Mestiv

This is may be surprising, but the fact they know seven languages is in many cases very unimpressive. Most imperative languages like C++ or Java are very similar to one another. I think that every programmer worth their salt can learn new imperative language in a matter of days and write the simplest of programs after couple of hours. (Knowing standard libraries, frameworks, good practices etc. is a whole different story, but I bet those other students don't have that kind of knowledge.) To cheer you up a bit let me tell you, that when I started to learn programming in university I didn't know anything about it either. Most of other students had already known stuff that for me was rocket science. But guess what? After one year, many of those students that seemed to know a lot didn't pass the exams. Why? Because they had bad habits, bad practices. They felt to sure of themselves and didn't pay attention to those super important details that professors were pointing out for us. So don't be afraid, having no knowledge of programming might turn out to be an advantage for you in the long run! I agree, just ask From what I've noticed, we have quite a number of programmers here, so I'm sure we'll be able to help

Have an upvote from a fellow programmer

I personally haven't heard of such setup. However one thought: An excellent bow with poor quality arrow is probably not that great. If you are to put so much emphasis on bows/crossbows remember to make production of projectiles an art too

But you will... It'll just take you 2 years But let's say you just skip 2 years. It turns out that everyone everywhere wears only the Borat Swimsuit when they go swimming and no one will explain to you why. I wish I had extra 5 hours of time every day (apart from the normal 24h everyone else has).

Little comic to keep the randomness of this thread going

So, now a question with much more sense. We can see that humans in cosmere are pretty much similar to us. That includes their pursuit of technology, at least on Scadrial, where, after TLR was gone, we have a technology boom. My question is: Why on Roshar, after Aharietiam, when they had 4500 year of rest from desolations, they didn't do much progress with technology? And I'm not just talking about the bronze-iron-steel-steam-electricity progress we know from our (and Scadrial) history. I mean progress like in fabrial creation and soulcasting. In WoK and WoR we see that Navani herself was involved in creation of a couple of new types of fabrials. It seems like if almost no progress has been done for thousands of years, until several decades ago when Navani went into fabrial-making business. Does Roshar lack coal to start an industrial revolution? Is fabrial-making that hard and Navani is a Tesla-level genius?

Oh my, megafauna on the dark side sounds sooo amazing O.O I'm struck with an image of a colossal (like 10 meter high, 50 meters wide) crustaceans crawling in the darkness, devouring all the dead bio-mass that is left after wild vegetation of those long days. Then it retreats back into the oceans, when the sun is beginning to rise again... The dark side would make a great setting for some exploration stories Thanks for linking me to this article and wikipedia page Too bad, my English isn't better than it is and I couldn't understand it 100%, but still the part I read was interesting. I admin I was wrong with the assumptions about Darkside place in the culture of the habitants, thera are many more options than I thought

I'm currently working on a dual monitor setup so I have two backgrounds, one for each The first, bigger one I use most of the time: And the smaller one I use for secondary things to keep an eye on: EDIT: Who can recognize the anime?

Support for Nalthis beeing 5th Essence world: It has focus "Wood, plants, moss" - the Tear's of Edgli are the main source of dyes for materials and the colors are required for Awakening just as much as glass and crystals are needed for Surgebinding and using Stormlight. I think that Sel fits number 9. Dakhor makes bones change shape, Elantrians are bound by the shape of land (made of stone). ChayShan use forms users create with their bodies and the shape of the body is determined by the position of bones. You can make Forging stamps from bones and Soulstones which are after all kind of a rock.

That's 6 pages before I can reach any real topics. And yes, I did count them or rather I had my computer count them, he is much more reliable.

