Gone Solar
Oct. 31st, 2025 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjFinally, after a variety of delays, we had the official building inspection for the solar system today. Inspection passed (including the retrospective inspections for the water heater replacement and the electrical panel). Mind you, I've already been receiving the benefits of the solar for a couple months, with my monthly savings over $100.
Since having to be home for the inspection disrupted my usual routine, I decided to tackle processing the quinces, which is now complete. Or rather, they've been processed to puree and now I have to decide whether to do something further or just freeze that.
In the anticipation of possible trick-or-treaters, I did some pruning and tying up of the roses that flank the front gate. I usually get one or two visitors, unless I decide it isn't worth it and go dark. The neighborhood logistics don't really make my street worthwhile for trick-or-treating, but I try to have something available just in case.
Since having to be home for the inspection disrupted my usual routine, I decided to tackle processing the quinces, which is now complete. Or rather, they've been processed to puree and now I have to decide whether to do something further or just freeze that.
In the anticipation of possible trick-or-treaters, I did some pruning and tying up of the roses that flank the front gate. I usually get one or two visitors, unless I decide it isn't worth it and go dark. The neighborhood logistics don't really make my street worthwhile for trick-or-treating, but I try to have something available just in case.
Notes from the bicycle seat
Oct. 30th, 2025 02:24 pmhrjOn my coffeeshop/writing bike ride (trust me, it makes sense) this morning I passed a whole flock of meadowlarks right by the Concord airport. They must be migratory because I don't think I've seen one in town before. Also an acorn woodpecker darted out to grab an acorn from the path right in front of me then dodge out of the way of the wheels. (I would have stopped, really I would.) I sometimes fantasize about the birds and critters layout acorns out on the path so that passing humans will step-on/run-over them and crack them, but the truth is that there are just a lot of oak trees along the rec paths.
I'd been avoiding the trail that goes past the airport for a while because they were doing various bits of road work. I spend a lot more time on surface streets for that route than the others, but drivers are incredibly courteous about waiting to pass until they can swing wide. I think it always amazes me because drivers were never that courteous in the east bay.
Another reason for sticking to the canal trail recently is that too many things have gotten in the way of a daily ride, so when I do ride I want to do the Walnut Creek loop (Canal Trail + Iron Horse). If I'm going that far, I'd rather avoid excess surface streets.
I seem to have solved the "tire slowly going soft" issue by means of getting another puncture that clearly required repair. The new tube is holding pressure solidly, so my worry that there was a hidden thorn or wire that I hadn't discovered yet seems to have not panned out. Or if there was one, then maybe it worked itself out. The other option is that that particular tube had a manufacturer's defect and I should have just replaced it immediately. Thus do we second-guess ourselves.
This morning the airtag hidden in the bike seat cheeped sadly at me that it needed a new battery, so I've taken care of that. As far as I can tell, placing airtags is simply a magic charm against things getting stolen because over the decades I've had bikes, cars, and bags stolen but never since I've started using airtags. Or maybe I've just gotten generally more paranoid. (Although I'll note that the one time I used Find My to locate a stolen iPad, the police literally said, "So what do you expect us to do about it?" I think I'll stick to the magic charm theory.)
I'd been avoiding the trail that goes past the airport for a while because they were doing various bits of road work. I spend a lot more time on surface streets for that route than the others, but drivers are incredibly courteous about waiting to pass until they can swing wide. I think it always amazes me because drivers were never that courteous in the east bay.
Another reason for sticking to the canal trail recently is that too many things have gotten in the way of a daily ride, so when I do ride I want to do the Walnut Creek loop (Canal Trail + Iron Horse). If I'm going that far, I'd rather avoid excess surface streets.
I seem to have solved the "tire slowly going soft" issue by means of getting another puncture that clearly required repair. The new tube is holding pressure solidly, so my worry that there was a hidden thorn or wire that I hadn't discovered yet seems to have not panned out. Or if there was one, then maybe it worked itself out. The other option is that that particular tube had a manufacturer's defect and I should have just replaced it immediately. Thus do we second-guess ourselves.
This morning the airtag hidden in the bike seat cheeped sadly at me that it needed a new battery, so I've taken care of that. As far as I can tell, placing airtags is simply a magic charm against things getting stolen because over the decades I've had bikes, cars, and bags stolen but never since I've started using airtags. Or maybe I've just gotten generally more paranoid. (Although I'll note that the one time I used Find My to locate a stolen iPad, the police literally said, "So what do you expect us to do about it?" I think I'll stick to the magic charm theory.)
