#possibly as a stacked bar chart

[gemmahale]

May Writing Update

Find previous months here.

4,972 words! Not a small number at all!

The start of the month was strong, then petered out as routinely happens. Had a med change in there and an increase in work - one a boon to my writing, the other a challenge.

I'm really excited to get my desk set up in my office, because Kallen has built me a super awesome computer (don't ask me stats, I just know they're good) and I fully intend to start incorporating writing into my daily routine. (And possibly some co-working/body doubling/world building streams? Maybe?)

Still tinkering on most of my fanfic. Think I figured out a pathway for Bury The Lede (#BuryTheLedeWIP) that I like. Thanks to @gloomwitchwrites and @syoddeye and @the-californicationist for being so outstandingly helpful with beta-reading and letting me spitball at you. 💚

~*~

Black and red line charts are from TrackBear (see my current stats here!), stacked bar chart and pie charts are from A.R. Thompson's Wordcount Tracker.

Just a little over a quarter of the way to my annual word goal. I've been consistently-ish (the last three months anyway) hitting about half of my monthly word goal.

I don't think I'll be changing my metrics, so if I make it cool! If I don't, cool!

It's unclear if coffee dates are helpful or not; I've run a few sprints during them with some friends, but the wheels aren't always turning when I'm there (it's more fun to listen to the conversations around us to be honest.)

As a reminder, blue is original work and pink is fanfic.

Rebuilt Engine and Bury the Lede really captivated me this month - that big chunk at the beginning of the year was Rebuilt Engine (I don't have a tag for that yet). Still tinkering on if I make it as dark as I originally considered, so I'm waffling on how much of that makes it to the final cut.

Also - why are like 7 of these wips got a mechanic of some nature in it? What the *hell* girl. I know jack shit about racing, cars, or airplanes. AND YET.

...really need to up my professional words. (This is a note to myself.) I have big goals, but I'm slow to roll them out. Hopefully writing at home will help, as will the list of topics I have brewing.

[lazyscience]

DCC Challenge, Day 17

Time To Floor Collapse: 13 days, 4.5 hours (give or take)

Time for the recap episode!

Crawler @quartzandsundry

New Achievement! Fuck You I Won't Do What You Tell Me!

If I were an algorithm, I would be hurt - but I'm not, so fuck those guys! While dealing out consequences is what I'm here for, I'm not interested in steering your choices. Well...no, I'm not REALLY, because nothing goes viral like the least predicted outcome! Viva individuality, everyone LOVES to imitate it!

Reward: A silver Twihard box! Inside, an Enchanted Bracelet of the Ab-Solar conferring protection against infection with vampirism, lycanthropy, and +25% damage against the sapient undead, and a roll of Regenerating Bondage Tape! 60' total, regenerates 1 foot per minute up to 3 times daily for as much skin-safe restraint fun as one crawler could possibly need!

Crawler @kathrynalexao3:

New Achievement! We're Gonna Play It!

So it is a known fact that I am not the biggest fan of bards (shut it, Mordecai, it's not MY fault that wet fart Chaco had a better lawyer) - most of the time, they're using it to sneak out of bars without tabs and castles after fucking elites, and while that's all well and good it's not The Main Event, right?

But (snerk, gasp) the mobs' little FACES when they realized they'd followed that tantalizing Entourage illusion into ambush and the heat was...on! Hah, I knew you'd make use of that eventually.

Reward: A gold Full Commitment Box! Inside, sheet music for Standing Ovation and Encore! You've earned some applause. And if you look in this box right here - (charting at Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of August 23rd, 1987, it's Rick Astley and "Never Gonna Give You Up" - applause, everyone!)

Crawler @king-ofconfusion:

New Achievement! Stranger Things than Death Can Happen!

Undeath's a bitch, isn't it? Well, it's not like you would know yet, you've managed to successfully duck, bob, weave and cast your way out of the hands of the war mages and vampires up till now, but keep an eye out for those janitor mobs, Jikiniki no jokey-nokey, yeah?

Let's keep it flowing, blood, ectoplasm, the traffic at rush hour....

Reward: A silver Smells Like OK Soda box! Inside, a Ricard's Ring of Sniping, a Silver Bullet ammo reload, 13 Holy Goopers and 7 holy-water-infused Hobgoblin Smoke Curtains. It's like a rave, of DEATH TO UNDEATH!

alive to death to undeath to death...yeah. okay. I confused myself for a minute there. We're all good!

Crawler @oreniaa:

New Achievement! Sweet Blasphemy, My Giving Tree!

