Whoso would be a man, must not lose the way. Or... The Chair Leg of Truth.

I did a read a few things this week that had nothing to do with the work.  This week, it was some of the standbys I keep on hand to remind me of better ways to be.  How not to fall into the rude traps of obsession and to go my way carefully and thoughtfully.

The first is one of the mundanes' more laudable poets.  At variance with what most might think, I tend more toward the romantics, trancendentalists and revolutionaries.  The first and foremost among the elders for me being Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The audacity and sheer willingness to cast aside the mere opinions of others to stay his own course, while learning and reading all he could reads like poetry to me.  For example...

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

Naturally there's a moral ambiguity here.  One I must be wary of if I want to cleave to such.  One must not stint to explore the notion of goodness without an objective mind.  You can't hold too fast to the convictions that motivate you, lest you find yourself justifying your goals to suit some predefined idea of goodness.  You end up altering the facts to fit your views, instead of being willing to alter your views to fit the facts.  And that's pretty much slow death for any artficer or engineer.  Be objective.  But once you've established the right course, and what is right will announce itself to you when you find it, you commit to it and damn the man.
 
I don't know that I've found what's right yet.  I'm still exploring the goodness of it.  But it's hard to stay objective.  Like the man in the movie said.  "I'm trying real hard to be the shepard."

Here's Ralph's 'Self-Reliance'.  Read it twice.  Because the first time you do, you're going to want to put it down because this guy's an ass.  The SECOND time though...  You're going to go "OOHHH..  Okay.  That IS genius."

Self Reliance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Next on our reading list takes us a lot farther back than good ol Uncle Ralph.  This one takes us all the way back to the greatest samurai that ever lived.  Miyamoto Musashi was an accomplished teacher, undefeated duellist and strategist.  Many will tout the philosophy of the general Sun Tsu, with his directives to be "extremely subtle to the point of formlessness" and all that.  And in the way of strategy, I find it to be good advice.  But the frippery of subtlety is really the luxury of people with means and armies to command.  Not someone with the desperation of defending one's self or starting a campaign of one's own.

Musashi's enduring work, 'Go Rin No Sho', or 'A Book of Five Rings' is a way of strategy that is still studied in the present day by the wise and sadly enough, the powerful.  I find it to be a much more practical work on both the personal and the trancendent level.  And while it's primarily a treatise on the way of strategy, it's also very much a treatise on how to structure one's thoughts and plans, so that you might apply that structure practically to any endeavor.  Be it artfice, mindbreaking, managing one's rather limited finances, board games...  Here's a short but important bit...

"Do not think dishonestly.
The Way is in training.
Become acquainted with every art.
Know the Ways of all professions.
Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything.
Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
Pay attention even to trifles.
Do nothing which is of no use."

I have not mastered these things.  I don't beat myself up for it.  People go their entire lives without getting even some of these concepts within their wheelhouse.  You need to work at it, or you lose your way.  Here's his masterpiece, A Book of Five Rings

 

Miyamoto Musashi's 'Go Rin No Sho' (A Book of Five Rings)

Finally, in today's reading list, is a more current work from the last 20 years.  This by a rather mad Scotsman who writes comic books, novels and movies.  How he's allowed to continue his rantings when he's published and movie'd by the very same powers that he seems to rail against mystifies me, but there it is.  The power of his word overcomes that kind of entrenched corruption.  They speak it in spite of themselves.  This would be Warren Ellis.  And the work in question is a comic book called Transmetropolitan. 

The mundane-born among us and to a degree, the mixed too will be more familiar with the science-fiction tropes that are expanded on here to the Nth degree.  The problems the world faces with its leaders from the huge to the very personal are writ large in the setting of 'THE CITY'.  A metropolis so huge it can only be described as such.  And our main character is Spider Jerusalem.  A full-gonzo drug-using, booze-swilling, violent seeker of truth and justice who only wants to eventually shuck the world of people, and get back to the peace of his cabin in the woods.  But America is electing its new leader, and it won't let him go back until he writes the books he promised and spent his advance on already.  And for dragging him back in, his laser-like journalist's instinct for the truth, and his capacity for benevolent mayhem will bring the corrupt in that world to their knees.

Spider and his Cat.

Go to this page here.  Read the issue you find there.  Then if you like what you see... and be warned.  There are some pretty adult-y things here.  The sensitive of heart will not come away unscathed.  Anyway.  If you like what you see, read the whole run like I just have.  You'll come away with a violent desire to do right in the world.  Or at least to do a world of wrong to those who commit evil in it.

TRANSMETROPOLITAN - Issue 25: 'Here To Go.'

When I wasn't reading today and yesterday, I was tending the perimeter.  The Monkshood is in bloom, and is a lovely enough sight to see.  Though I wouldn't advise a tea made of it.  The local deer seem to know better than to munch it.  The other defenses are unmolested and still armed.  The tells are untripped beyond the fences, and due to their nature, can't be reset by something that trips them.  So for the moment, I can determine from emperical evidence that no one's come calling.  Or if so, that my system is inadequate.  But let's not get into the paranoia that nothing works.

Music Time.

