Bob Space

Reminiscing about The Old Days has given me a Geek Urge to replace my current Chessex (round-edged European) dice with nice sharp-edged GameScience dice, like I had when I was beginning to play.

Wait, it gets even geekier: I’m thinking of omitting the 10-siders entirely, and using 20-siders numbered 0-9 twice, as used at the dawn of the hobby. Thus I can surround myself with only proper platonic dice. I’m even thinking about eight-siders numbered 1-4 twice, thus getting those ridiculously sharp and pointy d4s out of the box.

Yes, it’s totally ridiculous, and the urge is finally winding down. I seem to finally be grown up enough to recognize that spending $$$ on a pointless whim isn’t always a good thing. And what I’ll probably do in real life is buy a pair of the old-fashioned 20-siders to put in my Star Fleet Battle Manual kit, and retire My First Die to a place of honor.

Only 15,000 words later, I’m retiring the idea of publishing a guide to basic model rocketry. I can’t bring it the production values it needs, there’s never going to be a market given the availability of free information on the net, and my perspectives on good practice are nothing new.

So, I’m going to capture the unique bits I was bringing and put them into a series of booklets or essays. “Decoding the Model Rocket Safety Code,” for instance, showing how EVERYTHING in model rocketry is captured in the Safety Code. Or “Which Glue Do I Use?” Or “Fin and Dandy.” (Sorry.) And I’ll buy or print some Estes Model Rocketry Technical Manuals for my rocketeers. (The Quest Astra Mini-Manuals are cute, too, but just too small.)

A bit on the long side; settle in for another jaunt down Memory Lane.
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I do enjoy being out in the cool and quiet on these fall mornings. Seeing the stars. The sounds as our neighborhood starts to wake up. The frenzied barking of the idiotic dogs in some homes. It’s a nice way to start the morning. We’ll see if I still think it’s nice in February…

And, looking forward: after playing with the county GIS system a bit, I find that the “loop” is 1490 feet long. 7 times around that, plus the 150 feet back to my driveway, makes precisely two miles. Very convenient.

The program I wrote to predict model rocket altitudes generates results that do not agree with either the classic RASP program (in its pRASP incarnation) or with RockSim. While I’d expect some difference, I didn’t expect difference of this magnitude. I need to do a little more research to confirm there’s a systematic problem. Then I need to confirm that I’ve implemented the equations correctly in code. After that … we’ll see. Could be this is a book I won’t be publishing.

Star Trek (TOS) Roleplaying Game, and Narrator’s Toolkit and Screen from LUG. Nice books, don’t really suit me. In good shape. Make me an offer; shipping is (holds up his hand, fingers spread) FIVE BUCKS.