Adventures in Germany - Update #1

And after so many years, the blog is finally back!

So! As you all know, I've spent the last 2 weeks in Germany working an internship for the DLR (German Centre for Air and Space), and its been so fun *and hectic* that I honestly haven't had a second to let you all know about my travels. But today, I finally got the afternoon off, so I decided to write everything up. Since it has been so long, I'm going to be compiling things into subjects, rather than doing a day-by-day account as I originally intended.

So without further ado, *drumroll*

1/ Getting to Germany
Not a whole lot happened during my actual travelling, so I'll put the basics:
- The flight from Manchester to Stuttgart was okay, but the guy on the German passport control desk took about as long to process everyone on the flight as the flight itself. Someone needs to play Paper's Please (Glory to Arstotzka)
- Stuttgart is a very nice city, especially when one is walking around it in circles for half an hour trying to find the train station. Suddenly I know why that's the first thing you're taught in a foreign language.
- The train from Stuttgart to Heilbronn was double decker. DOUBLE FLIPPIN' DECKER. I thought they were only in America and Russia and I'd never get to go on one, but I did, *yeah!*, one more thing off the ol' bucket list. (Except I couldn't go upstairs cos of my luggage, so I'm keeping it on for now)
- Arriving in Heilbronn, the train to the house and Möckmühl was... cancelled. As were all of the others after it. For three weeks. Because the rivers flooded the day before and the lines were damaged.
Shit.
Thankfully, my supervisor at DLR was told about this and came to pick me up, so I finally made it to the guesthouse about 5 hours after I expected to.
Which leads me right onto:

2/ Where I'm staying
The guesthouse itself couldn't be nicer: it's quiet, surrounded by forest and the people I'm living with are nice, friendly and a whole bucketful of nationalities. Pity the closest shops and supermarkets are about 5 miles away. But luckily, everyone else has this problem too and they drive in to town every few days, so as long as I bat my eyelashes flirtatiously, they give me lifts in with them.
My room sits on two levels, with a desk on the lower floor and my bed upstairs. I've lovingly nicknamed it 'The Crow's Nest', and I often shout "Land ho, Cap'n!" out of the window.

I literally took this photo as I was writing this blog post.

3/ Where I work
I actually can't say a whole lot about this, since the DLR handle a lot of military contracts. Suffice it to say, I get my own desk, and some of the tests that I've seen so far have gone very similarly to this:

Science is nothing without the occasional slip-up

Saying that, my particular work so far hasn't been too taxing, just writing up a project plan of what I'll be doing for the next six months. Which generally means listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on loop in the background while I try to find the right words to use. I've finished that now, so hopefully I can move onto real practical work next week.

4/ Adventures around Germany
Now this is the fun bit. Since arriving, I've been invited on about 4 different trips to different cities. Last Thursday, there was a company trip to Bamberg, a beautifully city, which also happens to be the self-proclaimed beer capital of the world. So that devolved into me staring in awe at the architecture of the city while everyone else stared in awe at the size of their beers. Each to their own.

 Bamberg Cathedral. Named for and has a mural of Saint George inside, so a little bit of England in Germany

 

 Bamberg Castle, looking like German Hogwarts

 

Home of the main inquisitor during the witch hunts

Then, on Monday, we went to Stuttgart University for a series of lectures on aerospace and European agencies. Most of them were barely interesting, but one on a certain topic really piqued my interest (which may become the foundation for one of those ingenious presentations that Leggett suggested earlier).

5/ Observations about Germany

The first big observation is that Germans are ridiculously welcoming and nice, although this isn't much of a shock (most people are). And whoever said they have no sense of humour has clearly never been to Germany.

One thing that I've noticed is that German people never say 'Auf Wiedersehen', which I'd always thought of as just 'Goodbye'. Apparently, this is far too formal, and it's similar to saying 'I bid you adieu' or 'Toodle-pip' in the UK. People tend to say 'Tschüss', pronounced 'choos', or just 'ciao'.

It also rains just as much here as back home, probably because it's so hot. Or the weather's trying to make me feel at home.

And I can't finish without talking about the food. Every day, I seem to be trying something new and German, and it's all amazing. The obvious things, like bratwurst, schnitzel and pretzels, are all awesome, but there's some weirder, lesser-known gems I've tried. My favourites so far are 'Gaisburger Marsch' (kind of like a corned beef stew, and a favourite with the Stuttgart army during the Napoleonic era), 'Schweinegeschnetzeltes' (beef and mushroom casserole, called 'Zurich-style') and 'Maultaschen' (like ravioli, but the size of your hand). Now that I know what's good, I'm finding the recipes, so prepare for me cooking you all authentic German food when I get back!

Anyway, that's pretty much been my life for the last 2 weeks. I'm looking forward to the rest of my time, and looking even more forward to letting you all know about it. I'm sure the next time that we all talk on Skype, you guys can fill me in on everything that I've missed around home. Or just how much you all miss me, whatever =P

Oh, speaking of that, I almost forgot the most important part:

6/ The things that I miss

- My family. Probably goes without saying.

- My Xbox. Should also go without saying.

- Fast internet. The house may be nice to live in, but anyone who's tried to get in touch or play games with me knows how pitiful internet is over here.

