Dwarf Fortress is Awesome

Dwarf Fortress is awesome.  Really it is.

Here's a small example:

The Hill Titan Umstos Ospaznuspu Sesnum Xolang has come!  An enormous scaly tick.  It has a knobby shell and it has an austere look about it.  Its aqua scales are oval-shaped and close-set.  Beware its deadly spittle!

What shall my dwarves do?  Run and hide behind the defenses of the fortress, hopefully.  Sadly, their track record with goblin hordes suggests that they'll mill around in a panic while many of them are slaughtered mercilessly by the titan.  Eventually the military will defeat the titan...or not...in which case the fortress will be wiped out.  Fun!

Addition:  It turned out that the Hill Titan Umstos wasn't much of a fighter.  Here's the latest "fun thing" to come along - possibly a great deal more problematic from the description:

The Forgotten Beast Cuthabe Vilelanunore Anayaimeri has come!  A huge humanoid composed of steam.  It has a curling trunk and it squirms and fidgets.  Beware it's poisonous sting!

Ooh!  A forgotten beast!  Yay!

Let's hope the fine dwarven soldiers of "City Kenzas, Whimcrystals" are up to the challenge.

Astronomy is Cool

It is very much this sort of writing, which Phil Plait excels at, that fuels my love of science.

The article discusses "Hanny's Voorwerp" a galaxy sized cloud of gas...which is glowing green because of an enormous beam of energy and matter streaming from a "nearby" galaxy.  He also tells us about it's discoverer, Hanny van Arkel.  She is not an astronomer.  She's a schoolteacher and a "Queen" aficionado.  Now also an amateur astronomer and a celebrity.  Cool beans.

I am only tangentially  involved in research through my work, but I enjoy learning about all sorts (of research).  There are just so many cool things going on these days in research, engineering and technology.  From that point of view, it's an exciting time to be alive.

*Edit* because I just came across another example of extremely cool science and nascent technology on the subject of optical (electromagnetic) invisibility.

Perspective on (Popular) Open Source Projects

In a programming sense, I have never made anything but minor contributions to open source projects. As I have recently described, I use open source software all the time. The only major exception is at work on the corporate workstation on my desktop.

Large projects sometimes go off the rails and fail. Frequently they are forked, where a group of people take the code base off in a different direction, and the new project and old project live or die on their own merits.

At the moment this sort of thing is on my mind because of this blog posting from the author of the "Sigil" project which provides interesting insight into the dynamics of open source software projects from an inside perspective: Sigil Blog