Adrianna's theme of Music Monday continues, where we're asked to provide examples of music that relates to ourselves in keeping with a theme.  This week's was the sort of music that activates the romantic within us...  It will come as a shock to a lot of you I think that I do consider myself a romantic.  The way I presently live would seem to contradict the idea.  There is a difference, I'd say, between not being interested in romance, and not having the time for it.  I just need to find the person with the brain as well as the heart that would make what I'm doing secondary to her.  When it comes, like the man says, "...It'll come like a wind.  And none of your plans will stand before it.  No more than a barn before a cyclone."

First...  There is a movie that will not interest most in the Magimundi.  It's trappings from the 1990's are inherently Mundane.  But it's more about trancending the mere trappings of the superficial and embracing one's potential.  It is also a love story between two people who almost lose what they had to the complications of minutiae.  The build up to the moment you see here is a man who believes he's lost her.  But before she left, he promised her that had he the power, he would roll in fog and storms.  He'd change the polarity of the planet itself so that compasses would not work.  All to keep her plane from taking her out of his life.  But for mundanes... that's not possible.  Or is it?  This is Enya's 'Exile' used in the end of 'L.A. Story'

The Final Scene from L.A. Story, and the song: 'Exile' by Enya

(Stupid Blogger Site will not let you attach video from any other place than YouTube. >_<)

The second is from Rupert Hine, a producer of groups that people know more than him.  One where someone seems to be singing to the one that's helped him out of his shell and helped him to trust in his own abilities, and knew all there was to know about him 'With One Look'.  A bit of wish fulfillment I suppose.  This is Rupert Hine - The Wildest Dream.  It's VERY 1980's.

The last here...  I think is probably one of the songs I consider romantic passion encapsulated in music.  There's other mixes of this I find less satisfying than the one from this concert album.  I envision a night all in purples and gold.  Candles and sheets.  With wind and moonlight.  And possibly some cliffside with pacific northwest waves pounding in the distance.  In the absence of Thunderbird, cliffs in Tir Na Nog will work as well.  This is from The Police in 1985 from their Bring On The Night tour... "I Burn For You".

Tea... and here I am, the only guy with the antidote. How'd that happen?

Gentle Readers, some interesting encounters this last few days.  But first, the news.

My solar projects are starting to show results in the range I'd like.  I think with a bit of networking and research, I've got some of the photoreactive properties of Night Gargoyle stone replicated in a graphene lattice.  Note, for those of you who haven't had dealings with the species, that Night Gargoyles calcify into stone when exposed to sunlight.  As do some species of hill troll.  But such cannot be negotiated with and are for the moment, not within the scope of materials I had access to.

In any case, I was able to contact someone with access to a rookery of gargs that were entirely willing to let go some of their shed scales and biomass.  My idea was that the absorbed solar energy was being converted and stored as potential energy to fuel them like food when they decalcified at night.  So the ability to collect, store and convert stored energy back to usable bioelectricity was a magical property that could be isolated and conferred onto other materials.

I've been into some of the mundane science journals' articles on the uses of 'graphene'.  Or to put it more plainly, atom-thick layers of carbon in a lattice.  These are extremely strong lightweight materials.  Just the kind of flexible sheets I'd like to be able to apply to surfaces to absorb, store and draw energy from instead of the motion enchanted generator I've got in the shed.  I'm at the moment able to get roughly 65% of the energy I estimate is being collected back from the graphene sheets with the 'euryale' enchantment on it.  Even 65% is an incredibly good result, considering what the mundanes are doing with silicates and metal that don't get even 50% back yet.


And I'm sure I could refine it more.  If so, I can probably have a mobile lightweight power source for the golems.  They could have a composite armor layer with a graphene layer in it where they're powered by ambient light.  Of course this means they'd be kind of an iridescent slate gray-black.  The darker the better actually.  The darker I get it, the more light it would absorb and store.  I probably need to dig out the capacitor research to store the excess.

And now what will probably interest you more.

Met with Adrianna McCoy just recently.  Who seemed to be hinting that she might be able to apply her not inconsiderable sway in certain circles to make an inquiry into the ongoing investigation that drives my life right now.  She also seemed to indicate that an investigation like that has a price of its own.  And while I might be somewhat unpracticed at such negotiations, I find myself not at all unwilling to pursue it.  She is, I suspect one of the most social creatures I have ever met.  Following her around online a bit in the NWM boards, she seems to know a little something about everyone.  I suppose this might be from her position on the Disciplinary Tribunal at school.  And honestly, I cannot say that I didn't enjoy our encounter.

It stemmed from a thread she posted.  A thing where she's trying to get people to be thoughtful on thursdays.  Where she asked what we'd change about ourselves had we our d'ruthers.  That and was there someone you might be able to tell 'anything'.

My answers were about what you'd expect from a summertime engineering recluse.  Wishing I could be a bit more considerate and caring with people instead of the callousness I normally present.  If only people could be a bit smarter or worthy of interrupting my work for and all that.

As for that special confidante...

...

Well, let's say the opportunity worth the risk doesn't seem to have presented itself overtly.