Episode 2694: The NeverEnding Backstory
Oct. 30th, 2025 10:03 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
darths_and_droids_feed
Want to bring something new and interesting to fights? Interrupt them!
- Have someone's phone ring. And then it rings again. Whoever is calling doesn't want to just leave a message.
- It begins pouring rain. A tree nearby is split by lightning with a deafening crack of thunder.
- A terrified NPC runs through the middle of the battle, screaming for help.
- A strange horn blast echoes — reinforcements, monsters, or something worse?
- Bats! So many bats.
- A nearby building collapses.
- Local authorities (police, town guards, security bots) arrive and order everyone to stop fighting.
- A panicked horse pulls a cart at top speed through the battle, spilling barrels of fruit.
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Hehehehehahhah, okay. That's an excellent joke for the end of the comic.
Anyway, fighting with the weird dagger is certainly a decision for Rey. I would be shocked if it turns out to be made of Cortisol—I mean Cortosis—and that's what all of the fighting over it has been about. Okay, maybe not that shocked. It'd probably get another raised eyebrow at most like a number of the other plot decisions so far. But that would be kinda neat to see that material show up again.
So now that we've seen that there's more to this flashback scene now, anyone want to bet that there's even more to it that hasn't been shown yet?
Transcript
Episode 2693: How You Gonna Call?
Oct. 28th, 2025 08:11 amdarths_and_droids_feed
Characters can, like real people, have all sorts of different bonds. They can be related by blood or by marriage. They could have grown up together or worked together. They might be master and apprentice, or liege and servant. They may have been through a shared experience together, either traumatic or enjoyable.
Or they may be connected by weird circumstances. Successive hosts of the same brain-manipulating parasite. Linked by Fate to die together. Haunted by the same spirit for crimes against it. Cursed by the same malignant item. Mutual reincarnations of each other in a time loop. Two parts of a hive mind.
Find interesting and unusual ways to link characters. Either PCs to each other, or PCs to significant NPCs in your campaign. Don't overdo it though - not everyone needs to be a long-lost brother to the king or a magical clone of an evil wizard.
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
A Force Phone call is like a Force Vision right? It's a little weird to have it be Kylo yet again, but perhaps some info drop about the knife or the helmet will happen during the fight. Actually, thinking about it, almost every Force Vision has involved Kylo somehow. I wonder if I'm just reading into things because Kylo's the only other Force User that's actually active and doing things, or if it's a mostly intentional thing by the writers.
Having a surprise lightsaber fight like this is certainly a choice here. Especially since it's likely just as confusing in the movie if Rey started this fight or if Kylo did. Also interesting is that Kylo seems to be completely on the Steadfast now as that is definitely a parry with no Kijimi in the background. Force Teleport or whatever it was like Luke in the last movie? Or is this some other kind of Force power doing things this time?
Transcript
Episode 2692: One Big Stabby Family
Oct. 26th, 2025 08:13 amdarths_and_droids_feed
Strange juxtapositions are the bread and butter of unfamiliarity and weirdness. If you want to communicate an aura of unearthliness or a feeling of unease, take two things that are normally not associated—in fact it would be weird if they were associated—and associate them.
- A cave lit by bioluminescent fungi that hums melodically, shifting pitch as creatures move through the tunnels.
- A golem made from wet paper that weeps ink when wounded.
- Villagers who bury themselves in the ground each night to sleep. (They're not undead.)
- Giant bees whose wings are made of stained glass; they repair any damage with wax.
- A cathedral built entirely from coral, with fish swimming through the walls.
- A place where precipitation is fluttering pieces of paper, handwritten with text in a language no one understands.
- A lich with flowers growing out of its ribcage.
- Rivers that flow towards the moon, reversing direction with its movements in the sky.
- Elves who eat stones as delicacies, saying they “taste of memory.”
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
What?? A room that's actually nicely lit? And it's not just black, red, and/or blue? This can happen in a First Order ship? That is so different I'm half wondering if this is really the Steadfast!
And oh hey, that thing. I guess it'd make sense that Rey would sense that and wander off to see what the Force feeling is and it turns out to be the helmet. And getting Chewbacca's things is a good bonus for actually wandering off. Is this Kylo's storage room? It feels too white for something he'd want to use though. And there's not enough other stuff here for it to really be storage, so there's probably something else going on.
