Month: July 2014

It’s never good to reenter Kerbal’s atmosphere without a spacecraft.

I’ve been playing Kerbal Space Program (KSP) for the last few months. On twitter, I made my case why everyone should play it.

Kerbal Space Program is my new Minecraft.

— Bill Ruhsam (@bruhsam) May 22, 2014

This is truer than you might think, despite the obvious differences between the two ((In case you don’t know what these differences are, consult the Googles, or simply know that in Minecraft, you are digging around in a virtual terrain looking for gold and other valuables while dodging monsters and in KSP you are trying to manage the entire space program of the planet Kerbal. One you go down, the other you go up. For further information on Minecraft you can consult this very blog. )). KSP and Minecraft are both sandbox games. KSP and Minecraft both have modes where you are challenged to achieve accomplishments in order to do more; adventure mode in Minecraft and Career mode in KSP.

And they’re both addicting.

However, this discussion is an enormous tangent to my main point which is that I love playing KSP. It’s a huge waste of time when you consider all the other things I should be doing, but if you don’t believe it is fun, you should check out what google has to say about it.

My next goal is to get some of the mods loaded up so I can do more detailed rocket loading calculations and start lifting to orbit the pieces of an interplanetary craft that has even a hope of coming home with its Kerbal pilot. To date, I’ve sent several Kerbals on interplanetary missions (both on purpose and not) but none of them have or will come home. Ever. The wall of sacrifice outside the Kerbal NASA HR offices is getting long.

Thanks to Randall Munroe who introduced me to the game.

And of course there’s xkcd 1106 which mentions KSP in the mouse-over text.

The Eyebrow has been a recent victim of the ever-true dictum that, if there’s friction in getting something done, it may not get done.

As I mentioned on a earlier update, we have a housemate now. Jacob is a great addition to the household but it has necessitated a few alterations. Mainly, the guest/office room has become Jacob’s which means there’s no dedicated spot for Jenn and I to park a computer do the sorts of things we’ve done in the past: bills, photography, games, general internet surfing, etc. We all have laptops, of course, but if I want to do a blog post, it requires just that little bit more of an effort than it did before and that means it’s not happening. Photography especially is suffering because my equipment and the PC that manages the images now live in my closet in a bag, so if I want to do something, I have to go and get the camera and computer. I assure you that this isn’t a lot of effort, but it’s apparently more effort than I’m willing to put out right now. Griffin is wonderful but god he makes us tired sometime.

So let’s see. Recap of all the things I would’ve posted about but mainly got thrown up on Twitter:

• Supreme Court and Hobby Lobby: Bunch of patriarchal assbags and if you disagree, read this before you continue to.
• We’re going on vacation to the Outer Banks in August! Celebrating mine and Annie’s 41st birthdays (last year’s 40th birthday spectacular got derailed by the emergence of a human being from Jennifer).
• World Cup Soccer! It’s been a blast. Now it’s almost over. Soon we can ignore soccer for another four years except that Atlanta will have an MLS team in 2017.
• Go Braves! Braves just finished up a 9 game winning streak. Cobb county residents are suing to stop the construction of the new stadium .
• Griffin is coming up on the end of his zeroth year! We’re planning to have a huge bash for the adults. He’s invited.
• The new jobs for Jenn and I continue to be well. We could do with a shorter commute, and we’re making plans for a move in the next couple years.
• We’re catching up on Game of Thrones season 4. Jenn’s chasing behind in the books, so we have a continuous discussion about the differences between the books and the show.
• There’s discussion in the blogosphere that the HBO series may end before GRRM finishes The Song of Ice and Fire. If so, I’ll be avoiding any mention of the show until he publishes the final book and I can read the canonical version.  I’m totally supportive of people who aren’t readers getting into the world through the HBO version, but I feel like the readers who’ve been hanging on for 18 years now are getting the shaft.

I’m sure there was other stuff. I’d have to troll twitter to see what I was blabbing about.