The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • France Excursion 2023 Part Four: Up and Away!

    On Friday the 23rd we got up very very early, about 4:30 a.m., and bundled into the car for a drive up the Cher river to the little town of Francueil where we sat outside a deserted winery in the pre-dawn darkness. A few other cars pulled up nearby, and then the caravan of white…

    jamescambias

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Three: Chambord, Ezia, and Magic

    We got moving early on the 22nd. I got the car out of the underground garage, and we set out eastward on the Autoroute heading for Blois. From there we followed smaller roads to the great palace of Chambord. This was Francis I's personal dream house, and he poured treasure into the project — and…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Deux: Stones and Wine

    On Wednesday the 21st we had a fabulous lunch at a restaurant chosen at random because we were hungry, then picked up our rental car at the Tours train station and drove out of the city to do some tourism on the north side of the Loire River. Our first stop was the Dolmen de…

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  • France Excursion 2023: Episode 1, The Beginning

    The 27th annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology was hosted this year by the University of Tours. When neurobiologist Dr. Diane A. Kelly decided to present a poster session at the conference, my response was, "I guess we're going to France, then!" So we did. The plan was to cross the Atlantic a…

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  • Notes on Worldbuilding Part 15: Ecologies

    I'm going to begin this entry with a warning: I am not an ecologist. Some of the terms I use in this blog post may be inaccurate or incorrect, although I think I'm at least close to the technical meanings. I'm trying to generalize from what we know about ecosystems on Earth to what any…

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  • The Worldbuilding Index

    This is a master index to the Notes on Worldbuilding series. It’s a bit better than just searching for the Worldbuilding tag.   Notes on Worldbuilding 1: Real and Not-Real Worlds Notes on Worldbuilding 2: Why? Notes on Worldbuilding 3: The Future! Notes on Worldbuilding 4: Stars! Notes on Worldbuilding 5: Planetary Systems Notes on…

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  • Notes on Worldbuilding Part 14: Low-Temperature Biologies

    Most of the Universe is really dark and cold, so life which might exist in such conditions is worth thinking about. For every world with oceans of liquid water there are dozens of planets and moons with only ice. There's an upper temperature limit for As-We-Know-It life: above about 333 Kelvin (60 C, or 140…

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  • Notes on Worldbuilding Part 13: Weird Life at Liquid-Water Temperatures

    The last entry discussed possible biochemistries for planets hotter than Earth, ranging from "hot" to "incomprehensibly hot." Such life forms may actually exist in the Universe, but for fictional purposes they're a little inconvenient. When either the aliens or the humans have to make brief visits to the other civilization wearing heavy protective gear, it…

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  • Notes on Worldbuilding Revived!

    I know, it's been more than six months, but now I really really am getting back to the worldbuilding series. I promise. Pinky-swear.  As proof of my sincerity, I've updated the entry on hot planet life forms. You can find the revised version here. Next time I'll look at variant life for Earthlike worlds, and…

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  • Chatbots and Gamemasters

    The author of one of my favorite roleplaying game blogs — he uses the handle "Noisms" and the blog is called Monsters & Manuals — recently tried an interesting experiment to see how well ChatGPT could run a solo roleplaying session using his own published game setting "Yoon-Suin." Short answer: not well.  It's worth reading…

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The Worldbuilding Index