The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

1) Can't argue with that. I use the card art straight from Wizards for the images. I'm not sure I would feel right using high-res images off an artist's website. Usually you have to pay for that stuff, and I am just not there at this point.

2) I tried to make that happen. I drove myself crazy for a full weekend once trying to get the site to look how I wanted it to. I failed. Wordpress is pretty terrible for customizing formatting.

3) Much of what I put into the Baron Von Count deck is just there to trigger the ability, that is true. However, most of it doubles as a fair defense for a low cost, while not presenting much of a threat to other players (meaning they might leave me alone to set up). That said, Dismember and Breath of Darigaaz would be excellent additions. Bloodgift Demon is more expensive than I am willing to put into the deck, but what you might do can be completely different than what I've proposed.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to comment. It means a lot.

-Phobos

From what little I have read from your blog, I have a handful of gripes. Make of them what you will.

First, the resolution of your thumbnail images is poor for their size. I would recommend using card art instead of the entire card. You should be able to find high quality scans on artist websites.

Second, please center your card images. This is just an aesthetic preference. I find having everything skew to the left to be a bit of a headache.

As for your decks, I feel your Baron Von Count deck is a bit lacking. Almost the entire deck is packed with cards that are meant to trigger your commander's ability. Most of these cards do very little for you otherwise. This deck should carry more control spells. Adding removal cards like Dismember (gets 1,3,and 5!), board wipes like Breath of Darigaaz (1,2,and 4) and Void (garbage, but on-theme), and draw like Bloodgift Demon (1,3,4, and 5) or Erebos (1,2,3, and 5, rather expensive) would benefit your deck.

See here. (because I took that as a challenge).

More seriously, in code meant for readability, I prefer spaces around +=, == and the like.

While the literature many of us produce CAN feature quite a bit of swearing - there are M-rated fics sporked every so often, after all - the Board is expected to be family-friendly, so IIRC, explicit language is strictly prohibited.

1. Anything you feel might be of interest to the PPC (e.g. stories, news articles, websites, trebuchets full of pie) is on-topic for the Board. Don't worry about your interests being too eclectic either — someone's likely to be interested.
   
   17. Please try to word your posts in a way that encourages discussion and interaction. We like those things. If you're posting links, you're encouraged to expand on them somewhat.
   
   18. That doesn't mean the PPC is Serious Business! Silliness and insanity are welcome here — even encouraged. Feel free to leave your sanity at the door. Most PPCers do.
   
   19. There is no Article 19.
   
   22. If there's a thread about badfic on the top half of the front page already, go ahead and add to that - otherwise, feel free to create your own! (And when replying to a thread about badfic, or reviewing a badfic, please remember Article 2!)
   
   (( This has quickly been edited together. Commentary will be needed. ))
   
   - Tomash

So, thought about it. And then I said, "no. I won't do it. #define-generated functions are way too complicated a direction to go, it's a bad idea."

...So 15 minutes later, I'm reading the docs for preprocessor macros...

I also changed some other things: `long int` is `long` now (as per... C99, I think?), some things got put in functions, and `initgens` got inlined at its one callsite, as did `comparegens`.

The result is much shorter, and (arguably) cleaner. Although the inlining may be questionable: https://pastebin.com/B4Ttjvn4

...So then, I figured, what the hell, let's golf it.

Every line in the following as 80 chars or less. Really. I swear. It follows basically the same logic as the other version, just with no affordances for readability: https://pastebin.com/kWqsbuKe

I am a monster...

I'm not overly concerned with hS's proposed revisions. Maybe move the stuff on Other Things To Post to the FAQ? The thing about badfic should probably be there, although that should maybe also go to the FAQ.

If that happens, the constitution maybe should reference the FAQ. I am unsure.

Like, take Harry Potter. And once you're done with that, apologise to Ginny and have a look at the fandom. Sure, you have a lot of people being nice and raising money for charity and having civilized discussions and all that good stuff... but you also have the Snape Is Trans people, the antigay shipping warriors, the people who make fake nudes of actresses from the films that frankly blur the line of legality, and many more besides.

I think the difference is in scale. Smaller fandoms can effectively be self-policing; when enough people Refuse To Engage with bad actors, they can be forced out or forced to change. However, in a huge-ass fandom like HP, they're more likely to find their own support base of like-minded weirdos/bigots/stupid-white-teenage-girls-who-think-they're-helping (delete as appropriate) and keep on trucking in their own little circles. Maybe that's just me, though.

Just like it says in the handpost! =]

===

At the moment, I'm just vaguely concerned about making the Constitution too formidable and want to know if other people share that concern. {= )

~Neshomeh

So basically, what you lot call toxicity is what I call people being jerks. I'm lucky to have moved in respectful fan-circles all my life, so I haven't been exposed to all that, and I'd hesitate to put it down as an inevitable product of fandom, as some of the responses seemed to imply.

