CSI-V Blog Notes · 12:24am Feb 14th, 2016
Well, here we are.
It's been over a year since the last update, and actually nearly a year since I started writing this chapter. Based on the word count, I could have been carving the story out of granite and had it done quicker.
Sigh.
Still, it's totally going to be worth it, 'cause at the very end of this blog post, I'm going to have an outtake!
Pre-read by metalluisionismagic and AShadowOfCygnus! As is my wont, I went right ahead and made a bunch of last-minute changes without telling them, so if you find mistakes, they're totally my fault.
Strap your seat belts on, kids; you're about to learn things!
Source
Cheerilee deserves more respect.
The Acolytes of Mareona are a reference to early Christian monks. As many of their prayer rituals were supposed to be carried out at specific times, they were very interested in developing accurate ways of keeping track of what time it was. Pacificus, the archdeacon of Verona, invented a 'clock' (which apparently turned out to be some sort of star sighting device rather than a clock as we'd think of it). I also liked the idea it being Verona, since I once had to memorize the opening to Romeo and Juliet for a class.
The Sacred Order of Timekeepers is a reference to D G D Davidson's Chronoverse series. I haven't actually read any of the stories involving the Sacred Order of Timekeepers just yet, but I was at least aware of their existence.
Sextants are most commonly used to find your position by taking a sighting on the sun or a star; however, if you already knew where you were, you could presumably calculate what time it was by reverse-engineering the charts. While IRL this isn't very useful, in a world where the sun was controlled by a sleepy alicorn, it could be a handy skill to have.
The frame of a sextant is one-sixth of a circle (60°), which will be useful to know in a little bit.
Source
The antikythera is an ancient computer which was discovered in a Greek shipwreck. It is at least 2000 years old, and nothing comparable would be made until the fourteenth century. Here's a link if you want to read more about it. There are also numerous documentaries about it, such as THIS (YouTube link).
As an aside, I'm also going to include a link to a YouTube video about a mechanical calculator.
Theodolites are surveying telescopes. They're still in common usage, although typically they're used to find property lines, rather than to keep time. However, just as with the sextant, if you know where you are, you can take sun sights to find out what time it is.
A gnomon is the part of a sundial which casts a shadow on the face. In the interests of full disclosure, I really wanted to use the word gnomon in something.
Source
Merry May is an oft-appearing background pony.
From the Wiki
A monocerous is a legendary Greek animal with only one horn. It typically refers to a unicorn, although I suppose a narwhale would technically fit the description as well.
9:01 (standard time) can be converted to 3:76 metric time.To give you an idea how much research had to go into this chapter, while I could find metric clocks aplenty online, none of them let you enter a time to convert; rather, they just relied on your own computer's time. Likewise, the metric clock app I got for my phone before I went to Canada did not allow me to enter a specific time. Thus, I was forced to keep changing the time zone on my computer until I got what I wanted.
A backstaff is an instrument which measures the angle of the sun by casting a shadow. It was a precursor to the sextant.
An octant is reflecting quadrant device used to find your position, much like a sextant (in fact, it's a precursor to the sextant). Its arc is one-eighth of a circle, hence the name.
The chiming mechanism of a clock is somewhat complex. In a nutshell, a lever releases a mechanism which causes weights to begin to fall, ringing the chimes. Their pace is controlled in part by a governor; in many clocks, it's a fan fly, which is basically a gear with a fan on it.
Here's a video of how the striking mechanism works.
I put in a few lines from The Bells (Poe). It seemed appropriate.
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,—
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells,
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
And if Poe wasn't literary enough for y'all, there's a James Thurber reference in the chapter, too. See if you can find it.
And thus, Celestia Sleeps In with a Vengeance finally comes to a close.
Beyond this point is an outtake . . . if you don't want to know what got rejected, skip to the end of the blog post
The opening scene went through a few revisions. This was the penultimate one:
Celestia dreamed.
She dreamed her palace was full of nubile mares and stallions, and they were all hers. Every single one of them was a toy to be used at her discretion, and then casually tossed away when they stopped giving her amusement.
It mattered little to her. There were more where they came from; the whole nation was full of them, eager to please their princess in any way possible.
They came, unbidden, to the castle, sometimes bringing gifts and sometimes not. It made no difference; she loved them all equally. She loved her subjects with the sunlight that she gave them, and she loved them with her own bright countenance, and sometimes she loved them with whips and chains.
Celestia dreamed.
She dreamed that she sat on her gilded throne as guards led the enemy before her, that she might render judgement upon them.
Some of them defiantly held their heads high, but her guards knocked the resistance out of them and forced them to kneel in her presence, that they might be forgiven for not being born a pony.
Those who finally rejected their birth tribe were treated mercifully. One simple spell was all it took to turn them into a pony, where they could enjoy all the benefits of being a proper equine.
Those who stayed defiant—and there were a few—were cast into the dungeons and given an opportunity to recant. If they did not, they were banished to the coal mines, where they would eventually die, coughing their lungs out.