- Knowing what stuff's called. It's so frustrating trying to mime what I mean to someone in a shop or at work, and I have a newfound appreciation for foreign university students. Most people do speak English, but that means I feel ignorant for not being able to return the favour.

- Fresh milk. I forgot that over here it's always UHT and tastes a little off, even when first opened.

- All you guys. You're all amazing, and I'd love to Skype with you all sometime =]

THE BLOG IS BACK!

Hello good wonderful people!

Greetings from afar! I have decided we need to bring back the blog in all it's glory, so I have resurrected it.

How are we all? I thought I'd give you an update of what's been happening since September and I'm hoping that some brave soul will follow suit.

So, Nottingham's great! Awesome city, I'm loving wondering around in my lunch break and stumbling across great parks, buildings, chill-out spots and shops! It actually makes me want to go shopping?!? which is bizarre as usually I can't stand shopping or being in town for more than an hour, but here I find myself wanting to stay in the city centre for ages and have the money to buy that THING that looks COOL but has no practical use whatsoever. You should all come! Look how cool it is! I promise I won't take you shopping.

My course is good fun, we're making puppets this week out of polystyrene. It gets everywhere, I keep finding little white blobs in my clothes. Here's my course-mate with her new found friend...

...and what looks like a puppet massacre in the workshop...

... We've even got some headless puppets hanging from a rope so we can cover them in PVA...

It doesn't look creepy at all..

Freshers' week was... *insert word here*. The reason I say that is because (I'm sure you'll all know having done freshers' week before) that it's hard to sum up in one word. For me it was a mix of feeling happy, excited, nervous, lost, joyful, curious, cautious, down, anxious, confident, content, cheerful, lost (geographically), feeling at home, wanting to go home, wanting to explore everything and wanting my course to start so the late nights could stop.

So all in all I would say that it was good, but I can now safely say I'm not a massive fan of clubbing. Which always gets you a "you're weird" look from people, especially when they discover that you don't really drink either. I had a conversation with a uni rep, which went something like this:

"So are you coming out tonight?"
"No, not tonight."
"Oh, having a chilled one?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"Are you coming out tomorrow night?"
"No."
"Oh..." *Pauses for a sec, then walks away*

It just makes you feel a bit alienated sometimes, but actually having said that, my flatmates have been lovely, I couldn't have wished for a better flat. There are 10 of us all together, 6 girls and 4 boys. Most of them are southerners bleeerrgh, but they're still people and that's what matters. Here's a picture of them semi-dancing in the kitchen.

I've been trying out archery too! We're in Nottingham, so you've got to! I got near the middle bit and took a picture so you would believe me..

I'll beat Robin Hood in no time!

That's about it from me, but please do comment, rant, moan, request, suggest, or splat on this blog. It can be big, it can be small, it can be fat, thin, reflective, funny, serious, none, any or all of the above, we just need to use it peeps! :D

If you don't know what to write or are feeling the uni blues, just listen to Sam :)

Love from Sherwood x

Salad, Leeks, Mecha-Ferrets, Bombs, Gnomes and LEEERRRROOOOYYYYYYY JEEENNNKKIIIIINNNNNSSS!!!!!

So most wednesdays Leggett and I get together to play various games and what not and recently we've been testing my RPG, Fire and Steam. We've had some interesting occurrences for sure, so imma share them because they're hilarious. These are the most recent 2 adventures and I'm sure there will be more to come. 1 of there is Derek's adventure and the other is Amos's, Matt's brutal and disturbing lizardkin barbarian. Enjoy!

Adventure 1. Derek and the Magical Anus Monster.

Derek awoke upon a stone sacrificial altar at the far end of a large room. red curtains lined the walls connected to four pillars in each corner of the room, and in the partings of the curtains lied a total of three doors, one to the south, east and west. On the floor was a small stream flowing round the altar, unifying in a large, central pool, big enough to refresh one's self. Unsure and unaware, Derek hobbled to his feet, ready to explore, wearing nothing more than his beard and a loin cloth.

The southern door looked most appealing.

Opening the door, he finds a large conglomeration of priests and townsfolk. They stop and stare at his huge bulge... They cheer and bow, chanting "THE DELIVERER HAS COME". Derek stands there, not really sure about anything, but none the less accepting this high praise as a god. He is informed by the high priest and priestess that their town is being attacked by "the sorcerer" and that Derek is their "deliverer"...

Derek is not a woman and so shudders at the thought of delivery...

However, they show him the armoury and wow there were no guns... immediate disappointment, but a magical crossbow/RPG (called the Bolter) was close enough he supposes. Taking as much as he could carry and enough armour to protect him from a nuke, he wanders back into the main room for three whole barrels of XXXXXXXXXXXX pure dwarvern ale (how the hell they got their hands on this is beyond Derek, but Derek speaks in the third person so overlooks this matter). The door begins to thud. "They're smashing it down!" he thought (obviously) and in a moment of quick wit, he hurried the people into the sacrificial chamber and readied the Bolter. The door is smashed down and a huge (like, 10 times the size of derek) Minotaur comes in with a huge-ass shotgun. He's slow and can't hit Derek at 10 paces, let alone with a shotgun of that size. Five shots from the Bolter and it falls dead, but a swarm of strange beast-human hybrid creatures flood in after. The priests and townsfolk were feeling more courageous after watching Derek slay a "great minotaur" and rushed to help, stabbing the beasts with their sacrificial daggers whilst Derek ploughed through them toward the entrance.