That said, I do look forward to my next meeting with Miss McCoy.  I'm aware of her rather public dalliances with other students at our previous years' formals and events.  And aware that for some obscene reason, I'm expected socially to disapprove of such promiscuity.  That kind of thinking is for jealous dullards stuffed with inadequacy issues.  And I've no time for it.  Not when our next meeting may be worth more than just its weight in data and practical applications.  If I'm to be more than just what I've become, then learning to enjoy the people I want to improve the world for is part of it.  Somehow, I find it hard to believe that enjoying her company will be a chore.  As to whether I can be as enjoyable for her as well...  Well, we'll see.

Soon after, I took tea with Hyacinth Oeler of all people.  OUTSIDE of the library or wherever she disappears to when she's not studying like I do.  After Miss McCoy left, we talked for a little while about the sort of things I'm working on, what for, and to what end.  Which segued into a discussion about the eventual discovery of the Magimundi by the Mundanes and what horrors that might entail.  My own point was more along the lines of it being better to be a warrior who was ready to garden than being a gardener with no idea how to war.  To prepare for the fantastic possibility of peace as much as war so we don't favor a solution of the latter instead of the former.

And Hyacinth was an inquisitive, if intense, conversationalist.  One whose conversation, should we choose to talk again, I would consider my privilege to enjoy.  She seemed to not mind my own blend of blackberry and honey.  She has a leaf of her own she thinks I might enjoy the straight honest taste of.  Unless I'm reading more into her words than I'm supposed to be, it may not only the taste of tea she wanted to share.

Being as focused as I've been, it's something I hadn't considered the possibility of.  Much less from two people in the same amount of hours.  I wouldn't think either had some ulterior motive.  As antisocial as I've been, what could anyone think to want of me other than the conversation we enjoyed?  I will not let my paranoia scotch or scar this.  I had a nice day.

Well... it was nice.  It may not have been as nice for Hyacinth.  I touched a nerve with her, I think.  She folded up like the trays in my toolbox when I asked about her experiences with Mundanes.  I put forward the idea that we didn't need to talk the next time we met for tea.  Which tells me more about me than her I think.  Apparently I desired or cared enough about her company that I wanted there to be a next time.  And negotiated one.  Who knew I was capable?  I didn't.

Music time.

A podcast show I quite enjoy has a musician whose music has looped around and around for me lately.  It sets up in my thoughts.  I have procured a copy and slowed it 800% recently and enjoyed it just as much.  It feels like the place I have come to live in my thoughts and feels these last years.  The wistful echoed quality of it much like the blue-purple of misty emotion that creeps around the shadows of my skull and the work pouring out of it.  Were I to have a soundtrack of my own, this might be the first track on it.

Randomly going to the next track in my playlist...

And finally...

A person for submission, and on the submission of persons.

I was reviewing some of the first years coming in this year.  It's something necessary, even though I usually consider this something of an inconvenience.  I suppose getting used to administrative work in an official position is something they're trying to teach us as well.  I understand the necessity of it so that the new students may get proper placement at New World.  But at the same time, when I've got an idea or a thing on... which seems to be all the time now, I do admit.  In any case... when i have a thing on, it's hard not to see things like this as an annoyance.

Usually.

In particular, the case of Leland 'Lee' Radcliffe-Forsythe is a fascinating one.  This scion of the elite, straight out of P2A4 in Destiny is has the sort of lineage one might normally dismiss as destined for the plutocracy.  And it would be a sad disservice to the person in question.  Her family all but disavows her as a traitor to her kind.  Was relegated to the Morton house in Primaschola, which incidentally is where my father was sorted before he decided the institution had nothing further to offer him.  (The anonymous calls to various bureaus and the small scandals and disciplinary hearings among the elites that followed in his wake, I'm sure were 'purely coincidental'.)

In Lee's case, her dedication to study and the pursuit of a hypothesis to its logical, illogical, or sometimes outright purely nonsensical or unintentional conclusion is, from all reports, nothing short of breathtaking.  The results of her pursuit of the marriage of Mundane Technology and Mundi-Artfice, while producing often unintentional or chaotic results none-the-less GET results.  And that's right in line with Laveau's philosophy.  Properly encouraged and nurtured, her talents and abilities can be nothing but a boon for Mundi society.

Her more iconoclastic tendencies are in a word, unexpected, from one of her lineage and will likely cause difficulties for her with the more 'unsoiled' among the student body.  Especially if allowed to be inducted into a House Croatan in some misguided effort to 'fix' her by surrounding her with family and colleagues she could only hope to offend.  The Casa might be an interesting fit for her, if she is to be led into their mascot's mischief working ways, but a waste of a first rate mind and potential.  With her stated drives to bring positive change to the world with experimentation and innovation without the unnecessary fetters of tradition and mundane predjudice, it would be remiss of Laveau not to offer her immediate placement within its more tolerant environs.  How a person could come from the unsoiled so...  unsoiled is astounding.

Now to a different tack:  The mind...

Here's an idea.

Many Mindbreakers, at least from what I've seen, tend more toward 'seeing' and using one's extrasensory perceptions to get into someone's head and know what they do.  Getting around mental blocks or protections set up in the mind against untoward reading or remote viewing.  Or perhaps postcognition.

