Marie & Gali episode 30!
After nine months, Wasurenai has gotten off their collective butts and released episode 30 of Marie & Gali. It's pretty good. Not the best, but anything is better than nothing. Here's hoping they get back to work on it more regularly in future!
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Thanks for pointing it out. uTorrent's flaky RSS reader hasn't picked it up yet. Their comments on nyaatorrents seem to indicate they plan to get going on this faster.
(I also finally made sure I turned on encryption. My ISP has introduced a "Smarter" bandwidth limiter that can pick up Torrent traffic and limit it to 60 KBPS, but still allows other traffic. It even could figure out the random ports pretty quickly. Unfortunately there are no better alternatives.)
Posted by: Mauser at March 03, 2012 05:33 AM (cZPoz)
This picture really does look pretty cool. There's a pretty plausible technological explanation for it, but I'm sure it's gonna end up in some "ancient mysteries" web site without that explanation Real Soon Now.
Another small change to the top-rotation flash file
I recently noticed that I almost never saw any pictures from Sengoku Otome, even though there are 48 of them out of 994. I had the feeling I'd seen pictures from Maken Ki more often, though there are only about half as many.
It's the damned flash random number again. Sengoku Otome is the last in the list, so it would correspond to highest possible random numbers, and I think the distribution disfavors the very highest part of the continuum. So this morning I had an idea, and made another change to the code, which I think will help. As always, if you want the new one you need to clear your browser cache. It shouldn't be a huge difference, but it may be a little different.
(If you're curious, I multiplied the random number by 7 and then took it modulo 1, in hopes of evening out the distribution a bit more.)
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Can you retrieve a URL containing a random number generated elsewhere? It doesn't have to be something like random.org, just the output of a script running periodically somewhere. I don't know what access limits there are in Flash, but injecting the output of any other PRNG should help break up the patterns in the built-in.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at March 02, 2012 04:28 PM (2XtN5)
An expert probably could. I don't know how. Actionscript is a black art and most of what I've picked up has just been from messing around, and imitating things I found in other flashes that I decompiled.
What I've got now isn't intolerable, so I'm not rabid to find a solution.
Part of the problem is that Adobe's documentation ranks down there with the kind of documentation you get with open source software. It's mostly organized as a reference guide.
There are tutorials, but they're hopeless. I tried working through one of them, and it didn't work the way they said it would.
At least back in the days of flash 8, you got a local copy of the documentation. These days it's on Adobe's web server. Supposedly you can down load them, but when I try it takes forever and never completes.
I wonder if there's a "Stupid guy's guide to Actionscript" available for the Kindle?
The problem here isn't the random number generator. The problem is how it gets seeded. That AS is using the time-of-day as a seed, which is typical.
I'm virtually certain that's how the Math.random() function is getting seeded. So it wouldn't be any different.
Coming up with a reasonable seed is a lot more difficult than you might think. There was a case a few years ago where some supposedly-secure protocol got cracked because it turned out that it was using the time-of-day as part of choosing its session key. So nominally the key search space was unfathomably immense, but in practice it was pretty small if you knew about when the communication session began.
There's a guy, turns out to be the nephew of John Colicos, who claims to have developed a way of creating true random numbers using standard PC hardware. But I doubt that Adobe has licensed it.
Posted by: benzeen at March 02, 2012 08:05 PM (R9i5E)
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Apart from the obvious reason, I resisted the temptation to suggest better PRNG algorithms because that doesn't solve the problem of improving the distribution of the first number generated after seeding. The 100000th number will be better with a better PRNG, but not necessarily the 1st or even the 10th.
Essentially, what he's doing is trying to convert a single not-terribly-random number in the range 0-86400 into a plausibly-diverse index into an array of size N. The built-in PRNG is just a convenient hash function, so that the image generated at time T+1 isn't too similar to the image from time T.
If only ActionScript had a built-in function like CurrentWindSpeedInCanberra()...
