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[dr_random]

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

only if your American.

Who isn't these days. Even in England, you can enjoy our Cocacola and McDonalds.

Quick, fellow Europeans! Counter this remark with an outstanding cultural achievement of ours whose neglection would throw the New World back into Stone Age!

[Wannazzaki]

Invention of the first car! Discovered and propagated modern science! Invented the internet!

Scotland pioneered this! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-15262297

[Starver]

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

only if your American.

His American... what?

At the risk of suffering the Pedant's Curse myself, I would like to say[1] that your (correct) response is slightly tainted by not knowing that "your" != "you're".
[/derail]


[1] Oh dear.  I may just have annoyed myself with my own words.  Politicians (in the UK, at least) often say "And what I would say to you is <whatever their soundbite is>".  And this always makes me think "Is that what you would say to us, but can't because it isn't true?  Say it to us or not!"  Don't say you will, might, could, would like to or want to say something, just say it, goshdarnit!".  Anyway, now I've used one of those weasel-phrases, and I don't even have the excuse of wanting to pad a bit to emphasise or marshal my thoughts together, given this is a text medium with plenty of other opportunities for both.[/doublederail]


Anyway, miniprojects.  Was my idea not worthy of comment?  (After I put it down, I started to wonder if it was a bit more of a kiloproject... i.e. not quite mega.  Although I have it's big cousin in the works (slowly), which is a lot more work, given it uses 90% of the map area on a 4x4 embark.)

[dr_random]

Oh well, another attempt at derailing foiled. OK, I'll try to stay focused, now.
OP: I don't think you'll need that many hens to get a decent egg production. These numbers might quickly affect your framerate. Anyway, I'd suggest to couple your egg factory with breeding new poultry to release on invaders.
Perhaps it is possible to mod turkeys to learn?
What about a danger room experienced set of combat wrestler / biter king-turkeys? You'd surely need a lot of resupply then.

OT: Didn't know we invented the internet - I feel a bit proud.

[Starver]

Quick, fellow Europeans! Counter this remark with an outstanding cultural achievement of ours whose neglection would throw the New World back into Stone Age!

Am I the kind of European you're talking about?  I'm British/English/a Yorkshireman/etc.  And I'd nominally call myself European, unless you're talking about the kind of things you Europeans do that we don't (use euro[1][2], enjoy wine and other culturally significant alcoholic beverages not to excess, habitually know at least one non-native language and either obey and enjoy and European rules or disregard them happily with no official come-back[3]).

The Western World[4] has inherited a fair few things from the UK, apart from the language, although I have to say that the Scandiwegians are high on my list of "foreigners who made a difference but are often overlooked".  And I'm not just talking about the work of Ole Kirk Christiansen.

Whoops, more derail.




[1] Note that the officially correct plural is the same as the singular, and that I've also capitalised it correctly.  i.e. not.
[2] Also note that we in the UK have the € symbol on most non-ancient computer keyboards, on the same key as the dollar.
[3] As opposed to suffer them and get them enforced them nonetheless.
[4] I'm at about 1.5 degrees west of Greenwich[5], so I must be part of that.
[5] And the meridian is something of note that we stopped from being French/whatever.

[Starver]

Invented the internet!

I think you mean "the web".  (Speaking as someone who used the Internet before the Web came into existence, I do tend to be a tad pedantic over that issue.)

You could have mentioned computers, though.  The first (digital, electronic) computer, though, might have been either British ('Colossus', courtesy of Flowers, Turin, et al) or German (Zuse's 'Z3'), or possibly some kindred devices from slightly earlier or later in history, depending on what you consider to be a computer.

The first American computer...  Hmmm...   ENIAC?

I'm sure if you check web pages on each of the above, they'll all claim to be the first Computer, with perhaps a nod to the others and the (not necessarily complete or currently extant) prior works of Babbage, Pascal, Jacquard and Hero (amongst others) insofar as their mechanical predecessors.  Some of it is subjective to the same "what a computer is" idea, of course.

