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Ask Chaos Anything!


Chaos

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/14/2023 at 7:27 AM, Ookla the Prehistoric said:

What was your opinion on high school when you were in it?
(Sorry if that question triggers PTSD)

Also are you as terrifying as I think you are? 

*cowers in fear*

High school sucks. College is way, way better. Being able to go to a class and just have a break for several hours is awesome, compared to being in school for eight hours straight. You can choose who to associate with way easier... yeah, high school blows.

Am I terrifying? I don't think so. I'm just chilling. I think I just have this reputation because I am often taking the role as Bad Cop during moderation. (Admittedly, I do kind of enjoy it; I don't take crap from people.) But yeah, I'm just a nerd. Check me out on Shardcast, that'll probably humanize me more.

On 11/17/2023 at 7:55 AM, TheRavenHasLanded said:

ok, question: do you ever wish you could delete bot accounts? or are you able to do that?

Oh, I can, it's just low priority. There are many, many, many things I can do, and some things are just... way less important than others. Banned accounts are totally irrelevant so it's like, that's so far down the list, you know?

Now, being able to prevent them from registering would be great. That's what I really want. 

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10 hours ago, Chaos said:

High school sucks. College is way, way better. Being able to go to a class and just have a break for several hours is awesome, compared to being in school for eight hours straight. You can choose who to associate with way easier... yeah, high school blows.

Am I terrifying? I don't think so. I'm just chilling. I think I just have this reputation because I am often taking the role as Bad Cop during moderation. (Admittedly, I do kind of enjoy it; I don't take crap from people.) But yeah, I'm just a nerd. Check me out on Shardcast, that'll probably humanize me more.

Oh, I can, it's just low priority. There are many, many, many things I can do, and some things are just... way less important than others. Banned accounts are totally irrelevant so it's like, that's so far down the list, you know?

Now, being able to prevent them from registering would be great. That's what I really want. 

isnt there like a thing where you can ask if theyre a bot?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/27/2023 at 5:40 PM, Ookla-The-Stick said:

Did you enjoy being a Beta reader for Defiant? (assuming that was you mentioned in the list at the back of the book :P )

Well, betas are always work, and I will admit there has been quite a lot of such work. I am pretty tired. But Defiant was a pretty fast and easy one, so that was nice :) So yes, I did! 

I do not mean to sound ungrateful. It's more just, sometimes throughout the process I've read the book 2-3 times before it comes out, and Brandon put out five books this year, so I've done a lot of stuff.

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On 12/9/2023 at 8:08 PM, Ookla thePresentParticiple said:

Is it strange that before I started watching Shardcast I expected you to look like your profile picture? You turned out to be much less green.

Hah! No, I am not surprised. This happened a lot even in the earliest renditions of Shardcast in 2012, where people were very surprised what my voice sounded like.

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15 hours ago, Ookla the Resolute said:

What's the quality you look for most in others?

I'm happy to answer this, but I suppose what context? This has vastly different answers depending on if it's a friend, romantic partner, coworker, or student.

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Thank you for this site, this thread, and for sparing some time when you have it or just need to do something different to rest some brain cells. 

  1. How are the book(s) coming (besides slowly)?
    • Do you intend to try getting published when complete, or just writing for yourself, family and friends?
  2. You mentioned Butcher a few pages back, is that Dresden Files, Codex Alera and/or Cinderspires?
    • Do you have a preference amongst them?
    • Have you also tried Kevin Hearne (since similarities abound - Dresden/Iron Druid | Codex Alera/Seven Kennings)?
  3. Any other non-Sanderson Speculative Fiction you recommend to friends?
  4. Did you read The Martian (Weir)?
    • If yes, what did you think of the math and physics, as written?

Thank you very much and have a great day. 

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On 12/12/2023 at 8:06 AM, Ookla the Resolute said:

Coworkers, let's say

Initative and an observational eye.

16 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Thank you for this site, this thread, and for sparing some time when you have it or just need to do something different to rest some brain cells. 

