Kurkistan

Navani mentions specific characteristics of *Ssssh*, so that's out. I suppose that it's possible that no one remembers *Ssssh*, and Navani is the only one to realize the universality of the amnesia, so her recounting could theoretically be false. But this would be ludicrously manipulative of her, and I see no reason for Navani to be the only person who realized the universality of the amnesia. This doesn't even consider what motivation she would have to torment Dalina by making stories up out of whole cloth. Once again, especially given Dalinar's certainty that he is responsible for his own amnesia, I doubt your theory.

I fall in the "Radiant => Admin powers for shard-items" camp myself. Here's the quote, by the way: Google Books WoK, Page 981:

I applied my vast lack of knowledge about the meaning of energy and physics in general to a similar thread awhile back, and my conclusion as to why you couldn't maintain flight off of a movable object was because the amount of energy a Coinshot could put into a push at any given time was dependent upon distance between the Coinshot and the anchor, perhaps modeled by an inverse exponential scale, akin to gravity.

Good work on both designs Inkthinker, although I think "I'm Wearing Your Mom" is a bit more appropriate as a one-off joke than as something that judgmental old people stare at me for wearing in public. I voted for 1 slightly over 3A. 3B is cool too, but unnecessarily wordy compared to 3A, in my opinion.

As for Bendalloy, I can see eating enough food for 1.25 days every day and it adding up for when you need it. Storing water would also be useful. I would probably go with Copper, although Steel certainly has its appeal.

This has been a fairly long break, hasn't it? New version up, I finally (yes, I am lazy) implemented a simple efficiency boost to the search algorithm, as well as throwing in a few odd grammars and fixes to existing grammars. Big news of the day is that I've implemented a <safe>[...]</safe> tag that protects the code within the tag from being touched by the transliteration aspect of the program. This way, particularly tricky words or proper names can be cordoned off and search-replaced manually. It's currently set to leave the tags in the final text, where they can be easily found and removed after manual transliteration. Ex. "<safe>Wow, Xanthophyll is not necessarily the most transmorgraphical name to pronounce, is it?</safe>" becomes: "<safe>.wow xanthophyll is not necessarily the most transmorgraphical name to pronounce is it</safe>" EDIT: Added in grammar for "indict" fixed some inefficiencies in how the <safe> tag was handled, and threw in some documentation and a rudimentary program flow for the benefit of Joe ST.

While this may still indicate that Ruin wanted an Inquisitor to metabolize Atium for him, Marsh did not in fact get a Feruchemical Atium spike from the get-go, although he presumably was under Ruin's control when he did, so Ruin cared enough about it to take the time to make Marsh spike himself while there was a human-race to be exterminated. From the recent Reddit Q&A: The "reasons [he] han't spoken of yet" might still be to metabolize Atium, with Brandon simply forgetting that he's already given this answer, but the possibility exists that there is still an unknown reason.

Praise be to the Stormfather, someone who knows how to program! I am by no means an expert programmer, and have not had reason to do much searching within strings or use regex before, so do not have a very thorough knowledge of either. On top of that, I initially set this down as the bare bones of what would work, then focused primarily on the transliteration aspect. On top of that, I really didn't give much thought to the actual mechanics of searching/replacing words, and I haven't done anything similar to this before, so didn't have a code library to easily draw upon. Any improvement you have are welcome: in fact, the way you're talking seems to indicate that you have entire functions that could just be substituted in instead of mine, which I would welcome moreso. EDIT: For some substantive replies to your specific suggestions: You're right that I could fairly easily implement a chunks-based version of this, but I don't think it's strictly necessary at this point in time. The largest file I've converted is the Odyssey at 120,162 words and 594 KB, while the largest file we would probably ever convert would probably be the WoK at ~400,000 words, which would still be only around the ball park of 2 MB. This is mostly laziness talking right not, though, not any genuine objection to the concept. Once again, a better search algorithm would be welcome. Also, we probably wouldn't be able to order them entirely by length, given that text segments at the beginning and ends of words require special treatment compared to general swaps. On the note of making things simpler, though, I now realize that I was introducing unnecessary complications into the existing code by not marking off phonetic text from un-converted text. My new version, besides throwing in some odd fixes and grammars, makes it so that all substituted strings are in CAPS, so that they are not overwritten twice. This might not give much more utility now, since I've made an effort to avoid such complications so far, but could vastly simplify any additions going forward, as well as possibly make the implementation of a mapping easier. EDIT 2: Well, that was an un-fun experiment. Too many problems introduced through capitalization, making interactions between sections of transformed and transformable text impossible, rather than the simply problematic of the status quo. Changes rolled back, incorporating new grammars into non-CAPS version.