Well Kobold, your solar system got me really intrigued and I made some research First of all, the setup of one M-type small star and another F-type supergiant. How did such a configuration came to existance? Or actually, never mind, let's have fun with what you gave us To imagine how would a system you described behave, I found a great tool. With it, using this data: you can see how a system with one star 20 times heavier than the other and a planet placed in 5/6 of the distance between the stars would behave. Looks like a star-planet-moon configuration actually, where your planet is the moon. However, you obviously know, that star-planet-moon systems work on a very different scale. Now, time for a disclaimer I'm in no way any authority on astrology or cosmology. My physics knowledge isn't that great. I'm a programmer and what follows are my wild speculations backed up by common sense and basic knowledge Star sizes I'd advice to keep with more modestly sized stars. Supergiants were named like this for a reason. Our sun's radius is 1/215 of astronomical unit (source) and supergiants can have radius "from 30 to 500, or even in excess of 1,000 solar radii (R☉)". With stars placed so close together, your supergiant would a) suck the smaller star into itself rip the planet away from the smaller star and burn it like mosquito electric killer kills a mosquito. So, for the rest of my post I'll assume, that the bigger star is: bigger and brighter, but not that much bigger. Climate and temperatures I'd love to see some explanations of how those models with equalized temperatures work. For me, that sounds very counter intuitive, after all, our planet is rotating, has a lot of water that stabilizes the climate, and still, we have around 100°K differences between temperatures near the equator and the poles. I'm very curious. I wonder how much water do you want to have on this planet. After all, the more water, the more stable the temperatures. Day and night With one star and a tidally locked planet, there is not day or night. There is only the light bright and dark side. However, there is another star in the system that allows there to be day/night cycle, but not like we know it. So, first some definitions I want to use: Equator - For this planet I think equator will be the border between the bright and dark side. Minor Year - time needed by the planet to circulate around the smaller star. Due to the tidal lock, it can be observed by observing the bigger star on the sky. Major Year - time needed for the smaller star to finish it's circle around the bigger star. Can be more or less easily observed by keeping an eye on the stars and the horizon and position of the bigger sun. Day/Night - depends on the visibility of the bigger star on the sky. Month - Well, it might not exist at all. You didn't mention a moon Now, looking at the movement of the astral bodies in the simulator: As we can see, there are 4,5 minor years per major year. Now, an interesting observation: One day = one minor year. So actually, we have a planet, where the concepts of year and day are interchangeable. Cool How long would this minor year be in comparison with our years? No idea, you can pick some reasonable value I guess. Something from a couple of Earth months to couple of Earth years. The passing of days will obviously have huge impact on the life of the planet. The influence will be much greater on the dark side, as the bigger star will be the only source of energy. On the bright side the difference between day and night would be noticeable, but not that important. Life on the bright side Any life forms on this side of the planet has to be adapted to constant supply of heat and light. The plants would probably not be bound by any vegetation cycle. Unfortunately, I can't speculate much more as I don't know how much water there would be available. Important thing about the animals: they would probably not sleep like most of the animals on earth. I suspect they would utilize something like our dolphins - half-brain sleep. That would allow them to stay at least mildly active all the time, as there is no mechanism to synchronize predators with their pray, the herbivores have to be awake all the time. Only the predators at the end of the food chain would be able to allow themselves to actually sleep like we do. Life on the dark side Days and night on the dark side are very long. That means, that all life there would adapt to this cycle. Because of the little supply of warmth and light from the bigger, further star, both fauna and flora would be rather small and inconspicuous. Hibernating to survive the nights or evolving to acquire food some other way. Civilization So, time to think about the sentient inhabitants of the planet. I assume that they are native to this world. They somehow evolved to humanoid form or not, I don't really care. If they made a civilization, here are my thoughts on it: Measuring time. I think any civilization needs a way to measure time to coordinate any bigger work (unless this is hive-mind like species). Without any reasonable reference point how would they approach this? The movement of the bigger star on the sky is too slow to be precise. Maybe they would use the moon as the reference if they have any? If they don't, I think they would develop different ways of measurement in different regions. Some tribes would measure the time by observing life-cycle of some plants, other would measure it by observing a geyser or something. When they become more technologically capable, they would probably create some clocks and unify their time keeping. When they reach certain point with their technology the problem of energy consumption won't be a problem at all. With constant and reliable supply of light from the smaller star, they can just flood their lands with solar panels and harvest as much energy as they want. They can utilize the solar energy even earlier than that. Take a big container of water and use huge mirrors to redirect sun and heat the thing up. With some practice and steady supply of water, you would be able to create an engine providing a steady and reliable pressure of steam to power any machine. I can see some steampunk applications right here With their sun just hanging on the skies always in the same place and a compass the navigation becomes trivial on the bright side of the planet. (Assuming, that the magnetic poles are not in the same places where the hot/cold poles are). To pinpoint any location, you just need to know the height of the sun and how many degrees should there be between the compass needle and the sun, when you face it. Not sure if that would influence the civilization in any meaningful way I assume the civilization would develop on the bright side of the planet. Their culture would be very interesting. I suppose that darkness would be something that most people would be terrified of, like we are terrified of losing our sight. Their religion would most definitely demonize the darkness and discourage people from colonizing the dark side. Miners would probably be considered the bravest of all men. You can have a very interesting setup, if there would be two civilizations. One from the dark and one from the bright side separated by an ocean or something. Imagine their first encounters. Not sure how the darksiders would develop yet Well, that was a wall of text... I hope you'll find some of my thoughts interesting sorry for kind of 'hijacking' your world idea

