The Magicians Birthday

Tales From the Table Top

Location: Dave and Kitty’s Kitchen

Game: D&D 3.5

Mission: Find our way out of here!

Players: Dave (Game Master), Kitty, Leona, Phil, Phil and Mike

I run the Bard.  Why do I run the Bard?  Because our party contains my teenage son and I don’t want to dominate the game with a powerful character.  What better character to emphasize support and team building?  So while everyone is buffing up for combat and initiative, I don’t worry about any of that.  Spells to enhance strength?  If I do get into combat, would a +2 on my Die 6 attack really matter, so why bother?  Initiative?  It doesn’t matter when my Bard songs buff up the party, they don’t take effect till the next round anyway.  I may be packing a Masterwork  +5 rapier, but it hasn’t drawn blood in months!

But there are moments.

There are 5 members in our party, two rangers, a cleric, a monk and my bard.  We’re standing at a door at the end of a corridor that was shrouded in ice.  A quick peek revealed a White Dragon taking his ease upon his hoard.  We shut the door and backed up to make plans.  Encountering the White Dragon was not a surprise.  The temperature had been dropping rapidly as we explored this area.  The final hundred or so feet was absolutely perilous with ice.

Coming back to the door, fully buffed with all sorts of flammables at hand, and we opened the door.  The Dragon slammed us with a cone of cold.  Our two rangers, all prepped with flaming arrows, started to pepper the Dragon, while our Monk, hands covered in fire wraps, stood firm holding a tower shield to mitigate the Dragon breath.  (And what turned out to be a supporting Magic Users spells!)  Our Cleric healed the front ranks in turn, and with each round, we were whittling the Dragon down.

The Dragon, or rather the DM, saw that this long range encounter was rapidly not going his way.  He went down his list of spells and found some kind of dimension door.  The next instant found the Monk looking straight into the Dragon’s maw.

                                         

I was amazed!  Other than the surprise, this was wonderful.  “Now wait a minute Dave, are you trying to tell me that the Dragon was losing so badly that the only way it could fix the problem was by teleporting the human buzz saw right next to it”, I asked.

“I just rolled a random PC, that’s all”, he replied.

After taking a chomp and a claw, the Monk proceeded to do what he does best.  He leaped over the Dragon so as to be shielded from the bow fire, and proceeded to lay on a couple sets of “Fury of Blows”, racking up about 150 points of damage on the critter.  Meanwhile the Rangers shifted their focus on to the Mage, while our other heavy hitter, a Cleric with a Holy Falchion ran towards the fray.

The Bard, marched into the cavern, bagpipes screaming “Scotland the Brave”.  The music focus allows long range critical heals on the Monk to keep him in action.  It would take the Cleric 2 rounds to engage the Dragon and 4 for the Bard. 

After two more rounds, the Dragon had had enough and leaped off of its meager hoard into a nearby basin of water.  The Monk leaped after him, engaging the beast in what had to be 32.1 degree water.  The Bard was out of critical heals and reaching the low end of his repertoire with only light heals.  Even with heat wraps and presence of mind, the Monk was accruing damage from hypothermia, tooth and claw faster than we could take them off.  It was also noted that the Dragons wounds were closing and he was beginning to look healthier.  The icy water was regenerating him!

The exasperated Cleric, having run another two rounds to engage the Dragon, was getting pissed off about the situation.  But the Bard unperturbed, marched steadily onward to the now unoccupied hoard.

The enemy Mage retreated to beyond bow reach and was focusing her attacks on the Monk, and despite receiving 5 heals, he was going down soon. 

Now seven rounds into the fight, the Bard had his moment.  I saw it coming many turns earlier, and if the Dragon would condescended to live long enough, the Bard would have the spotlight.

The Bard dropped the bagpipes, which deflated on its own weight with a mournful tone.   Scooping up some of the gold, he stood atop the mound of treasure; a glorious tenor (Charisma of 27) voice rang out.

