#they were so crazy for making the wizard a giant super computer

[tabooiart]

Be off and be on your way! Bring me the broomstick of the Witch of the West These are your orders, now obey!

^ bonus flats cuz theyre cute

[trashcankitty12]

Timmy Headcanons

(Sorry for the wait, life, am I right?)

Timmy Somerville. Cute nerd, badass strategist, and most likely one of the smartest dudes you’ll ever meet.

Poor dude doesn’t always get the recognition he deserves, so here it is. I hope.

(Also, I took the name for his hometown/home city from the comics.)

(Also, these headcanons are mostly for my main verses. “Left” and “The New Company of Light”.)

-Timmy is from Zenith, more specifically, the City of Titania, Zenith’s Capitol.

-It’s just him and his mom and dad, and their robo-cat, Chester. (Timmy named him after a character from his favorite game series.)

-Timmy doesn’t have many family members, as both his parents are also only children and both sets of grandparents live in the warmer climates of Zenith. (There are like… Two or three warm cities/villages in Zenith.)

-But his parents do have lots of friends that are sort of like his ‘aunts and uncles’. (And they spoiled him like they were his family.)

-Honestly Timmy is a bit spoiled as far as family love goes. They have always been supportive of his projects and are just so proud of him.

-He tends to be closer to his dad than to his mom. His dad was more of a stay-at-home dad (he ran his business from home, which was game designing), and his mom worked as a hotshot lawyer on Zenith. (Mostly for copyright claiming and patenting.)

-His dad always let him playtest his games (assuming they weren’t for more mature audiences, Timmy was a bit of a sheltered child about those subjects). And Timmy… Well it started Timmy’s love of them.

-As he got older and more into the mechanics of game design, mechanic-ing in general, his parents let him start using his room as a workshop.

-He used to take everything apart he could get his hands on, and then would put it all back together, good as new. (And sometimes, better.)

-His parents used to suspect he may have some techno-magic because of how the machines responded to him, but they never could prove it.

-(To this day, even the others in his squad question if Timmy has some latent-magical abilities. He tries to laugh it off, but he has found himself wondering too… Even to the point of trying to summon his magic. So far, nothing.)

-His vision started going bad around the time he turned 12. He was averse to getting glasses at first, but his run-in with contacts didn’t go so well… So glasses. (Which sucks when you wear helmets, but he’s come up with specialized helmets for people like him with poor vision. It just took some time to create. And for his mother to help with the copyright and patents.)

-Timmy had braces for a short time after an incident in elementary school messed his mouth up.

-(Dodgeball at Titania Prep was cut-throat. Cut. Throat.)

-Timmy also has an allergy to seafood. Which sucks, because he likes the smell of fried fish and the sauces that come with shrimp… But if he eats it, he can’t breathe and he’d just rather not deal with that.

-He was actually a pretty popular guy at his elementary and middle schools. He was the guy who had access to first-rate games before anyone else did, and he got to have the latest in technology. (And could explain it without it being boring.)

-So how did little Timmy decide to go to Red Fountain?

-His middle school hosted one of those fairs that shows off different high schools that someone could go to. There was Zenithian Prep, which was connected to the main college of Zenith, Zeni Tech. The Eraklyon Institute. The Callistian Artistry School for the Aspiring Youth (what a mouthful). Coventry Academy for Witches and Wizards. And Red Fountain.

-Timmy had been wanting to go to the prep school, just as was expected of him. But Red Fountain just… Spoke to him. He wanted to be different. He wanted to be more than just ‘the smart Zenith kid’. He wanted to standout somewhere. And he kind of liked the idea of the adventures Red Fountain offered.

-So he started his training for the entrance exams. Thankfully, Chester could easily be programmed to be an exercising partner and couldn’t be easily swayed to deviate from the course.

-Granted, the physical part of the exam was hard, but Codatorta saw something in him and personally vouched for him to join the program.

-Timmy’s parents were shocked at first, but since Timmy got in and had expressed such a want to go, they approved and signed the necessary papers. (With the promise that Timmy would bail if it became too much for him. No shame in realizing something wasn’t for you.)

-Not gonna lie, adjusting to Red Fountain life was a bit hard at first, but once he got into the routine, it was second nature.

-Granted, he was never as physically fit as Riven or Sky or Brandon, but he could hold his own in a fight.

-Hand-to-hand fighting isn’t his strong suite, but he is tenacious about it and isn’t afraid to exploit weaknesses his opponent has.

-Thanks to his hand-eye coordination skills from playing video games, he’s actually really good at aiming blasters and performing with a bow and arrows.