Naturally, being myself, I've often wondered what kinds of artfice could be applied to the 'science' of mindbreaking.  More to the point, there is the concept of hypnosis and framing the context of a situation in order to produce the circumstances under which a person's natural inhibitions to a suggestion would be greatly lessened, or perhaps even non-existent.

"What does any of that even mean, Snow?" you might ask.

Many of the more mundane born among us will be familiar with the concepts of hypnosis and mind control; if only through mundane science fiction, hero stories, or fantasy.  Wherein a person is fixated and relaxed, or talked into a state of suggestive hyper-awareness.  One in which the conscious mind is fixated or distracted or relaxed into submission while the 'under-mind' or subconscious takes the wheel.  And in this state, that inner computer that drives or does things on autopilot while the conscious mind is considering other things is in control, and suggestible.

Many mundanes will use props in this regard.  Usually with the intention of producing eye fatigue or conscious distraction, hypnotists will employ things like spirals and the ubiquitous pendulum or swinging pocketwatch.  And lots of times this kind of object or visual fixation is married to a spoken induction that keys into the learning modes of the subject.  Sometimes brainwave states are induced with the use of a binaural tone, or to put it plainly, an alternating tone in both ears that can induce brain states conducive to learning states, trance states or suggestibility.

You can already see where I'm going with this.  Mere clairvoyance or invasive telepathy must usually set up a combative state in the subject.  Often times this would likely affect the information gleaned from the subject.  Likely traumatizing them in the process, or damaging their sanity which further damages the qualilty of information.  Positive reinforcement instead of negative always gets better results.  You frame the situation so that it's in the best interest of the subject to want to share information with you.  In the context of trance, where the subject's subconscious is working actively towards their best interests, it will gladly cooperate with beneficial suggestions.

Now add a subliminal element to this, where the hypnotist's intentions can be communicated below the threshhold of conscious perception.  Now add a binarual tone to encourage the person's physiognomy to be more suggestible.  Add in a visual element that can not only fixate, but add subliminal suggestions faster than the conscious eye can see.  Add a biofeedback generator to encourage physical calm.  THEN start leading the person into trance.  It still takes talent and training in order to talk the person into a trance state where they'll speak to you.  But the results of a session used in combination with the suite of tech suggested here?  All of that charmed and enchanted to enhance the enchanting effect of the apparatus?  I'd think any Mindbreaker would sign up to put such a thing into common use.




Note... the staggering possibilities for misuse are of course plain.  Such tech would need to be a regulated thing.  While not entirely useless in untrained hands, there's enough people in the world who've read a book or two with untoward intentions to make them dangerous to others.  The possibilities for positive use beyond mere interrogation are just as staggering.  In the absence of actual brain damage, such a suite could be used for therapeutic purposes.  Helping wizards who've accquired the odd neurosis or mental effect in the course of their own works.  The detoxification of panic or terror in those with crippling phobias.  The elimination of undesired habits or toxic behaviour patterns.  Properly used, it could be a boon to all.

Music Time Again

Here's meditative and hypnotic types of music today.  Again, here's an 800% slowed piece I chanced on.  Which honestly has me considering slowing some of the music I already have down to see what effects it might produce.  The musician herself is from Thunderbird, and were she not such a public figure, I'd place money she was Mundi-folk.  As it is, I'm almost sure she's mixed lineage, or has some fey in her.

There is a Scots punk band from the early 1980's that managed quite nicely with a singer who doesn't so much use words to make sense, but as devices to use her own voice as a complimentary instrument.  It has been known for her to sing the scientific names of butterflies, or to have picked random words from a hat to sing.

When I am down...  when I need to remember that on the grand scale, none of the evils around me truly matter.  When I need to remember the goodness of a simple breath and the majesty of the great everything around me.  When I need to inspire myself to do better.  I listen to this.

And if I need to be a bit more pumped up while doing it...

I do not aim with my hand... that hand usually has a wand in it.

     Found that an esteemed Mindbreaker will be teaching the subject this year.  My parents never mentioned people they may or may not have worked with.  It is perhaps worth investigating to see if he may have known or worked with him in the two years after he left college himself.  My knowledge of the size of the community of astromancers or mindbreakers is limited.  But if he is as talented as he is hinted at being in what information there is to be had of him... then my mother knew of him at the very least.  He may be someone that could help make in-roads to professional mindbreaking as my mother did.

     Weekly practice with the revolver went well today.  It's hard to believe I won't be bringing it with me to New World.  I'm not sure I understand the ban on firearms or their research in the Artficer classes there.  I'm guessing it's probably the standard predjudices against such things when it comes to mundane tech.  And there's a point there to some degree.


     This machine in particular has one use, and one use only.  And a frightening one at that.  It's only use is the ending of a life.  One that someone has struggled to fill with all the days they ever had.  And it's one I hope never to have to use in that capacity.  Unless you've a chirurgeon or healer about, it's not a thing you can take back or fix unless your shot wasn't a lethal one. 