When Derek finally leaves the temple, he finds the city in ruins and the beasts running amok everywhere. He hears a strange sound in the distance... Salad and Leeks?.. who knows. Getting closer to the sound, it definitely is a ferociously screamed "LEEKS! SALAD AND LEEKS!" coming from the barracks. Entering the barracks, Derek finds some of the town guard being swarmed by quite a few of the beasts. Some guards fire crossbows from the upper balconies, and two are throwing a bed on top of them. On the roof, presumably about to jump on the bed as it crushes the beasts, is the man screaming "LEEKS! SALAD AND LEEKS!". This strange man does indeed jump onto the bed, and wielding nothing but a butcher's knife and a frying pan, cleaves through a majority of the beasts, leaving Derek and the rest of the guards a few to shoot. The brute turns to Derek gives him a nod and says "leeks. salad and leeks". Intrigued in this unusual creature, Derek asks the guardsmen who he is and why he says that. They respond by saying that he witnessed a massacre committed by Amos Habbakuk and the barbarity of it made him return the salad and leeks he had eaten to the mortal world and scarred him for life. Knowing Amos... Derek is not surprised.

Salad and leek man along with some of the town guard and Derek all go to the library to rescue anyone there. Upon arrival, there is a nutter of a librarian on the roof of the burning library casting fireball spells everywhere...

...nope...

...nope nope nope...

...

...nope...

... thinks Derek, but he notices a strange contraption he had seen before... yes... it was a mecha-ferret (or war-ferret to the Dwarves) piloting a servo-harness, not good in combat, but gives a ferret the power of the slightly-more-than-average human. Still it died easily to the crossbow bolt to the face, and popped like they do when put in a microwave...

The library is soon cleared, but the stupid librarian keeps throwing fire everywhere... so we move on to the town hall. This is rather hopeless. Three great minotaurs and mucho-beasties plus a few more war-ferrets. The most worrying thing here wasn't that Derek would die, but that salad and leek man would. He is glorious to watch...

A battle raged here for a while and during said battle, Derek noticed that all the bodies that died started crawling toward the city gates for some reason... so after chopping up some bodies so they couldn't crawl away, Derek pretended to be a body, and crawled toward the gates. Approaching the gates, Derek sees a hideous monstrosity; this black thing, larger than the gatehouse it's smashed into, and spewing acid from its tentacles that appears to be helping the creature digest the rotting corpses around it... mmmm... delicious...
Watching for a little longer, the thing opened a "mouth" and some weird hybrids popped out and joined the siege. Through fear and "nope" he climbed over the wall without anyone/thing noticing. Because Derek has a heart and wanted to save the poor city (though he had contemplated running like a motherfucker) he walked round the evil one, and in doing so revealed... eyes... on its back?... or is this the front?... if it is then HOLY SHIT IT HAS A MAGIC ANUS THAT POOPS HYBRID CREATURES... By this point Derek is getting closer and throwing up a bit because of the smell, but far enough away to hit with le Bolter. Derek can hear a voice in his head saying kill... but it's no more dominant than the other voices...

So Derek shoots an eye and makes it go pop. He hears the creature scream in his head and feels crushed by the pressure. He also feels an urge to move to the town hall where the main siege is taking place which seems to be telling him to kill at that point... nothing Derek's iron will can't stop, so he shoots another eye. Again, forced to in knees by the pressure, but this time he feels an urge to stay right where he is... and kill, as though the creature was targeting him... Soon, he can see the beasts crawling over the walls and through the small gaps to get to your position.. RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING to the left occurred. The beasts just stopped right where Derek was and hobbled around looking confused for a bit before returning to the city. Derek felt that the point change from where he was, to somewhere between the creature and the town hall. This happened a few times, each time the point moving closer to the creature from the town hall each time, until the beasts just stopped and fell over and the voice saying kill was no longer there... though Derek couldn't tell... Walking back to the lifeless black creature, Derek hears the scream of "LEEKS! SALAD AND LEEKS!" and the strange dude bursts out of the belly of the beast in a spray of black stuff, blood and acid, just nodding again in appreciation, simply saying "leeks..." and all the while Derek thought "if the city had this nutter, why the hell am I the deliverer?!"...

And all was well...


Adventure 2. Amos, Fiddle and Neb and the Train of the Suicide-Bombing Gnomes.

NOTE: Leggett has made 3 characters; Amos Habbakuk the lizardkin barbarian, Fiddle Farthing the human hunter and Obadiah Nebuchadnezzar (aka Neb) the dwarf guardian.

Amos, Fiddle and Neb are on a train to one of the large cities, but the train has been hijacked by bandits. The three and all the passengers were chucked in the caboose at the end of the train and tied down. The three, however, know their way out of a simple badly tied rope, and all together lunge at the three guards in the caboose, Amos lunging at one and ripping his arms off while Fiddle and Neb just flick them on the nose... The remaining two guards retaliate, but to no avail, as Amos ripps their heads off... I should've mentioned that they have no weapons, only armour...

