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This may or may not actually work, but if I understand it right, anybody can now go here and download the mix I put together. It comes with a CD cover in case anyone wants to burn a disc.

Let me know if it works.

~Neshomeh

I keep getting a "403 Denied" window. Is there some kind of problem with the site?

Oddly, you're the second person I know who can't ride a bike. Hmm.

*hugs Trojie* Not fun; poor KidTrojie.

Saddlepacks are a good idea. And of course, I need to make me some goggles to wear while riding her... and at all other times... wheee!

You stand up slowly, still clutching the note, and reach for a convenient piece of lead pipe lying nearby. Whipping around with it raised, you shriek out your war cry-

There's nothing there.

You look down. There's another note.

What do you do?
-This is too weird. You ignore the second note and get out of there.
-You pick up the second note.
-Ignoring the note, you prepare yourself for a fight.

You suffer a temporary bout of sanity and levelheadedness, and realize that such a fic is too much for you alone to handle. Even with heavy flamethrowers. But who to choose, and where to go?
What do you do?
-Go to Badslash for help.
-Go to DMS for help.
-Grab a random person from the cafeteria and force them to help.
-Stay put. If you leave the RC, you'll never find it again.

Oooh, I like. I'll have to use this on a few friends. Thankfully most of my Uni friends are (almost) as great of Tea Fiends as I am, so the call of "Who want's to go to Az's place and have tea?" in a crowded room almost always elicits at gathering in my home and at least one strange combination. I think the most interesting thusfar has been Russian Caravan tea (really strong smoky black tea) and Anise Extract. It actually turned out quite good....

O.o....

That reminds me of the (first) time my dad attempted to teach me to ride.

We live at the top of a very steep hill.

He gave little, eight year old me a bike made for a grown-up, strapped me all up with helmet, knee- and elbow-pads, and pushed me down the hill.

My bike and myself ended up in a ditch filled with rose bushes at the bottom of the hill. He then got angry because I hadn't stayed out of the ditch. My bike ended up being left in the ditch until I went back and got it three days later.

Four years later I taught myself to ride, rather than letting him teach me....

My mother still to this day refuses to ride a bike, due to an almost exact occurrence in her childhood. The only advice her father gave her was to "keep pedaling!" straight into the rose hedge at the bottom of their drive...

The last time I was on a bike I was twelve. My mother decided that she should finally get round to teaching me.

It, um, sort of backfired. I was terrified. I could just about ride the thing for about five metres before I had to stop and do special breathing to stop hyperventilating with terror.

Mum persevered for about six months, but it was the time I got stuck on the beach heading out into the waves with jammed handlebars, crying and flailing and eventually falling off that convinced her that maybe I should just walk while the rest of my family cycled.

Okay, right. Where to start. I'm simplifying this, uh, a bit.

The record of life through time is the fossil record. The fossil record is things that are preserved in rock. Rock gets laid down in a number of ways and at varying speeds. Sometimes you'll get three inches depth of sediment over a million years. Sometimes you'll get thirty feet. Sometimes you'll get three hundred feet.

Rock also gets destroyed in a number of ways. The longer a given body of rock has been around, the more likely it is to get destroyed soon. There are very few places on the Earth where unaltered rock from, say, the Archaean, are preserved.

The period of time of interest to us is the base of the Cambrian, 542 million years ago (Ma). This is, I'm sure you can appreciate, quite some time ago, even to those of us who work with deep time (for reference, the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, human ancestors arose around about 4-3 million years ago ish (this is another one of those 'controversial' issues), etc etc).

Unaltered Cambrian rock (by 'unaltered' I mean not squeezed to hellandgone by more rock on top, not baked by heat and depth, and outcropping at the surface - i.e., rock we can get at) is not actually that common. Most of it has been metamorphosed, subducted or eroded by now. So, baseline for understanding here is that the history of life through time is a book, and the closer to the beginning of the book we get, the more pages are missing.

Now, let's get back to that thing about sediment getting deposited over time.

Evolution happens over time. How much time is debatable (see 'Dawkins vs Gould' by Kim Sterelny for a good synopsis of the two sides of the debate on this one), but for the purposes of right now, we'll just accept 'a long time' and move on. So any given population of animals or plants changes by very small increments (okay, okay, there are exceptions, I'm not going into them here, just work with me).

Not all animals are preserved in the fossil record. Off the top of my head, I think the preservation rate is somewhere between one and ten percent of any given species may enjoy the luxury of fossilisation. It's all dependant on the environment they die in and a few other things. The great majority of fossils that are found are of marine organisms, because the environment is better for preservation under the sea.

So, we have basically a roulette here. Not many specimens are preserved. The rock they're preserved in is becoming increasingly rare. The ones that are preserved are not necessarily the ones that show any kind of easy-to-see change.

And there's one more thing. Generally, the only bits of an animal that fossilise are the hard parts - shells, teeth, bones. But I bet you can think of a dozen things alive today that don't have any of those.