A feeling of family for Ochi's dagger? That is weird. The runes on it were faked, but the rest of it could still be legitimate. For whatever it's actually meant to be for. There's just nothing that gives the PCs a clue about where it's used now I suppose. Time for Rey to have a Force Vision?
Transcript
Episode 2691: The Fistfight Show
Oct. 23rd, 2025 09:11 amdarths_and_droids_feed
For some players, even overwhelming odds looks like a cool challenge. There are two ways out of this.
Have other players talk sense into them. Or let them try and find out.
The second is more fun, but the first is more conducive to an ongoing adventure.
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Oh, huh. I guess I didn't think that getting hit like that would slow the group down enough for them to get caught. Sure, Chewie or Finn would have needed to pick Poe up from prone, but that wouldn't have stopped the other from continuing to shoot troopers showing up. 30+ troopers would be a little difficult to win against though, so..... I guess this would be the same result in the end.
Poor Chewie. Briefly relieved from his prison, only to be caught a minute later and then told he's part of a comedy program again. At least Rey is still running around and can break them out again later? If that Force Distraction isn't too enticing I suppose.
Transcript
Knitting and me
Oct. 21st, 2025 09:30 amhrjOne of my retirement to-do items is "learn to knit socks; knit socks." Now "learn to knit" might seem an odd part of that equation, given that I've been knitting since I was 10 years old. (I.e., for well over 50 years.) The thing is, I never learned to follow patterns. I'm like a musician who can learn tunes by listening, improvise music, and put on a great performance, but who never learned to read notation. I have, in fact, knitted a pair of socks before by sort of reverse-engineering how to make yarn look like that. But I figured it was time to actually learn "by the book" as it were.
My first step was to learn to read patterns via a book on blanket squares, making a (cotton) baby blanket for my grand-niece, where each of the 16 squares has a different pattern. That way I could learn cabling, lace knitting, and all sorts of other variants. I won't say that I can remember all the individual stitch instructions by heart, but I can do them and know how to look them up. (And I can remember them during the course of a particular project--they just don't necessarily stick permanently.)
As part of the sock goal, I've been picking up some lovely hand-dyed, fancy fiber sock yarns. But I don't want to do my beginner learning on those! So I went to my local yarn store...oops, the last LYS I went to (in Piedmont) has closed OH NOES! Search...search...search...ok there's another LYS in the Elmwood district. (These are both over on the bay side of the hills.) Explain my goals "a nice boring plain-color sock yarn that I might not mind frogging a lot." Turns out the Piedmont store closed because the proprietor wanted to retire...but she's now part-timing at the Elmwood store. So that feels like a happy story.
Now I'm swatching. Swatching! Me! Seat-of-the-pants me! I had picked up a lovely (expensive) interchangeable needle+cable set. Should be good for all my knitting needs, right? Uh...the smallest needles in the set are size 3, which is definitely too large for socks. And doing online research, not only does that brand not do smaller needle tips for the interchangeable set-up, nobody does smaller needles for interchangeable cable sets. This probably has to do with the problem of the minimum size of the little screw-in thingy connecting the cable and needle.
OK, back to the store, and not knowing what size is going to turn out to be optimal, I went ahead and got circular needles in sizes 2, 1, 0, and 00. (I have some even smaller double-points from back when I was doing some medieval silk knitting.) I wanted the circulars because I want to do the thing where you knit both socks at the same time on the same circular needle. This may possibly be over-ambitious at this point in my learning curve, but when have I not been over-ambitious?
Back to swatching. At this point I've done size 2 and size 1 and we're approaching the target stitch gauge, so I have hopes that I'll hit it before I run out of needle sizes.
ETA: The sock book I'm working from is "Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Sock Book." It has vast amounts of theory alongside the specific patterns, which warms my scientist's heart, but makes for boring reading when I'm still figuring out how all the theory fits in with the practice.
My first step was to learn to read patterns via a book on blanket squares, making a (cotton) baby blanket for my grand-niece, where each of the 16 squares has a different pattern. That way I could learn cabling, lace knitting, and all sorts of other variants. I won't say that I can remember all the individual stitch instructions by heart, but I can do them and know how to look them up. (And I can remember them during the course of a particular project--they just don't necessarily stick permanently.)