Crawler, if there was a dungeon crawl art exhibit you'd be Jackson Pollock with a bullet. If there was a catwalk, all the black clerics would gnash their teeth and claw their faces at your effortless air of apostasy (they'd probably do that anyway, but REAL hard, like they meant it)! And if your hair could talk - it'd say business in the front, desecration in the back!

Reward: A golden Love for Fire Box! Including matched Obsidian Needle Gauntlets of The Cenobite, which inflict the Suffering Bleed debuff (stacking) with each direct hit to an opponent, with a cumulative incidence of 1.3% of summoning a Lesser Infernal Demon if employed against a minion of Hell (call it professional courtesy)

Crawler @cairfrey :

New Achievement! CrawlCon!

6:00 AM - Crawl Art Contest! Featuring Crawler Cairfrey, Ripper Wonton and former crawler Herot judging!

9:00 AM - Beez in The Trap! Panel on ambush and trap attacks!

12:00 PM - VIP Meet N'Greet! 1 3DEO recording with Cairfrey, Waterkangaroo or both! (Extra charge of 19.99 GalCred for both)

2:00 PM - Live With Odette, Snick or No Snick!

4:00 PM - A-tier Meet N'Greet! 1 signed autograph from Cairfrey or Waterkangaroo on your choice of promotional material - still photo, CrawlCon program, or genuine reclaimed Earth paper (highly collectible!)

Reward: For publicity? Seriously? Unless someone dies, you're SOL, but that said, I heard Shade Gnolls don't give a shit about corporate property and there should at least be a couple pretty sweet Deluxe Shower arrays to make sure you're all pretty for your press. Do with that what you will.

Crawler @deathdovesong:

New Achievement! Me and The Devil Blues!

Surprise T'Ghee round! Good thing you had those level 65 Gargoyles and a level 58 Devilfish still tucked into your hand, the mob's level 69 Reaper Golem was a BEAST! But in the end, Uzi Jesus always performs down to expectations as a nepo baby and you brought home the win.

Reward: a gold Squeaky Clean box! Includes a Day Pass and Deluxe Bubble Bath at Busted to Bomb, the Desperado Club day spa, and a 50,000 credit for Bed, Bath and Beleaguered, purveyors of fine alchemical supplies, potions and poisons in the famous Midnight Market! (No takebacksies if anything you buy gives you the screaming horrors. Caveat emptor!)

Crawler @clearbrightlight:

New Achievement! Catlike Reflexes!

Some people might think I mean speed and grace. Nah, I mean The Slappinator! By the time you stopped smacking that bitch up with Astral Paw, there wasn't enough left to juice.

Hummina.

And then there were the ones you used Walls of Fire to kettle him into your savage horde of familiars. Killing with claws isn't feet, of course, but it's the next best thing!

Reward: A gold You'e Got A Friend in Me box! Includes an enchanted Flute of Snake Charming! Deactivates aggro from snake and snakelike mobs, +10 to Charm Critter, Hypnosis and Sonic Attack skills! (Increases aggro of feline and canine mobs; bonded pets will be distracted and difficult to control, wild will attack on a failed attempt to charm)

Crawler @lazyscience:

New Achievement: Juggling Grenades!

wretched monthly one-on-one? check. regulatory agency hold to reply to? check. pushy PI draft? check check. stupid consent kerfuffle? check. hateful guideline clarification, check. Everything's still in the air, we'll see what you drop tomorrow!

Reward: I TOLD you, everything's still in the air, so nothing went boom! also churro donuts.

Now get out there, crawlers, and kill, kill, kill!

ATTENTION, all partied crawlers! Don't forget to update me on mobs, quests, or parties (defined at link) so I can award you achievements! Please let me know either in the replies to this post, reblogging with additions, or hit my askbox/DMs!

(please, do this, even with small and silly mobs/quests, it makes giving achievements so much easier!)

[fourhornedsatyr]

I love Cassette Beasts.

As someone who is an avid fan of Monster Collector games, and who most fondly remembers Pokemon B&W and Digimon D&D from the DS era, I only have good things to say about my first four hours of playing Cassette Beasts by Bytten Studio.

So, I'm gonna talk about it.

Gameplay

The Transformation Mechanic & Record (capture) mechanic

Unlike most games of the genre, you do not summon/control the monsters you use to fight, but rathee you become them -- digimon frontier style. Your avatar & a companion fight using cassettes that have copied the essence of the monsters you encountered (captures work like an alternate of the data copy mechanic of the digimon turn based rpgs).

You effectively have two health bars, that of your monster form & that of your human self, and once your monster form takes enough damage the cassette will break. Upon breaking you will revert to your human form and take on any overflow damage. If you are attacked before it is your turn to select another cassette, then you will receive damage and hence have to worry about your own health. There is no way to replenish the health of human characters in combat, at least none that I have accessed.