-Piloting is his favorite though. He loves getting to ‘play with the ships’ and getting to work on them and fly them around. It’s just… He loves it so much. You guys just don’t understand.

-Please don’t ask him to fight with swords or shields or spears… He does his best and he could hold his own… But it’s just not for him. (He doesn’t have the upper-body strength to really fight and hold up the weapons too. At least, not for long periods. He does well enough just to get passing marks.)

-Strategy is another strong suite of Timmy’s. He loves plotting and looking over maps and creating the battle strategies. (Maybe, just maybe, it makes him think of the Magical Dimension’s version of DnD, but he won’t say that outloud to anyone but Tecna.)

-He also sort of liked the war game drills Red Fountain ran. And the off-world training exercises.

-And okay, he wasn’t a complete fan of the camping trips, but he did have his favorite camping moments. Like bonding with his squad-mates and getting to know more about the people around him.

-(And getting to learn more about people other than Zenithians. Despite being the tech giants of the Magical Dimension, Zenith doesn’t really communicate much with the rest of the realms. So this was a great experience for Timmy and he got to share his adventures with his family who also loved hearing about them.)

-The Sky/Brandon thing did hurt him though. Like he found out early-on who they really were because they weren’t as discreet as they should have been at Red Fountain. But the fact that they didn’t just come to him and admit to him who they were kind of stung. Especially since he was supposed to rely on these guys to be his ‘brothers-in-arms’.

-His crush on Tecna happened early-on too. When he first met her, she made him so nervous and he just couldn’t believe that he was talking to that Tecna Mode, daughter of the owners of Mode Inc., and he just… Almost lost his cool. (Okay he did lose it, but she laughed and joked and that made it so much more bearable.)

-(And the fact that after they started dating, his parents fell in love with her too, just sealed the deal for him.)

-He does tend to go to Helia and Brandon for romantic advice. He knows Tecna loves him as is, but he wants to continue being able to make her feel special and keep the warm-fuzziness going.

-When she was thought to be dead in Omega, Timmy had a full-on meltdown. He went to her memorial at Alfea and he cried like a baby to her parents. He apologized at least half a dozen times to them. But he swore to them he’d bring her back. Alive. Somehow. He swore it.

-It didn’t matter that everyone thought he was crazy or delusional. Tecna was alive and he could feel it. And so could Digit. And if anyone would know if Tecna was really dead, it’d be the damn pixie she was bonded to. So she had to be alive.

-And damn, when he did see her again, when they finally made it back to the ship in one piece… He almost couldn’t bear to let her go. He basically let Helia fly the ship back so he could spend the entire flight holding her. (And she let him, despite not usually being one for PDA.)

-After that, he texted her nearly non-stop for a month, just be sure she was still there. That it wasn’t a dream he’d had. Thankfully, it was all true. She was safe and back at Alfea.

-Timmy has a poor sleep schedule, despite having been training for early morning drills at RF since he was 14. When he’s working on a project though, nothing will stop him from finishing it. (Unless the others literally pull him away.)

-(Which has happened before. Riven will literally just scoop up Timmy and take him to his room and plop him down and be like ‘sleep or I’ll knock you out’.)

-Timmy has a small case of tinnitus due to blaster use and working on the RF ships.

-Timmy also runs mostly on caffeine. Coffee, energy drinks, soda. You name it. (Helia and Nabu have been subtly trying to remove the caffeine over the years, but Tecna keeps enabling him… Or rather, enabling them both since she also runs on caffeine.)

-Timmy has tried his hands at poetry. It’s not the best, but it makes him feel great to work on writing and Tecna absolutely loves the poems he writes for her.

-Stella and Timmy have secretly been working on uniforms for soldiers/cadets in training. She wants them to be a little more stylish and he has some ideas on how to better protect the person wearing them. (And maybe add in some heat/air condition stuff. Those things are super temperamental.)

-And Layla has been helping Timmy stay in shape since they all graduated and moved to Earth. (Well, temporarily relocated to Earth.) She knows he’s slacked a bit on training since he hasn’t been at RF, and he needs to keep on his toes.

-He likes Earth okay, but he has to fight his need to fix everything to be on par with the rest of the Magical Dimension. (Please Bloom? Just one car? Or maybe a computer? Please? Please?)

-Timmy loves when they have game-night at the loft. Even if it tends to end in screaming matches between Stella, Riven, Musa, and Tecna. (So many super-competitive people in one place.)

-He has discovered that he makes the ‘best sweet tea’. At least, according to Bloom. (He doesn’t understand her or what this ‘sweet tea’ is… He’s honestly just pretty sure he ruined a thing of tea… But hey… Earth is weird.)

