I think the definition of "highly armed" is rather a variable of what universe you're in. Take Star Trek for example- you can't scan a planet because of mystical "interference" but there could be "at least" fifty BORG on the surface. If you're the captain, you order a "heavily armed" away team to beam down and check things out. If you are Robert (i.e. me) told to gather a "heavily armed" force in that reality, it would consist of at least 100 people (1/10 the force of the ship). 10 of these would be outfitted with sniping equipment and be beamed two hundred meters away, in a circular formation. Another 10 would have augmented strength via cyber suits and carrying some kind of heavy weapon, like a turret. Maybe even a turret phaser of some kind? Programmed to rotate "phaser frequency" with every shot. Let's see a Borg keep up with that. 20 would be carrying the portable cover, (shield generators) and be armed with hand phasers, their job to keep those generators running in the case something really bad goes wrong. Another 10 carrying EMP grenades, (come on, it's the future, they have them) lots of EMP grenades, as cyber systems (like the Borg) wouldn't be able to withstand something like that, if it goes really, REALLY wrong. The rest, heavy type rifle phasers in a staggered formation, ready to take any Borg by surprise. We know the Enterprise has at least 3 transporter rooms and cargo bays, and they beam up about a hundred people in a minute, so that accounts for the time to get them off the pad too. So in a minute you have your force down there. 

 

But if you are Will Riker, ladies man, overconfidence extreme, what is your "heavily armed" force of people beamed down?

 

[[image:highlyarmed.jpg:What's heavy about that group?:center:0]]

 

Five humans and a Klingon. All carrying the wimpiest type phaser possible. Glad those fifty Borg weren't right there to greet you?

 

Commander Shepard's "heavily armed" force would be his team of 8-10 people, each with 4 weapons, grenades, and the biotics would be creating shields and throwing stuff around.

Master Chief's would be an entire platoon of marines, some tanks, support aircraft, with the MAC (Mass Accelerator Canon, not some kind of iGun by Apple) standing by from orbit.

Optimus Prime would no doubt field a crack team of elite soldiers, depending on generation, none of which can actually hit anything so as to not get killed themselves and end the show.

 

See what I'm getting at here? Shame on you Riker, SHAME on you and your TRANSPORTER created DOUBLE. 

 

Anyway, nothing yesterday, so I did in fact work more on the comic maker. I think I know how I'm going to do the speech bubbles. It's really not very elegant compared to Comic Life, I really have no idea, short of a TON of math, how they did it. They have some crazy looking bubbles, and they just resize like nobody's business. So they have to be vectors and not bitmaps, but how did they connect the tail and get it to look so good? I can't even imagine.

 

Some work today, the first a bad DIMM chip, which was caught right away by Memtest. Also it was filthy, but she had air to throw at it, violently, which helped. Also some bizarre registry thing that kept putting her default printer back to the wrong one, fixed. The other was to set up a router, but as soon as I turned the machine on, oh look, you're infected up to the hilt. So that took me some time to delouse. Then more work on the comic maker. I wanted to have something like this:

 

[[image:bubble.png:tiny bubbles:center:0]]

 

where you can see the green points are the places you can drag. The one at the tail works perfectly. The one by the rectangle... not so much. When you drag the mouse, all I have is the place you started dragging from, and where your mouse currently is. The bubble must grow from the center, meaning if you move the mouse one pixel down, the bubble grows one pixel in the down direction and one in the up direction. It's not working out so well. I have no idea how the third one, that controls where the opening is, will work. Well, I have a vague notion. I may just put sliders in to control the size of the bubble. Like I said, not very elegant.

 

The trouble is, I like to program, but if I'm quite honest with myself, I'm not very good at it. Thanks, five years at RIT!!! 

Comic Life handles it much better. They have those cute drag circles around everything, it's very professional. Which it should be, they sell it for like....*looks at site* twenty bucks? Man, they must have dropped their price? But still, the company that made it has all of four developers. One in Australia, two in the US and one in France! Shouldn't I be able to make something as good as them, if I allow for the fact it will take me four times as long? But I have no idea how they did certain things, nor do I have any resource to find out. It's quite... frustrating.

 

And played more Bayonetta. I have won it on easy, so I thought, as I can take all my items and weapons and money on another go round, why not do so? It's not so bad this second time around (love the whip) but I still die... in stupid "press x to not die" quicktime events. Hate them, we do. Yes.

 

No grandma tomorrow, she's not feeling well, she'll miss me sooooo much. I know. Game though, remotely, finishing the Perfect Horizon game possibly. Then perhaps the tournament on saturday? One job tomorrow, here, and one 10:00 saturday morning. A lady who just is not prepared for life in the current era. I swear, how can people not at least reason a little ways through a situation? Just look at the situation, look at the tools you have, and the options those tools give you, and FIGURE IT OUT. But I'm going to do 5 seconds of work for her because she "just can't handle it". *shakes head*

 

Don't let anyone fool you tomorrow.