[dr_random]

Quick, fellow Europeans! Counter this remark with an outstanding cultural achievement of ours whose neglection would throw the New World back into Stone Age!

Am I the kind of European you're talking about?  I'm British/English/a Yorkshireman/etc. 

Yes, I mean you, too, strange island-dweller.
Seeing you mentioning orb-related things (meridian) and me being the central continental type of European, I'm itching to make a remark as to the nature of English penalty kicking, but I rather don't because of your reference to the "LEGO" thing: Hey, I grew up with that. And my creations were even more colorful as my first architectural projects in DF.

[Gamzee]

All those footnotes...Now I want to read House of Leaves.

[Wannazzaki]

Start a new fort. Dig down to the layer just above the magma layer. Then build your fortress upwards from there. Make everything that wants to trade or attack you come down to you, giving you plenty of spare to make them run a gauntlet of death.

[hjd_uk]

Depends if you're British or not.

(My own spill-chucker likes "defence" but not "defense".  Also not "chucker", but I should change that, given how many times I mention my spill-chucker. )

Miniproject: Having decided that you can fit everything you want into a (say) 20x20 tower (up to the sky and in basements deep into the ground), set a cohort of miners to dig a trench around the site (maybe one or two tiles wide, depending on how you're accessing the materials) and use exclusively those rocks to build the walls upwards, as you increase the height.  (All else from the internal underground excavations can go towards the internal overground floors/etc, except for whatever minerals you process.)

Easier done than described, actually.

Heh, like my current fort then?
Pillar-Fortress

[acetech09]

Turkey fortress.

yes.

[Starver]

Yes, I mean you, too, strange island-dweller.

Seeing you mentioning orb-related things (meridian) and me being the central continental type of European, I'm itching to make a remark as to the nature of English penalty kicking,

Makes no bones to me.  The traditional podal extremity sphere-shifting game generally passes me by as much as (apparently) said sphere does the guy in charge of the English fishing net structure.  My Dad enthuses about the spheroid-based game with the H-shaped bars at the end (and can even tell the difference between the "Hooligan's game played by gentlemen" and "Hooligan's game played by hooligans" versions).  There's the little sphere propulsed towards the sticks in the ground game, as well, which largely unphases me.

Sportwise, I'm most closely aligned to velocipede racing, but the Time Trial versions, not the massed start stuff that's more common on the continent.  And my personal involvement is in the capacity of officialdom (usually one of the the guys with the watches, but I'm as happy to stand with my arm outstretched at junctions) rather than participation.  Now, talking of bicycles.  Dunlop and others, who are probably way underappreciated for their developments, can be added to your list of European/British contributors.

...your reference to the "LEGO" thing: Hey, I grew up with that. And my creations were even more colorful as my first architectural projects in DF.

Colourful?[1]  Sorry, but my creations were never colourful.  Not necessarily monochromatic, but I don't think I ever built a model that was a hotch-potch of the white, yellow, red, blue and black[3] bricks.  If not monochrome, certainly there'd be some logic (e.g. grey wings and blue body to my space-ships, with yellow nose-cones and red rockets at the rear) and where that was not possible I usually obeyed a reflective symmetry (or rotational, in some less pointy structures.


And it goes that way with my forts.  Constructed walls and floors all of a particular colour (actually, particular material, and usually blocks of it, though you wouldn't know under the default graphics set) with perhaps spare orthoclase or another available material of an otherwise unused colour for temporary structures that are to be removed once their access/support purposes are fulfilled.

I'm bogged down a bit with some of my current project-fort, because I can't currently access all the sandstone I want (and want to turn into blocks) due to aquifer-prevalence and a digging plan that precludes simply suffering some minor flooding (because it would flood just about everything for 40 Z-levels or more, below), but the andesite, dacite and diorite (IIRC) elements of the above-ground structures are coming along nicely.  I really need to isolate some more precise stone stocks near the mechanics' workshops, though to get a nice subset of equal-quality mechanisms all of the same material in order to fulfil my CDO[4] personality.