-Timmy hopes that after all of this ‘saving the magical dimension’ stuff is over, he and Tecna will get to live a quiet life. Or at least one where their inventions and games blow-up and they get to bring joy to others’ lives.

-(But first, the Magical Dimension needs to stop needing to be saved. And like hell that’ll happen.)

[realestate63141]

How to conjure up your future: Zillow and Expedia co-founder Rich Barton’s advice to UW computer science grads

Rich Barton, the Zillow and Expedia co-founder, drew inspiration from Bill Gates, JFK, an ancient Greek myth “Weird Science” for his commencement address Friday at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Watch his address below, and continue reading for a transcript.

Rich Barton: Thank you to the faculty and staff of the University of Washington Computer Science Department. You’ve created something truly special here, a purple gem of a program in an Emerald City of opportunity for your graduates. UW Computer Science, are you kidding me? Wow. Congratulations on completing the most challenging and rewarding journey of your lives, and I’m not talking to you graduates right now. I’m talking to your parents. It was no small feat getting you from diapers and drool all the way to gowns and diplomas, and you know it. Let’s all, right now, say thank to your parents and supporters.

Now, I address you, graduates of the Class of 2017. For the next few minutes we’re going to talk about Pygmalion and the Wizard of Oz. Pygmalion is the title star in an ancient Greek myth. He was a sculptor who created a statue of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with it. His love was so pure and so strong that his statue came to life. Anyone who’s a fan of 1980’s geek flicks, and I’m sure there are a few of you out there, will recognize this as the plagiarized plot of one of the greats, “Weird Science.” Oh, wow. It stars Anthony Michael Hall, king of the geeks. No? All right, you gotta see it. If you’ve seen it, be honest. Okay, all right, all right. Get it. Put it on your Netflix list.

Two lovable geeks with a computer that used what looks kind of like a CAD program to create a woman who they loved so much that she actually comes to life and now they have a real girlfriend for the first time. Twentieth century sociologists named a human behavioral phenomenon after this myth. They observed that teams that have big audacious dreams achieve their dreams more frequently than is logically predictable. Thus the Pygmalion Effect was born. Great expectations beget great results.

An example. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” When President John F. Kennedy issued this challenge in 1961, most heard it as ludicrous. However, just eight years later, while the whole world watched a scratchy video feed on television, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and uttered these timeless words, “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.” Thank you for the chuckles. Trying to be dramatic up here. OK, that is the Pygmalion Effect. Great expectations beget great results.

Another, more local, example. “Our dream is a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software.” When Bill Gates first said this in the early 1980s along with Paul Allen about their tiny software company, anyone who was paying attention thought this dream far-fetched and silly. Almost no one had a personal computer at work or at home and yet today, you have one in your pocket, you’ll have one on your desk at work at your future job that I hope you have, you have one in your kitchen at home, you drive a computer and increasingly are driven by a computer. Computers are everywhere and clearly they’re not slowing down. Again, this is the Pygmalion Effect. Great expectations beget great results.

Here are just two quick examples from my personal experience. In 1996, when the web was brand new and I was a little older than you all, I told BusinessWeek magazine that Expedia would one day become the largest seller of travel in the world — helping everyone, everywhere make and take better trips. My bosses at Microsoft thought I was crazy. Well, in 2014, Expedia did become the largest seller of travel in the world, selling over $60 billion in travel.

Finally, 10 years ago, my Zillow co-founder Lloyd Frink and I, two geeks at a computer, created another big audacious dream while we were frustratingly shopping for homes and not getting the information that we deserved and needed. We decided we would use our technology skills to tear down the walls that separated regular folks from the real estate data they needed to make informed decisions about where to live. In so doing, we would create the largest real estate marketplace in the world.

Last month, the Zillow Group had over 170 million unique visitors to its sites and maps, and is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest real estate marketplace in the world. Again, and finally, this is the Pygmalion Effect: have a dream, gather or join a talented crew of fellow adventurers and make it so. Great expectations beget great results.

So it’s reasonable now to ask, “OK, Rich. What does it take to achieve these big dreams? Do you just click your heels and it magically happens?” I’m going to answer in an allegory through the three main characters of one of the great movie book Broadway shows of the 20th Century, the Wizard of Oz, and say that it takes a scarecrow, a cowardly lion, and a tin man. Each of these seekers overcame “lions and tigers and bears, oh, my,” wicked witches and flying monkeys as they followed the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, wherein, the great and powerful wizard was to grant each one a wish. Their wishes are what I wish for you as you begin your journey in pursuit of your big audacious dreams.

