Sol 74
MISSION LOG – SOL 74
Hello humans who read this! I am Starlight… sorry, I can’t find a good English word for mine last name. Mark lets me write this using the dictionary in his computer.
There is a page with pictures of animals on it. The animal closest to what I am is “horse.” But it’s not quite right. Your horse has a strange face and a really small brain. Too I have a horn and your horse does not.
Mark does not want to write today. He went EVA to walk for a while. He is angry. So am I. We hate this rover. The rover stinks from our bathroom. We have to save it for the farm, but it’s really bad. We can’t move because the rover is too full. We can only get space if we wear our suits and go outside, but that is a lot of trouble. We can’t get more than six hooves away from each other. Mine legs hurt from not moving so long.
Mark thinks we get to Pathfinder in two or three more sols. The ground is different here. Where Mark lives is flat. Here there are hills and valleys and a lot more rocks. Mark can’t drive as fast as he wants. The rover moves when we drive over small rocks. Today we had to back up and go around a field of rocks too big to drive over. We drove seventy-two
“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas.”
kilometers today.
“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, do you read?”
“Reading you clearly, Amicitas. I’m kind of busy now, over.”
“Just the daily status check, Starlight. How are you doing?”
“About eight words per minute.”
“Sorry, Starlight, I didn’t copy that.”
“I said we’re fine, Cherry. And I know you’re fine, because you would have called sooner if something happened.”
“Oh… well… okay, then. Until tomorrow, Amicitas out.”
Writing this took me half an hour. I am learning to type but I am slow. I need practice. I need to tell humans how our magic works and how our technology works. We need humans to help mine people find us and come get us. For humans to help us we must help humans.
Too this helps me learn more English. It is strange how English and our language are different words but in the same order. Our numbers are near the same. There are other things I can’t talk about now. Maybe
Mark is back in the rover. He wants me to stop now. I hope I talk with you again.
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Hoof harder, Starlight!
i like her typing
Why save the urine this time around? In the original he saved the urine because he had to go through so much effort and danger producing water that he wasn't going to waste a drop. Here they have as much water as they could ever need.
The urea, sodium, and potassium in the urine would be useful to recycle to their crops, but they've been putting their urine in the water reclaimer not on the dirt, so those chemicals aren't entering the soil anyway. I'm pretty sure that most of the solids would be left behind in the container when the water sublimated anyway if they were that concerned about them.
Hope we get more Starlight logs sometime. This was adorable.
I sympathize with starlight I did a test. When not looking I got 30wpm with 12 mistakes, when looking I got 36wmp and 3 mistakes.
8733197 The exact mechanism of the water reclaimer is never described in the book, but there has to be some filter or reservoir or something for the non-water components of what goes in. That has to be serviced now and again, and I'm assuming that Watney retrieves nitrates, etc. from it at some point.
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They're saving shit for composting.
I hear ya... I didn't really learn to type until college. I knew how before that but never really did so since my family didn't own a computer. The 90s were a different time...
Starlight types about as fast as my dad, who uses 2 fingers. That said, she's learning it and English really fast. Not unexpectedly though. Short but sweet this one, thanks for writing... sorry your luck with vehicles is about on par with Mark and company. Racoons can get prettt big...
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Neither of these explain why they can't eliminate the smell via sublimation. Poop and pee placed in a box with smallish holes in it, or simply one that isn't air tight. Take box outside. Water sublimates dehydrating the whole thing.
Dump remaining dried contents into a box in the saddlebags of the rover. Bring bathroom box back inside. Smell is now negligible without the water increasing ability to get into the air (fully dried manure is almost odorless), and most of it stored outside.
You now have all of the nutrient rich solid waste still available to take home, at a couple percent the odor level. Also given they're going through probably 3 liters of water a day or so between them, you free up about 60 liters worth of space that would have been filled with urine.
Incidentally in the book he never says where the filtered material is going, but I have to believe it's being dumped outside or something. He was concerned about soil running out of nutrients eventually, but if he could recycle his urine as fertilizer then all of the nutrients are stuck in the closed system.
This is adorable, and I'm reminded of Twilight using Randy's computer in Arrow 18.
I remeber learning to type with reader rabbit on my old DOS
*chuckle* I had typing practice during Grade 9 and I wanted the time spent to be worthwhile... I still only use one finger on my left hand, but I use all five fingers on my right hand. (Though not for the keys you're supposed to use them for... I just got good at using whichever finger was closest without really thinking about it.)
My younger brother taught himself to type because he wanted to type in the dark so our mom wouldnt catch him staying up late playing World of Warcraft. Me, I used a high-school typing course. Best class I ever took.
Same idea as 8733223
Ha ha :D I learned how to type playing the old TIE Fighter game. It was my first game that used pretty much all of the keys on the keyboard, including bizarre ones like ~ and all different types of brackets. I had to keep my eyes on the screen while finding buttons because those little TIE Fighters would explode in a second if you weren't paying attention. By the time I got to high school I was already around 30 wpm and then we had touch typing classes and boom, now I'm up over a hundred, easily.
But that's just a regular QWERTY keyboard. Put me in front of one of these new fangled ones and ugh.
Starlight will get better at her typing.
I use two finger typing now, but in high school we had to have 30 wpm in five minutes to get a C-minus which barely passed. My final was proctored by a female classmate who brought her boyfriend into the classroom. I feverishly typed on the old manual typewriter while a very heavy petting session was going on behind me. I glanced at the clock when she called a stop, twelve minutes instead of five and exactly 30 WPM after a couple typo penalties. Should have given her boyfriend a five as thanks for the extra time. I generally feel lucky to get 6 or 8 WPM now.
