A stupid person can make
only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are
far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to
everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.
Vlad Taltos, Iorich by Steven Brust
Celti Burroughs
Amateur Universe Designer
About Celti
In no particular order, both professionally and avocationally, I am a working-class systems administrator and developer; avid reader, roleplayer, and gamer; Linux guru and resourceful troubleshooter; amateur writer and game designer; and an ardent technologist. In my personal life, I have struggled and continue to struggle with being bipolar and transgendered.
Currently between jobs, I spend my days improving my skills with the Rust Programming Language and navigating the bureaucracy of the American healthcare system; my nights engaged in writing for or playing games with Steve Jackson’s GURPS; and in the surrounding spare time I provide Internet and technology services to friends and family, including email, cloud storage, and hosted applications.
Happy holidays, folks. Been a while since I’ve posted, I know. Less than a year this time, at least!
Since you last saw me, there have been… changes — and I’m not just talking about the new website (powered by Hugo and the Academic framework). Since I last posted, I have (in no particular order):
Discovered I do not suffer from the potentially-fatal cardiovascular form of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, as I and my physician previously thought.
N.b. — I started this post in January 2016. I finished it today. See the previous post for my reasons, and my apology.
In Altered States, the year is 2065. Here in 2016 2017, home automation is a burgeoning field, and domestic technologies are taking off in a very big way. With five decades of technological advancement, just imagine the possibilities…
In a previous post we discussed living object networks.
Over a year ago, I said I had a post half-written. It’s about three-quarters written now, and the rest will be up sooner rather than later.
The day after, I got rather philosophical, as I sometimes do.
The day after that, I went cold turkey on the antipsychotic medication I have to take for bi-polar disorder. Lack of employment and lack of health insurance meant I could not afford them anymore.
Consider a new technology. A form of crude but effective mind control, that can with total effectiveness and no margin of error remove any single memory of group of memories from your brain. Ignore the science and the ethics behind the existence of this technology; it exists, and you have access to it.
Would you use that access to remove memories that you didn’t want to have?
I’ve been sitting here all day, soul choked and mind plagued by my subconscious running rampant through my past, bringing up memories I’d desperately prefer stayed buried in a corner of my mind — wondering if I would.
So as I’m sitting here looking at vision-based traits for a character with magical eyes, it dawns on me: why buy Blindness? Blindness is a whole -50 points. Seems like a worthwhile amount for such a limiting disadvantage. Consider, however, the following list:
Bad Sight (Nearsighted) [-25] Colourblindness [-10] Night Blindness [-10] No Depth Perception [-15] Tunnel Vision [-30] None of those are mutually exclusive, and they add up to a massive -90 points.