So Amos grabs the freshly decapitated bodies and storms into the next carriage shouting LEERRRROOOOYYYY JEEEENNNNKIIIIINSSSSSS!!!!!! and proceed to kill a few more guards in a very brutal manner and rescue some now-disturbed and mentally scarred passengers and throw them in the caboose too.

The next carriage has more guards, but this time Amos' discovered the ladder to go onto the roof of the train. There's a hatch on the top of the carriage and that can only mean one thing... SURPRISE LEEROY!!!! BURSTING THROUGH THE ROOF HE MUTILATED ANOTHER FOUR GUARDS and this time decides to search the carriage. He finds bombs... four bombs... quite a bit of boom power too, so naturally Amos goes and gets the four gnomes that happened to be passengers and straps a bomb to each of them... he is very pleased, though the gnomes feel unsafe around such high explosives and a mass murderer...

In the next card there is a massive load of boomy bombs all over the cart... enough to blow the entire train and most of the area around it... so Amos sends one of the gnomes in and threatens to blow up (to which Matt rolled 100 for intimidation). The guards just laugh and one of them goes to stab the gnome a little for fun. Before he gets chance, AMOS BURSTS THROUGH THE ROOF ONCE MORE. BRUTALLY KILLING THAT PERSON WITH HIS BEAR HANDS (RAWWWRRRR BEARS FOR HANDS) AND BLOOD FLIES EVERYWHERE. One of the guards strikes a match and threatens to light the bomb fuse whilst the remaining guards ready their guns and aiming at Amos. Again, naturally, Amos lunges at the fuse-holder and stops him. Some simultaneous shooting occurs and the guards are dead the there is even more blood around the carriage. But one guard still lives, and after an amazing interrogation by Amos (rolled 100 again), his baby faces only cause the guard to feel better. The gnome tries to get stuff out of him and he spills the beans. Turns out they're an organised crime group who were hijacking a train to blow up part of a city. So he throws the guy out of the window so precisely (rolling 3) he only breaks a single pane of glass and feels pretty damn proud of it.

Intrigue gets the better of Amos and he detaches the caboose with the passengers and then the carriage with all the explosives and sets it off just to see the explosion... its quite the mushroom cloud...

Explosively satisfied, he pursues more murder and sacrifice to his great lord of soberness, Trevor. He is now at the coal car where the shoveller is being forced to fuel the engine. One side of the cart is a massive furnace and the other is a coal storage space with two guards making sure the shoveller works. So Amos melts one of them in the furnace and rips the other in half. The now terrified shoveller is forced to go and stand in the corner and think about what he has done.

The next caris the engine where the gears and steam power of the machine drives the wheels... nothing is in here, so Amos tries to jam the gears just to see what would happen, so grabs the shovel and puts the handle between the gears. The shovel breaks and the train jerks a little, but ultimately continues on its decelerating way. Amos opens the last door where the train driver and two more guards are. Amos tries to rip the door of and throw it at them but he misses somehow and throws it into the ceiling. Finding their attention, he punches one so hard his arm penetrates his skull so it now resides on his elbow, then snaps the other in half with one hand. The train driver puts on the brakes and everyone is saved, except the evil bandits... theyre in bits everywhere.

Matt's a bit brutal ain't he?

Stokachu 

So many different views... how can any of it be true?

There are loads of different opinions, interpretations and translations of the Bible. Not only that, there are also tonnes of denominations, belief systems, factions and so on that have arisen from it, and not just Christian ones!
Even if I was interested in exploring Christianity, how would I know what to look into? How could I divide the "worth looking into stuff" from the "definitely without a doubt load of rubbish stuff"?

I don't know if that's something you've ever thought about. I certainly have. If you're at all interested, I'm planning on doing some posts on the matter. The first (the rest of this one), is on which Bible translations are worth reading (if any)? The second will probably be on why on earth are there so many different denominations, and what on earth we're meant to do if we just want to find out what the Bible has to say without bothering with all the nonsense. I may or may not do some more after that (hopefully much shorter posts!), based on the reception of these ones :P

But in case you just can't be bothered to read two massive posts (I probably wouldn't be), the short answer:
- The most common translations tend to be pretty good, so if you have a Bible then I wouldn't worry too much about it, what you've got is probably reliable and true. If you're interested in getting one, I'd recommend the NIV and ESV translations of the Bible, as they are very close to the original texts while remaining readable and without the thees and thous of the King James Bible. These are also the Bibles that you tend to find in hotels, they're the little red ones the Gideons gave out in a school assembly once, you probably have one somewhere, or the ability to get one for free if you want.
- Don't bother with denominations. Read the Bible, find out for yourself what it's all about. Anyone can understand it, don't let people convince you that you don't have what it takes. If there is anything you don't understand or want to ask someone about, go for it, ask someone! Just don't listen to people who make stuff up (like purgatory).

So, on with the post.

The Bible - Which One!?!?
There's the KJV, NIV, ESV, the Message, the New World Translation, the RSV, the DRB, the CCD, the NABRE, to name but a few. Most of which sound like the names of special forces and government agencies. And surely this throws up the question of reliability? How can any of it be true if so many different translations exist?