Rarely do I miss PowerPoint, let me tell you, but I don’t have it right now. I’m gonna ask you to close your eyes and picture the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. He’s got straw coming out of his head and he’s vapidly smiling, his eyes are wide. What was it that the scarecrow sought from the Wizard?

Brains. I heard it. “Use your brains” might seem like an unnecessary and obvious piece of advice to give to this super-bright class, but suffer me. In my grandfather’s time, the most important assets in the economy were hard assets, factories, ships, trucks, bricks and mortar. People were important mostly for the kinetic output of their muscles in their bodies. Employees were known as labor. Today, in the future that I foresee, people, not things, are the most valuable assets and they are so valuable mainly for the work product of their brains, not their brawn for the intellectual property that they create. Software, algorithms, designs, brands, ideas, these are what drive the information age.

The scarecrow sought brains — plural, not brain. Networks are much smarter, more complex and interesting than nodes. This is true of neurons, bees, servers, homo sapiens. You will need a network as well in order to achieve your dreams. You will need to be part of a team. Your fellow team members will not all be like the people you have been spending most of your time in 002 or 003 with. If you don’t already, you’ll learn to respect people who can’t do math quite as quickly as you can, but who can inspire with words or images, who can connect with people in an emotional way. Together, you will make a diverse team that will accomplish much more collectively than you could as an individual or as part of a homogenous team. Brains. This is what the scarecrow sought and what you will need.

Now close your eyes and picture the cowardly lion. He’s frightened, his shoulders are hunched, he’s holding his tail. He seeks … courage! Good. Excellent. Instead of rallying you around great courageous statements like FDR’s, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” I’m gonna tell you why courage should be an easy one for you all.

I know many of you may feel like you’re tiptoeing on a high-wire tightrope, especially as you graduate into the great unknown. You feel that if you slip or wobble, you might topple to your death. Here’s the secret. Shhh. You have a net under you. You are so lucky because most people don’t have this net. The net is your family and friends, your degree, the network of graduates you are sitting with right now, your professors. The net allows you to walk that tightrope with confidence. Take big swings. There is zero cost to missing the ball.

Actually, there is learning to be gained from swinging and missing. Parents may be cringing right now. They probably want you to take a safer path. They don’t want you back living in their house, in your old bedroom. However, you are at the most risk-tolerant point in your lives. Most of you probably don’t yet have a spouse or dependent children and you hopefully don’t have a huge pile of bills and possessions. Your risk profile will change as you age. Take a chance on pursuing a big, audacious dream now. Courage. This is what the cowardly lion sought and what you will need.

OK. The scarecrow was confused, the lion was scared, but the tin man was really in the worst shape before he met the wizard. The tin man was stoic and mean — standing stiffly with an axe at the ready. Can you see him? He was missing a heart. He didn’t feel. He didn’t have emotion. I’m sure you could see how critical heart will be on your journey. You gotta have heart. Will you do the right thing? Are your motives pure and transparent? Are you fair and kind?

Humans are meaningfully more emotional than we are logical because emotion evolved hundreds of millions of years prior to logic. Emotion is primal. We respond to body language more fundamentally than we do to spoken language and are persuaded more by images than by data, which I know maybe hard to accept for those of you who love your data out there. Our hearts beat faster when we feel passion and hope and excitement. However, our hearts beat faster when we feel fear or humiliation.

Unfortunately, it’s harder to inspire hope than it is fear, so the most common leadership style in human history is leadership by fear. Get it done or you’re fired. Give me your stuff or I will kill you. From Genghis Khan to Machiavelli and Frank Underwood right down to far too many current political leaders, business leaders, and the occasional college professor, fear as effectiveness is indisputable. However, it isn’t any fun nor is it healthy to live in a land of fear. Hope is harder, but much happier and healthier.

Therefore, as you set off to join teams that will change the world, make sure your team leader is not the tin man. As you become leaders yourselves, remember to risk showing and sharing your own heart. Heart. This is what the tin man sought, and what you will need.

The lesson of Pygmalion is to have a big dream. No matter the context or the organization, set ambitious and inspiring goals for yourselves and with your teams. More often than is reasonable to expect, you will find your dreams will come to fruition. Great expectations beget great results. Do not believe that there is a silver-bullet answer, or a wish-granting wizard that will make your dreams come true. In the movie, the great and powerful Wizard of Oz turned out to be a fraud. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” He was just a man.

The wizard’s gift was to simply hold up a mirror to his hopeful supplicants and show them what was inside of them already. You have brains. Take courage, demonstrate heart, and the Emerald City will be yours. Congratulations, and thank you.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2sfz0D4