  1. How are the book(s) coming (besides slowly)?
    • Do you intend to try getting published when complete, or just writing for yourself, family and friends?
  2. You mentioned Butcher a few pages back, is that Dresden Files, Codex Alera and/or Cinderspires?
    • Do you have a preference amongst them?
    • Have you also tried Kevin Hearne (since similarities abound - Dresden/Iron Druid | Codex Alera/Seven Kennings)?
  3. Any other non-Sanderson Speculative Fiction you recommend to friends?
  4. Did you read The Martian (Weir)?
    • If yes, what did you think of the math and physics, as written?

Thank you very much and have a great day. 

1. The Prophet King is going okay, though I did not get as much progress as I would have liked this year. This term has been very busy. I'm halfway through part two of five, 80,000 words in. That's about a third of the way, maybe. 

As for your other questions, I think I need to make a blanket comment that my scant reading time tends to mostly just be Sanderson stuff. Maybe if he stopped writing so much I would have some more time...  

2. Dresden Files; I've read all the mainline books. I have never been disappointed by reading one; they have always been good. I did start Codex Alera some amount of years back, but I didn't read enough of it to get into it, and other stuff got in the way so I put it down and never picked it back up again. Maybe when more Cinder Spires books have come out I could get into them. 

3. 😅 Look, I will always recommend Asimov's Foundation series. I think it dealt with something like the Diagram much better. I clicked on that Recommended Reading list and I admit, way too intimidating for me to properly process. My TBR list of books I already own is probably a decade long, no joke. 

4. I have not! I think Project Hail Mary would be first to read.

Anyway, that is an extremely boring answer. I admit, I am not well read. Other staffers are much better read, I think because they can listen to audiobooks on commutes. Audiobooks do not work for me; it's hard for me to process the words, and when I listen, I just end up thinking, man I could read this in text so much faster. Obviously part of the appeal of audiobooks is that you can read at more times, like commuting, but I don't know. Reading in small increments every day sounds torturous... 

In my very lame defense, I conceivably have five different jobs. One is my tutoring coordinator job (the one that actually pays me). Then the second is any other classes I teach, like this last term which just ended today. Third is moderation and Shard work. Fourth is content creation for the Shard. And then, the one I really want to do is my personal writing. 

So, uh, if you wonder why I don't have time, that's why! There's so so many things I wish I had time to do, like more Coppermind editing. Realistically I need to shove tons of things on the backburner to be an author, which is what I really want to do with things. 

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3 hours ago, Chaos said:

The Prophet King is going okay, though I did not get as much progress as I would have liked this year. This term has been very busy. I'm halfway through part two of five, 80,000 words in. That's about a third of the way, maybe. 

Progress is progress. Congratulations.

3 hours ago, Chaos said:
  • Dresden Files; I've read all the mainline books. I have never been disappointed by reading one; they have always been good.
  • I did start Codex Alera some amount of years back, but I didn't read enough of it to get into it, and other stuff got in the way so I put it down and never picked it back up again.
  • Maybe when more Cinder Spires books have come out I could get into them.
  • Mainline books. So probably not all of the short stories?
    • If so, newest Short stories (post Battlegrounds) are Toot-toot POV (Little Things), and Mouse POV (Fugative)
    • If you consume epubs - I collected all of the Year of Dresden free fiction from Butcher's website and crafted by own epub for them so I can have them on-the-go. Since they are free personal use, I can get it to you if you would want it. Feel free to PM if you are interested.
  • Codex Alera is great - and since it is complete, you don't have to add an ongoing series to your reading list (but it's also not going anywhere) - Six books total
  • Well, book 2 finally came out, but I haven't gotten to it yet either (I'll need to reread Book 1 first)
3 hours ago, Chaos said:

I will always recommend Asimov's Foundation series.

Absolutely. Foundation and Robot Series (Bailey and R. Daneel) were my intro to Speculative Fiction (along with Narnia and Michael Crichton) and I love them.