[WARNING - Lots of history stuff, might not be that interesting for you, feel free to skip to the ANYWAY below :P] First of all, we still have many Koine Greek, Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew manuscripts (the languages that the collection of books and letters we call the Bible was written in). Many of these are on display in museums - if you can read the language then you can go and read these manuscripts for yourselves. It's the accuracy of these manuscripts that really matter in trying to work out whether or not the Bible is historically reliable, rather than the accuracy of the English translations people have made of these manuscripts (of course the accuracy of the translations we read does matter to us, but I'll get to that later). Just to justify my last point:
Imagine I heard a lecture from a Professor Higgs. I then went and told you all about what he said. Except what I told you was a load of rubbish, it wasn't what he was trying to say. That wouldn't make what he said untrue or unreliable, it would just make me false and unreliable. So it is with the Bible and people's translations of it.

Can we trust that these early (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents are indeed based on the original books and letters? And if so, can we trust that through paleography, textual criticism, and hundreds of thousands of hours of study, discussion and work that an accurate representation of the original books and letters can indeed be made through these? Yes. And if you use the same methods and critique as you use to determine the reliability of other historical documents, then overwhelmingly yes.

Take many of the Classical works for example:
"In evaluating the significance of these statistics...one should consider, by way of contrast, the number of manuscripts which preserve the text of the ancient classics. Homer's Iliad...is preserved by 457 papyri, 2 uncial manuscripts, and 188 minuscule manuscripts. Among the tragedians the witnesses to Euripides are the most abundant; his extant works are preserved in 54 papyri and 276 parchment manuscripts, almost all of the later dating from the Byzantine period...the time between the composition of the books of the New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief. Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after the composition of the original documents." Bruce M. Metzger - Pulled straight from Wikipedia.

What that's saying is that the time span between the earliest surviving copies of part of a widely accepted classical (ancient Greek) writing are from roughly a millennium or more after the originals were written, whereas the earliest surviving copies of the New Testament scriptures is less than a century. In fact, in those terms, the New Testament Scriptures are actually pretty top notch for ancient documents. Anyway, this is a lengthy discussion, but well worth looking into (I'm certainly going to be reading up much more on it. [Be warned, though, it's very easy to get the wrong idea when you read this stuff - it's a lot more complicated than you would think (or than I thought, at least). Later manuscripts are less reliable than earlier manuscripts, but people often refer to them in one category, so beware people talking about difficult to qualify statistics like, "There's x number of conflicting words between y manuscript and z manuscript", when really they've decided to dump something written by a monk 500 years later which no one uses for translation with a manuscript written less than 100 years later that everyone uses.]

There's loads more that I would love to say. I'm no expert, but I'm aware of archaeological evidence, non-Christian historians (Tacitus being my main example), historical standards and so on which would all suggest that the early manuscripts we have can indeed be used to come up with a highly accurate Bible. By that I mean a Bible which contains historically really accurate copies of the letters and books it does indeed claim to consist of. Whether or not what these original letters and books had to say is true is a different argument. But I don't want to consume the whole blog page in one post, so...

ANYWAY

I got carried away, my apologies.

Safe in the knowledge that there's a good chance the Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents we get our English translations from are reliable and accurate, we're now left trying to work out what English stuff is accurate and what isn't.

First of all, stay away from anything Gnostic, Mormon, Catholic, Coptic, Jehovah's Witness' (New World Translation) or similar. Their scriptures often include stuff varying from inaccurate and unreliable to just plain made up. [WARNING AGAIN] I feel I ought to justify this, but I'm aware this is a pretty long post as it is. So I'll be as brief as possible...
The Book of Mormon - meant to have been written by someone writing down what someone else was reading off of a plate that no one else could read or see (in 1830 by an American). Enough said.
Gnostic Works - Gnosticism is a cult predating Christianity (some argue not) that adopted and mutated Christian beliefs, it does not align theologically with the major themes of the Scriptures and their additional texts are likely made up (e.g. the "Gospel of Mary") ("The Gospel of Mary is an apocryphal book discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex." and, "Hollis Professor of Divinity Karen King at Harvard Divinity School suggests that the original gospel was written in Greek sometime during the time of Christ. Most scholars disagree with her conclusion..." Again, it's all on Wikipedia so you can see for yourself what I'm saying.)
Additional Catholic Old Testament Documents - this one is more ambiguous. There are 7 books present in the Catholic Old Testament which are not present in the Protestant Old Testament. These books are present in the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, but not in the more reliable Hebrew Old Testament, and hence they are not included in the protestant Bible (the standard of what could be considered part of the Bible had been increased since the formation of the Catholic Bible). They remain in the Catholic and some Orthodox Bibles mostly due to tradition, though you could attempt to make some standpoint on their reliability (this is without considering whether or not they even make sense historically and theologically - the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures do). No reference to these books is made in the entire Old or New Testament, and though this definitely does not mean that they are false documents, it's hardly in their favour.

ANYWAY

So we know what to stay away from, but what's good?