Sorry for the implied belief that you were a vengeful monster there, Chaos. I was kidding with the "protect me" and "please don't down-vote!" comments, although I realize now that a less dour smiley would have conveyed that better. Discussion ftw! I'll trust your word that warranted down-votes exist. It's good that people are already on the ball with offensive material, but I believe that you actually undermine your own argument with your "If ten of these..." point in the last paragraph. With down-voting as criticism, it's not ten people telling you that your post was "completely idiotic" in a productive manner that you can learn from: it's ten people who just universally downgraded your Reputation for reasons that you may not fully understand, leading much more naturally to a "Wow, they hate me" response. Looking further down your post, I would much rather that any genuine criticism be expressed as a reply, while "dude, just no" responses are issued as down-votes. That's a quite well reasoned defense of the system, I must say. I had been focusing more on poorly-written or ill-informed posts than on the realm of posts to which no constructive response is possible, and I agree that there is some utility for down-votes within that realm. As long as you and the rest of the staff are keeping an eye out to make sure that things don't take a turn for the worse, then I suppose that we ought to attempt to retain this benefit of down-voting. As far as my "neutral argument" goes, the "hybrid" we currently have is just about as far down that road as I think we should ever go. I understand that sometimes people just don't have the time or inclination to write out full responses, but I still think that they're preferable. Thanks for taking the time to address my concerns, and for not smiting me with your mighty smiting powers (note the amusing, non-serious smiley this time).

Thanks for the support. Will you protect me when Chaos hunts me down for calling him blatantly wrong in a myriad of ways? (as long as he doesn't down-vote me...) I approached down-voting as if it could be disabled separately from up-voting, but my arguments are essentially the same in a world where they are inseparable: Keep the system the way it is, but by no means encourage down-voting, perhaps even actively discouraging it as an unavoidable relic of the system. The view of down-voting as a positive tool for this forum is still flawed in a world where the mechanism itself cannot be done away with.

Personally, I think that a down-vote option is not necessary as a rule, and particularly not in this community. If a post is so offensive that it actually requires community members to down-vote it as a means of "self-policing," then it will be both rare enough and offensive enough that it merits a Moderator's attention. I think that we have a good enough community that our Mods won't be swamped by the work In this case, down-voting may actually hinder the ability of the community to call attention to "bad elements" when members simply down-vote offensive/inappropriate posts and go about their day, duty done, instead of contacting a Mod. If by "self-policing" you refer to the possibility of using down-votes to spur and steer discussions, down-voting posts that you disagree with or find poorly written, but which are not offensive, then I think that this is a poor policy to follow both in the specific and the general case. First of all, our community does not, as a rule, down-vote anyone. Just about every time I've seen a down-vote on this forum, it's been immediately followed by a post saying "sorry, I meant to up-vote you, could someone else please up-vote that post for me?" I, at least (and others, from what have seen), up-vote posts I see as particularly funny, witty, helpful, or insightful. People simply don't "vote" on posts that aren't particularly noteworthy, and any post actually bad enough to warrant imposing the stigma associated with a down-vote upon is probably tangibly offensive, and worth contacting a moderator to address. I imagine that the reason why we focus almost exclusively on up-votes is because of the universal nature of Reputation on this forum, tracked under each and every post and strongly related to image and prestige. Down-voting someone for saying something that you disagree with, or for using poor grammar, is thus counterproductive and harmful to the community at large as it discourages members from voicing their opinions due to fear of having their Reputation and reputation damaged as a result. Especially given the current nature of Reputation and "votes" in this forum, I think that an attempted shift towards a more "negative" culture would be bad for us. It's always better to have actual input from someone who agrees or disagrees with you than just a number at the bottom corner of your post, which might have been a comment on how insightful it was, how that Portal reference was awesome (or annoying enough to warrant a down-vote), or just an accident as the anonymous forumite who clicked the down-vote button missed his initial mark. Even intentional down-votes don't provide as much tangible feedback as a well thought out criticism of a post that you genuinely disagree with. In the general case, I imagine that a "neutral" voting culture would be one such that members up- and down-vote freely to voice their support for various positions in discussions. As a rule, I hold that actual posts with substantive reasoning are always better than a number tacked onto the end of a post, but perhaps this might be the best solution in massive communities where it's unreasonable to read the hundreds of "me-to" posts that cluster around major ideas, with most users instead anonymously supporting their champions through voting. We have a small community of people with good ideas though, and we really don't up- or down-vote enough or for the "right" reasons for this kind of system. If your goal is to use down-voting as a means of self-policing unacceptable behavior within the community, then I believe that you actually undermine that goal by lowering report-rates and allowing problem-members to continue posting for longer before being brought to the attention of the Moderators. If your goal is to spur discourse, then I believe both that our culture is such as not to abide this use of Reputation and that, even if it was, we are small enough that substantive posts are still feasible and preferable when voicing support or opposition to the ideas of others. P.S. For instance, I could have just down-voted Chaos' post instead of providing everyone with this mega-post. How terrible that would have been for all of my loyal readers.

