Fantasist's Scroll

Well, I’ve really done it this time!

Yep, I made a name generator based on the Conlang Word Generator and the Conlang Generator. It’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself! Now, keep in mind, the names aren’t perfect and they’re based on the languages in the drop-down list, but they aren’t from the language. In other words, if you choose “Chinese” as your base language, you won’t get Chinese names, but conlang names based on Chinese phonology. And, if you choose “Tsolyani”, the names will be in the correct “format”, but not really quite like names from Empire of the Petal Throne. Still, it is fun. And, if you’re an author looking to crank out some names fast, it works pretty well.

In any case, I had fun doing it, so enjoy!

Imagine the entire universe laid out in a three-dimensional map.

Well, imagine no more, it’s a reality. According to this article on Wired News, a couple of scientists in New York have made just such a map. It’s not as accurate as they’d like, but that’s mainly because our actual knowlege of the universe is pretty limited. Still, it’s a three-dimensional map of the heavens that can be navigated in pretty fast “real-time”. Though, real time would take hundreds of years to get us from place to place, so it’s actually a lot quicker than that. A very cool learning tool that will, hopefully, inspire legions of future astronomers and space scientists.

You can experience the magic, in a more limited fashion, right on your desktop. The Hayden Observitory, who created the “big” map, also created Partiview, which let’s you see the same thing they show at the observatory at home, though it’s not quite as spectacular.
Enjoy!

Today is the birthday of one of the greatest diarists in the English language, Samuel Pepys.

He was, born in London on this day in 1633 to a tailor and a washerwoman. However, thanks to an upper-class cousin who helped him get into good schools and got him government jobs, Pepys managed to work his way up from his humble beginings at a time when it was almost impossible to do so in England.

Pepys began his diary in 1659, a diary he would keep for almost ten years. No one knows what inspired him to start it, though it wasn’t unusual for well-educated men at the time to keep a diary. He was also a well-known collector, collecting such varied things as ship models, scientific instruments, portraits, ballads, money and women.  In fact, some critics see his diary as an attempt to collect his whole experience of the world.

What made him unique, however, was that, as far as we know, Pepys was the first Englishman to fill his diary with descriptions of his most personal and ordinary experiences: his aches and pains, what he liked to eat, going to the bathroom, his marital love life, and his extramarital affairs, graphic details that novelists wouldn’t start incorporating into their work for more than two hundred years.

An on-line version of his diary is available for viewing at PepysDiary.com.