TenthSpeedWriter

Yeah, don't worry if some of the things we spout sound a little too complex. It's the sort of stuff you pick up on when you spend long enough with the sciences. If you do decide to go down that path, you might pick up on quite a bit of it. Like I said, SI (System International; blame the backwards word order on the French. xD) is just a little twist on the metric system. It uses most of the same units (meters, litres, degrees celsius, and so forth), but its base unit of mass is the kilogram instead of the gram. Here's some basic physics, for your pleasure. : D Mass and weight aren't the same. Mass is fixed for any object; weight is the force that gravity applies to it. Pounds are a unit of force, believe it or not; your weight in pounds will depend on what planet you're on, but your mass in kilograms will be the same anywhere (even if you weigh more because of different gravity.) Force is kind of a fundamental idea in physics; it's the motivation an object has to accelerate. In the SI system, things are pretty simple: the unit of force is a newton. A newton is the amount of force it takes to make one kilogram of stuff go one meter per second faster, every second. (In other words, one meter per second per second, or one "meter per second squared"). You don't hear newtons used much outside of science, because the kilogram (mass) is the fundamental unit for SI. On the other hand, In the US standard system, the pound (force) is the fundamental unit. The unit of mass in our system is the slug, which is the mass that 1 pound of force will accelerate at 1 foot per second, per second. At earth's gravity, a slug weighs 32.2 pounds force, making it a little awkward for measuring most household things. For counting: Engineers (and some scientists) like to think of things in terms of ten to the third (thousands of something.) For example: a kilogram is 1 000 grams. (A megagram is 1 000 kilograms, a gigagram is 1 000 megagrams, and so on.) Likewise, when you want to deal with very small things: a meter is 1 000 millimeters (mm). A millimeter is 1 000 micrometers. A micrometer (also called a micron) is 1 000 nanometers. You'll rarely use prefixes bigger than that, but they're out there on wikipedia, if you're interested.

The vast majority of furries I've met personally have been pretty cool with really diverse interests. As much as people like to mess with fursuiters, it's really a fascinating exercise in artistic costume design.

Bwahahahahaha! Now the twelve year old girl who was hatin' on the ponies, is watchin' the ponies. I've inducted the entire family. Friendship is Infectious. >:3

Fair point. Honestly, I'm only inclined to defend US Standard so hard because I've done my entire undergrad work thus far here. I find SI slightly easier to work with in many aspects, even if US Std is more intuitive.

On Fukushima: I agree that folks tend to over-react to the idea of nuclear power. Fukushima-Daiichi was old, poorly maintained, and of a hilariously terri-bad design -- not to mention hit by one of the worst natural disasters in recent history. The more recently designed reactors at the same plant went through disaster procedures very well under the circumstances; it was only those with switching stations in exterior facilities (as opposed to inside the sturdy, well protected reactor complex) which failed to shutdown correctly when the plant was flooded. Someone did point out a relatively new idea to me during the wake of the disaster: http://en.wikipedia....en_salt_reactor The concept is still being hammered out, but it's very promising. It could offer lower mechanical stress on reactor systems, shorter-lived byproducts, and an overall safer system (for instance, a reactor whose fuel is always in a liquid state can't 'meltdown' in the traditional sense).

You do realize that, except for its scale of temperature, SI is equally arbitrary?

Meh. She's not anti-brony, she just likes teasing me. : P

Bwahahaha... engineering major enters the discussion! Nuclear fusion (to my understanding) as we have it laid out right now is a foreseeable thing in the long run, but right now faces the simple issue of efficiency. A sustainable fusion reaction is a very difficult thing, and keeping one going tends to take more energy than can be harnessed from it. On systems of measurements: Honestly, the chief advantage of the SI system (the scientific version of the metric system, using kilograms as a standard rather than grams) is that it's more widely employed. (Its units of temperature are also on a more intuitive scale, but it matters much less in application.) In science and engineering, the chief difference between them is that SI defines force in terms of mass times acceleration, whereas the FPS (foot-pound-second) system employed heavily in North America defines mass in terms of force divided by acceleration ("slugs" are the proper term, and anyone who uses the phrase "pounds mass" deserves to be whopped with a wet noodle.) (A slug, by the way, weighs 32.2 pounds at standard Earth gravity.)

Coheed & Cambria - Ten Speed (of God's Blood and Burial), a discourse between The Writing Writer (God) and Ten Speed (his murderous alter-ego who wants to disembowel the character written in honor of the Writing Writer's cheating ex-girlfriend. Also a bicycle.) Believer, you'll leave her in leaving them all (No, but I don't buy it!) ... like anything you do, as anyone you are. (Ten Speed, if I must, then I must.) Co&Ca were really influential on my creative growth in high school (when I thought up the username).

My fiancé was messing with me for having a bunch of ponies hanging from the roof in my car. So I introduced her little boys (2 and 4) to it. They love it. >:'D I sat them through s1e1/2 and s1e4 on my old laptop. The four year old keeps asking me to let him watch "the twi-wight show." I feel like I've accomplished something here, y'all.

Fourteen, In a record-setting shut out victory that polls had us pegged against 49 to 1. That is all.

To earn my steel ring, to be an engineer. I want to raise cities from the ground. I want to lay roads to every place that man is meant to explore. I want to harness technology to shrink our footprint on the world to the land we sit on, to grow civilization in harmony with the Earth we inhabit, to make the best possible use of our scarce and precious natural resources. I want to write poetry that touches people, that moves them. I want to inspire someone, to put hope or joy in their heart or move them to think again about how they see the reality that surrounds them. I want to find things worth saying and say them in a way that people will hear. I want to keep making a difference in the lives of others. I have been so fortunate as to see lately just what that can mean, and I'll never stop trying; even if all I can do for someone is hear their story and understand, that sometimes can make all the difference in the world. I want to exemplify everything that I am. I am a writer and a creator; I am a southern gentleman; I am an asperger's child come of age; I am a son and a brother and a lover and a friend. I want to encompass the ways I define myself, and I want to transcend them. And if nothing else, nothing at all, I want to be the sort of person my family will be proud of one day.