If you average together your response times, you still get a pretty good number, so you're still ahead. Yeah, I've since rued that "endgame" comment. Not so much at that point. I'm hesitant to say it again. Just as a note (and/or excuse), my main computer just kicked the bucket, leaving me without the "Test.txt" file that contained just about every problem word ever, which I checked every time I updated to guard against accidental changes. So there might be some more mistakes of that nature in this version. Fixed all of Turos' bugs, made the replace() function a bit more efficient, then made it less efficient by adding on "ized" and "iest" suffixes. Made it so that hyphens are turned into spaces upon conversion. Threw in a few random grammars like "align" and "ape\n." EDIT: Cleaned up some r-ender words interactions with suffixes, generalized -iest to just -est, added in .def, .fly, cite\n and city\n grammars. EDIT 2: Added rules for eir\n, ere\n. EDIT 3: I have no idea how to post attachments otherwise and don't feel like starting a photobucket account just for my signiature. EDIT 4: Added in specific grammar for "Roman" and more general grammars for .rom so that my signiature isn't false advertising. Might need to focus more on "an\n" as a suffix (Trojan, Sicilian, etc.). Added in rules for possessives, moved the counter for the replace() function down so that it didn't double count calls, added in dle\n rules.

No problem, you've had a remarkable turnaround speed so far. This also gives me extra time to polish the next version before you test it. Speaking of that. . . Generalized .or\n to just .or EDIT: Sped up inAlphabet() and fixed file name within the code so that it can actually run.

Interview More importantly, I would suggest running away from this section of the boards as quickly as possible. Even the titles of some threads are spoilerific.

Well, Spook's parents abandoned him/his father-figure was killed, and he does have some crazy acrobatics going on in HoA...

EDIT: Firstly: Thank you. Secondly: You may want to hold off for a moment. I'm doing some rather large revisions to boost efficiency, which are having odd side-effects. EDIT: Okay, done with that. Also added in some .pie rules. Essentially, I made a very foolish programming error that resulted in running about 20 times as many replace() functions as I needed to: This spiked run-times by a small amount. As evidence, I ran the odyssey for only 18 minutes, 16 seconds, despite having more grammars than the last time I ran it. EDIT 2: Made periodMover() a bit more efficient as well as allowing it to work on an arbitrary number of periods, added in a few rules for xious\n, irst\n, stion\n, the pp's.

I warn you, it's gotten slightly longer to convert things. The Odyssey was bumped up from 8 minutes to 2 hours, 16 minutes . EDIT: That's a %1600 increase, for all you folks at home.

Dealt with Turos' bugs, added rules for suffixes which add a 't' onto the end of words, added a few more "pp" rules, although there might be a few more floating around. Specifically, a few of the bugs that Turos pointed out were actually intentional on my part based upon Dictionary.com phonetics: I meant which->huiC. I messed up with case->seys, but it should have been case->keys all along. Many of the cases of .a->.uh are actually intentional, although it varies by word, and so is still worth double checking.