It's totally evitable. It just takes people standing up and refusing to engage in it or to put up with it.

~Neshomeh

• Double-check everything. The time you don't double-check is the time you will be utterly, laughably wrong. In fact, triple-check.
  
  - Fear failure, but fear success even more. Consequently, get nothing done.
  
  - Want to do all the things, suffer decision paralysis. Consequently, get nothing done.
  
  - Be baffled when people still think you're a level-headed, with-it, confident person.
  
  - If all else fails, edit the wiki.
  
  - Spend inordinate amounts of time on wiki articles and projects meant to elucidate the masses. Inevitably suffer frustration and disappointment when nobody notices. Keep doing it anyway.
  
  - Use a smiley that no one understands anymore. {= )
  
  - Crackers don't matter, and there is never a bad time for a Farscape reference. {= D
  
  - There is no problem that can't be solved with more and better words.
  
  - Everyone needs your advice whether they want it or not, no exceptions.
  
  - Re-read your own work. This is to a) actually remember what happened, and b) because you are secretly self-centered and enjoy it.
  
  - Pretend really hard not to be so self-centered. Maybe pull it off?
  
  - Write extremely slowly. Publish a mission maybe once a year or so.
  
  - If you get into a new thing, get really into it. Pursue it until you are in danger of burning out. Then drop it and move on to the next thing. Come back later.
  
  - Once you commit to something, never let it go ever. Even when it's long past time most people would have moved on and not felt bad about it. Torture yourself with every incomplete project and swear you'll finish it eventually, really.
  
  - Honestly believe that most people are good and pretty much just want to live their lives in peace, despite evidence to the contrary.
  
  - Embody the Unitarian Jihad name of Sister Boot Knife of Looking at Both Sides of the Question. Never outright disagree with anyone when you can temporize instead.
  
  - Waste ridiculous amounts of time trying to find that one word you know exists but can't quite remember. (Temporize. Which I'm still not sure is quite the word I wanted.)
  
  - Occasionally withdraw and don't talk to anyone for a week or so with no explanation. Apologize later.
  
  - When editing, obsess over typography. Hyphens and dashes are the best and nobody else appreciates them like you do.
  
  - Real life is the annoying but necessary distraction from the important stuff in your own head.
  
  ... Yeah, that's a good start. {= )
  
  ~Neshomeh

Hello, everybody. As some of you may be aware, I am a semi-professional Magic: the Gathering player in what used to be my free time. Well, I decided that I still had too much free time and decided to write a blog about the game, as well.

I post twice a month, usually bringing new decks or exploring old decks. I hope to start doing Magic story articles in the new year. I won't be doing re-caps of the official story, since that is a thing other content creators already do well. I will, instead be doing character/plot analysis and evidence-based theory-crafting.

So, if any of that interests you, or if you just want to see what all of the (as of yet non-existent) fuss is about, check it out.

BEHOLD!

-Phobos, aka BadMoonMTG

Some #define'd constants might've been a good move though.

Or, if you really wanted to be fancy, even though it might be overkill for two cases, a C macro for generating the functions.

(since that's really all I don't like about your solution. Excessive copy-paste)

- Tomash

Oh, look at us, all clever and modular-like. :P. Seriously, your code looks quite good.

I wrote in C. So.. not as cool and shiny and modular. But I did get to use function pointers. https://pastebin.com/UcnibFee

Since Tomash is currently working at the University in Aachen in Germany, we thought it was a good opportunity for a gathering in Germany. However because we kind of forgot planning we ended up realizing yesterday that this weekend is the last date this year that we can both attend.
So we decided to meet this Sunday, December 18th in Aachen. We were planning to meet up at around noon(-ish), and visit the Christmas market.

Would anyone else be interested in coming?

I agree that a real-time chat generally needs more energy and mental bandwidth than posting on the Board or writing an email. Same as (for me) actual in-person conversation takes more bandwidth than the Discord.

And yeah, different people have different tolerances for how they can use their bandwidth. For example, at RL parties or the like, I'll basically end up taking breaks from the conversation because it gets to be too much after a while. Heck, I'm sort of like this with the chat at times.

And yeah, the Board and the chat are different and good at different things and neither is inherently better than the other.

So I think this is a long-winded way of saying I agree with most of this.

I'd say some effort to keep the Board a little bit more aware of the chat and vice-versa might be a good idea though. (See below about summarizing discussions onto the Board if they get long enough. Or heck, just pasting them on over here might be sufficient in some cases.)

- Tomash