-j
Posted by: J Greely at March 02, 2012 08:11 PM (2XtN5)
That's exactly right. No matter how you add it up, a pseudo-random-number-generator is just a function applied to the seed, if you only call it once -- which is the case here. The real randomness is the seed, and there just aren't that many things you can use for that.
Back in the DOS days, they used to include things like the current mouse pointer position, and how long it had been since the last character on the serial port, and stuff like that. But you can't really use those any more. (Serial port? What's that?)
The PRNG is just a hash function for the seed value, is what it amounts to.
I suppose I could use the raw time value, and multiply it by something like 137, and then take the modulo by the number of pictures. Maybe I'll do some experimenting.
Put the eggs in a pan, then cover with cold water.
Place on the stove on high heat, and keep track of them.
When the water begins to boil, wait 1 minute. Then remove from the heat, and cover.
Wait 12 minutes.
Pick up the eggs one-at-a-time with a soup spoon and put them in a bowl full of cold water. Leave them there for a few minutes.
Not too long, though; they eat best if they're still warm inside. Peel them by using running cold water to keep the shell cold. Eat with salt.
Apparently the reason for heating the eggs along with the water is that if you drop the eggs into water that's already boiling, the shells will crack. Anyway, it's part of the cooking process.
There's a flock of Canada Geese which have decided to spend most of their time in my yard.
I hate the damned things. They make all kinds of noise, and they drop their poop everywhere. Come to think of it, that's just like the Occupy movement, ain't it?
Not a lot I can do about it, except to absolutely refuse to feed them. I save my bread for the ducks, but the geese have mostly chased the ducks away. As to the stuff the geese are leaving all over the yard, it eventually gets dissolved by the rain and soaks into the soil -- and fertilizes the grass, so I guess there's a benefit to it after all.
But they're loud. It's the runup to mating season, and they're pairing off. And every once in a while a breeding pair decides they need to announce their engagement to the world by hooting and hollering in unison. I guess that's what it takes to get the blood up in a goose, but never having been a goose I wouldn't know.
This appears to be their wintering grounds. Sometime soon (I hope) they'll vacate the premises and head up to Alaska or somewhere inhospitable like that. Just as long as it isn't here, I'll be happy. But with my luck it'll be a month or more.
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Geese are the vermin of the waterfowl world. Even us ducks hate them.
We're not above using them as goons and cannon fodder, though... kinda like the way the KGB used Bulgarians in all the James Bond novels.
Posted by: Wonderduck at March 01, 2012 07:01 PM (O9XO8)
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"I can hardly think of a better way to get myself evicted."
Well, if you don't eat the evidence first....
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at March 01, 2012 07:42 PM (Lbkvv)
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Geese are protected Migratory Waterefoul, er, fowl. You can't just shoot 'em like that. Not that a BB-gun would be a good tool for the job. That would be inhumane.
Posted by: Mauser at March 02, 2012 02:40 AM (cZPoz)
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If you seriously want to get rid of them without breaking any laws, a Border Collie would be ideal. The collie would tirelessly annoy them by trying to make them line up in a row, to the point where they would leave in disgust.
Posted by: Jonathan Tappan at March 02, 2012 03:49 AM (poC8e)
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Actually, a non-pump BB gun won't kill the goose at the ranges that I'd expect an evil universe Steve to fire from unless you hit it just right in the neck or head. A center-of-mass hit would raise a welt under the feathers, but that's about it.
If you did use a pump BB gun, the minimal number of pumps required to get the BB over to the target would bother them enough to make them leave.
(Not that I or the chickens on my parent's farm when I was growing up would know anything about this.)
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at March 02, 2012 08:03 AM (Lbkvv)
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My two dogs find goose poop immensely tasty. Which means that at this time of the year, several of my favorite walk routes are unusable.
