Daring Fireball: On Top

Daring Fireball: On Top

There are four styles for replying to an e-mail.

• Do not quote the original message
• Top Put your reply above the quoted text of the original message
• Bottom Put your reply below the quoted text of the original message
• Quote relevant parts of the original message with your reply following each quote

I agree with John Gruber (Daring Fireball) that the last is the preferred method.

But some of my friends—for some reason—do not keep an archive of their e-mail messages. They rely on people who respond to not only quote the previous message, but the entire thread. In “top” fashion.

So, I try to oblige.

Housing/credit crises

Back when all these people were taking out these loans, perhaps Congress could have spent a little money on a campaign to educate people about why those loans were a bad idea. I mean, I saw them being offered. They looked like a bad idea to me, though I know little about such things. Surely your typical Senator/Senatrix/Congress(wo)man could see and know. Then maybe they wouldn’t be debating spending a lot of money to bail a lot of people out.

My four-fold model of RPGs

There are four stereotypes of approaches to role-playing games.

These are just stereotypes. Nobody actually plays 100% by any of these.

Stereotype 1: Playing The character is a virtual playing piece. A pawn. A counter. An avatar of the player. The game world is a virtual board and framing story. Some effort is made to stay within the framework of the framing story, but generally players have their characters do whatever they (the players) want. Players are generally free to use personal, out-of-game knowledge and insights in deciding their characters’ actions. Likewise, the challenges which the GM presents may not be completely natural outside the context of the game.

Stereotype 2: Rule/roll playing The player builds the character. Since the player cannot know what the character knows and cannot act as the character would act—in play, the rules and mechanics determine what happens.

Stereotype 3: Role playing This is a mix of method acting and improvisational theatre. The player authors the character, but in play the player simply has the character act as that character’s goals, motivations, flaws, etc. dictate.

Stereotype 4: Story telling The players and the GM work together to tell a collaborative story. Decisions are made based on what makes the most interesting story.

Robust software

RFC: 793

TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

Martian Headsets—Joel on Software

Now there are all these web pages out there with errors, because all the early web browser developers made super-liberal, friendly, accommodating browsers that loved you for who you were and didn’t care if you made a mistake. And so there were lots of mistakes. And Postel’s “robustness” principle didn’t really work.

My expansion on Postel’s robustness principle: Even though you are liberal in what you accept, that doesn't mean you should do so silently.

Arthur C. Clarke

What to say...?

His short story, “Breaking Strain”, (if I’m remembering correctly) is a great example of how a science-fiction story can contain both good science and good fiction. How good science can even be an integral part of good fiction.

Rendezvous with Rama may be my favorite Clarke novel. A comparison (& particularly contrast) with Gentry Lee’s sequels really highlights the things I enjoy about Clarke’s writing.

RIP

Pathfinder RPG

Pathfinder RPG: “Today marks the beginning of a year-long Open Playtest of the new rules, which are based upon the popular 3.5 rules available under the Open Game License.”

The really odd thing here is that the company doing a minor revision to the D&D 3.5 rules are doing a year-long open playtest while the company that is doing a major revision did a six-month closed playtest.

(Yeah, yeah. Wizards of the Coast playtested 4e in-house longer than that. (In-house playtesting is not playtesting.) And they’re using concepts that were tested via 3.5e supplements. (Testing a concept is not the same as testing a specific implementation of that concept in the context of an entire system.))

I actually had a draft post about how, if I were Wizards, I would do inexpensive, low-production value preview versions of the rules and not put out a fancy hardback version until the system had been widely played and stablized.

Tattooed turtle girl

I love my tattooed turtle girl & wife.

She’s beautiful. She’s sexy. She’s stylish. She’s smart. She’s fun. She’s crafty. She’s clever. She’s forgiving. She’s strong. She’s frugal (yet splurges). She’s generous. She’s a wonderful mother.

And so much more.