New Mars Forums

Hey guys!

Sorry for being inactive this past while, but I have been uber busy. To make up for it, in the first bit of time I had free, I thought I would finish off the composition I have been working on with the programme Sibelius 3.

It is simply entitled A Minor. I tried to make it feel chaotic and un-easy. The real version is actually 39 beats per minute faster than this, but Sibelius saves midi files at the default tempo of 100 beats per minute. (I don't have the software to record a .wav or .mp3 file.)

I also found the first ever thing I finished on Sibelius. It is called the Final Movement. I originally invisioned it as the 4th movement to some mega-opus thing, but I never got around to writing the other three. To make up for that, it is in a wacky time signature. I love wack time signatures. Also, something is messed up with the ending; not sure what it is, and I can't be bothered fixing it.

What do you guys think?

Hello!

Clark asked me to set-up a game of volleyball. I meant to do this earlier, but this is the first oppertunity I have to do it in where I actually feel like doing it. 

Ok!

The basic premise of the Volleyball game is to improve your writing skill by continuing a storyline much like the Round Robin game currently running; however, Volleyball is different in that each post must be of a different genre. I know sci-fi is the preference here, but a good author should be able to write any genre.

There are a few rules; nothing too complex or anything:

1) Each post should be a different genre, or sub-genre than what has been posted. After a while, most of the obvious ones are taken, then you have to get a bit wacky!    There will be a bit of leway as the used genre list increases, so don't worry too much about that. I will try and start a list of used genres for reference...

2) You have one hour with which to make your entry, so when you intend to post, you simply put up a message saying something along the lines of "Ok, my turn" or something like that so people know not to double-post you. You then write whatever contributions you wish in EDIT mode (and of course, delete the part of the message pertaining to your intention to post).

3) Contributions can be however long or short you wish, provided they can be written within the time frame of an hour. (If after an hour, for whatever reason, someone has not finished their addition, then it is opened up again to whoever wants to post).

4) You can take the story in whatever direction you please, as long as it reasonably follows with the storyline (your discretion here, but pretty much anything is go, as long as you don't start a whole new story or something), but of course, there will be lots of strange directions as the genres change.

5) Posts can be as serious or as humourous as you desire.

6) HAVE FUN! Making writing practice fun is what Volleyball is about!

So... if anyone wants ideas or more information or whatever, follow this http://www.ibdof.com/viewtopic.php?t=2382]link

Sweet, so I guess I should start things off with something quick (opening night for the school Production of the Merchant of Venice is in about 3 hours and I need dinner and to get to school and amp'ed up).

[Lovecraftian Mythos Tale]

I want to tell this from the beginning; I ask that you listen and do not interrupt me. I fear that if interrupted, I would lose my chain of thought and the courage which took years to muster. You, Sven, must keep this knowledge to yourself; there are those who would wish you harm if they ever find out what I am about to tell you. But you must not ignore the lessons you will be taught; you must use this knowledge to deliever as many people as you can and you must do so subtley! Our survival depends on it.

Well, you remember that Ihsahn, do you not? Yes... I first met him back when I was...

Building on the thought of a villian winning; to move away from the good guys vs bad guys sorta thing, give the protagonist some kind of negative trait which impacts largely on how he relates to people (but not enough so that we aren't turned off the story), and also have the antagonist have some endearing traits as well. For example, a 'goody' who is a compulsive theif versus a 'baddy' who champions animal rights, or something like that.

You can go further, and make your otherwise moral character put in a situation where they have to make a very hard choice (eg in L.E. Modesitt, Jr's Ethos Effect), or make us see the antagonist's point of view, and make that point of view just in their eyes (For example a kind and moral tyrant, who is forced by whatever forces to be harsh on his/her kingdom).

Goody vs Baddy stories suck! It is the amount of grayness in between the extremes that makes a storyline interesting. 

I am soooooo becoming a Nuclear Engineer when I finish school!

Thanks for the password! 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162 … 78,00.html

Yeah, and what if some psychopath gets a hold of one?

Hehehe, definately!
...Get some weird radio-filter vocals recorded from inside their environmental suit happening.

Soz for taking a while to reply - I find it difficult to keep active due to school and stuff.

Yup, that's what I'm ganna be doing. I'm also interested in power supply so I'll do some engineering course on that also.

Yeah, I suppose NZ is quite nice and where I live at the moment has a lot of green and stuff but A lot of NZers take it for granted - we produce more waste per person per year than the average American does. :-\ It really sucks arse seeing all the rubbish on the fields after lunch and going around doing my bit to pick it up (while getting laughed at).

Ewww!! I can't see how anyone could drink that stuff!

  Hehe, yeah, there are a few of us around.

Not so much a book but a very interesting, must read article on environmental fanatics and stuff like that. Nice bit of indirect Greenpeace bashing.

It's a very nice site actually - Indymedia, I hadn't heard of it before now, has anyone else heard of it?

Remarks to the Commonwealth Club by Michael Crichton

There was an interesting doco on the Discovery Channel in NZ (and Oz presumably) last night.

Said basically that we are over due for a magnetic reversal by likw 500k years (usually happens every 200k years but it has been over 700k since it last occured).

From estimates and studies etc the mag field is at about 10% of normal due to the abundance of areas where the magnetic field goes in/comes out from the core (currently there are two of these - the poles, actually, they said that there is an area in the south Atlantic where the magnetic thing is opposite than the area around it).

Suddenly the magnetic field kinda flips but it stays unstable for a very long time (thousands of years) where North and South move very often. They used the example of a mountain range thing which was formed my lava flows where the bottom was aligned towards the current North and the top was aligned towards the south. The interesting part was in-between the rocks varied to a large extent. There was one flow were in the time it was cooling (bout 10 days) the location of North varied by 60 DEGREES!!!!!! The whole instablility thing was like around 5,000 years or so.

For the effects, they estimated that at sea-level cosmic radiation will double causing like 100,000 more deaths per year via cancer and you may be able to view the northern lights in Central America and Europe!

But dont worry, it won't happen for a couple of thousand years. Anyway, the Earth just went through a period of high magnetic field strength. I cant remember how long the period was but there was a big bulge on the graph.

So yeah, i wouldn't really worry about it. Our core isn't going to freeze ending the field entirely and letting the solar wind steal our atmosphere. 

As a side note, apparently Mars' magnetic field was like 30x times stronger than the Earth's before it shut off.

So yeah, I hope I informed someone Sorry for mistakes etc, but my parents rushed me off the computer.

Rock on all.

Yo and welcome to the Mars Society forums!

Yup!