Post your problems on the 17th Shard and I bet someone will help you understand

For a long time I've been playing with a very general idea of a magic world. You know this cliche of "old, powerful magic"? Like in almost every book where they have magic, there are some artifacts of ancient magic, much more powerful than the magic main characters use? That always got me a bit angry, as it negates the humanity desire and ability to progress. I want a world, where magic is more powerful than it has ever been before, and characters are baffled by how primitive the "ancient artifacts" are. That setting would be usable only for some silly story I guess, but still, it would nicely point out, how "ancient magic" is overused in the fantasy genre.

Can you become a ShardNerfGun?

About the not-green plants, here are some explanations: http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1110 It boils down to the fact, the chlorophyll is not the only option for plants to generate nutrition from the sun, there are other photosynthetic pigments that have different colors. The purple plants you are mentioning have a lot of Anthocyanin (but they also have chlorophyll like the others), just because those plants have different mix of pigments in their leaves, they appear purple Now, for the stars... I'm really not any expert on those things, so I can't say if such configuration would be stable or not However, I really like the idea of a planet that's tidally locked to it's star. That would probably result, that on this planet, next to the magnetic poles, there would be temperature poles Extremely hot where the planet is closest to the start and extra cold on the exact opposite side. This setting would probably result in a circular area spanning around the whole planet, where life would be possible. It would start at the border of the shadow and span in the direction of the heat pole. How wide would it be depends on how far from the start the planet would be... Hmm... I really like this planet idea! And the other, bigger yet further star would allow to have some exotic life-forms in the dark side of the planet.

Is pretty good at going in circles around the sun, she just completed another round!

Calling anime "silly Chinese cartoons"...

Congratulations on completing another round around the Sun And here is something random:

Me and my GF have spent last night trying to catch a homeless kitten living on a parking lot, got to bed at 5AM and now I'm just struggling to stay awake at work... We didn't catch him :/ I hope that this night will go better as we'll use a trap.

Confusing Star Wars and Star Trek

Kind of a silly question: While rereading WoK when I reached chapter "Errorgance". In this single chapter the sentence "Jasnah sniffed." is present 3 times in a fairly short chapter. Was she cold? Or is there some hidden meaning to this sniffing?

Good My idea for the plot: During excavations near some big city, normal Shushland workers discovered a Silimatic artifact. When they accidentally activated it, they disappeared and the still active artifact is now visible using Oculator Lenses no matter how far you are from it. It appears as a bright dot for every Oculator far away and a very bright flair for those closer. Of course, Librarians are trying to lay their hands on it, but it appears, that the company that excavated it, is not just any ordinary Shushland organization and wont let them easily take it. So we have a Smedry task force trying to get the artifact, Librarians trying to get the artifact and normal humans defending the artifact. Does that sound plausible and interesting? Anyone else want to share ideas? Maybe someone else has better story we can turn into our RP

That wouldn't work you may as well push on the front eith your legs. However, it you pushed on the other carts and shelves, you would move

Thank you Kobold, you just saved the day