This machine changed the world.  It ended the days of the longbow, the sword and armored knights and mercenaries centuries ago.  There were matchlocks and flintlocks on the scene as far back as the days when Virginia Dare herself was merely a glint in her daddy's eye.  Its use doesn't seem to be specifically banned in the Magimundi.  It just hasn't really caught on like it has with the Mundanes.  And of course, why should it when we're all walking around with the stick equivalent of a flamethrower (It werfs flammen), howitzer (don't ask.), rail gun (don't ask about that one either, dear readers.) or orbital laser. (REALLY don't ask about that one.)

Some of my own experiments have been interesting in an awful kind of way.  I would imagine a lot of artficers would consider firearms to be something of a blind alley in that one really can't use them to fire a spell effect itself into an opponent or target.  Which to a large degree is missing the point.  The same kind of tunnel vision that makes most Wizards go, "What do I need one of those for?  I have a wand."

Firstly, with the resources we have available to us, we can do away with the need for black powder or any kind of gunpowder.  It takes some spellwork, yes.  But a sufficiently powerful directed repulsion spell on the firing plate that triggers on impact from the hammer would do.  Essentially you pull the trigger.  Hammer hits the repulsor plate.  The Repulsor Plate repels a loaded projectile up the barrel.  The barrel itself accelerates the projectile to merely fast, or hypersonic speeds and there you have your powderless caseless gun.  (IE: Caseless = Without a powder shell around the projectile)

Now... Taking that a step further, there's all manner of wheezes and pranks that use charmed and enchanted materials that go off when touched, or on impact after being thrown.  Usually this sort of thing is left to pyrotechnic effects in 'firecrackers' or immobilizing someone with 'spancel-grass', etc.  These ideas are a hop and a skip from things like projectiles so cold they freeze things on impact.  Or flash heat on impact so radically that they generate explosive plasma.  (Ball lightning to Mundi-folk like you and me.)  Or basically any spell effect you can reasonably enchant into a solid piece of matter.

Which brings us down to the materials themselves.  The mundanes have long used lead, or other alloys in the manufacture of their bullets.  Something that can stand up to the stresses a bullet must undergo from a gunpowder explosion behind it, followed by the extreme heat and stresses of going from rest to 1700 miles per hour instantaneously.

However, if we're eliminating the idea of a gunpowder projectile we can also start considering specialized bullets.  Even mundanes know that most lycans cannot bear the touch of Silver.  And silver bullets are the stuff of folklore and legend. 

Other creatures with more of a Fae-like origin can't abide cold-iron.  But a Mage-Gun might be loaded with all manner of specialized materals.  Petrified wood, or perhaps a seed of quick growing nettle or creeper.  Or something that fired high into the air burns visibly in the electromagnetic spectrum of sunlight.

Those two examples are pretty hot subjects, given that Lycans and Vampires are all people.  I'm not proposing some artficed-weapon meant for murdering people with abilities and pathologies that make them superhuman.  Personally, I'd rather see folks cured of their bloodlust than slaughtered.  And this kind of research would be a positive boon as a delivery system for a subsonic dart tipped or loaded with the right dosage or immobilizing potion.  Or perhaps a fast expanding and immobilizing gel to temporarily hobble or drop your target.  Given the resources at our command, and the imaginations we aspire to, lethality could be removed from the equation.

Still...  I make myself practice.  I will not be caught out like they were.  And I will not go unarmed outside of the extraordinary circumstance of New World.  School is safe.  Or at least as safe as such places go.  In the numbers of my fellow students, I think I'll be safe enough from what may be hunting me and be able to devote myself to my studies undistracted.  I wasn't firing live iron today.  Merely marbles with light enchantments on them at subsonic.  I wanted to see what I was shooting, and how far off I was from the targets on the far fence.  6 shots.  6 hits.  So like the writer says, I've not forgotten the face of my father.  I seem him well, and he is still with me through all.

Music time.

Here's a song about a mythical fantasy land dear to the Mundanes.  Not that one.  The other one written by that writer's friend, C.S. Lewis.  A bit more family friendly than the apocalyptic visions of Tolkien.  If you've the opportunity, it's a great study in the kind of fantasy meant for Mundane Children.  You have to wonder if Lewis was Mundi-Folk.

As well, from Lewis, you may want to have a listen to some of the audiobook of his much funnier and adult work, 'The Screwtape Letters'.  One in which we read the correspondance between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his minor subordinate, Wormwood.  This one is read by the incomparably funny mundane comedian, John Cleese.  As always, no one comes close to the snide, bored and entrenched malefic authority of a feared schoolteacher like Cleese.

And finally, along a different track, here's a bit of mundane music about the 'lost' colony from the Outer Banks of Solaris.  One in which a rather legendary figure from our own history is namechecked.

I didn't make connections, but connections had a hand in making me.

There is a problem as far as understanding the Mundanes and the road they've taken with scientific advancement.  There's no real treatise on how to do it.  More to the point, like any person at all, they don't truly know or understand themselves either.  The one fundamental difference between us is that we are born with some switch in our genes or souls in the on position that lets us harness the power of our wills and the universe around us, and manifest that power to desired effect.  If you're born with that switch in the off position, you pretty much have to make do with what you can find and what you can make with it.