Well, the RSV (Revised Standard Version), the ESV (English Standard Version) and the NIV (New International Version) are all pretty reliable. They've had some of the most care and time taken (by countless highly trained and qualified translators, linguists, historians and scholars) out of all the English Bible translations. They also tend to show you wherever the translators are unsure of their translation - footnotes on the page tell you if they're unsure of a word, or if a verse is in some later manuscripts but not the original and most reliable ones. Such footnotes are comfortingly rare, too. The RSV and ESV go as much as possible towards as word for word a translation of the Bible as possible while still maintaining English grammar and "readability". The NIV also adheres to this, but with a slightly greater focus on conveying the meaning of the original manuscripts, as this can occasionally be lost in translation.

A lot of people have King James Bibles, these are ok, but they're not the nicest read (subjective, of course) and not as accurate as more modern translations.

The Message Bible is not really a translation of the Bible at all. The author has decided to convey the meaning of the Bible, without using most of the original Bible words. This can be really helpful, some bits of the Bible aren't the easiest read without patience, time and effort, and this could help make more sense of these. But I'd be very hesitant on calling it a Bible. It begs accuracy questions, and undoubtedly some of the great depth of meaning and authority that the actual Bible has will have been lost. Not saying it's a bad read, though.

So there you go. Sorry for a REALLY long post, but hope it was interesting enough for you to have got this far :P

All the best! Hope you're doing well (:
Matt(hew)

A Brief History of Fermat's Last Theorem

Careful guys, this one gets pretty maths-y. Well we say that, there are hardly any equations here.

As all stories should, let's start with Pythagoras. It was a sunny day in Ancient Greece...
Nah, on second thoughts, let's not. Big Bang Theory already took that one. Anyway, a long time ago, in a country far, far...
Hang on. No, Star Wars had that...

Anyway. Greece. Home of Heracles and hummus. And someone who may or may not have been a dude called Pythagoras, in his almighty (possibly bearded) wisdom, decided that right-angled triangles should be easier to understand. With perhaps the most well known mathematical formula of all time: a squared + b squared = c squared. (Blogger doesn't allow for superscripts, so sentences will have to do, get used to it)

You all remember this from GCSE, right? You will be tested on it.

In the example above, the values of a, b and c are 3, 4 and 5, the first set of whole numbers that this theorem works for. But there are an infinite number of solutions to this equation, so 3-4-5 is nothing special.

Of course, there's no reason whatsoever to stick to just whole numbers... unless you happen to be a number theorist, a strange bunch of mathematicians that spend their time obsessing over whole numbers. If it ain't an integer, they don't wanna know.

But let's get back to the story at hand. Pythagoras (or maybe some other Greek dude/girl, no-one's quite sure really) devised this triangle thing, and everyone was happy for about 200 years. Then a guy called Diophantus, who is much less known outside of the world of mathematics, wrote a book called Arithmetica. While writing up Pythagoras' theorem, Diophantus (or maybe someone earlier than him, seriously this happened thousands of years ago, stop expecting perfect historical accuracy) said to himself, "Well, why do we have to stick with using squared? What about cubed, or to the power of four? What about ANY power larger than two? Are there any numbers that work like that?"

No-one answered him. Mostly because he was probably sat alone in a room writing his book and no-one heard him, but still. Taking a few weeks off from writing, he had a go and couldn't think of any solutions to this equation, written out as a^n + b^n = c^n for some n>2. So, in his book, he wrote that this equation had no whole number solutions.

The problem? He couldn't explain why. And saying you can't do something and giving up isn't proof. It's like saying humans can't survive without air and then NOT strangling a person to prove it? Maybe? I dunno. And so, for a thousand years, mathematicians tried to figure out a proof for this problem. And quite frankly, checking every combination of integers to see if one works takes a little too long. As in, if you'd started counting at the dawn of time, you might have made it about 0% of the way through by now. Cos there's a looooot of integers, and a looooot of possible n's to check them for.

So, people sort of got bored, called it impossible to prove, and moved on. Until, in 17th Century France, a dude called Pierre de Fermat (who we know a lot about due to it being so recent. And no, he definitely didn't have a beard. At least, not in his Wikipedia portrait), who was a lawyer by day and a number-crunching, crime-fighting, maths wizard by night (except he probably fought crime as a lawyer too, so that's what he did from lunch to early evening), was flicking through his own copy of Arithmetica when he spotted this equation. Having a stab at it, he did some quick mental arithmetic, came to a conclusion, and wrote on the edge of the book, "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

And then he died.
Wonderful.

Well, it was 30 years later that he died, but he never actually wrote down the proof that he claimed to have found. After the funeral, which probably consisted of a quiet ceremony and a much less quiet reception, Fermat's son Clement-Samuel, came across his father's notes, and subsequently republished them as that year's Christmas best-seller. Seriously, this was huge in the maths community (which is small, secluded and somewhere in Berkshire), and every number theorist in the world tried to find Fermat's solution as their own.

And... no-one did. A lot of people said that we just couldn't understand the maths that Fermat had thought up. A few said that Fermat must have been mistaken. And a couple just thought he was leaving a huge trollface in the middle of his textbook. Who knows?