(I'll have a look at the Pillar-Fortress later, hjd_uk.)


[1] Actually, didn't mean to highlight your use of the 'Merkin term, in this part of my response but this sort of thing is how this derail started...

[2] As the most common colours, in those days.  Did you know the founder of Lego didn't want green (and brown) bricks, because he didn't want people to make war-things.  Indeed, when I first visited Legoland (the original and, at that time, only one, in Billund, Denmark) the decorative artillery pieces in the Buckingham Palace model were famously made of rare[3] green bricks.  Didn't stop people making blue WW1 biplanes or just guns in that self-same multi-coloured mish-mash that I'm railing against.  Personally, I used to use the 2x8 flat white bricks used as sleepers for blue rail-track pieces to form a variety of single-coloured constructions, because I could reliably get hold of so many of them, and amongst those (usually planes purposed not specifically towards military ends) were the occasional gun, I suspect.

[3] Excepting the more specialised grass-plates, trees and flower-stalks, which took more than a little imagination to form into guns'n'tanks.

[4] Like OCD, but in alphabetical order!

[hjd_uk]

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

only if your American.

Who isn't these days. Even in England, you can enjoy our Cocacola and McDonalds.

Quick, fellow Europeans! Counter this remark with an outstanding cultural achievement of ours whose neglection would throw the New World back into Stone Age!

Newton
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Charles Babbage -> Analytical Engine
Bletchley Park -> Collossus

Could go on but can't be arsed

[Starver]

Newton
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Charles Babbage -> Analytical Engine
Bletchley Park -> Collossus

Could go on but can't be arsed

You're mildly ninjaed, and I'm sure a continental bod will counter at least with the likes of Leibniz, Pascal and Zuse's Z3 that I already mentioned.

(Not too sure who would counterpart Brunel, the trouble being that he was working right at the beginning of the era we sort of created (YMMV)... But if there was one person primarily responsible for the engineering part of the modern TGV (or ICE, or whatavyer) rail system then they might be considered comparable.  Don't know quite so much about trains, though, so really can't be sure.)

[dr_random]

Makes no bones to me. The traditional podal extremity sphere-shifting game generally passes me by as much as (apparently) said sphere does the guy in charge of the English fishing net structure. My Dad enthuses about the spheroid-based game with the H-shaped bars at the end (and can even tell the difference between the "Hooligan's game played by gentlemen" and "Hooligan's game played by hooligans" versions).

I'll have to look into that H-shaped thing, too, one time. Even the French seem to like it.

Colourful?[1]  Sorry, but my creations were never colourful.  Not necessarily monochromatic, but I don't think I ever built a model that was a hotch-potch of the white, yellow, red, blue and black[3] bricks.  If not monochrome, certainly there'd be some logic (e.g. grey wings and blue body to my space-ships, with yellow nose-cones and red rockets at the rear) and where that was not possible I usually obeyed a reflective symmetry (or rotational, in some less pointy structures.

Ahh, I suppose it had to do with the way I stored all my tiles. One big ton, turned over for playing purposes. New sets were assembled once and promptly disintegrated into the ton. The "There is always a missing piece"-phenomenon was playfully picked up quickly, then. Creations sometimes looked as if they came right from the scrap yard, but they still worked pretty good - most of the time.

As the most common colours, in those days.  Did you know the founder of Lego didn't want green (and brown) bricks, because he didn't want people to make war-things.

Thinking of it, I really can't remember green brick tiles. Not sure about brown, but I think I was really short on green bricks. But you could use those polished slabs (without nipples on top) as a nice low-friction surface to design-your-own railgun with moderate effect if you didn't stick the tiles too tightly together.