I did some research a few years ago after a few coworkers and I had the conversation while walking to lunch through a crowd of geese and their droppings, and it turns out that while using a gun or bow to kill geese will of course get you in lots of trouble with the local authorities, it's perfectly legal to garrote them, as long as you plan to eat them.
Posted by: David at March 02, 2012 08:40 AM (+yn5x)
I didn't have killing the geese in mind at all. Annoying them into migrating away, a la Mao's decadent sparrows, on the other hand....
I assume Steven doesn't want to buy a dog, although my Heeler would probably be happy to loan herself out for a while.
Posted by: RickC at March 02, 2012 09:53 AM (T/uvz)
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We can't let dogs run around loose here. They have to be kept on leashes. The only time I ever see dogs in the back yard is when people are taking them across the culvert to the other side of the stream into the tall grass to do their business.
Does anyone know how to reset the Master of Magic Hall of Fame, short of uninstalling and reinstalling the game? I can't figure out where the thing is stored.
I noticed something interesting. There are ten Champions:
Mystic X
Aerie
Deth Stryke
Elana
Roland
Mortu
Alorra
Sir Harold
Ravashack
Warrax
And five colors of magic. It turns out that there are two champions per color, and you can only get champions as a function of which spell books you have. Mortu and Ravashack only appear if you have black. Elana and Roland require white. Warrax requires red. I'm pretty sure that Alorra requires green. I'm not totally sure about which colors the others are associated with, but I am sure that they have them.
I've been messing around with using Warrax as a board-clearer. Once he's up a couple of levels, and properly equipped, he can wipe out anything except that he's helpless against Sky Drakes.
UPDATE: I just did an experiment to check on this, and I was wrong. Mortu and Ravashack do require black, and Roland and Elana do require white, but the others don't align with any color.
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I had never noticed that. I would think I've experienced exceptions, but they may have occurred after finding an extra retort.
My favorites are Mystic X and Warrax. Get them over 30 spell damage, and enjoy your curbstomp.
Posted by: BigD at February 29, 2012 06:46 PM (qLkdZ)
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I tried one game where I paired those two and ran around the board with them, and it was indeed impressive -- except that they can't fight Sky Drakes. For those I used summoned Great Wyrms with Flight and Iron Skin.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 29, 2012 07:15 PM (+rSRq)
The other thing I was doing was to run a mismatched pair. Ravashack and Mortu work really well, because they can even take Sky Drakes. It was fun; Ravashack was fast enough to outrun them, and they chased Ravashack and totally ignored Mortu, who killed two Sky Drakes per turn without taking any damage in exchange.
Elana and Roland were exactly the same.
But having Warrax and Mystic X both equipped with major staffs was fun, too. Walk into a battle, hit "auto", and watch them machine-gun the enemies. Pretty cool.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 29, 2012 07:17 PM (+rSRq)
There's a page up now on TVTropes about our favorite recent series. As always, it's loaded with spoilers for those who haven't seen the series, but there isn't anything there I didn't already know after having watched 8 episodes.
There's something I was considering adding, but held off because I wanted to check with the more knowledgeable among you. It's this: the word "privateer" doesn't appear in the EDICT database. The Japanese word for pirate is kaizoku but there doesn't appear to be any word for privateer.
I'm guessing that historically they didn't do that. The concept is one they learned from the west, after the Meiji restoration when Letters of Marque had already been abolished in the west.
There doesn't appear to be any term for "Letter of Marque", either. What's getting translated into that phrase is something that means "license to plunder" or something to that effect. Unlike "Letter of Marque", which is a term of art in maritime law, the Japanese is just an informal phrase describing it.
When, in ep 6, Misa gives her history lesson to Chiaki and Marika, there's a point where Marika gets confused: "We're pirates, yet we aren't?" And I keep thinking, Of course not. You aren't pirates, you're privateers. There's a difference.
But if there isn't any Japanese word for "privateer", then her confusion becomes a lot more clear.
