robert.admin – Page 122 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 11, 2016

OpsLog – WBRR – 6/11/2016

ooks and movies never work well if nothing goes wrong. The excitement comes from complications and deviations from the plan. Like in the movie Alien. Would you really want to watch it if, after the facehugger thing got that guy, they locked him down in proper medical observation, saw the seed, removed it, squashed it? Then you’d have ninety minutes of them getting themselves ready for cold sleep, just SOP, nothing more. Well, in model railroad operations, running the timetable is the goal. Immediately after our last session in March, Al, Phil and myself took Al’s original written instructions for […]

June 9, 2016

Opener (DOG EAR)

e’ve talked about the importance of hooks, and how critical it is to draw a short-attention-span audience into buying/reading your masterwork. So how about character development? Shouldn’t we be able to form our character descriptions quickly? Hundreds of years ago, traveling troupes set up archetypes so that ignorant peasants in every village wouldn’t have to suffer the drag of character development. Scaramouch was always the trickster and weaver of plots. Harlequin was the mute jester. And so on. The characters dressed and acted according to their established types and were known immediately to their audiences. So here’s a good example […]

June 5, 2016

The Day of the Star Cities (Review)

needed a break from my long slog through The Republic (“Do you think that a book that goes so long, and is so pedant, can hold your attention?” “Of course I do, oh Great Socrates!”). Picked this one up in a Maya’s raid, a thin scifi (154 pages), and it would make for a nice intermission. So, things on this future Earth (as seen in the 60s, when this was written) ain’t so hot. Aliens have arrived, ones we’ve never set eyes on except for their five great ships. When they show up, all of our nuclear stockpiles and weapons […]

June 2, 2016

Gamebooks (DOG EAR)

kay, this one seems like a natural for me. You might have heard of Gamebooks. These are the branching type of adventures we used to see in all the wargame shops in the 80s. In them, you’d buy a book and read the opening chapter. Perhaps you were crossing a picturesque stone bridge and realized there was a troll under it. The story would break, and you’d see something like If you want to fight the troll, goto page 14. If you want to cross the bridge and continue up the path, goto page 24. Each of those pages would […]

May 29, 2016

Toomai of the Elephants (Review)

suppose that not many are in the Indian space that I’m in while I read this. I’m just back from two weeks in the sub-continent. And I’m in the break room at work. Indians chat in Hindi to each to each other. The spicy scent of their food drifts over me. So, what better place than to read of Little Toomai, the son of a mahout, from a long line of them. His great grandfather was the one who help capture and break the grand elephant Kala Nag (“Black Snake”), a huge, wise elephant in service for proud decades. While […]

May 28, 2016

OpsLog – FEC – 5/28/2016

ust another day on the railroad. Ran the 940 rock run under great difficulty – a car on the team track, my trick siding packed to full, and a boxcar coming in and out. Yeah, it was a stumblefest. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get it worked. But the weather held off and soon I was ready to highball out – I just had to let about three trains, a railcar, and two trudging hobos get past before the DS would let me out. So that’s why I was an hour late. That’s usually the most tricky turn on […]

May 26, 2016

Interruptions (DOG EAR)

t’s funny how creative and not-so-creatives view the very act of creation, but it’s certainly differently. See, I see it that I’m working with Squiffy, a sharp little adventure creator. You remember those old adventures where the computer would tell you a scene (“…You are in a path in the forest. The road runs north and south. To the east, there is the sound of rushing water. What will you do…?”) Yeah, back then we played about every Scott Adam’s adventure there was. Anyway, Squiffy lets you do this fairly easily (had to learn a couple of java script tricks). […]

May 25, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/25/2016

ight night at the club – it’s like that sometime. But the crew runs sharp – we’re cleaned up, set up and away when the clock goes hot. Matthew made it on time so I gave him the panel – he’s off to College soon. This let me out to run the Shelfton Turn – interesting note about Shelfton; it’s the oldest section on the layout. It’s been in operation 25 years. And I’ve never run it. Nope, not once. So tonight I did. Worked it smooth – I don’t know if the usual crews do my trick – I […]

May 22, 2016

Industrial Revolution (Review)

was trapped. Lunch had fallen through (nothing else planned) and the doctor’s office called and said they could reschedule for today (always a wait there). Didn’t have my book. Didn’t have my tinytop. I’d have a couple of hours to kill and nothing to kill it with. I was entertainically unarmed. Thank you, Project Gutenberg. Hopped in and opened up Amazing or Astounding or something, downloaded it to my work computer, then stripped out a thirty page story. This I dumped into word, reformatted it and printed it into fifteen double-sided pages. And I was good to go. So, yeah, […]

May 19, 2016

New Media (DOG EAR)

eah, I always go after new media. Today on the train everyone was squintin’ and clickin’ (I, sniff-snuff, was reading Plato’s The Republic). But I bash the open changes we’ve seen, from Amazon rankings to cute media stunts to tie-ins to promotions and everything in between. But even I change, even though I resist. Was buying a mouse (for my computer, not my cat) at Best Buy the other night. They are hanging on by their fingertips (boooo, Amazon), which made me melancholy (for a box store – see – that’s part of it). But then I wandered through the […]