One simple spell, their stripes vanished, and they were free to integrate with pony society. Or, the coal dust would accomplish the same. It made no difference to Celestia. There would be no striped ponies in her queendom.
Celestia dreamed.
She dreamed that she alone was the sole savior of her little ponies, diving down from the sky like a dragon, consuming their enemies in righteous fire from her horn. The earth ponies all cheered as she swept across the plains, burning buffalo out of their stupid tents. The pegasi all cheered her on as she soared majestically through the sky, striking down griffons and dragons alike. The unicorns all cheered her on as she cut a swath through the once-mighty forest, clearing land where they might build their stone towers in honor of her majesty.
I'd thought it would be funny to include all the 'bad' versions of Celestia in her dream, but it just didn't work out like I'd hoped. It was more dark than funny, and while I might have been able to tweak it a bit here and there, it was unlikely to ever work out the way I intended.
So I'm taking it you're not talking about CSI Las Vegas here. I was wondering what there could possible be to blog about that show.
That's an absolutely ghastly color scheme, by the way. Pink and green are some colors that seriously don't mix well.
3752227
Heh, no. At some point, Celestia Sleeps In got understandably abbreviated CSI. I probably should have spelled it out in the blog, because not everybody is using that abbreviation.
You're right about Merry May. She was the first pegasus I could find who had a vaguely sun-related or time-related cutie mark.
3752263
Ooh, yeah, there is that. You know, I just realized, I never actually got around to reading that. No particular reason, I suppose, but after reading Onto The Pony Planet, there never really seemed to be any point. That story seems to sum up all the pertinent parts of it fairly well and I have to admit, it also begins at the point where the whole premise really starts to get interesting to me. Actually interacting with the foreign society is just so much more engaging than sitting on a desert island bumbling through basic communication, if you know what I mean.
3752276
I've always thought that the mark of a good multi-part story is that you can read any one part and figure out what's going on, yet there isn't so much repeated information that if you have read all of them, you aren't rolling your eyes and thinking "I already know that."
3752310
) but in terms of how you can perfectly well read it as a stand-alone kind of story without getting that whole "who are those people and what is even going on here" feeling, the way I always get it when I try to read one of jordan159's stories, you are certainly completely right there.
Well, I wouldn't know about the repetition part (
3752321
I learned what not to do from reading Xanth. An occasional hint at what happened before is fine; having about one-third of the book devoted to what happened in the last 30 books, not so much.
3752327
I can only shudder at the thought of that series. Really the only thing anyone should ever learn from it is how not to do things. Piers Anthony can be a really, really horrible author if he tries.
3752332
There were a couple of good books, so long as you didn't mind terrible puns. Mostly the ones with mundanes in Xanth. As should be fairly obvious by the kinds of stories I write, I love culture conflict stories, and even Xanth had a few things to offer.
I don't think Piers Anthony really gives a crap. He just writes whatever he wants to.
3752353
The problem is mostly that most of what he writes in that series is really, really awful. It's not even like he's always that bad. I've read some other stuff of his, like the Incarnations of Immortality series, and while I still wouldn't really say it's good, it's lengths above what he does in the Xanth books. You're right when you say that he really didn't care for that one - not about quality, not about making sense, not even about good taste. I mean, really, what of author writes an entire book about a mermaid going on an epic journey to find out what color of panties she should wear?
3752369
For that matter, how does a mermaid even wear panties?
I liked the Mode series. Read a couple of Incarnations of Immortality as well. He's got a fair number of short stories which I liked, and I've even stolen the occasional bit from them.
3752378
"For Love of Evil" was honestly pretty good, I think. The one about the Time guy was pretty decent as well. I never noticed the Mode books, but I've been meaning to pick up the Apprentice Adept series at some point. I've got them lying around somewhere here, but I never had the time to actually read them.
The weirdest thing about Anthony is that, when he's at his best, he really reminds me a lot of Roger Zelazny at his worst, who's one of my all-time favourite science fiction/fantasy authors (and one of the best and most underrated scifi authors of the 20th century period, in my opinion.) "Madwand" in particular is something that I can almost imagine them having written in collaboration.
3752393
There's some good first-contact stuff in the Mode books. It was likely influential in CSI.
It's probably been almost 20 years since I read For Love of Evil, so I can't remember that many details of it.
I haven't read as much Zelazny as I ought to have.
3752405
If you haven't read every single thing by Zelazny, you haven't read enough Zelazny. Seriously, the guy was a genius. He's not all first-contact stuff, but a lot of it is very similar in tone, close enough that you'd probably enjoy it - and really all of it is pretty damn good, I'm not only talking about the big-name stuff.
"Lord of Light" is the obvious shoe-in, which is probably his most famous one and involves an invading transhuman immortal making the first real communication between equals with a previously-defeated race of bodiless aliens. "And Call Me Conrad" is about a human dealing with alien tourists in a future where Earth has become something of a interstellar corporate outpost for the Vegan species. "And for a breath I tarry" is probably my favourite of the bunch and about a supercomputer AI from the post-human future learning about what it means to be human... by becoming a new Adam. "The man who loved the Faioli" is honestly just impossible to really describe, but really unique. One that I've currently forgotten the name of is about a human hedonist participating in an artistic experiment with another species that conveys him their ability of electroperception and getting to enjoy their art that consists of a synesthetic experience of electromagnetic fields... until he ends up burning out the necessary anatomy and loses that experience forever.
