon when they're only going up against harvester youma, but the story's already diverged from canon in that Beryl's ordered bodyguard youma be deployed to protect the harvesters.

Can Doug help the Senshi get rid of the "pose" part of their rituals, and let them be able to use run-and-gun or attack-from-behind-cover tactics against the bodyguards?

Old thread is here.

To save everyone the trouble of having to hop back to the old thread, I'm quoting Geth's last post in its entirety here:

Quote:Okay, before I do anything on the actual wiki, here is the new home and community pages optimized for both desktop and mobile view, so people on their computer and on their phone and tablets will see nothing too broken when they look at pages using any tabs

They were recreated using the Tabs extension with MobileTagsPlugin for the mobile view pages and TabberNeue, the fork of Tabber with support for mobile view, as default Tabber does not have mobile support and is entirely broken.

The mockups I'm linking are not perfect, but these should at least have minimal issues switching between desktop and mobile skins, compared to the original versions, which were working on desktop but completely broken on mobile:

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/File:Deskt...e_Page.jpg

I had to change a few section headers to plain wikitext and use a few hardline templates to keep things separated in mobile view while still looking good in desktop view.

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/File:Mobil...e_Page.jpg

In mobile view, the tabs are changed to an accordion-style dropdown that expands to let you read each section without spilling over other text or the dividers.

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/File:Deskt...Portal.jpg

Here I used TabberNeue for the parts using Tabber, which looks only slightly different from the classic Tabber look in desktop. Note the dropdown menu in desktop view for the page list of red links, this will not be visible until moused over and can be condensed if need be. This functionality already exists for the use of Tabs for those not aware.

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/File:Mobil...Portal.jpg

Here is the important part. All the TabberNeue tabs, you'll notice have a scroll bar for what goes off screen and will scroll over to what is off screen and back so mobile viewers can see all Tabber sections on mobile phones and tablets.

There were some minor issues with Tabs on the mobile view Community Portal (I'm on localhost, so this may not be the case on the actual wiki, but aside from some minor issues, it looks fine in mobile except for the fact the list does not condense for the list using Tabs up top), but it no longer shows raw extension code breakage like it did before.

It's not perfect, but compared to the horror show of broken Tabs/Tabber markup we had before, this looks a lot better for mobile users.

TabberNeue will replace Tabber, but they use the same syntax, so it will be an easy drop-in replacement. Tabs augmented with MobileTagsPlugin allows the Tabs extension to work better on mobile and at the very least prevents them from breaking to the point of splaying ugly extension code everywhere at worst.

I look forward to any comments before I make any changes, as I also plan to write up a new policy page for best practices so all pages can look good on mobile and desktop platforms going forward.

Note: TabberNeue may require about 24 hours even after a cache purge for the Miraheze servers to catch up, but given it will primarily affect the Community Portal and then only in the short term, this is the only possible downside of the switchover from Tabber to TabberNeue.

I'm aware that this isn't a mechanical engineering forum, but where else am I going to go? I've been doing some back of the envelope math and I can't see how this fails so far and I'd like to know what I'm missing.

The idea is to have an air conditioning unit that runs off solar power, which, I know, is easily enough done with some photovoltaic cells, a couple batteries, an inverter and a normal air conditioner.

Instead, the thought is to skip the electrical step in pursuit of higher efficiencies. Have a concentrating solar mirror setup running a stirling engine and the stirling engine pressurizing a hydraulic system that then powers the compressor for the air conditioner.

The design
Incoming solar power is concentrated by a fresnel mirror. The mirror is built out of (at most) four identical segments, each 1mx1m, that provide a 90 degree sector for the array of mirrors.
The stirling engine would be about 5HP powered by the reflected sunlight concentrated on the hot end.
The air conditioner would be designed for 1 ton of cooling and the hydraulic power system would be sized to power that requirement.

My math
The sun - Flat on, at Earth we get at least 1321W/m^2 in orbit. I'll allow 1kW/m^2. That gives me 3kW of power with just 3 mirrors.
The mirror - The lowest reflectivity listed for aluminum on the table I found is 86.8% All the others are higher, so I'll use 87%. So I have 2610W.
Stirling engine - I'm using 70% for the efficiency here, because I have no idea what the air temperature is going to be, or what the mirrors will be able to bring the high temperature portion up to and I found one list where the efficiency for an engine that used pyrex as 72% because parts started to melt then, and worse than that seems reasonable. Which gives us 1827W to play with.
Hydraulics - We're building for a efficiency here, 90% should be achievable, let's set that to 85%. Available power there is 1552.95W.
Air conditioner - 1 ton of cooling is equivalent to taking 3516.8525W out of the space being cooled. Average COP for an air sourced heat pump is usually about 3, and you can get higher efficiencies if you want it only move heat in one direction. We should be able to get enough efficiency with a COP of less than 2.5.

For comparison: Photoelectric and conventional cooling
I found a 1 ton unit that takes 900W electric from Mitsubishi, which seems reasonable (and has a COP of about 4). The best efficiency for a solar panel that I could find is 23%, so you'd need 3.9m^2 to power the unit, which is just under the area I allowed for my design -

If you used all four mirrors instead of just three, that is.

So, can anyone tell me where I've dropped a digit? The fact that this looks so doable and no one seems to be flogging it is bothering me.

It's an issekai-protagonist power fantasy mecha that's been bouncing around the hutch for a while, so I'm interested to see how other folks' takes on the concept align with my own ideas. (Pretty sure I mentioned an earlier take in the context of a wreck-the-Battletech SI, actually) Presenting the latest in rabbit-technology, the BN-1 "Bunny" and BN-2 "Bun-Bun" Rapid Action Binary Interface Tactical Combat System!


