Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:02 pm
Page 62 of 69
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:49 am
Nice bill, as usual.
And by the way, regarding the lack of purple on flags...this is surely because in the past, purple dye was very expensive and hard to come by. It was a luxury item, so maybe some nations didn't want to use it on their flags if they intended a lot of flags to be made.
And by the way, regarding the lack of purple on flags...this is surely because in the past, purple dye was very expensive and hard to come by. It was a luxury item, so maybe some nations didn't want to use it on their flags if they intended a lot of flags to be made.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:41 am
I think it's less that (after all, most national flags are relatively recent inventions) than the need for visual clarity. Here is the spectrum of visible colours plotted according to the brightness sensitivity of the human eye:clawgrip wrote:And by the way, regarding the lack of purple on flags...this is surely because in the past, purple dye was very expensive and hard to come by. It was a luxury item, so maybe some nations didn't want to use it on their flags if they intended a lot of flags to be made.
Note how purple lags behind every other colour (including orange) in this respect. It's relatively easy to perceive under optimal conditions (such as a crisp image on a well-lit computer screen), but flags were originally designed to be recognisable under very adverse conditions (e.g. dark smoky battlefields) and are often displayed under suboptimal conditions still.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:23 pm
nope, guess againsirdanilot wrote:What is your hometown, Tokyo? The idea of a tram in Tokyo seems a bit absurd to me. Then again, I heard the subways are filled to the brim there and people have to actually push the travellers inside to get the doors to close, so maybe it's just absolutely necessary to relieve the subway network?finlay wrote:Trams are also a massive sore point in my hometown, where the government has spent in the region of £2 billion building tracks and setting the damn things up - they were finally completed this year after about something like seven years. There are untold mutitudes of better things they could have spent the money on, including more buses, of course, but by the time there was a new local government that wasn't so much in favour of them, and there was an expensive mishap (the tracks didn't last an unusually cold winter and buckled everywhere), the project had progressed far enough that, counterintuitively, it would have cost the same amount or less to just finish it than it would have to scrap the whole thing, and I suppose now they've finished it they have a chance of making back some of the money.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 10:40 pm
More stuff, in this case featuring a distinguished member of this message board.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:31 am
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 4:16 am
Don't know whether you have mentioned that already, what is the era Telemor is using? And is it on our (or a parallel) Earth or somewhere else?
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 8:11 am
Are those birds the usual birds they look like, or are they stand-ins for alternate National Birds of Telemor Which Only Live Here?
Or are they the birds they look like but also live in and are popular in Telemor?
Or are they the birds they look like but also live in and are popular in Telemor?
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2014 11:43 pm
They are the usual birds. Partly because I'm lazy, but also because, climate-wise and habitat-wise, it's not too farfetched.Civil War Bugle wrote:Are those birds the usual birds they look like, or are they stand-ins for alternate National Birds of Telemor Which Only Live Here?
Or are they the birds they look like but also live in and are popular in Telemor?
I initially started it envisioned on a parallel-ish Earth, largely because I didn't want to wrangle with revisionism and the like. The era is based on a common calendar called the UIC, a calendar which initially starts with the collapse of an empire located within Telèmor.hwhatting wrote:Don't know whether you have mentioned that already, what is the era Telemor is using? And is it on our (or a parallel) Earth or somewhere else?
Sorry if I'm not too clear with that, but I'm feeling extremely over-caffeinated and a bit strange as a result.
Also, more stuff:
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 12:55 am
I know it's been some time since this was posted, but I just stumbled across it and thought I'd take a crack at deciphering it. I'm guessing, based on the orientation of the glyphs, that this is written from left to right; I've been playing with PIE roots, and I have a guess at what the first word might be, though it's a bit wild:KathAveara wrote:I've written a sentence in my recent IE-lang!
I'll be amazed if it's ever translated.
Edit: Excuse my apalling hieroglyph drawings. I can't draw.
The first four characters could, assuming I'm right about the orientation, represent the consonants ʕ-ɾ-kʰ-ʃ in Middle Egyptian. If the Indo-European language in question is an Anatolian or Anatolian-like language that preserves some of the laryngeals, this could just represent a reflex of PIE *h₃rḗǵs, "king." Am I anywhere close?
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 2:33 am
Oh dear, I don't actually remember what it means, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing about any king.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 3:58 am
@vampireshark's banknotes: Muisto means like souvenir in Finnish. 
