Piers Cawley

Recent Actions

• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  basic evolution shows that a 'superior' race will necessarily emerge at some stage. Um… you're gonna have to show your working for that jump mate....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  BTW, the text blade looks splendid (and inexpensive enough that I seem to have ordered one); I may well be nicking some of their chording ideas for myself if I start hacking on my keyboard firmware again....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  [The Matias Tactile Pro] uses Cherry buckling-spring keyswitches, so feels somewhere between the IBM Model M and the old-school Apple keyboards. Um... no. IBM Model Ms use a buckling spring design. Cherry MX switches use a different mechanism entirely involving...
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  Simple systems of rules can't cover all circumstances and complex systems contain logical inconsistencies that can be exploited creatively ... I give you Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, the proof of which is an existence proof that you don't need logical inconsistencies...
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  Jesus! My respect and astonishment at the survival of my (now) late grandfather continues to increase. Maybe getting shot down over Holland and having to walk home was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. He'd certainly not have...
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  Chaps I know who've driven steam cars reckon they're amazing. Completely insane torque curve if you're used to IC engines. Similar to the Tesla apparently. But with a steam car you are, apparently, always aware that it wants to blow...
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  In that particular set of books, the 'heroes' were player characters from Feist's campaign weren't they? The players had fun getting up to that shit, so of course the readers will too....
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  About the only good idea in Rick Cook's Wizardry series was the magic system and the thought of what could be done when someone trained in computational thinking got his hands on a Turing complete system of simple spells. Much...
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  I find I have to be careful about nitpicking this stuff and can accept a great deal of illogic if the storytelling works. I know the London-set urban fantasy of which Charlie speaks and it's definitely starting to get faintly...