The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I was just thinking a double-underline would help to differentiate it in cases where the rest of the text is also underlined for whatever reason. It's an edge case, I know, but one I think might be worth considering =]

(Random aside: every time, I try to start my subject line with 'Hui', because that's what goes in the first box. EVERY TIME. I'll get used to it. ^_^)

Links in HTML are default underlined, aren't they? I might be wrong, but that's my memory. It's not common that you'd have a block of underlined text with a link in the middle; I'm sure it could happen, but I can't think of a reason to do it.

Obviously the Board uses underlines... other places might use significantly different text colour, but I feel like that works best on a dark background, because... I think our eyes are better at picking out differences when they're set against black rather than white? I don't know. Wikipedia uses blue (which I think is also the default for YourWebApps), which works, but honestly I think Board-standard red-with-underlines has serves us well for a long time.

If a different solution is adopted, that's fine. But right now, reading something like this post is requiring me to run the cursor over every line to track down the links.

hS

(though I'm traveling for work and so it might be a few days unless one of the other new Board technical folks gets around to it)

Underlining works, but only when the rest of the text is not formatted with underlining. Is there a double-underline functionality that we could use?

This could fit more into the solarpunk AU (still working on it, don't you fret), but there are some really fascinating methods of communication that I think would work well in a kind of updated, automated way. First, there's message sticks, common all across Australia's indigenous communities; for something like a secure message system, you could transmit a message pattern from a hub to an ethernet-connected rhubarb forcing house, whereupon the message is carved onto the rhubarb and the agent is alerted to its arrival via some other means. It's coded and secure, because afterwards you can eat the rhubarb. Also, FYI, rhubarb forcing is basically a way of making rhubarb grow so fast you can hear it.

A more complex version, and one that could involve more in-depth messaging opportunities, is the stick-chart navigation system of the Marshall Islanders. These are bent sticks that show the positions of swells, tides, islands, and so forth in a more permanent manner; a very flexible semi-liquid wood-pulp version with parts that move via fluid induction and kirigami could be extremely useful as both a display piece and an objet d'art, which fits into the solarpunk aesthetic very nicely.

But yeah, the A/N was good. Both of them were. The stuff about writing short pieces isn't necessarily helpful to me and my high-5-digit word count missions, but one point in particular - wanting to tell a specific story with your agents as well as spork a specific badfic - really made me think. I haven't quite been doing that with the PPC Power Hour; mostly it's been about analyzing certain tropes and clichés within PPC writing as a whole and trying to do interesting things with them, building the overarching storyline of the Oncoming Form into that, and then finding a fic to serve as... well, almost as set dressing for the rest of the story. Your comments got me to thinking about that approach, and I think my future writing will be all the better for it. =]

If we're looking for historical dead ends to pillage for ideas here, it's worth looking at France's Minitel network, where you'd have a mostly dumb terminal jacked into a BBS-style service that provided country-wide information services.

Man, imagine if that had taken off.

Early PPC may have used consoles based on telex systems, essentially two-way teletypes. Presumably, there was a cadre of agents in Intel tasked with literally typing assignments down the line. Or maybe some sentient blobs. Who knows.

Other fascinating systems from the past include the memex. I don't think there was ever a working version of this in real life, but it's the conceptual ancestor of the wiki and of the internet itself. I can totally imagine a bunch of agents in SAT or intel wiring together Memex exchanges to transfer intel notes and research data in some sort of primitive wiki system.

As an accessibility issue, links in posts being distinguished solely by colour is less than great - particularly when that colour is red. I'm at the milder end of colourblind (red/green), and I'm still having trouble spotting them; someone with full colourblindness would be totally unable to see them.

hS

My guess is that the NewBoard reads an image as a single line of HTML text, and moves the posts below it according to that, rather than according to the actual size of the image. An example, if the tech team need one, can be seen by expanding the posts below this one (at least on Chrome).

hS

Okay, so on the webapps board, one really useful thing that I found was the 'return to messages' behaviour. What it did was, if you went back from an old message it would take you to the page in the archives where that message was stored, rather than the main page; it's kind of inconvenient if you end up back at the main page by accident while you're trying to read multiple discussions from 2011. Could you please implement 'smart return'?

Also, there seems to be an issue with image formatting in some posts (does the Board not react well to Photobucket?); when a post containing an image is expanded, the posts below it may not move properly, leading to a region of difficult-to-read overlapping text. An example of this can be found in this thread. This seems like it's probably a bug in something.

Other than that, I can't really think of any issues I've noticed since official deployment; the aesthetic is a lot nicer than the old Board, although it's a bit slower sometimes.