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 11:37 am
Alas, and here I thought I was being so clever.KathAveara wrote:Oh dear, I don't actually remember what it means, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing about any king.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 2:34 am
Well, that's an added bonus: muișto, which I swiped from the German Muster, means "sample" or "specimen". But regardless.Qwynegold wrote:@vampireshark's banknotes: Muisto means like souvenir in Finnish. :)
More stuff:
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 12:31 am
Hate doing multiple posts, but, seeing as how they're about two weeks apart, hopefully that's less unforgivable.
Anyways, over the course of my vacation, I've been busy with personal projects and a commission. Here are some results.
Telèmor 50 Franc banknote (now in polymer for increased durability)
Random Ilian postage stamps for 1st-class domestic (D19, up to 20g), larger 1st-class domestic (D42, up to 50g), international 1st-class (D30, up to 20g), and large letter (D120, up to 250g)
Ilian highway vignettes, because boredom.
Anyways, over the course of my vacation, I've been busy with personal projects and a commission. Here are some results.
Telèmor 50 Franc banknote (now in polymer for increased durability)
Random Ilian postage stamps for 1st-class domestic (D19, up to 20g), larger 1st-class domestic (D42, up to 50g), international 1st-class (D30, up to 20g), and large letter (D120, up to 250g)
Ilian highway vignettes, because boredom.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:17 am
Do you do coins? I do have my people use "Tokkul" which is made of obsidian... hmm but how do you carve in that...?
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:13 am
With great care. Obsidian has a greater tendency to fracture rather than carve, but I'd imagine that if you do it just right...אקֿמך ארש-הגִנו wrote:Do you do coins? I do have my people use "Tokkul" which is made of obsidian... hmm but how do you carve in that...?
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:11 am
Birds use coins called pence and paper money called jiri.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:40 am
I wouldn't call this "creativity" unless you tell us a little more about it.Birdlang wrote:Birds use coins called pence and paper money called jiri.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:45 am
I do do coins on occasion, though I much prefer banknotes.אקֿמך ארש-הגִנו wrote:Do you do coins? I do have my people use "Tokkul" which is made of obsidian... hmm but how do you carve in that...?
And carving in a stone like that seems very difficult. In principle, though, you could just have it be a weight-based currency, especially if obsidian is somewhat of a finite resource.
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:29 pm
They already went past the "weight-based currency" phase well over 800 years ago (in their timeline) , now they use coins, but not paper currency...vampireshark wrote:I do do coins on occasion, though I much prefer banknotes.אקֿמך ארש-הגִנו wrote:Do you do coins? I do have my people use "Tokkul" which is made of obsidian... hmm but how do you carve in that...?
And carving in a stone like that seems very difficult. In principle, though, you could just have it be a weight-based currency, especially if obsidian is somewhat of a finite resource.
We will use bronze tokkuls, silver tokkuls, and obsidian tokkuls, of increasing value...
On the other hand, I thought to use onyx and turquoise, but those are considered to be sacred and highly valued gems...
There is an entire mountain where obsidian can be found, more so than turquoise and onyx, but less so than copper, tin, silver, gold, and iron...
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:26 pm
Keep in mind, however, that a lot of countries used some sort of weight-based currency standard until actually very recently. For example, until 1965, most US circulating coinage of value 10¢ or higher was minted in silver at a rate of $1 per ounce of silver. Similarly, the dollar was fixed to gold at a rate of $35 per ounce of gold until 1971 (Bretton Woods). So the weight-based phase, for some countries, lasted rather long.אקֿמך ארש-הגִנו wrote:They already went past the "weight-based currency" phase well over 800 years ago (in their timeline) , now they use coins, but not paper currency...
That said, it might be more advantageous to have uniform shards of specified weights and the like. Uniformity is, after all, essential in monetary systems.
Also new stuff:
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:38 pm
Very nice notes and coins, vampireshark. Gives me a ... yen to learn the language of Telemor. Have you put anything on the 'net about it?
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:36 pm
I dunno, I wanna use obsidian as a currency of some sort. But I don't know how a weight-based system will work...
"I say that cow is worth 8 tokkul..."
"I say that cow is worth 8 tokkul..."
Re: Creativity of the day
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 7:09 pm
Exactly as arbitrarily as modern currency.אקֿמך ארש-הגִנו wrote:I dunno, I wanna use obsidian as a currency of some sort. But I don't know how a weight-based system will work...
"I say that cow is worth 8 tokkul..."