Furthermore, many of your status effects, buffs, & debuffs carry over from one transformation to another. This leads to a lot of stacking possibilities, but also means that one much be cautious, think wisely, and manage their defence and type matchups.

When recording/capturing monsters as well, you have to leave your monster form and are vulnerable. Despite having a good chunk of hp it is still wise to protect your human characters via walls & taunts to improve your chances of successfully copying a beast & sustaining minimal damage. This adds an enjoyable complexity to the capture stystem.

Type Matchups & Dynamic Interactions.

Speaking of type matchups, the type interactions are marvelously impressive & complex!

There are 14 types that are inspired by both naturally occuring aspects/materials/elements of the world and anthropogenic ones. Many of these typings can be thought of with a twisted pokemon logic (ground beats lightning, fire consumes poison, water & air put out fire), but we also have the celestial type, which draws from the natural typings and is weak to anthropogenic typings such as metal, plastic, & poison (it thematically (& vaguely mechanically) reminds me of holy & dark digimon types).

Furthermore, many type interactions include buffs & debuffs. Earth slows down plastic types, poison fuels fire types, lightning electrifies the air, and celestial absorbs the energies of natural typings.

BUT THERE'S MORE! Metal types can be coated in poison after interacting with poison type moves and can then deal poison contact damage! When fire types attack air types an updraft is formed that gives the air types a shield! I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED TRANSMUTATIONS! When fire types attack ice types, the latter will gain the water coating effect and will become water types! Likewise, electric attacks can turn ground types into glass!

The dynamics of type interactions is amazing, and makes gamplay so enjoyable.

(Type matchup chart, wiki.CassetteBeast.com/wiki/types)

Fusion

As far as I am aware all cassette beasts are monotype unless they are fused. This is a major mechanic in the game that serves to create a new monster during a fight that shares most of the moves of you and your companion's monster forms.

Yet, while you can do this after filling up a meter that takes, usually, multiple fights to fill, the wild monsters can also do this. These Rogue Fusions pose a unique threat as once defeated they will defuse with full hp and you will then have to fight the two that were fused -- just as what happens when you defuse.

Though there are unique fusions that do have interesting and enjoyable dynamics I have not yet acquainted myself with too many and will not delve too heavily into this topic.

One aspect of the fuse that I will discuss further is the music.

Atmosphere & World Elements

The Music

The music in this game is amazing. The music for the basecamp village of Harbour Town is amazing and nails the theme of the town and the initial emotions of the game wonderfully. Much of the music in combat is dynamic and will change depending on the state of the battle, often playing wonderful vocal pieces after drawing first blood post-fusion (the music changes depending on the fusion too). I fucking love it.

The Land Keepers

There are vampire landlords called landkeepers that you fight in the game to keep them from gentrifying the island.

(Wiki.CassetteBeasts.com/wiki/Landkeeper)

Look at that freak! They are capitalist estate agents whose only goal is to setup an exploitative economic system on the island of New Wirral. One of your companion's whole quest line is shutting them down!

●●●

I love this game.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2003 - Number 43 - Bubbles - "TKO (Knock You Out)"

Formed in a dance studio in the late 1990s and pushed by the Ace of Bass production axis, Bubbles are a girl group who would have been familiar to Swedes in 2003. They'd had several top 10 hits starting in 2000 as well as managing to get a song on the soundtrack for Ice Age.

When I say girl group here, I mean children. When they met and formed the band they would not yet have been teenagers. There are actually five members of Bubbles in total. The reason that only three members are on the stage at Melodifestivalen is that two members of Bubbles, Jenny Andersén and Hannah Steffenburg were still only 15 and Melfest, like Eurovision itself, has a 16-year old minimum age limit.

2003 also happened to be the first year of Junior Eurovision, but Bubbles were probably already too big for that (as well as just turning 16) - even if the main consumers of their music were young teenagers and children themselves. Melodifestivalen was their push into the grown-up music world.

TKO (Knock You Out), aptly, feels like a work-out song. A strong beat and lots of encouragement to dance or possibly spar. It's an out and out girl bop. There's a gap for a dance break which they don't really take full advantage of, however there's no doubting their qualities as singers and performers. For a trio of 16 year olds, their confidence and stage presence is incredibly assured. Caroline Ljungström, and Patricia and Sandra Joxelius are pitch perfect even while performing some of the more vigorous choreography to be seen on the Melfest stage this year. You can tell they've actually been doing this for at least three years already.

The song was written by a few people including Paul Rein, former Melfest competitor and Swedish star of the 1980s alongside Fredrik Lenander, producer and Eurodance purveyor from the 1990s. There is pop pedigree throughout this.