That's just a small list, too. There is so much more and it's all amazing.
Having found a way to use the word, you have now been elevated to the Gnomonklatura.
Yeah, glad you didn't go with that version.
I have seen some really weird things in the local clock shop.
Held some of them too.
Im glad I have trouble seeing absolute reality, some of those parts dont exist in just one.
Take hours, multiply by 10/24 (or, equivalently, 5/12). The first two digits after the decimal point are minutes, the following two are seconds.
Take minutes, multiply by 1000/1440 (or, equivalently, 25/36), add to minutes figure from previous step.
Take seconds, multiply by 100000/86400, (or, equivalently, 125/108) add to seconds figure from previous step.
09:01:00 thus works out to 03:75:69.4444444
good story is good, I'm glad I got to read the final chapter! Keep it up!
3752465
I also used kerfuffle, which I am proud of. Along with naming basically every obscure navigation instrument ever invented.
3752486
I think I could have made it work, but a week's worth of thought didn't give me any answers.
3752722
The thing I like the most about old machines (clocks or whatever) is that you can really wrap your head around what the mechanism does, even the parts which aren't obvious at first glance (like the fan fly). It's hard for me to get that much interest in the circuits of a digital alarm clock.
3753273
Ugh, math. If I'd tried to use a mathematical formula on my own . . . well, you'd be surprised how far wrong the conversion would have wound up.
3754885
Thank you!
3754939 Metric time... Yeah, I can see dividing one revolution of the Earth into 10 units, and working down from there... And we could even ignore the Moon (Sorry Luna!) and make each month either ten or 100 days long... But no matter what we do, for the foreseeable future there will always be approximately 365.25 days in a year.
Dagnabbit. Danged uncaring universe just won't do things all neat and tidy-like.
3755049
I don't see that being an issue for the ponies at all. They can make a day or a month or a year or a lunation or whatever however long they want it to be. They'd never have to deal with leap years or leap seconds or reconciling the synodic calendar with the solar calendar.
3755057
*Facepalm* D'oh!
Trying to apply real-world conditions to a magic pony cartoon universe NEVER WORKS. My bad...
3755118
I was actually going to put details about a synodic calendar in CSI-V, but then it occurred to me that ponies would have no such thing. Each month would be exactly the same number of days long, and each would likely be one full lunation, and each year would be a set number of lunations . . .
And our own calendar comes tantalizingly close to having that work. Something which will ultimately cause them no end of frustration in the Pony Planet verse.
3755125 Yes, inviting immortal, near-godlike beings over for lunch can be stressful.
"I've had a lovely time visiting your world, Mr. President, and I hope you'll be pleased that I repaired your solar system--it was running just the tiniest bit slow."
"Princess Celestia, please ...explain that in terms of any effects we might notice."
"I had Twilight go through the calculations five times, and it's quite exact. Your years will now be 360 days long, to the second! We can update it if that becomes necessary," Celestia gestured in a generous way, "Free of charge!"
"I'll have to discuss that with ...several others before I can give you a proper thanks, Princess." the President also gestured, giving the one that meant, "Set up a call to the UN without delay."
Maybe I missed this being stated, but where is the actual chapter your notes are referring to? OTPP doesn't show any unread ones for me.
3755802
It's for Celestia Sleeps In with a Vengeance, which is a crazy comedy.
3754939
...huh, really? I thought I was suggesting the easy way out.
Further proof, then, that different people think in (sometimes remarkably) different ways.
3755227
There aren't enough fics with ponies trying to fix things that are wrong with Earth, especially since that's a not-uncommon trope in HiEs (protagonist gives the ponies nanotech or something like that). It's been done a few times, but not in all that many stories that I've read.
Of course, the consequences on our end would probably be terrible. Especially if they moved the earth to a 'better' rotation (and presumably evened out the moon's orbit while they were at it). First sign something was wrong would be when most satellites stopped working correctly.
3756068
I manage to screw up simple addition as often as not. You can only imagine what I can accomplish with multiplication.
3756875
Of the various ways I imagine Celestia might change the number of days in a year, reducing the speed of the earth's rotation would cause the least damage--I'm sure she'd take the spin of our planet's liquid core into mind... but I was thinking she'd instead increase the Sun's mass, and its gravity, pulling the Earth into a slightly closer orbit and so making the year 5.25 days shorter.
(That wouldn't bother anyone, surely!?>
<You told me it was just an exercise in physics...)
3756882
You're allowed to use a calculator for this calculation...
Miss Cheerilee would probably be less grouchy if she took that advice.
I've read that it actually referred to the Rhinoceros & that critter was the basis for the legend
5080855
It might have. That seems a likely source, or at least an inspiration for an animal with a single horn in the center of its head.
There’s also speculation that it originated from the auroch.