zompist bboard

So I posted my process for adding streams (and as it turns out… deserts) on my blog. An overview of the entire continent, showing the somewhat oversized desert regions, and poorly displaying the generated river network, below. https://preview.ibb.co/cFgDLG/overview_1.png Here is a closer view of the...

A picture to go with all of that.

Here is a little something I cooked up, though it's not a perfect fit to your guidelines. I'll describe my methodology, as it could prove useful to others. First, I went to the USGS EarthExplorer site . I used to use seamless.usgs.gov, but that seems to have gone away :x . To download data, you need...

Wilbur's a bit less capable than that, but still nearly indispensable, even if you have professional-grade GIS software. Basically, the closest that Wilbur comes to that precipitation and water movement model is a D8 flow accumulation model. It basically just counts the number of pixels contributing...

Used to have a collection of MySQL tables. Had a 'language' column so that I could mush the words from three separate English re-lexings(with some just plain batshit stuff; hey, I'm strictly monolingual!). I had a little java app good for routine access, and had to dig out an SQL textbook to do anyt...

If you clipped off Christchurch, it'd go a long way toward obfuscating the geography for most people.

Cut and paste topography is hard but rewarding.

It would be interesting to try a few variations of this in Mercury6 . I'm somewhat dubious about the stability of these, particularly the trojan relationships. Even L-4 and L-5 orbits are only stable in the sense that LEO is stable. It still requires some impulse to maintain those orbits over time, ...

How to get your continents moving on gplates. since MysteryMan23 showed interest

EDIT: A little addendum here, showing how to move portions of rasters on the globe.

Yeah, I work with some pro-grade GIS programs, but for drawing out vector features on a globe, gplates is pretty uniquely qualified. I like to base things on raster elevation maps, so that's something I have to work around... While I applaud Ishmael over on SF RPG for his work with Blender, the resu...

Okay, I've got my new blog post on gplates up. I've barely touched on the capabilities of that program, which really is a fairly capable pint-size GIS app in its own right. For instance I could only give a short preview of the plate rotation tools, which are kind of the programs forté. On the other ...

That spherical easel could prove useful. If you're working in vector, then gplates could be helpful(It's free, open source and all that). Draw a collection of continent shapes, probably all clustered together into a 'pangaea'. Then read the documentation on how to create a rotations file at least tw...

Fairer to say, the process tarnished Asimov's name.

Don't beat yourself up. This stuff is a great steaming bitch. I tried to get MITgcm running without any success. The program is all written by other people, who are clearly smarter than me, but I can't even get that bastard to compile. I still have a massive headache from trying to read the instruct...

It looks like Bricka's pages are still up here, and FinalZero's site is still up.
Yay!
And...

STICKY!!!!

I hate to bump pointlessly, but I consider Bricka's pages valuable and as they tend to get abandoned like sad little orphans from foster home to foster home... Here is the latest foster home I found them at http://thunder.smokeynet.org/bricka/ Big thankey to FinalZero, whoever that is. I might just ...

All I'm saying is, while it's possible to take it too far, there's no need to hold back on the innovation thing as much as all that. Look at the other stuff that was innovated by the same tradition on Oikumene. and all that, mind you, in a world under the baleful glare of Rome. Quoted For Truth. Th...

As I understand it from reading the Almeapedia, the Eled'At aren't terribly interested in the Old Testament. Questions about the location of Eden just don't matter because the creation stories in Genesis just aren't that important to Almean christians. Seems like the Book of Eled' kind of took over ...

i.e. still important to theologians, and lying dormant in ideology waiting to come back whenever the time is ripe for the right heresy. you can't kill an idea! I could see it having some attraction to Earth-humans on Almea. How many of those are there? I don't see the idea as having any attraction ...

In order to be *sure* that Christ's salvation carried over to the uesti, theologians would need to construct a stronger reassurance than "well he looked about the same" -- see above for why. "God clearly brought us pilgrims here to this world for a reason. If it wasn't to bring these heathens to Go...

Yeah, that picture zompist put up has to be plate caree. Mercator just doesn't make flat tops like that. It stretches things out to the poles. Infinitely. Those muffin tops aren't necessarily plate caree, but that's a good guess. Of course once you have a plate caree the options for reprojection sof...

conworlds.org is now at http://168.144.87.33/~conworld/cwbb/index.php

Yeah, I'm assuming constant density, which is not altogether reasonable given my assumption of similar composition and taking compression effects into account. I'll stick to the constant density assumption unless someone can give me a reasonable formula for compression effects on planetary density. ...

You know, Eddy, even if a particular set of modesty standards aren't universal you can still apply them to your conculture. If it's similar to an existing culture, at least people can't claim that it's unbelievable. You can always throw in little wildcards that kind of say, "Not America!" Yeah, we h...

I suppose by "underwear" I meant clothing that doesn't cover most of the body. [circular definition] I really don't know if your point about Heian women's fashion is really relevant since I somehow doubt [weasel words] the majority of peasant women worked in such impractically heavy clothing as you...

Let's see. The heat output of radioactive materials should be, assuming the planet has an earthlike composition, proportional to volume(treat that as g^3). The surface area through which that heat must pass is proportional g^2. So the heat throughput per unit area would be proportional to g^(3/2). T...