Fast forward another 300 or so years. It's the 1960's. By now, people have devised ways to prove the theorem in bits and pieces, but no general solution exists. And in steps a 10 year old kid called Andrew Wiles. Reading a textbook on his way home from school, Wiles comes across Fermat's Last Theorem and, as all good mathematicians do, becomes obsessed with solving it. Showing it to his teachers, family and even a guy in the street called Gerald, none of them could explain to him how a theorem so simple to describe hadn't yet been proved. Except Gerald, who, other than being a mathematical genius and world-renown gymnast, was most likely made up. By us. Just now.

As most ten year olds do, Wiles grew up, went to University and attained a Ph.D. in mathematics (although a lot of 10 year olds get their degrees in other subjects). Starting a research grant in the mid-80's, he and a group of number theorists used a lot of time, effort and complicated maths to figure out a proof. But after a year, they hadn't made much progress. Despite this, Wiles continued with his work alone, in almost complete secrecy (he told his wife and that was it), continuing for 6 years to find this general proof.

And he got one. In 1993, Wiles published a paper which definitively proved that Fermat's Last Theorem was, in fact, true.

And then in August 1993, someone spotted the error he'd made.
Oops.

Wiles was, as is to be expected, a little discouraged by this. 7 years of his own work had been based on a flawed bit of maths. Disappointed is a bit of an understatement for this.

But, being British (and a mathematician), Wiles didn't give up. Devoting his entire researching timetable to the problem he worked for over a year to rectify his error. In time, he came to realise that the error, although incorrect, was a crucial part of his argument. He couldn't simply remove the error and call it a day. It seemed that the end had come.

Until, in 1994, on the verge of defeat and looking at his working one last time, he noticed a way around. A way to avoid the error entirely, which was both simple and valid. Writing this solution, Wiles was finally able to call it the finished article. His published findings were scrutinised, verified and accepted by the mathematics community. Finally, Fermat's Last Theorem, first proposed by Diophantus two thousand years previously, had a full working proof.

*fireworks, cheering crowds, etcetera*

So there you have it. A very short summary of one of the most interesting problems in all of mathematics. So simple to state even a 10 year old can understand it, but so difficult to solve that the greatest mathematicians of the age for two thousand years were stumped. Goes to show that all it takes to solve a several millennia old problem is one British dude in his mid forties. Words to live by, right?

Posted by Jake, but Baker did most of the work. :P

The Year is 125 AD

and Stokes is Going on an Adventure

And so by the request of Stokes, a post summarising what he got up to today in an RPG we've been playing!

With helpful pictures.

BUT FIRST SOME CONTEXT. (Skip this if you don't like a quick bit of history, or if you're familiar with the legend of the ninth legion)

The year is 117 AD, and Briton/Provinca Britannia (modern England) is under Roman occupation. But that isn't enough, no no. Rome hungers for Caledonia (modern Scotland) and so dispatched the veteran Legio IX Hispania, the Ninth Legion, who were garrisoned in Briton, to seize the north lands (it was at this point that the IX Legion disappeared from all historical records. The rest (apart from the bit about Hadrian) is legend, not history), but once they crossed the border, the whole 5,000 elite soldiers mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

What happened to them? Nobody knows, but the general assumption is

Unfortunately for the Romans, this also meant that the legion's eagle standard, the symbol of their honour, was lost.

Which led to the myth of the curse of the legion, meaning Rome could never reform the legion unless the eagle was found.

Worse still, if the Caledoni were to get their hands on it, it might be enough motivation to lead to the unification of their tribes in a great and terrible war against the occupying Romans.

Things were in fact so bad that Hadrian, the recently appointed Emperor who was on his "world" tour, decided that the VI Legion ought to be shipped in to Britannia and the Great Wall of Briton ought to be built, spanning the breadth of the border with Caledonia. The purpose of this was to keep the northerners out because they were ginger. That or because they had battleaxes, I'm not sure which.

ANYWAY

Enough context. Where does Stokes come in?

Well, the year is now 125 AD and Stokes was given the choice to be pretty much anyone. So he chose to be a native, from the Brigantes tribe, serving as an auxiliary soldier in the VI Legion, in order to earn Roman citizenship. Which is odd, because when I asked him if he'd like to find the lost eagle in order to bring it back and restore the lost legion's honour, or to unite the Caledoni and lead a revolution against all Romans, he chose the latter. And you know what's also odd? His name, Derek Kneetaker. Lovely.

So anyway, after we determined all the important stats he'd have to keep track of, like beard length and personal hygiene, we got on with the story, which started with Derek/Stokes being given four weeks leave from service, in order to go and do his own thing.

His own thing turned out to be signing up for gladiator matches.

In which he did quite well, despite at one point basically having half his chest mashed up into soup.

When he was done with all that (and had a shave), he used his funds to buy a doctor slave and then headed southwest in search of a new town, to raise money for mercenaries to take north with him, past the wall, to find the eagle standard.

On his first night out, just as he was about to pop off to sleep, he was awoken by the sound of drumming and chanting in the woods nearby.

Which turned out to be a cult of about 15 druids and one other dude who was chatting to their leader.

The next day he reached the nearby town, and was having a look around when he found the home of the other dude who had been chatting to the druid leader. Stokes decided to stalk him for a bit and then pop into his house for a chat.

