31 Notes for Writing History

I have written 72 History papers in the past 4 semesters. I have collected some advice from my professors and personal experience, which I thought should be shared:

1. Learn to love double spaces papers, and hate single-spaced papers. 
2. 12 point fonts are fine.
3. New Times Roman is the default choice for a reason.
4. The professor's style guide is best. Do not argue. 
5. Oxford commas are impactful, important, and helpful.
6. Staples are not a good idea, they should be the law. 
7. Number multiple-page documents even when stapled. 
8. Use the school directory to look up the professor's name. Spell it correctly. 
9. Add your own name to spell check. 
10. Do not merely spell check. 
11. Do not use contractions. 
12. "Extremely" and "huge" both mean "I need a thesaurus". 
13. Dates do not have apostrophes. 
14. "Very" is unnecessary.
15. "Interesting" is not. 
16. "Toward" is United States usage, "Towards" is British, and Buffalo, NY usage. 
17. History does not repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. 
18. "Etc." is not worth using. There are better ways. 
19. Foreign words are in italics. Foreign means it is not in an English dictionary. 
20. No first OR second person, unless the professor requires it. Thank them when they do.  
21. The past is always in the past tense.
22. Do not confuse British for English. The same goes for others. If in doubt, look it up.  
23. Do not confuse name places for countries.
24. "Would" is a crutch or a mistake. Be careful. 
25. "Led" is more apparent than "Would lead". 
26. Passive voice is painful, but not avoidable. 
27. When comparing situations implicitly link subjects to periods. 
28. Do not hide verbs.  
29. Learn how to write citations from memory.  
30. Do not use clichés.
31. Learn how to type special characters and accent marks manually.  

Bonus: "Thank you" means "thank you". "You're welcome" means "you're welcome". They are not interchangeable. 

Gemstone IV and The Wizard

This week, I will be reviewing the Simutronics Wizard for Mac and PC. The Wizard is the client for most Simutronics' games, I will be focusing on Gemstone IV, but this could apply to any game supported by the Wizard.

My goals are:
Install Wizard on Mac OS 9.
Install Wizard on Chromebook.
Install Wizard on Windows.
Getting the most out of a Mac OS 9 install using other software.

Bonus points if I cover:
Telnetting into the game.
Cover Stormfront for Windows and/or Linux.
Cover other MUD software for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, OS X and Chromebook.

Tall order...

Research for Pio

Pio is a novel set in Italy before Mussolini's rise to power. It has sat on the back burner for a while and there it will remain until I do some more research.

To that end, I am reading How Fascism Ruled Women. While it is set at some point after this novel's timeline, the effects of fascism were already becoming a powerful force on society. Reading the end point is kind of backwards, but helpful.

I order a physical copy from Amazon, which was a little pricey but worth it.

What I have found is that I need to back up in time to really capture what and why things were happening in Italy between the World Wars.

I love research!

Space Marines (Continued)

I found a few Space Marines weeks ago. I keep finding just enough parts to build a couple more. These three are mostly painted. I thought I would try a little red highlight on the figures to switch it up.

(Obvious, I have never played Warhammer 40K.)

Amarillo Design Bureau Freighters, Kitbashed

Starfleet Battles is an intensely detailed and competitive game. For the longest time, how ADB designed ships was a secret. A few years ago, the team took a shot at rules to modify ships. The rules were written, but then abandoned by the authors. The general problem was Starfleet Battles ships have a power curve, meaning the ships should have limitations and abilities based on speed. It is easy to modify a ship to reduce or eliminate a limitation.

The nice thing about ADB is they have a rich history of two-way player support. They post rules for players to try before launching a product. Very often those products are loaded with player created content.

ADB correctly assessed that modification was not good for the product line, but then posted it for player's home campaigns. Personally, I like to use it for freighters. Freighters have a long life and well, they are often used ships with odd histories. They also don't fight very well, so modifying one doesn't unbalance things too much.

The freighter above has an extra sensor box, hence the large antenna. As a backstory, the ship was modified by Starfleet and then they realized the hull itself caused sensor performance problems. That and the antenna took up cargo space defeating the purpose of the ship in two different ways. It also causes a strange shimmy when accelerating and a terribly annoying whistle in the comms.