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Japanese Wikipedia has entries for shiryakusen and shiryakumenkyo as "privateer" and "letter of marque", respectively, but both are stub entries referring exclusively to Western privateers. Historically, I think some of the wakou were in the pay of various feudal lords, but that word is pretty much only used in its original context, and not often; the romanticized Hollywood image of Western pirates seems to dominate.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at February 28, 2012 11:30 PM (2XtN5)
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Mr. Greeley is correct. Besides, "It's time for some Privateering!" doesn't really sound as good.
Posted by: tellu541 at February 29, 2012 01:31 AM (pJ1uW)
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Well, thinking about it, privateering arose as a way of indirect competition and warfare between European nation-states targeting each other's trade. Japan didn't exactly have an overabundance of trade, it wasn't really what we'd consider a nation-state until Tokugawa, and it didn't have a whole lot of aggressive wars aside from the disastrous Korean campaign by Hideyoshi. Seems reasonable that the idea of "using piracy as a weapon of war" just didn't have a reason to develop.
( as opposed to simply bribing pirates to go after your rival's loot, in a feudal context. . . but you certainly can't do that *officially* )
Posted by: metaphysician at February 29, 2012 10:11 AM (3GCAl)
It's been going on for a long time, so there must be tools out there. What program do I want to use on March 9 to rip files from the Mouretsu Pirates OST?
Ideally it would separate the tracks into separate files, without me having to figure out where the gaps are, or having to enter track lengths manually.
This is on a PC. And "iTunes" is the wrong answer.
I just made another contribution to Japan's economy
I just ordered the first BD of Moretsu Uchu Kaizoku, deluxe edition (which includes a OST CD). It's due to ship in March 7.
That's what CD Japan calls it. Why is everyone lousing up "mouretsu"? I swear, this series has a thousand names.
It's interesting; mouretsu uchu kaizoku means "violent space pirates". So far there hasn't really been a lot of violence, and I don't actually expect there to be much at the beginning of ep 9, either. Most likely
Gruelle is gonna get on the comm link and order the attacking ships to stand down. And once they know she's (voluntarily) on board, then they can't risk firing on the Bentenmaru. It would be an act of treason, unless she's been declared an outlaw, and I don't think that's the case.
The biggest unanswered mystery so far is
Who made two attempts to kill Marika, and why? One thing that bothers me about it is that the government of Sea of the Morningstar surely must know.
They captured the assassin in ep 1, and the Stellar Navy almost certainly were the ones to capture Lightning 11 at the end of ep 4. Bentenmaru and Barbarossa would have stood off and observed. It was the Stellar Navy's job to board and capture, because Lightning 11 had fired on an unarmed civilian ship. That crew has to be up for attempted murder charges, even if nothing else. Of course, if the Stellar Navy hadn't been able to handle it, Barbarossa and Bentenmaru would have turned Lightning 11 into slag. But I'm sure it didn't come to that.
Why haven't they told Marika about it? Even worse, I think it likely that
Misa knows, and she's the one keeping it from Marika.
We heard the formal titles of the bridge crew in ep 8, but it looks like they all have other duties. Kane and Misa seem to be the public faces of the ship, for the time being. Misa's formal position is ship's physician, but if so, why does she have a station on the bridge? I think she is also the ship's business manager. She's the one who does the negotiation for routine jobs. ("For thus and so extra, you can have a sword fight.")
Schnitzer exposed a different side in ep 8, and now I'm getting Giroro vibes from him, which I like a lot. He's big and ugly (and knows it) but I think there's a soft spot in there, too. Looking like he does, and with his capabilities, it isn't really too surprising that he chose to call a pirate ship his home. They all like him and accept him, and where else can he find that?
I very much like the fact that Gruelle
isn't acting like a spoiled brat. That would have been an easy out, and Sato isn't taking any easy outs in this series.