This is where the term 'Cambrian Explosion' comes in. At about 542Ma, suddenly in the rock record we find multicellular organisms with shells. It's literally, bang, there in the rock. Like an invisible line - below it, only microfossils, if that. Above it, shellfish (not quite molluscs, but basically shellfish).

So, the reason I say 'sudden', is because in all likelihood it was nothing like sudden. It's just that it appears sudden because the rock is not preserving all the evidence - it's like a strobe light. You put on a strobe light, and dance. Watch your friends dancing. You only see flashes of what they're doing, not all the bits in between. If one flash of the light they were not wearing a hat, and the next one they were, it'd look to you like the hat just magically appeared. Of course it didn't - they had to pick it up and put it on, but you didn't see that bit.

Um, I hope that explanation helped.

Having misplaced your sanity and common sense, you decide to sit on the Generic Surface floor and resume playing the game. Never mind the ominous silence, never mind the missing Agents, never mind the mystery. You want to play games and you want to play them now.

You start the game and play it with your back to the corridor, completely absorbed by the plumber and his antics. You almost notice the Necron Flayed One before it well...flays you and leaves you to die in a pool of your own blood.

Honestly, what were you thinking?

Turns out that, no, you can't fix it. The reason for this is simple : this adventure would never go anywhere if you just sat there playing video games. So make another choice.

It's written: Look behind you.


What do you do?

- Look behind you
- Do absolutely nothing

There's nowhere to run! Remember, the corridor is a dead-end.

Guess there's no choice but to look behind you. Or continue gaming.

You stay there like an idiot, staring ahead blankly, until something hard smashes your skull like a nut and kills you instantly. Some people have no patience.

Fun fact : There is no afterlife.


-----------------------------------------------------------

(Of course, some options must result in death or a dead-end. Otherwise, the tree will become ridiculously complex.)

"Agents are missing," you tell the Sunflower. "Who is supposed to work in this response center?"

The Flower somehow managed to frown. A frowning flower is quite a weird sight.
Let me see... Um... Three agents of the Department of Floaters. They have no names, they're only red shirts. I'll take care of finding them. As for you, answer this call while they're gone.

Without leaving you the time to argue, the Sunflower shuts off all communications.


What do you do?

- Acknowledge the mission.
- Go back to your RC.

does anyone know examples of 40k badfic? (Other than "Squad Broken", that is)

You push a button to stop the beeping, then look at the screen of the console. Your eyes widen in horror.

Someone has actually written badfic about the PPC. It slashes Jay and Acacia and features a Mary Sue named... Jaycacia Thornbyrd? You've heard that name before. This unspeakable abomination has supposedly been killed in canon (which, in your case, means reality), but it apparently still exists in one of the many alternate universes of fanfic.


What do you do?

- Go into the badfic alone.
- Look for a partner for this mission.

For a sort of university short course thing :)

...in years, anyway. In cynicism, about two hundred. ;)

Stupid machine. Of all the times for it to malfunction and spew out nonsense...

You fiddle with the CAD and reboot it. There's another message on the screen when it reopens.

[LOOK BEHIND YOU, YOU IDIOT!]

-The CAD is obviously broken. Maybe you can fix it and play Mario?
-Look behind you.
-Sit where you are and do absolutely nothing.

If I'm in a coffee shop with my mum and brother I'll usually have a hot chocolate with all the trimmings, except for one place I go to that does gorgeous white/milk/dark chocolate with strawberry/banana/orange milkshakes. I like going there because you get a free chocolate with every drink, and because my mum doesn't eat chocolate I get hers as well since my brother is a grumpy, lazy git who finds a table as soon as and sits down so doesn't get a say in things. I'll sometimes have a milkshake at the Thornton's Cafe as well, since theirs are made with ice cream.

There are several places here that do wonderful milkshakes, the sort where you pick a sweet or chocolate bar and it gets blended into your drink. Bounties and Daims are my usual choice there, although I did have a Crunchie one from the Italian ice cream place today.

At home I drink lemonade, and very rarely anything else. I keep a two litre bottle next to my keyboard at all times. For variety I tend to have at least one can of Ting fizzy grapefruit juice hidden somewhere, and a few bottles of Oasis, water and Sprite of varying levels of fullness. There is alcohol hidden somewhere, but I only touch that very rarely.

When eating out, usually in the food court, it depends on which vendor I've ended up at. Apple juice, J2O and water are my usual choices. If we've just gotten a drink from the shop then I'll have water, Sprite or Oasis, which is how they end up in my room half-drunk and destined to be forgotten about. When at Costco, where the choice is free coffee or free orange juice, I'll always pick the orange juice.

I haven't had a hot blackcurrant drink in ages. I might have to see if there's any squash in the house so I can make some tonight.

Wow, this reply seems to have turned into a bit of an essay.

You decide to check RC next door. You knock, but no one answers. You open the door to find that the room is empty, aside from its Console and a small slip of paper lying on the ground.

What do you do?

-Go back to your RC.
-Pick up the piece of paper.
-Search for other agents in HQ.