I challenge you, I challenge you all
For all you own and all you know
And by all the powers of darkness
I will steal what is mine

Surrender now or face my spite
I grant you it may be Friday night
But did you know this day
Also numbers thirteen.*

With the Dragon’s attention fully gathered, the Bard released the pilfered coinage in a steady stream.  It’s catlike eyes narrowed to the barest slit, the whites going instantly red.  It gathered itself for what would be a devastating body blow to the Bard.

The party looked at me in horror and demanded, “What are you doing?”

The Bard was in his element, unconcerned: because for now, the performance was everything.  He removed his feathered cap, his hair waving in an unfelt breeze in perfect sync with the flutter of his cape.  He drew forth his flaming sword which as of yet has never drawn blood, letting it rock gently in front of him with a confidence he did not feel.  I held up the Out of Character card and replied, “I’m buying you guys two more melee rounds.”

The challenge could not be denied, the Dragon leaped, shaking the Monk off its back.  The Monk made his dexterity roll and landed catlike on his feet upon dry ground. 

The Cleric had arrived; the timing was perfect, as was her rolling two crits with her Holy Falchion.  The Dragon was gutted as he flew overhead and fell into ruin upon her.  (Only the Cleric’s plate mail armor protected her from doing an amount of damage that would have squashed the Bard flat.)

The enemy Mage teleported out at that point, and we were left wounded but victorious, sitting on a dragon’s horde.

* Excerpted from “The Magician’s Birthday”, with apologies to Uriah Heep.

Christmas at Stokesay Castle

http://stokesay.net/

The new needs friends.

Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source.  In a nearly perfect replica of the thirteenth century Stokesay castle constructed in Reading Pa, in 1932.  The Christmas decorations were tasteful.  The outdoor fire ring was well appreciated in the 28 degree weather.  

The interior was pleasant, with piped in Christmas music, and a roaring live fire. The staff was beyond perfect in attention to detail and willingness to go the extra mile to satisfy.  I lack the words to describe the meal, but to say that each course was so extraordinarily fabulous as to be off the scale of any superlatives I could offer.  I will be returning to Stokesay's soon, hungry for more.

It was a great night.

Alternate Lighting Schemes. LEDs, and Fluorescents.

Originally published in 2013.  The first section was dedicated to compact florescent.  Which are now totally eclipsed by LED's in price and quality.  Scroll down to "On LEDs" for more relevant information.

 

Most of you probably have the compact fluorescents in your homes by now.  And now with the advent of LED bulbs are contemplating them as well, but with a $23-40 price tag, are also contemplating the survival rates of snowballs in Texas. This is not a propaganda piece to change your mind, but a couple of pages of information on the topic based on my experiences.  I am a technology buff, and a geek and have been following these advances for years. 

I was a fairly early adopter of the compact fluorescents when they came out.  I waited till the price was around $12/bulb and the displays showed they were putting out white light instead of brown.  After that I bought enough of them to re-bulb my house, and believing they would last the 7 years that was advertised.  Then the deployment problems started.

Compact fluorescents can’t be put on dimmer switches or on touch sensitive switches, which a surprising number of my fixtures were on.  Also I found that I didn't dare put two of them in the same fixture.  Each would emit a slight buzz, but two would buzz twice as loud, and out of sync.  This made my bathroom sound like it was infected by cicada’s on their 7 year mating cycle.  The result was I had to mix incandescents with fluorescents in the same fixtures.  

This created a storage problem, as now I had to stock both types of bulbs, with an excess of fluorescents, as I couldn't deploy as many as I had bought.  The secondary problem was the heat from the incandescent was boiling the electronics of the fluorescents, causing many premature failures.  This meant care must be made for the placement of the bulbs in a common fixture, mainly in the bathrooms where 4 bulbs are above the mirror.  First I put the fluorescents on the inside two, and the incandescents on the outside.  Logic being the outside bulbs would radiate half their heat outward.  This did not work well and premature failure of the fluorescents continued. My current configuration now has the fluorescents on the outside where they have better air flow to keep cool, and their failure rate has diminished.

