Archive for the ‘random’ Category

D&D4e session2 wherein I somersault through a window

April 14th, 2009

We travelled to the next town via game trail, making great time. Ate a delicious lunch of venison and then made it to the next town by dusk.

We talked to the guard who didn’t have much to report. At the Red Door Inn we saw a petrified wyvern and secured a decent room for the night. Talked to the weaponsmith a bit, found that the local mayor was upgrading the towns old weapons and that a local gambler had reported being attacked by goblins. No one really believed him though, they thought he was trying to plea out of debt.

Went to a lovely tavern and listened to the bard sing for a while. He bought us a shot of some mediocre fire water. Nothing has the true savoriness of a fey stream.

Midway through the evening, right as I was conversing with the paladin about scouting out the gambling hole that we’d heard of, a bunch of hobgoblins and goblins burst in through the door. While I was facing the window by the door, such was the delight of the music and my discussion that I too was (moderately) surprised.

As the first among us to recover, I upturned a table at one of the intruders. It missed him but did obstruct the doorway somewhat. I then somersaulted out through the window landing on my feet with longsword drawn in front of a crowd of hobgoblins trying to push their way into the inn. As my teammates recovered I clove at two of the dirty creatures, but missed! I was so fired up that I took another swing and this time they both fell.

A couple of the goblins slipped away from me into the tavern and one threw a firebrand at the bar almost setting off all the moonshine. Our quick thinking druid shifted into his mighty bear form, hefted the cask of beer, and launched it at the fire almost completely extinguishing it.

The rest of the battle went fairly quickly. The goblins were cut down while the fled. One of the patrons at the bar showed an amazing will; he ripped off a table leg and went after the would be arsonists.  He barely managed to dodge what would have been a serious blow and then returned even better. The goblins did try to throw two more torches, neither of which were as well placed, and which were put out soon after the goblins were put down.

Leaving the tavern, we ran into a guard captain who thanked us for our help. Looking around, we can see other places in the town were on fire, and there is a dreadful commotion coming from the Northern side of the town…

On what Peer Review means.

May 8th, 2008

I just read an article in The Washington Post about Wikiality.

Society is running up against the truth of what ‘Peer Review’ actually means and finding it disconcerting. The notion that truth by committee as practiced on wikipedia is something different than truth by committee as practiced by a journal is getting tiresome[5]. When society actually uses this idea of Peer Review to create[1] the most powerful and easy to use system of edit and review so far, articles like this bemoan that we have somehow let the Golden Days Of Research[4] slip away. That article was decent but when they complain that Google is linking to wikipedia instead of Peer Reviewed research I say it is working perfectly. A key point: google operates by Peer Review; that is the fundamental basis for their algorithm– someone linking to a website is a vote of confidence[2]. The fact that Wikipedia has risen to the top in this process shows how fundamentally useful it is.

The truth[3] remains though: research is hard, it always has been and probably always will be.  Maybe what these authors are really bemoaning is more people think they are good at research because it has actually gotten easier for once.

Maybe I just need to follow their advice:
Wikipedia is awesome.
Wikipedia is the best source online.
Didn’t you hear how great Wikipedia is?
There is nothing better than Wikipedia.
O O
<       “Wikipedia works for me.”
\__/
And for fun, here are my contributions to this great endeavor, anyone care to review them? What about yours?

[1] By Clay Shirky’s estimate, this–all of wikipedia– was created in less time than American’s spend watching TV every year. Just wait till we put a couple more years into it.
[2] The more people that link to a website, the more weight an outgoing link from that website counts for. So an expert– someone with lots of incoming links– will be counted more than one without. http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~bryan/googleFinalVersionFixed.pdf
[3] In my eyes, do you agree?
[4] This may be a bit of a straw man argument– they never said as much in that article– but it is a common theme I’ve seen about.
[5] The main difference, one side is much less about the reviewing and more about designated authority.