This ship is modded to have two extra hull boxes. In game terms, the extra boxes gives the ship more survivable without really giving it any real combat edge.

The backstory behind this modification is grandma and granddad promised to give a grandson their ship to carry on the family freight business. The problem was, the family business wasn't very profitable, so granddad and grandma built a retirement module on the ship before signing over the title. Worse, grandma and granddad don't talk much any more, so everything is rather awkward.

The S3 rules for Starfleet Battles are very comprehensive and nice for the friendly game but really very terrible for a fair game. However, if you kitbash ships, they are a handy reference of what is technically possible via the rules.

Amarillo Design Bureau's Starfleet Battles Freighters #MiniatureMonday

(Updated based on the ADB Facebook page. Go ahead and like them.)

Amarillo Design Bureau does several series of ships for Starfleet Battles, 2400 and 2500 series. The major difference between the two series is scale, however general ships like these freighters are the same size between these two series. Backward compatible if you like. :)

Once or twice a year ADB packages up all of the ships with defects or flaws that makes them generally unsalable and sells them by the pound.

I didn't mean to post about the scrapyard ships, but why not? Its a cool and cheap way to get into kitbashing and SFB.

These two ships were painted with Vallejo paints. The white piece holding the ship is a piece of soapstone with an arc cut into it to cradle the ships for painting.

In my next post, I will show a couple of freighters that I modified. 

Quit and win while you are ahead

Ah, Fixit.com, you saved the day once again. Our PlayStation 4 was overheating and the warranty was long gone, so into the case I went with a Fixit.com manual.

But Fixit.com can be dangerous. Sometimes, a little foresight can save you a lot of headaches.

Item one, my fan was not making any notes.
Item two, I have a can of air that didn't make a bit of different from outside the case.
Item three, I wasn't sure it was the fan.
Item four, I didn't have a replacement fan.

After dealing with the annoying security screws, I was fed up. I was looking at a 23 step guide and wondering what I would do if it wasn't dust. The image above was the point where I was about to give up. And then I noticed the solution right in front of my face. 

This is step five from Fixit.com. I can see the fan. If my can of air was going to work, this is the point where I needed to try. I could disassembled the whole thing to take the fan out, but I had been wrestling with screws and dust dobermans already. Time to quit. 

One blast of air filled the room with dust. I was on to something. While I was doing this, I sent the kids over to clean up our PlayStation 4's cage. Vacuuming, dusting, putting all those discs away would help our little PS4 in the long run. I didn't even reassemble it, once the area was clean, I plugged it in and tried it. And it worked. After 20 minutes, I was convinced I had the problem beat. 

I had the kids dust off the TV and collect up cable while I put the PS4 back together. And we are all happy again. 

Fixit.com is wonderful, the handman's go to textbook. However, just because it can be done doesn't mean you should actually do everything. Sometimes, a little forethought is needed to use what tools you have correctly and responsibly. 

Yet again, thank you Fixit.com for your wonderful guides. 

Opening Post For Pretender to the Power

Wayback in 2011, I created my first blog. I was unsure what to do with it, and by the time I let it go, it had been through many transitions. It was for art, music, games, travel and writing themes. By the middle of 2015, I let the whole thing go and Pretender to the Power became an Italian Shoe Outlet site.

That was disheartening to see my old site taken over by an outside company. And for shoes no less. The cost of repurchasing the site was out of the question. This year, I noticed the shoe company was gone and was able to repurchase the site at a very much reduced price of less than $20.00.

Having realized that this name and site meant so much to me, I decided to give it another go. I am now the happy owner of 4 websites. Each one has a different theme.

PretendertothePower.com (Writing) (defunct)
Unpwnd.com (Art and Technology) (defunct)
Theseoldgames.com (Gaming)
and WondersOfNY.com (Travel) (also defunct)

This site is my virtual notebook, containing items I write for fun and possible profit. I'm a long way from profit.

The title comes from a novel I wrote as a child. It is horrible, so don't expect Pretender to the Power to appear here. Working titles are:

Pio - a fantastic, historical novel set in pre-World War II Italy.
Redact for Redemption - a futuristic fantasy novel.
Accretion Disc - a science-fiction based game.