A large part of the failure rate of the fluorescents has to do with manufacturing specs.  (made in China)  When I worked for CMC Energy Services, which is in the business of making homes energy efficient, I was given 4 compact fluorescent bulbs.  Their failure rate was 75% in 6 months.

Then there is the disposal problem.  The fluorescent coating requires mercury, and these bulbs should be taken to a recycle center for disposal.  That just sucks.  I am still kicking myself for that.  I did know, but didn't consider the mercury and that I was creating a pollution problem when I adopted the damn things wholesale.  Now that the fluorescent bulbs are under a dollar a piece, and 100 and 75 watt incandescent bulbs are outlawed, fluorescents are flying off the shelves, creating a waste stream catastrophe.  This may be over stated, because if you live in an area where your electricity is generated by coal, then the fluorescent bulbs are burning 75% less coal to light, and thus 75% less pollution in the air, mercury included.  The fluorescent bulbs probably are still better for the environment overall, providing they last the 7 years as promised.  I don’t think any of mine have, but some have lasted many years.  

There is also a dimming problem.  Fluorescents lose about about 20% of their brightness after 3 years average usage.  

 

ON LEDs:

 
For over 20 years, I have been following the development of LED lighting.  Everyone in the lighting business knew this was where lighting was going.  And it has been an arduous development process.  The lure was great, as the actual energy conversion to photons was very close to 100%.  But the lights were too dim.  The power conversion too big and too hot.  The number of light radiating elements too high and complicated, and LED light was too direct, like a laser, making them uniquely unsuitable for all round lighting.

Many years ago I saw a prototype LED lamp for chandelier lights.  It looked like a candle with white measles.  The bulb might put out the light, but you would never want to look at it.  I bought a string of blue LED lights for my Christmas tree.  Pretty yes, but when you walk through the room your eyes were constantly under assault by hundreds of blue lasers.  This is very distracting.  

So several years ago the only suitable LED lighting was for track lights.  They were $40 a piece, and I bought 2 of them.  The only problem with that the energy conversion process from house current, 120 volts AC to 5 volts DC creates a heat problem and to deal with the heat problem the bulbs are out sized to dissipate the heat.  This makes them ugly and in some lamp fixtures, impossible to deploy.  Also, this inefficient electric conversion means that LED’s burn 20% the energy of an incandescent as opposed to 25% for fluorescent bulbs.  The actual conversion of energy to light in an LED is an extremely efficient 98+%.  For fluorescents, this is about 10%, while incandescents convert only 2% of their input energy into light; the rest being lost as heat.

I will say, if you can fit them in your fixtures, my $40 track lights are excellent.  They burn bright, white, and after many years in a prominent spot, are still working.  I am well pleased with them.

But LED bulbs providing all round lighting, have proved elusive until recently.  In 2010, Sylvania announced their LED 60 watt (800 lumens) equivalent bulb.    But at $40 per bulb this is a hard choice when for the same price you can get a shopping cart full of incandescents.  I was tempted to buy ONE then as a test, but didn't.  The break-even point of energy savings was 5 years at that point, and frankly, I like my rooms bright, and in general don’t use less than 75 watts (1100 lumens).  And at that time I still had my two test LED track lights working.

Well it is three years later, and I think I can say, LED’s are here.  The size has improved somewhat.     The cost per bulb has dropped dramatically.  While the price point is not exciting, it does mean in my area of the world, where electricity is 15 cents/kilowatt hour, the payback on the 60 watt bulb is now a 1 year, down from 5.  After 3 years, the amount of electricity used by the LED bulb is under $2/year as opposed to $10/year for the incandescent.

Phillips 810 Lumen LED Light Bulb

But the main reason I am saying that LED’s have arrived is that the 75 and 100 watt equivalents are out.  They are not cheap either, at 20 and 30 dollars each, but both have the break-even point over the incandescents at just under 3 years.

Other things you should know.

LED bulbs are heavy.  Goose neck style lamps will droop with them, and lamps with long stems may be unbalanced.