Could've been worse, but not by a lot - learned to hunt, peck, curse, and erase on a manual Smith-Corona portable typewriter with a bottle of correction fluid. The IBM Selectric with correction ribbon coupled with a 1960s-era typing textbook from a garage sale, was a massive improvement, and, to me, PCs with word-processing programs were all that and a bag of chips... Now, imagine learning to type on something like a manual Smith-Corona with a keyboard set up for, say, Cyrillic, or Arabic. How much fun is that gonna be? Welcome to Starlight's world at Sol 74
This is getting put on my featured wall if you keep it up. I know it might not mean much, but I don't just add everything.
I like how the chapters are short and they in their own way has played a hand (or hoof) in bringing immersion and a bit of realism to it.
Seriously, keep up the good work.
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I haven't thought of that fic in a while.
Hoo boy, hope they hurry with Pathfinder and get back... reading the last chap's comments has me nervous.
Modern vehicles are literally built to crumple easily. It's great when you get in a serious accident that is going to total your vehicle anyway, since bleeding off the extra energy by making a car do an accordion impression could save you from injuries or even death.
But it means that minor accidents do way more damage than they did 20-30 years ago
I hated my typing class in highschool soooo much. Growing up as a gamer, I learned to type with one hand on the mouse at all times. I think I average 50-70 WPM while I'm in the zone typing, though I haven't checked in years.
In that class, however, every time the teacher caught me typing with one hand? 0 WPM for that test/assignment. Didn't matter if I was doing double the minimum at all. XD
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She has one digit per limb. Muscle memory means squat. Also, have you ever tried to type with your heel? The edge of a hoof can't be much better.
Were she to use telekinesis to push the keys, I imagine she could become proficient and quick.
On the last chapter, our Wonderbolt just committed a grave sin. She didn't follow her instincts, and that might well prove deadly to someone. At least they're fast on the drills.
than six hooves away
What's the conversion of hooves to metric? because I' would say that it's around ten centimeters... and sixty centimeters maximum distance is more than murderous... ^^;;;
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That's about right, I'd wager. I mentally translate hooves to hands, the human measure which is four inches, or 10.16 cm.
I first learned typing with an old IBM PC program (Typing Tutor?), but we didn't keep that computer for long. I also took a typing class or two. So I knew the layout of a keyboard, but didn't have much practice. Did a lot of hunting and pecking, with reasonable speed. During college, I made a conscious effort to practice touch typing. As time passed, I spent enough time online and got much better.
A bad allergic reaction on my hands a couple years back made all my fingers curl up until sorted out the contamination and steriod treatment, just managed to have one finger on each hand reached out slightly further than the rest. Im that bad at typing normally that having to swing from teh shoulders and elbows didnt even half my typing speed,a nd Ive been using typewriters and computer keyboards for almost 40 years.
Apparently I dont learn too good.
Hmm, recent article on NASA looking at waste processing recycling method for Mars lifesupport. Theyre going for anaerobic gas digester, coupled with methanogenic food algae.
Things could go boom.
As someone who is still learning English, I can sympathize with Starlight. English is both simpler and more complicated that Spanish:
- simpler, because there aren't gender or number sufixes for adjetives, verb conjugation, etc...
- more complicated, because the damned rules for syntax and others, plus their exceptions.
8733641 i can't help but to see dragonfly computer he buy for video games is a trs-80 type or a C64
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Can relate, comrade, tho I started studying English after Russian and French. Both of those have a metric fuckton of rules on conjugation, but lack one particular thing about English, that I personally find infuriating: in English literally anything is a verb.
I lost it when I first heard "I heart you".
Also, 9000 accents in USA. Like every single person decided for himself how they're gonna pronounce everything.
I've been using keyboards since the age of three... and never really developed a technique for more than about four fingers. And two of them are working Shift, the spacebar, et al. And, of course, there's the smartphone I'm using right now, with its size requiring me to treat it more like a game controller.
As for Starlight's progress with English, she's certainly doing a good job all things considered, though it's a bit disturbing to think that another universe could produce the eldritch nightmare that is English grammar.
Sounds like what they need is...
I learned the ten fingers thing before my class mates Always makes me twitch when I see someone using s keyboard and pecking. Unless it is on a phone the. Well yeah I use two fingers easy.
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Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "Access" was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed.
Calvin: Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.
I sympathize on the typing thing. I would never have learned 10 fingered typing were it not for StarCraft multiplayer. Took me years of competitive play to get my wpm above 40.
The moment when Starlight finally learns the English word for her last name is going to be one of those moments that kills me with adorableness isn't it?
I wonder what the range is on a changling love infusion? When they finally get pictures out, billions of people a long way away will be thinking how adorable Dragonfly is... can changlings explode?
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Guessing it won't reach all the way to Mars but if she ever gets to Earth... Eggplant mode.
Not one of you guys is going to mention cybersex As the way that you learn to type so fast? :-)
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Any tips for someone learning Russian?
Ah, just a raccoon.
Here in NJ, we hit deer. A lot.
They tend to total your car.
They must be destroyed... yes... destroy them all... destroy them all..
I know a book that might help
i.imgur.com/E7PPEEM.png
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(American here!!!) Yes, very true... Too many accents... Mine is a sort of blend between all of them
I'm so glad that I learned how to type properly in grade school. My words per minute right now is somewhere around 40 to 50.
Type away, you crazy little horse.
Don’t know of it comes up later in this fic, but I kind of hope it is speculated, revealed or touched upon that earth and Equestria were linked at some point in the past, probably around the time of Ancient Greece. Hell, the Gods could be people that learned magic. Before whatever connection existed was severed because of Greek god assholery.
I don’t think I’ve read a fic yet that has followed that thread before, or at least adequately explored it.
I guess it's recharging time, then...
Hah!
oh, this part about Starlight having lousy typing skills reminded me of this crazy video:
what playing a piano with hooves would probably sound like
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