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

I have not! I think Project Hail Mary would be first to read.

This is also on my to-read list. Excerpt from Weir's essay about The Martian (and why I thought you might like it):

Spoiler

I’m a nerd.

<snip>

 I study orbital dynamics as a hobby.

<snip>

One day, in between doing highly charismatic non-nerdy things, I started working up a manned Mars mission in my head. I even wrote my own software to calculate the orbital trajectory my imaginary crew would take to get from Earth to Mars. And not some boring Hohmann Transfer, either! I envisioned a constantly accelerating VASIMR-powered ship, which—ahem. Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, I had to account for failure scenarios on their surface mission. What if something went wrong? How could I design the mission so the crew would have contingency plans? What if they had multiple failures, one after another, that ruined those contingency plans?

While working that out, I started to realize their increasingly desperate solutions would make a pretty interesting story. That’s when I came up with the idea for The Martian.

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

Audiobooks do not work for me; it's hard for me to process the words, and when I listen, I just end up thinking, man I could read this in text so much faster. Obviously part of the appeal of audiobooks is that you can read at more times, like commuting, but I don't know. Reading in small increments every day sounds torturous... 

In my very lame defense, I conceivably have five different jobs.

Finally, somebody else who agrees. I'm glad Audiobooks exist for those that want them, I'm just not one of those people (waiting on Lux Prose). 

I get it, busy is as busy does. I picked up an e-paper reader so I can read in unproductive situations (waiting in line at the store, waiting at the doctor's office, etc.) There will always be more good books than time to read them.

Good luck to you.

Edited by Treamayne
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We are recording more WoBs this month. It won't come out on New Year's Eve.

There are a lot of WoBs to do--including still some remaining from our interview--so I would not be surprised if there would be 3-4 episodes to get through everything.

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9 minutes ago, Chaos said:

We are recording more WoBs this month. It won't come out on New Year's Eve.

There are a lot of WoBs to do--including still some remaining from our interview--so I would not be surprised if there would be 3-4 episodes to get through everything.

I'm looking forward to it. I love WoB episodes.

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  • 1 month later...
30 minutes ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

Where'd you get your profile picture from?

Topic Page 2, Chaos said: (not using quote so as to not summon wrath upon me (yet))

Quote
On 6/13/2015 at 11:00 AM, Quiver said:

Who is that in your avatar image?

It's been bugging me forever.

It's a character from Guild Wars, my MMO series of choice. This is Shiro Tagachi, the villain of actually my least favorite of GW1's campaigns. It requires a bit of explanation as to why he's my avatar, as he's been it since before 17S existed.

You see, back in... 2006, when Guild Wars Factions came out, I lived with my dad in the middle of nowhere. We had dialup. Surprisingly, Guild Wars 1 worked okay on dialup, actually, as much of that game was instanced. That was nice.

Anyway, Shiro's plotline was pretty terrible. He came back from the dead, brought affliction, blah blah. In the final battle with Shiro I kept DCing because dialup was also awful, but I managed to get credit for the mission. The end cutscene had someone explain that they need an especially bad place for him in the afterlife, since he already left it once. So that person said Shiro was going to "a place of eternal torment."

Naturally, I assumed this to be a dialup modem. It makes sense. It basically is eternal torment.

From there I began to say that random disconnecting was Shiro's fault. Later when I got better internet, when routers randomly need to be rebooted, I also blame Shiro. He is a convenient scapegoat for all networking problems.

His powers have grown over the years. If a snowstorm takes out the internet, I blame Shiro. His mythology that I have invented is extensive now. There's the Anti-Shiro, god of networking, but Shiro erased his name. Shiro can turn into a cat, and for some reason, I have memory of Matt Damon/Jason Bourne being part of Shiro's mythology. I don't really know why.

Shiro's my avatar in penance, so he takes pity upon me and does not destroy my internet.

That, or I liked the wallpaper at the time, and I might just think it's so weird if I change it now.

 

Edited by Treamayne
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