What we do with our powers for magic or invention define us.  So if we are to know what the Mundanes are, we may be greatly served by looking at what they have made in order to survive and prosper in the world.  Or at least... see how they are destroying themselves with same.
I stumbled across a thing when I was doing some reading up on my namesake.   In 1977, there was a show in England called 'Connections'.

It was sort of a holistic view of technological advancement from the Bronze Age to the present day.  The presenter was a technology historian and commenter, and bounced from topic to topic pretty randomly at times.  But there was a method here.  the progression of his episodes were how one advancement led to another.  And that to another still.  And how people are connected by the events and the things they use as a matter of course every day.

More interestingly still, while not drawing moral conclusions, he did ask moral questions regarding the impact mundanes' technology has had on their lives.  He would of course say something was better or worse if in fact it was more mechanically efficient or effective in its use.  But he'd also ask if man was better off for its invention.  In this, he'd leave it to the viewer to draw their own conclusions.  He invited the viewer to think about what was needed, the solutions applied and the consequences from an over-arching perspective of historical advancement.

Honestly, it's one of the most compelling and informing stories of the human race I have had the privilege to see.  One any artficer or engineer should be shown from the time they pick up their tools to start a work.  And it's available here for anyone to watch.  Have a look!

In other news, I may have a solution for bartering for giant spidersilk from a supplier.  The person seems unsecretive about it.  It's not like it's an illicit material or anything that I know of.  So that may take care of the need for the muscle fibers on the current Winter Series.  I may go with a longhaired look to her for practical reasons.  I might be able to use 'hair' to bleed off the heat from the CPU.  In this case, I may want to consider hair from some cryptoid with heat conductive properties.  The longer the hair, the more heat it would sink.  I keep thinking something like the sort of hair you might find on a horse's tail might be ideal.  Either this, or thin extruded metallic hybrid filiments that can conduct heat without melting and curling up into frizz.

As far as heat sinks, this may be the reason in the past for people doing golems as clay or mud.  It's not exactly lightweight, but excess energy turning to heat would certainly be absorbed by it.  Metal was dear back then.  Nowadays, stronger lightweight materials are much easier to come by.  Making the skeleton itself of a heat-disapating material, and sinking that heat out of the chassis is a nice efficient solution.  I considered a liquid coolant.  But honestly, that's a thing that if damaged causes a mess inside and might be fragile when it comes to movement.  Looking into how coldstones for refrigeration are made might be an idea.  I imagine the same enchantments could be applied to a titanium endoskeleton.  I'll have to consider how to vent moisture to prevent condensation inside the chassis.  But really, that'd only be a concern if the construct was over-exerting itself.  The concept included here is one of the biggest inspirations for my present design.

More music from the playlist.  This is what stood out to me while I was working and researching today.  Things that broke through the train of thought and demanded recognition.

Bear McCreary - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Motorcycle Robot Chase

Hans Zimmer - Inception - Old Souls

And if you've got an hour, I found this to be rather conducive to delicate work that needs peace of mind.  Something I find that can be in rather short supply sometimes...

Hans Zimmer - Inception - Old Souls (Slowed 800%)

And finally... there's an animated feature of the robot design I liked up there.  It's a little science fiction-y.  And it's not in english.  But you don't really need to understand to understand.  It raises some insteresting ideas as well as questions worth considering.

Looking Into the Infinite. ...And Knowing We Can Do Better Than This.

Okay... do you see this?  This, for those of us who do not look at the sky at night, is Mars.  It is the closest most hospitable neighbor to our planet.  It's about 245 million miles away from us roughly... Well... point up.  Good.  It's thataway.  The Mundanes have machines of their own, orbiting this planet.  They have silicon golems of their own, rolling around on that planet.  Digging at it.  Looking to see if it's more than just Iron Oxide and sand.  The poor things are getting cooked slowly by radiation from the sun.  But they're also powered by it, so they just keep on going.  Looking to see if there's anything alive up there.

Now... do you see this?  This is Jupiter.  Our Astromancers will be pretty familiar with this one.  It's the biggest planet in our star system.  That big red eye there?  You could submerge several earths in it, and never see us again afterward.  Us human creatures have some fantastic close-up views of it, and its next biggest neighbor, Saturn.  Why is this?  Did they just build a really big telescope to look at them with?  Oh hell no.  Any mundane-born wizard will tell you.  We sent more machines up there to go take pictures of them in the 1970's.

Well, great job, I hear the traditionalists say.  Those probably wore out years ago, right?

Au contraire, my hidebound friends.  It is still going.  It's taken fantastic pictures of other planets too, including the one furthest away from us that we KNOW about just in the last few years.  Where is it now?  Who knows?  It's gone beyond the boundary of our star's wake, and out into interstellar space, where it's still sending information back to us.  And the Mundanes built this more than 40 years ago.  It's even got a gold recording of us on it.  Saying hi to people in every language we could find.  The man I was named for signed it.  We sent greetings and music to whomever might find it.  Not because we were sure someone would.  But because we are a good, friendly and curious species at heart.  It's our message in a bottle.  With a map back to us should someone want to come see what may have happened to us someday.