That this is their first Melfest is therefore only down to their ages. They're the perfect pop product whom their managers and promoters were no doubt hoping would go on to much bigger things. (i.e. Eurovision). It didn't happen. They finished third in their heat, then went into what was an absolutely stacked Viewer's Choice final. They managed to get second in that, once again scraping through. In the final, they finished 9th out of the 10 songs but sadly didn't get a single televote point.

It did, however, score them another top 10 hit in the Swedish charts. They continued to other successes and for a time changed their name to Bless to avoid a copyright/brand-confusion situation internationally. Eventually their output stopped. A planned album and single didn't emerge and Caroline left to go solo. By 2009 the band had split, although all the messaging was directed through their record label and management.

Child stars grow up and often decide that now they get to make decisions for themselves - they want to do something completely different. What exactly happened doesn't appear to have emerged into the public sphere and barring Caroline, nothing has been heard from any of the members since.

[leebird-simmer]

Statistics: Display and Shape

1 Categorical Variable: Class Make-up

Comparative Bar Charts

allows us to look at multiple groups of one categorical variable

can be a stacked bar graph or a clustered bar graph

One Quantitative Variable

A. Examining Quantitative Data

distribution = tells all possible values of a variable and how frequently they occur

Summarize distribution of a quantitative variable by telling shape, center, and spread.

Shape = tells which values tend to be more or less common.

Center = measure of what is typical in the distribution of quantitative variable.

Spread = measure of how much the distribution's values vary

B. Displays

Stemplot - advantage: most detail - disadvantage: impractical for large datasets

Histogram - advantage: works well for any size dataset - disadvantage: some detail lost

Dotplot - advantage: can show outliers - disadvantage: much detail lost

Stem Plot

quantitative data

combines the characteristics of a table and a graph

general steps: (1) Separate each observation into a stem (first part of number) and a leaf (remaining part of number) (2) Write the stems in a vertical column; draw a vertical line to the right of the stems. (3) Write each leaf in the row to the right of its stem; order leaves if desired.

Stem: 10's digit

Lead: 1's digit

5 I 3 = 53

Constructing Stem Plots

Comparative Stem Charts

used for comparison of two groups of 1 quantitative variable - ex. Compare exam scores from two classes.

Dot Plots

used for 1 quantitative variable

similar to a stem + leaf plot; each dot represents one value

Ex. An instructor has obtained the set of N=25 exam scores: 82, 75, 88, 93, 53, 84, 87, 58, 72, 94, 69, 84, 61, 91, 64, 87, 84, 70, 76, 89, 75, 80, 73, 78, 60

Histograms

Show possible values of a quantitative variable along the horizontal axis, with vertical bars showing the count, percentage, or proportion of values in certain interval ranges.

shows quantitative data ONLY

display of a grouped frequency distribution

adjacent bars touch each other

Divide the possible values into class intervals (equal width). - How many intervals? One rule is to calculate the square root of the sample size and round up. - Size of intervals? Divide range of data (max-min) by number of intervals desired and round up. - Pick intervals so each observation can only fall in exactly one interval (no overlap). maximum-minimum/number of intervals

Count how many observations fall in each interval (may change to proportion or percentages).

Draw representation distribution.

Ex. An instructor has obtained the set of N=25 exam scores:

82, 75, 88, 93, 53, 84, 87, 58, 72, 94, 69, 84, 61, 91, 64, 87, 84, 70, 76, 89, 75, 80, 73, 78, 60

Grouped frequency distribution histogram vs. stem plot.

The stem plot is placed on its side to demonstrate that the display gives the same information provided in the histogram.

Scatterplots

Used for displaying the relationship between two quantitative variables.

Ex. Compare students' exam 1 vs exam 2 scores.

Interpreting Histograms

When describing the distribution of a quantitative (interval or ratio) variable, we look for the overall pattern and for striking deviations from that pattern. We can describe the overall pattern of a histogram by its shape, center (central tendency) and spread (variability).

Shape of Distribution

A symmetric distribution has a balanced shape, showing that it is just as likely for the variable to take lower values as higher values.

A skewed distribution is lopsided:

skewed left: few values that are relatively low compared to the bulk of the data

skewed right: few values that are relatively high compared to the bulk of the data values

Outliers

Extreme values that fall outside the overall pattern.

may occur naturally

may occur due to error in recording

may occur due to measurement error

observational unit may be fundamentally different

After identifying potential outliers, investigate why they obtain unusual values.

More Specific Shapes

unimodal distribution: has one peak

bimodal distribution: has two peaks

uniform distribution: has no peaks, showing that all possible values are equally common

normal distribution: symmetric, unimodal, "bell-shaped" or "mound-shaped" pattern