*Bows* Second that. If you want an Latin/Roman transliteration of an Alethi file, then your best bet is just to hope that the file was originally typed in English, and acquire that source file. It might be possible to transliterate raw Alethi, despite the fact that our Alethi alphabet has fewer characters: someone might be able to reverse-engineer my program or create one of their own from scratch to transliterate it into English. The problem is that the spelling of many English words is phonetically arbitrary, so you won't be able to get proper spelling unless you put in a ludicrous amount of work, and maybe not even then. ---------------------- I'm away from my computer and working files for a few more hours, but these all look like relatively simple issues, not the death-log of your last test. Most of them are just stupid mistakes I made, like forgetting the second '\n' when going from "tual\n"->"Cual\n." I'll take a look at that tab problem as well, although that's almost certainly just an itsy bitsy coding issue, not a implication-ridden grammatical error. EDIT: Found it in the spoiled code already. I need to move removeCharacter() higher up in the function: There was a colon just before that tab, and that's what the period was moving to. I agree wholeheartedly that Spanish would be easier. English spelling is what happens when you take one alphabet, use it to generate choose-your-own-adventure spelling for two completely different families of languages, and then mash those languages back together again, stealing from a few others along the way.

That was fun. Thanks again for putting in all of that work. Now you get to re-check everything to make sure my fixes didn't mess anything else up! Yeah! I probably need to sit down and reorganize the grammars to eliminate interference, which was the cause of a fair amount of your issues, but I'm too close to it right now. I didn't get your tab problem, so if you still have it for this version, then please send me the before and after text files that contain that specific error. I also disagree with your categorical "ged\n"->"jeg\n." There's some nuance there. Fixed all of Turos's most recent bugs, added in "pp" rules, as well as rules for sufixes of words ending in 'p.' EDTI: Deleted some of the old versions to make room in my attachments.

Ow. Very thorough. Thank you very much for doing this: I doubt that I could have stood going through another transliteration of the Odyssey looking for errors. I see much work ahead, but at least the end is in sight. *knocks on wood* The system of phonetics that I'm using is the one used on Dictionary.com, simply because of ease of use and consistency. I' going to say goodbye to efficiency for now and just tack on all of those suffixes without looking for necessary conflicts between them. A three-suffix limit should accomplish the job, although it will be less efficient than looking for individual conflicts. If you do end up adding number characters, be sure to tell me so that I can add them to the "allowed" list when removing forbidden characters. I'll whip something up to remove forbidden characters, but I think that abbreviations and acronyms will just have to go the way of the dinosaurs for now, given the complexity involved in fixing them and the relative ease with which they can be avoided. "Poetry," was an example of the comma not being recognized, so getting rid of them would solve that. I do warn you: I'm going to take a bit of a break for now, and I'll probably start working on this in a few hours at the earliest. I'm a bit burned out just now. EDIT: Looking at the suffix list, I think I'll just leave well enough alone for now. Most of them are just the ends of existing words, not "tacked on."

Yeah, it get's confusing when Eric posts in the same thread as people warning newcomers about Eric spiking them.

Perhaps it's only all in or all out, but I have some doubts about what that quote means. I think Brandon might have misheard the question there. Mi'chelle wasn't asking about whether time bubbles move, but what happens when you half-bubble a stationary target. Brandon started talking about trains again in his answer. It's a possibility, at least. EDIT: I was hoping to sneak using velocities instead of energy past you by using exactly half of the object at a time. If that doesn't work, though, then I suppose that, once again, you have crushed my poor, sad hopes using your cruel "reality."

Ok then, thanks for trying to explain. I get it a bit more now. I think I'll just sit here quietly until someone else comes along to prove how awesome I was without even knowing it. I feel dumb. Last effort before I take a break to let my brain cool down before possibly looking at the numbers again: what do I do wrong in my math in this post? P.S. I think I'll just start PM'ing you before I start any physics-related threads from now on.

Second and third-ed. I've been using Notepad++ for my crazy-insane transliteration project with Turos, and I can't believe that I didn't make it my default text editor until now.