Now see this?  More than 40 years ago, Mundanes walked on the moon.  They didn't just send machines.  This time they actually went up there themselves.  It is one of the mightiest endeavors our species has ever achieved.  We traveled to another planetary body and landed on it.  Then came back alive.  And some of those people... people who were able to look up at us here on earth and see every person alive, or has ever lived.  Some of them are still alive and walking among them.


The Mundanes did this.


Now look at this.  They did this today.  This is a thing they use to fire themselves and other stuff up into orbit.  They managed, after years of trying over and over again to send this up so high, it fell all the way around our world and then ignited the great firework of a rocket underneath it.  And then it came unerringly down and landed safely.  It didn't splash down in the water.  It didn't arrive safely on land.  It landed on a barge in the ocean.  Because they wanted to make their creations SO good that they could do that.

Why haven't we, as a wizarding people tried any of this?  Where are our golems in orbit?  On other worlds?  We by and large don't have the transportation needs that the Mundanes do because we can teleport wherever it is in the world we want to go, one way or another.  We can literally fold space and time with enough knowledge and power.  Were we so enchanted that we stopped looking up?  When did we stop wanting to go to the stars too?

Is it a practical problem?  Are we just not able to come up with a vehicle to convey us?  Does our magic fail when we get too far from our planet?  Or is the magic anywhere the light from our sun touches us?  Have people tried to put together a ritual that can vanish us from here, and arrive on the slopes of the great Martian volcano, Olympus Mons?  Have we not researched spells and charms to protect us from radiation, or to provide us with breathable air and heat on a world like that?  We have photos of the place.  Have we not tried to make a photo like that big enough and real enough to be a gateway so good, our imaginations and powers can let us walk through onto the rusty plains of Meridani Planum?  Do we not want it bad enough to be able to call up that power and go there?

I do wonder sometimes why some of us in the Magimundi seem to almost regard the Mundanes with this species of pity.  As though their achievements are somehow lesser than ours, when they've walked on our moon and looked back at us nearly a half century ago.  I think, for the wise, or the inquisitive who ever looked up at the sky and thought of going there too, it must not be pity.  But shame that we have not done so already.

We ignore the mundanes and their science at our peril, my friends.  If they can do these things... they will discover us too.  And no amount of wand-fuelled amnesia will banish that discovery back into the bottle they let it out of.  We must be ready to embrace the rest of the human race as our brothers and sisters when that day comes.  And it will be a when.  Not an if.  We must help them see the sense in not going to war with one another when this happens.  Show them the wonders we might achieve together.  Cos if they can do all this more than 40 years ago without magic?  Imagine what we might to together?

Or where we could go.

Enough ranting for tonight.  I've got work to do.  In closing, here's a thing put together by the Astronomer I was named for by my parents.  It is likely one of the most beautifully humbling things you will ever hear.  And all of it is true.

Also, some more music from my playlist.  Random selections you can listen to online as well.

Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

The Eagles - Journey of the Sorcerer

Hammering In An Unacceptable Amount of Silence.

Hello...  unsure where to begin, really.  Honestly, this is more of an attempt to settle my mind, or perhaps get things out of it so I can clear the space necessary for thought and study.  I'm sure you know how it can be when you're overburdened with the minutiae of the world around you.  It can set up a din in one's mind that can barely be shouted through.  And I suppose that's what's going on here.  Like with some devices, a pressure release mechanism can be good for the mind.  Allowing it to release the dross of random thought.

I'm also aware of what my old classmates from Primaschola think of me, these last three years.  Withdrawn... serious.  And they're right.  Maybe this is my way of speaking to people without my standards getting in the way.  Putting it all down to be understood without the necessity of awkward social interaction.  Maybe I'm just sick to my heart of having no-one to talk to.  Which to a large degree is my own fault.  If I'm to dig out of a bit of my own isolation, this is as good a spade as any.

I go back to NWM soon.  And while I am somewhat closer to my goals, concept and design-wise...  I still am no closer to gathering materials and being able to sit down for actual fabrication of same.  The stipend from the agency is not what you'd call a research budget.  It's more along the lines of a thing meant to keep one fed so you don't slowly starve on conjured food.  Power and water are no problem.  Refreshing the motion charms on the generators out in the shed keeps the lights on.  Water's in the well, and thus far as not been soured or fouled.  That I have to check that bothers me.  But one has to be careful nowadays.

The house is still secure, and none of my alarms or indicators have been set off around the perimeter.  It's still not real to me here at times.  I expect to see mom over in her red reading chair firing through some mind magic treatise.  Or maybe hear dad frotzing something into its component atoms and cursing at it creatively.  Having the place to myself is unnerving, even after two and a half years.  I tend to have my playlist going simply to have some kind of noise to defeat this ghastly silence.

I'm getting my thoughts together, in as much as that is possible nowadays.  I'm going to need funding for the golem research.  I'm only able to go so far with the printed circuit designs on the golem control plates without proper materials.  Orichalcum in the most minute amounts costs the earth.  But simple or even enchanted iron-mongery or even platinum tends to overheat or crack the plates.  Don't even ask me how I got the platinum to test this.  Happily I was able to smelt what little I had back into usable ingots for later use.