As part of the sock goal, I've been picking up some lovely hand-dyed, fancy fiber sock yarns. But I don't want to do my beginner learning on those! So I went to my local yarn store...oops, the last LYS I went to (in Piedmont) has closed OH NOES! Search...search...search...ok there's another LYS in the Elmwood district. (These are both over on the bay side of the hills.) Explain my goals "a nice boring plain-color sock yarn that I might not mind frogging a lot." Turns out the Piedmont store closed because the proprietor wanted to retire...but she's now part-timing at the Elmwood store. So that feels like a happy story.
Now I'm swatching. Swatching! Me! Seat-of-the-pants me! I had picked up a lovely (expensive) interchangeable needle+cable set. Should be good for all my knitting needs, right? Uh...the smallest needles in the set are size 3, which is definitely too large for socks. And doing online research, not only does that brand not do smaller needle tips for the interchangeable set-up, nobody does smaller needles for interchangeable cable sets. This probably has to do with the problem of the minimum size of the little screw-in thingy connecting the cable and needle.
OK, back to the store, and not knowing what size is going to turn out to be optimal, I went ahead and got circular needles in sizes 2, 1, 0, and 00. (I have some even smaller double-points from back when I was doing some medieval silk knitting.) I wanted the circulars because I want to do the thing where you knit both socks at the same time on the same circular needle. This may possibly be over-ambitious at this point in my learning curve, but when have I not been over-ambitious?
Back to swatching. At this point I've done size 2 and size 1 and we're approaching the target stitch gauge, so I have hopes that I'll hit it before I run out of needle sizes.
ETA: The sock book I'm working from is "Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Sock Book." It has vast amounts of theory alongside the specific patterns, which warms my scientist's heart, but makes for boring reading when I'm still figuring out how all the theory fits in with the practice.
Episode 2690: Fire in the Hall
Oct. 21st, 2025 09:12 amdarths_and_droids_feed
Some types of opponents the heroes should just be able to mow down without worrying about being hit. In some games.
It very much depends what type of game you're interested in playing. You can go fully cinematic and have Arnie run across an open courtyard wearing shorts and a ripped shirt and carrying a minigun, with hundreds of soldiers firing machine guns at him and they all miss, while Arnie picks them all of easily. Or you can go grittily realistic and have Arnie be turned into a smear of red paste.
One important part of this is letting your players know which sort of game it is before they try this.
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Run and shoot their way through without a care in the world? It wouldn't be a Jim plan if it made sense! The really surprising thing is how well this all is working in the movie. There hasn't been any sneaking around at all yet! Okay, so the big bad leader left the ship for a little bit, but I would have assumed Hux is at least competent enough to have a proper number of troops keeping an eye on incoming ships. Though perhaps this is a baiting trap of some sort via the Millennium Falcon? That was towed or something back along with Chewbacca, and Episode IV did have the tracking device put on the Falcon as well.
That just leaves the question of why the heroes would take the Falcon anywhere the First Order would be interested in at the moment, but that's only a small plot hole. We've got references to make and there's a bunch more left to do! All we need now is some superweapon that gets used. If we do get another superweapon, I hope it's more interesting looking than that oversized land cannon in the last Episode.
Transcript
Episode 2689: Now My Thoughts Run Wild
Oct. 19th, 2025 09:11 amdarths_and_droids_feed
It's normally up to the GM to plan things in secret and pull surprises on the players. But as players you also have power to collude and do things that will eventually be a surprise for the GM!
Just be aware that most GMs hate this sort of thing.
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
It's probably just the repetition of the same perspective on Kylo, but that crack on the nose and mouth plate stands out a little too much in this instance. I guess I hadn't expected it to continue glowing this long. I wonder what it's made of, both in the movie and as a prop. I suppose it could just be a CGI addition if the whole helmet is CGI, but that would mean the lines standing out like this is an intentional effect.
Anyway, escape should be easy enough. Assuming the ship they arrived in hasn't been blown up yet. That said, with the noise made so far, I would expect it to be heavily guarded or exploded by this point. Which would then lead to needing to steal a shuttle of some kind; perhaps Jim gets the idea of calling the Steadfast's bridge and pretending to take Chewbacca away in order to keep him from being rescued by the invaders. That sounds just like the sort of crazy plan Jim would come up with that would still somehow work with the movie. All that leaves is pulling Rey away from wherever that Force Sense snipe hunt she's decided to go on has brought her to.