A plain, boxy design with a stubby chest cockpit and and a slender optics-turret head, the BN-1's main external distinguishing features under field conditions are its tail mounted "fanny pack" for passengers or cargo and a pair of oblong multi-function drones that may dock to its shoulders in an upward V position or hover nearby, or if closer inspection is possible the saw tooth pattern of large bay doors on its chest and the outer faces of its arms and legs. Its built in armament is light, limited to a single bay on the inside of each forearm, typically fitted with a medium beam projector that can pup up and extend its barrel past the wrist and hand. Along with those hands the BN-1 is also equipped with mounting points on its upper back for various heavier weapons and mission-specific equipment, and combined with an impressive jump-jet system its quick yet exceptionally powerful actuators and heavily reinforced bunker-breaker rams on the feet allow for utterly devastating physical attacks in close combat. More dangerous are the disintegration and reconstruction functions of its drones, which while short ranged can tear an enemy to pieces in moments, or just as quickly build, repair, or fortify structures and ally units or designs from an extensive library of weaponry and equipment using the scavenged material, or augment the BN-1's already formidable self-repair function.

For heavy duty operations or more compact transport, a pair BN-1 units are also capable of combining into a BN-2. The waist, elbows, and knees extend to allow more clearance at the joints, and the limb and chest hatches open up. On the unit that will form the core the cockpit flips up to a head position and the existing head splits into a pair of top-mounted booms, while the head of the secondary unit splits to the sides to be out of the way as the two torsos interlock front-to-front, its cockpit slipping into the space opened by the relocation of the core's. Flexible interface cables extend from the opened limb hatches and pull the secondary unit's arms and legs into position on the outside of the core's as they detach, again interlocking at the edges of the hatch doors. The secondary unit's hands tuck into the interstitial space and link actuators with the core's while the feet latch together directly side by side for the sake of stability and ground pressure, shifting to a longer form only about 50% wider than the single-unit configuration. The secondary units tail and pelvic module also shift to a flatter configuration to avoid compromising mobility. In binary mode the unit's mechanical output and close combat potential are drastically increased, and the combined output of its thrusters allows for limited but sustained flight, along with allowing one operator to concentrate solely on commanding drones without needing to spare attention for piloting the unit directly.

The true danger of the BN series is not its direct combat ability, however, or even its high utility in a combat engineering role, but the ability to self-replicate in the field using scavenged material or dismembered enemy mecha. When suitable materials present themselves a BN-1 can use its interface cables to grab and pull it into position at its binary ports, rapidly breaking down and restructuring the salvage to upgrade itself to a BN-2 before separating and allowing an allied pilot to board or taking the new unit under remote control to provide oversight for the onboard AI. With sufficient materials a BN force is theoretically capable of exponential growth in this manner, though in actual application the limitations of AI with only minimal direction and of material availability impose practical limits. The system has also proven usable for field-expedient cargo transport and the operation of scavenged weapons.

Block-0 test squadron BN-1s had even more extensive AI support and the core unit of the repair system integrated with an independently mobile escape pod cockpit capable of rebuilding a complete unit from scrap if required, but the added cost and complexity was judged to be unnecessary for normal operations and all production models have a simpler escape pod with only the standard survival tools and supplies. Block-5 and later units or those upgraded with refit kits replace the ejection seat with interface lugs for Exo-Gear Extra-Vehicular Armor in couch mode, and the addition of a rack capable of securing a light motorcycle or zero-G maneuver pack in the auxiliary mission electronics bay is a common field modification when not otherwise in use.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/89875...t_Wars_30/

See this, this is Super Robot Wars 30, the first licensed game in a 30-year-old franchise that is legally purchasable in the United States and Europe without importing with a full official English translation.

I just pre-ordered this and can confirm it's real, it's not a joke, somehow, the absolute nightmare of licensing issues that prevented this series from seeing western shores (aside from fan translations and the GBA Original Generation games with all original stuff) has been worked past, we can now get this without importing.

If this is clown world, get me my floppy shoes, red nose and grease paint, cause this is insanity I can totally appreciate

Time for folks to clean out their PM queues...

Note that anything in the Trash still counts toward your limit - you have to empty the trash in order for the space to be freed up.

It's a ten-year-old article, so it isn't "news"...

How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine

Quote:“There’s no number 1 key.”

Quote:Rice had a ratty old textbook stashed in his camera bag, which he referred to furtively and often. After all, one wrong mixture of chemicals, or one processing step out of order, and a roll of 35-mm film or piece of light-sensitive paper comes out blank. And neither of those items come cheap.

Quote:(They enjoyed playing stupid and asking me questions like, “Who’s Marge?” Huh? “MARG RELEASE!” At least, I hope they were playing.)

Quote:And no one tried to get high by huffing the rubber cement. (An improvement over my days at the University of Florida newspaper in the mid-’80s.)

Quote:Just like the reporters have learned that “cut and paste” once involved actually cutting and pasting, the copyeditors have learned that the copydesk was once a real desk.

Quote:Mariam, our managing editor, was previously our rock-star art director. So she resumed that role for All On Paper. Her designers mostly deserted her after they learned a terrifying reality of pre-computer layout…

You must do math.

Quote:The editors had the nifty idea of compelling the writers to paste up their own pages. That didn’t survive the first week. Many staffers learned that, while they can deftly manipulate a mouse to kill hundreds of bad guys in a videogame, few of them can draw a straight line.

Right here.

So stop asking, already...