It's too bad I can't get in touch with Tenebrae's Silicon Golems, wherever it is they went.  I've contacted the Tenebrae estate, but his notes and research were confiscated following what happened to him after his experiment.  (UGH)  I should start charging government agencies money to stonewall me.  That would fund my research just fine with perhaps enough to look into some of the solar solutions I've had ideas for when it comes to component miniaturization.  But that's a whole other thing.  Tenebrae's Golems are in the wind, and I'm thinking unlikely to speak to me in this regard.  It's worth talking about publicly.  Maybe they cruise the internet and look for mentions of themselves.  If you're out there, I don't mean you any harm.  I just want to see if I can build on, and maybe improve upon your design.  I'd welcome any collaboration or correspondance you'd care to enter into.

There's a message in a bottle for you.  I suppose that officially makes me desperate.  Which I suppose is a different thing to be desperate about.  How refreshing.

In other news, my playlist is expanding nicely for work.  I have to make sure to put on the more stately flow-y kind of music nowadays.  When I fire up the industrial, that's really not conducive to delicate work.  Industrial's for when the hammers come out and we're working on endoskeletons and musculature. 

Speaking of musculature, I'm not sure if I'm going in the right direction with that.  I'm getting nice amounts of success with the tensile strength of enchanted silkworm fiber and giant spider-webbing.  There's a nice amount of give and tensile elasticity there.   The problem is getting the stuff to expand and contract like muscle fibers do.  There's several species of expanding and contracting creeper with the same tensile strength, but the problem there is that it adds weight and mass that the species of silk and web don't.  There's also the problem of plant matter moisture.  Spider-silk's probably my best weight/mass solution.  I'm going to want to avail myself of the libraries at NWM to see about enchantments that can cause expand/contract effects on command.  If a command can be keyed to that, maybe the CPU of the golem can issue those commands in a numeric string internally.  Which again, begs the need for a fast conducting material capable of sending spell-active instructions to enchanted materials.  And we're back to Orichalcum again.  UGH.

Money blows.  Don't let the rich folk tell you different.  When you don't have it, it blows.

Two  ideas for possible funding: 

     Avernus Prison.  I'm betting that in terms of costs and public relations, security golem without the benefit of sentient level AI would probably save them a lot in the long run.  No more crypto-rights activists painting them as modern day slavers for using chupacabras as their guards.  And while they'd have maintenance costs to consider, not having to farm or outright buy the beasts from Chupa-Farmers or feed the things would be something of a boon.  And it's not like a limited AI is going to be any less nuanced in its decision making capabilities.  And as guards, they could be enchanted with all manner of spell resistances or materials effective against meta-humans who've contracted vampirism or lycanthropy.

Divinatory Companies.  This is maybe more of a long shot.  Golem don't HAVE to be ambulatory.  Baked into the mechanism for a dedicated cosmic or divination observatory, such a thing could adjust the position of elements, focuses, or material elements necessary to any ritual or seance down to the inch or decimal point.  Diviners could free their minds to let in whatever they're seeing or dowsing while the AI takes care of remembering what planet is in what position or is in retrograde to what other planet might be relevant.  So seeking out 3rd years who may have contacts in professional divination houses may be a good way to go.

Probably want to steer clear of the more traditionalist purebred.  No society that wouldn't have a mix like me as a member is going to fund my research unless they're the sort of people that use and throw away people callously and grow rich on their stolen labor.  The idea is to open up opportunity to everyone.  Not help to entrench the elect or the elite.  I need to keep an eye out for the more philanthropic sort of patron.  Someone who wants to bring change to the world in a big way.  With the right resources, I think I can make that happen.

OREO (tentatively)

Speaking of resources...  Got an owl today.  Anonymous sender.  It was a little gray barn owl with a white face.  Cute little guy.  If I see him again, I'm officially calling him Oreo.  It would appear to be an invitation, after a fashion.  It's encoded and I'm running some algorithms on it right now to see if it matches anything.  Not in the computer.  Right now, I'm just using a sketchbook to do the diagrams necessary.  It might be ensorcelled to reject a mechanical solution.  In any case, I'm not scanning that into my home machine.  I haven't got the money for a new one.  This seems like a test.  We'll have to see. 

This could also be a trap.  But it doesn't fit the M.O. from THE INCIDENT.  Logically it doesn't follow that someone would encode an invitation only to get me to someplace in order to do me harm.  If they wanted to do that, all they'd have to do is enchant the owl they sent it with to explode.  Or write the invitation in exploding runes.  So given that I'm still in one piece, I think I'll keep researching this... whatever it is.

This reminds me of a piece of music.  It's a lovely piece, which I think was written, or at least played by J.J.Abrams when he was doing Fringe.  Essentially an equation in the form of music that when used right, opened the way between walls.  There's a nice poetic sentiment there.  Included here is the piece it reminded me of, and an expanded one that includes other recognizable themes for those familiar with the darker side of mundane science fiction.