You see, Stokes had managed to work out, with a bit of help, that the guy was leading and uprising against the Romans, and decided to ask to join, as this fitted nicely with his overall goal for the RPG. Turns out you should never let Stokes ask you something though, as his idea of asking was stabbing the guy in the chest and knocking him to the floor, almost killing him.

[Sensitive readers should skip this next paragraph]
This woke his wife up, who tried to take Stokes out with a frying pan, but Stokes dodged, causing her to unintentionally smack her husband in the head, finishing him off. After failing to disarm her about five times, and concluding things had gone a bit too far (and got perhaps a bit too dark), Stokes decided to flee the town and head back to the legion fort to get back to service early.

So back at the fort of Eboracum (which eventually was to turn into the city of York), Stokes had a peaceful few months before a native uprising did indeed take place. Very quickly these rebels laid siege to the fort. Sallying forth to meet their foe, Stokes ran into five chariots. With some impressive javelin shots he and a couple of others managed to take them out, and hold their own against the dismounted riders while reinforcements came to lend a hand.

And the story so far ends with Stokes back in the gladiator arena trying to raise funds for his holiday expedition to the north, past the wall into the cold dread lands. He's just won a match against an extremely small person armed with a dagger and a shield twice his size.

And that's all for now folks... it should get a lot more interesting pretty quick, as Stokes can pretty much do whatever he likes, so we'll keep you updated.

Leggett

Going on an adventure!

You're Going on an Adventure

Actually, you're returning from one...
You don't need your character sheets for now, just sort of go with it, we'll sort out all the technicalities a little later on.

Again you found yourself face to face with the foul fiend, but he is quick witted and powerful. You may have foiled his plan to use these Chaos Crystals for the time being, but he is sure to return. The Gnomes of this city know the most about them, as their captor forced them to study every aspect of them. The crystals are highly unstable, but with the aid of magic- of which many a Gnomic kin are accustomed in these realms- they find a relatively safe method to handle them. They decide the best thing to do is to find a way to destroy these crystals, for they cannot be used for any purpose of good. You are sworn to secrecy on the matter of the Chaos Crystals- unless the knowledge of these such artefacts will save the lives of those in danger of a result of the artefacts themselves.

You have spent much time in this mining town, recovering and attending meetings regarding the proceeds for the safe disposal of the crystals. The Gnomes and their alliances, (Dwarven Leaders of Bordorock from the Northern Mountains and High Elven Elders of Galderome included) yet, despite your rest, those of Elven blood grow weary and weaker by the day, suffering agonising headaches and trances filled with darkness and torment- the Galderomanic Elders are also affected, and they conclude such sickness comes from the evil of the crystals. As such, you decide to retire further East.

It is a dark morning and the clouds threaten heavy rain to come. Wizard Isaac's House is 4 days by foot/2 day by mount by means of the road. You estimate that you may make it there in 2 days by foot if you cut through the forest. Unfortunately, gnomes do not ride horses, they're simply not size compatible, they do, however, have a few ponies they would be willing to sell you. There is a general goods stall at the market, although they are low and limited in stock due to recent events and as such, prices are higher (x3). There is also an Alchemists shop, who shall give you a discount for saving his life. The town has 12 ponies used in the pits, though they are blind to the light, they are stronger than most, and they shall sell them at 25gp.

• Trail Rations: 15sp per days worth, 1lb, 11 in stock
• Oil: 3sp, 1lb, 6 pints in stock
• Lantern, hooded: 21gp, 2lb, 1 in stock
• Fire Wood: 3cp per days worth, 9 days worth in stock
• Tent: 30gp, 20lb, sleeps 2, only 1 in stock
• Hempen Rope: 3gp 50ft, 10lb, 1 in stock
• Flask, empty: 9cp, 1 pint capasity, 1 1/2lb 8 in stock
• Vial, empty: 3gp, 1/10lb, 17 in stock
• Acid (in flask): 7gp, 1lb
• Alchemists Fire (in flask): 15gp, 1lb
• Antitoxin: 30gp, na/lb
• Holy Water (in flask): 17gp, 1lb
• Smokestick: 15gp, 1/2lb
• Sunrod: 1gp, 1lb
• Thunderstone: 20gp, 4lb
• Tinderswig: 7sp, na/lb
• Pit Pony: 25gp, 6 for sale

You are (mostly) all RIDICULOUSLY encumbered with your loads, and should be travelling at half your speed (Ehem, short-arsed Derek with chain mail and at least two heavy axes, yes?) but I am willing to let that slip for the time being if you buy a pony to carry the extra load so you can travel as forecast above until you reach Isaac's humble abode. Also the NPCs are all laughing at anyone lugging around a 10ft pole with them and, unless you have a bag of holding, you will suffer the consequences for carrying such a silly burden- you have been warned. You are trusted to keep account of your own finances and equipment for the time being, feel free to buy any of the items above to add to your equipment (but please make a note in the comments), and you may sell weapons and armour to the Dwarves for 2/3 price of the original value. You may also sell any of your Adventuring Gear to the Gnomic stall owner for full price.

How will you proceed? Discuss with your fellow adventurers below!