And some enterprising sort has almost certainly ported Skyrim to it. And possibly Minecraft. =]

(All right, it's only halfway down the Front Page, but I'm trying to ease us back into the habit of scrolling down gently.)

I've just run into this video (via Paleofuture), which features the home computing system of 1999... as predicted in 1967.

Hooooo boy.

Here we see The Wife (who I'm pretty sure is an old Doctor Who companion) using her video console to shop for clothes. The cameras at the store will scan (live) the display of products for her to peruse, slowly scrolling through them. She makes her selections using single buttons on the front of the console.

Meanwhile, and I'm going to quote this precisely, 'What The Wife selects on her console, will be paid for by The Husband on his counterpart console'. He too carries out this futuristic act through the use of small, unlabelled buttons on the front of his device. The bank's central computer will debit his account, and credit the department store's.

Should he be concerned that The Wife's extravagance will put a strain on the budget, The Husband can receive a printed copy of said budget instantaneously, at the push of a button! It includes the taxes he owes, and the payments left on the car.

"But wait!" you cry. "What if he needs to communicate with other people through something other than a single button? Are we to believe that The Husband has access to some manner of electronic typewriter? Preposterous!" Quite so, my friends, but fear not: the man of 1999 will have something far more plausible.

This is The Husband's electronic correspondence machine, or 'home post office'. None of this mucking about with buttons for the electronic letter of the future - The Husband is able to employ his masterful penmanship to send messages to individuals all over the world!

As long as no-one knocks any of the wires out of the plug-board, at least.

~

I assumed this was going to be a post about what a wacky retro-future console would look like, but honestly, I suspect there are consoles in HQ running on exactly this system. Only without the misogyny.

hS

I was worried while writing the note that it was getting far too long (I think it's about a quarter of the wordcount of the mission itself), but as we all know, I'm abysmal at saying things concisely. I'm really glad it came out as something useful. And I'm glad you enjoyed the mission, too!

hS

I enjoyed this quite a lot. It was short but said what you wanted it to say and did what you wanted it to do. My favourite part, though, was the author's note at the end. It was a valuable insight into how you and Kaitlyn work as PPC authors, and it reminded me that there's always room for more storytelling in a given mission. =]

The reason this is a reviewish is that I don't have much more to say beyond that, sorry.

I think the NewBoard is still using the previous version of the header. I feel like we deliberately separated the Constitution out for emphasis; we also have a link to T-Board, which (assuming it's still going to be used for RP) should probably go in.

On the flip side, I should also update the Board header to prominently redirect people over here. It looks like we're coming down on the 'move immediately' side of things, so a visible link would be valuable.

hS

For me, the few times I've gotten a reading from friends, I've seen it as, as I put it, "RNG-guided therapy". The cards are vague enough that you can use them as prompts to really go through your thinking about a situation and dig into emotional stuff.

There's definitely folks who take a more mystical approach to things though.

Of the Major Arcana, the two I'm most commonly associated with are the High Priestess and the Empress, for very different reasons. (The Lovers also comes up every now and again.)

Even though you're not an expert by your own admission, thank you for the reply!

I'm not sure if it's always been like that and I just never noticed or if the library I'm using to handle search broke everything between 2012 and now.

I've looked into it some, and I at least have an initial sense of what's going on here, though the fix may be somewhat involved in the worst case - this bug has all the hastlly thrown together technical rambling in the unlikely event you're interested.

This Board and T-Board use separate databases and therefore sets of accounts - your T-Board account will still work over there.

"Enable reply emails", unlike on the Board, goes for all replies (except yours) on the portion of the thread you enabled reply emails on.

"Hey, look at this." Cinnabar announced as she sat down with her lunch.

Cinn smirked, before looking at Theo's left, cybernetic arm, "I've got an interesting one...

So my agents Cinnabar and Theo (both DOGA) are up for the challenge. Items for the challenge could be: a toothbrush, a flask of Bleepka, Stuff (specifically, Purple Stuff, but other varities could work too), a roll of Duct tape and mashed potato. (Despite the above interaction hinting at the use of Theo's arm I'm not going to put it in as it's not really feasible or practical especially considering he doesn't have a spare).

Nova

Raven Firedragon (ie, Selene's creator) was kind of into them... I have vague memories of a reading that prominently featured the Tower, though I might be transcluding that from a book.

I actually own a Tarot set - not for the mystical or psychological* content, but because this particular set is Steampunk Tarot. They're very cool cards, even if most readings wind up as 'you're going to steal a zeppelin alongside a lady inventor-slash-adventurer'. Which frankly is my kind of destiny anyway.

*So which is it meant to be? I know the original idea was The Cards Show Your Fate, but the discussion I've seen tends to be more around 'use the cards to help lay out your thoughts'.

hS