Most LED bulbs will work on dimmer switches.  But that does not mean they will dim or light in stages.  The radiating elements of the bulbs are either off, or full on.  It does mean your dimmer switch will not blow out the energy converter.

Your heating bill will increase.  As your incandescents were providing excess heat, your heater didn't need to cycle as much.  But heating your house with electricity is the most expensive way to do it anyway, so there is a net savings overall.

You Air Conditioning bill will decrease.  Without your incandescents providing excess heat, your air conditioner won’t cycle as much.  This cost saving is almost a watt for a watt, effectively doubling the value of the LED bulbs.  A definite win-win situation.

LED Bulbs do not dim over time. This is noted by my personal observations and confirmed by Consumer Reports testing.  Fluorescents dim 20% in 3 years.  

Replace the heaviest used bulbs first.  My break even points are based on a light being on for 3 hours a day, but I replaced 2 specific bulbs now because that specific fixture is used 6 hours a day or more, reducing the break-even point to 18 months.

On Lumens

As watts becomes an irreverent method to measuring light output, the term lumens is coming into vogue.  Truth be told, watts were always just units of energy consumption, and was never a very accurate measuring the amount of light generated.  Higher wattage bulbs were more efficient, generating more lumens per watt.  A single 100 watt bulb generated almost as many lumens as 4, 40 watt bulbs.  Manufacturers are also playing fast and loose with the lumens and the “watt equivalency” on their packaging.  I have found this most egregious with regard to candelabra style lamps.  

I don’t propose you memorize the numbers.  But when I am comparing, I go by a 12-1 ratio.  1 watt incandescent generates 12 lumens of light.  Just keep in mind that this ratio is a curve, as 40 watts fall below this ratio, while 100 watts goes above it.  

But in general here are some numbers:

20 watts (candelabra)       165

40watts  (standard)           440

40watts (candelabra)        280

60watts (standard)            810

75watts  (standard)          1100

100watts (standard)         1600

On Kelvins
The last piece of information is concerning the spectrum of light the LED's are radiating at.  This is rated in Kelvins.  Scientifically this is the color temperature of the electromagnetic radiation emitted from an ideal black body is defined as its surface temperature in Kelvin.  

The current numbers seem to run from 2700K to 5000K.  2700K, which marketing is calling "cool white", is too brown for my taste.  I have 3000K and that is better with the color of the light being emitted.  But I really like how white the light is that is generated by the 5000K bulbs.  They are worth the extra cost in my book.  Especially for something that will last "forever".

The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special.

AKA, The Only Time I’ll Ever Get To Use My Sonic Screwdriver and Not Feel Like a Total Jerk.

We had the sheer joy to experience the Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary Special in 3D at the local theater.  It was really difficult to avoid the spoilers present on the web these last 3 days since it was simulcasted in Europe.  Two and half hours before the show I grabbed my sonic screwdriver and met Joanne at the Kamita restaurant, which is a 5 minute walk from the theater.

An hour before the show, tickets in hand, we joined the crowd before a shut door #19.  “Is the door locked?” I asked.  Screwdriver in hand I pointed it at the door activating the light and sound effect.  Which generated a few laughs from the audience.  And I was more surprised than anyone when the theater cleaning staff opened the door at that moment.  The crowd didn't even hesitate to enter in the rush for seats.   Not missing a beat, I called out to no one in particular, “You’re welcome.”

The theater filled quickly.  At least half full before the commercials started.  If you only saw it on TV, then you missed the introduction by Strax, the Sontaran who chained bandaged movie etiquette violators to the wall and explained he loved blowing up the corn creatures and stated that popcorn can feel pain.  

The show was magnificent.  The 3D was not over done to distraction and greatly enhanced of imagery of the 3D pictures within the film.  The ending changes the history of the Doctor as we know it, and the closing shot of the 12 current doctors was worth the price of admission.

Afterwards, there was a short film on the making of the special, narrated  by Colin Baker.

On the way out the door, we headed for the normally unused back exit.  I gave it shot with the sonic screwdriver before opening it.  I hope someone saw.