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Mouretsu generally only means violent in the sense of "violent opposition"; "intense" might be a better translation.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at February 26, 2012 10:11 PM (2XtN5)
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I think you're right about Misa.
There have been a number of subtle clues that she knows more than she's letting on about.
Posted by: Dave Young at February 27, 2012 10:32 AM (DYR2Q)
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I got a bit of kick out of the optional "kidnapping suite." On the other hand, I had a "WTF?" moment when Schnitzer flatly refused an order from the captain. It was a bad idea, but still, he cut her off at the knees. Marika's authority seems much more tenuous as a result.
Posted by: ubu at February 27, 2012 10:36 AM (i7ZAU)
Ubu, I'm not so sure about that. I think the idea here is that this isn't really like a military unit, where orders really are absolute, and refusing to follow them leads to court martial. It's more like they're employees of a corporation. And as employees they can quit at any time. Nothing forces them to remain. Likewise, the only real punishment available for refusing to follow orders is being fired.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 27, 2012 01:28 PM (+rSRq)
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Space is a very unforgiving master, and the captain of a ship, even an airplane, has to have absolute authority (though hardly in the sense of a dictatorship). I expected him to try to convince Marika it was a bad idea, not just refuse.
On the other hand, given her rather low-key reaction and immediate selection of one of the two obvious candidates to do the job, I considered the possibility that she's just pulling Schnitzer's leg. If so, it speaks volumes for how comfortable she already is with the bridge crew.
On the third hand, I was interrupted about five times and needed two hours to watch the whole episode, so I might have missed a few subtleties. Re-watch definitely required.
Posted by: ubu at February 27, 2012 02:13 PM (i7ZAU)
There actually is some of that going on. Later in the episode she kids Kane, for example, and shoos the other members of the bridge crew back to their stations.
I think you might be right: she may have been teasing Schnitzer.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 27, 2012 02:39 PM (+rSRq)
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I thought the Lightning 11 was an unmanned drone. That's why it had such a big receiver antenna, so it could get instructions from its masters off in god-knows-where.
Posted by: tellu541 at February 28, 2012 02:27 PM (pJ1uW)
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The unmanned drone was what generated the radar signal that the Odette II first detected; then it was used to launch the EW attack. Then it was hijacked to launch the counterattack. Lightning 11 was a manned ship... and yes, the crew's total absence from the storyline is a bit curious.
If there's one thing I don't like about this show, its the lack of questions from the characters that we as viewers find logical to ask.
Posted by: ubu at February 28, 2012 02:57 PM (i7ZAU)
Lightning 11 is
the callsign originally used by the ship in dock in ep 3, which tried to hack Odette II's computer before they even left the space station.
It's also the callsign used by the ship which attacked them during their voyage.
The drone belongs to them, and Lyn took it over and used it to hack Lightning 11's own computers.
"Lightning 11" is in some sort of database; Marika found it there and said that the ship was registered to some place called "West Kilia". But I don't believe that's what it really is. It was operating under an assumed name, as it were. Its transponder was hacked to announce something other than what it really was.
It's one of many crimes those guys committed. They certainly did enough to face life terms in prison, if you count piracy and attempted murder, not to mention computer hacking offenses. Also operating without a transponder at all, for certain periods, and so on. I'm sure there's a long list.
Bentenmaru and Barbarossa also broke a few laws, but the government will ignore that.
And, everyone, please remember to use spoiler tags.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 28, 2012 04:19 PM (+rSRq)
The drone was described as being only about 1 meter across. No way such a shrimp could carry energy weapons like the ones which were fired on the Odette II.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 28, 2012 04:26 PM (+rSRq)
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I know the drone was unmanned, I simply assumed that the Lightning 11 was too.
Posted by: tellu541 at February 28, 2012 06:04 PM (pJ1uW)
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Tellu541:
If the Lightning 11 was unmanned, who was it that was using the optical aiming system to shoot at Odette II?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 28, 2012 07:39 PM (+rSRq)