Be careful about assuming that the epsiodes are chronologically ordered. At all. xD With a few exceptions due to explicit references, it's quite possible to turn the order of the episodes on their head.

My assumption has always been that some of the more obvious ones (Photo Finish, for example) were nicknames, assumed names, or the like. Maybe there's just a rampant streak of nickname wit among Equestrians. Sometimes you just have to accept things as cartoon logic, y'all. xD; Otherwise, you're going to have as much luck as you would explaining Wile E. Coyote's anvil-accordian hypothesis.

Big equipment that isn't running. That goes for everything from car engines to walk-in kilns to x-ray and gamma ray centric medical equipment. I feel perfectly comfortable near any machine whose operating state I understand, but there's something terrifying about knowing that it COULD BE RUNNING BUT ISN'T BUT COULD BE. x_x

We were contemplating watching a marathon of FiM and FMA:Brotherhood when she gets back to town. In the course of our conversation, I came across a profound new idea: Adam onoez perhaps we should use the torrentz ... is there like a dark power that enforces equivalent exchange among torrenters? Thou shall seed twice what thou dost leech or some such? [*]Karla idk [*] [*]Adam [*] that would be badass. john q derp leeches a 10 gig file, 1 seed up and 5 dl's going doesn't seed for a second And the founders of pirate bay show up in pirate regalia and avast his ass on which note And then I introduced her to

I recall having a wonderful and drawn out conversation with one of my favorite community writers about this very topic. What I've found in life is that after a certain age, there's no-one really telling you what to find magical. It becomes easy to slip into cynicism, and to deny how amazing even the most simple of things are. Just imagine how astounded an alchemist of centuries past would of our periodic table of elements, or how utterly fascinated an early machinist would be with something as mundane as an internal combustion engine. Even a hundred years ago, the little devices we fold up and tuck into our pockets would have been nothing short of unimaginable. To me, magic is something very, very powerful which we haven't yet begun to understand the fundamental ideas of. Modern technology would be astonishing to someone from another era, sure; but, on the flip side of that, I'm sure that in a world with Harry Potter-esque magic, the finest elements of spellcraft would seem as dull and academic to some people as the driest textbook. If you want to see the magic in something, take a moment to consider just how much astonishing knowledge has gone into it. That's why I'm an engineering major; the stuff I learn each day might strike some people as dry and uninteresting, but I find it utterly engrossing. I can now explain how objects interact physically; I can explain how particles move in certain fields of force, and predict how nature will react to our different actions. One day, I'll use all of this to raise great cities from the earth, and lay highways and bridges and tunnels leading across the land, and mesh our world with the natural one... and I am never not in awe of that. (TL;DR: My Little Geek: Engineering is Magic)

I'mma get philosophical for a second. Worrying about the lifespan of a fandom is about as futile as worrying about your own. Fixating on the end of something keeps you from enjoying something to its fullest; it just leads to hypochondria and needless stress.

You know, unless it was hard drive failure specifically, or you've already reformatted it, it would still be quite easy to get the data back off of it. (Even if you have, there are professional services that could probably pull it back from the drive itself.) You should shoot me a PM with the specifics. *I earn my wages fixing computers, and I'm certain that whatever's happened to it, it can't be more horrific than what your average college computer lab user does on a daily basis. : P *Edit: Not threatening to charge you, or anything. o-o I'll do it to save the fics!

IRC/Misc Community 'Cheeves: [Cutie Mark Crusader Mercenaries!] - Join fellow Canterlot.com members in a rousing game of Team Fortress 2. [Mmph MMMMPPH!] - Be dominated by a fellow Canterlot.com member during a game of Team Fortress 2. [That's What Friends are For... I think.] During a game of Team Fortress 2, help a fellow Canterlot.com member douse a tail fire using Jarate. [Dr. Love] - Attempt to diagram Canterlot.com shipping via the Four Quadrant method. [Amore Archivist] - Successfully create a Canterlot.com shipping wall. [Taking Sides] - Join the armies of Empress Estrella [Pancake] - Be piled upon by no less than three ponies. [Fainting Goats] - Engage in synchronized flopping with at least four ponies at once. [Throwdown] - Participate in a Canterlot IRC Rap Battle. RL Nonsense: [Workhorse] - Watch an episode of MLP:FiM while at work. [Hi-ho, Hi-ho] - Sing along to an episode of MLP:FiM while at work. [My Little Secrets] - ...without being detected. [Equus Vincit Amor] - Convince your significant other to watch an episode of MLP:FiM. [Can't Do a Thing With Her Mane] - Mod a My Little Pony. [Vinyl is in the House] - Hijack your dorm's basement speaker system with Pony music.

Well, for what it's worth... The most notable experience this I've had was being drawn to a handful of particularly awesome people by a very short-lived friendship with a hateful, self-centered, and potentially psychotic woman.

I draw off the bulk of the haters by dressing as a cute little bunny and bouncing around before them. Unfortunately, I am neither little nor cute, and haters do not like bunnies. (Then, along came Elmer Fudd...)

I feel like there would still be casual friendships, but without Twilight, they may never have cemented as a clique. I've seen something like that happen in real life several times, where a single person, whether intentionally or just by virtue of knowing compatible people, ends up being the nucleating point for a web of friends.