bad things

part of the project of mood tracking is to help me learn wtf is going on with me. I think I'm starting to learn that when things get bad, it brings up my memories of all the bad things I don't like in my life. One thing going wrong reminds me of ALL the things that go wrong.

new computer, ish

So a friend, Robb, was able to give me some of his old computer parts that he's no longer using. Normally that does not sound like much, but he keeps up with the cutting edge of computer technology, and I'm using a computer that is over a decade old.

I got a CPU, Motherboard, RAM, and GPU. I should be able to put these in an old case I have; and by simply adding buying a PSU, I should then have a fully working computer that, assuming I stretch it as far as I have stretched this computer, will last me to 2028.

I'm putting this here, and not linking to it, as I've yet to fire it up. I still need to install the heatsink and plug everything in, which probably will happen tomorrow. Then, I still need a PSU, as mentioned, and even when I get those things, I'll need to consider an operating system. I don't know if I can simply toss the hard drives I am currently using into the new machine and have it all magically just work - if I can, then I could well be using it by Tuesday, if not, which is what I suspect, then we probably don't get fully online till February, as, I like to take things nice and slow.

gear shift

just another note for my daily tracker; sometimes I shift gears, this basically means I put aside various things I was focusing on (for, say, the past week or month or whatever) and begin a new focus.

in particular, I'm putting aside my research and game work and shifting to more fun.

democracy, timeline-history by country

USA - 1775 (note 1)
Britain - 1832 (reform act)
Canada - 1847 (responsible government)
Switzerland - 1848 (1848 revolutions)
Denmark - 1849 (1848 revolutions)
Australia - 1855 (responsible government)

note 1 - The current US constitution is not the first, but is it second constitution of the USA; additionally the US operated for years prior to that first constitution (articles of confederation). Thus, we must look at each state individually. States began electing their legislatures and governors mostly in 1776 and 1777, some as late as 1780; but one (Rhode Island) did so in 1775; as such, I've chosen that year for the US.



This post was originally a lot longer and had a lot more countries, however things kept coming up. Greece had 22 interruptions (civil wars, coups, occupations) France was interrupted by its 2nd empire, occupation, and successful 1958 military coup. Then there are questions about countries that slowly evolved towards full democracy, and so on and so forth.

Eventually I decided to cut it here, as these 5 countries have clear and stark differences from the remainder. Yes Denmark was under occupation for a 5 years, but almost all of the other countries with earlier dates (IE Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway) were as well, and even those with more questionable claims (Czechia, and Greece) also suffered under the same occupations. Other countries with claims (Germany, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, Serbia, Austria) spent a long time under constitutions where the bodies that had real democratic elections had little to no real power. Those countries, along with New Zealand (1879) are all the countries with claims to democratization before 1900. The next best claim would be France (1875) in its third republic, keeping in mind the military coup of 1858.

Adding this all up and making it a list of "years of being democratic" you get as follows:
245 - USA
188 - UK
172 - Canada
171 - Switzerland
166 - Denmark (5 year interruption)
165 - Australia
141 - New Zealand
139 - France (5 year interruption + 1 military coup)
118 - Belgium (4 year interruption + 5 year interruption)
115 - Sweden
110 - Norway (5 year interruption)
and this is where I'll stop. A ton of countries democratized after WW1 which puts them all just a tad over 100 years of uninterrupted.

modern sailing galleon?

so I was reading this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51067440 and remembered that I'd thought up something similar; using cargo ships to cross the atlantic.

anyway, if my math is right, this https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kXMnEZYN84bMQfYmBJ9shh9xvhxP0GMu&usp=sharing trip, should take a month at 1800's sailing speeds.

Galleons, the big sailing ships, could carry 900 or more tons of cargo, which works out to about as many cars (450 or so) as a modern ferry. Leaving space for people and other items, you could easily fit as many people and cars on it as you could on the old ferry to PEI that the Confederation Bridge replaced. (220 cars and 600 people)

This is all assuming a boat built to the standards of 1800. It is 2020, and we have more advanced technology and materials. A modern sailing galleon might not even be made from wood, but some sort of fibreglass. It likely would not be a galleon but a clipper of some sort, or some other design. Even if it is made from wood, we have technologies to better streamline hull shape. Many people are already starting to seriously look at replacing current cargo vessels with some kind of sail powered vessels.

This plan would have three stops on either side of the atlantic. Boston, Halifax, and St. John's, followed by Cork, Plymouth, and Cherbourg. It would connect the United States and Canada with Ireland, the UK, and France; thus connecting to the EU.

unification of italy

so, turns out that the unification of italy included plebiscites.

information is scant, but, it seems that at least 10% of the population in every area voted yes. Keep in mind that not every person is even an eligible voter; so this 10% is more than it sounds.

In fact, looking at eligible voters (as a share of the population) in other countries at the time (1860s) and looking at data from the few places in italy that straight up gave turnout figures; it seems 40% of the people were able to vote.

This means only 25% of eligible voters actually votes for unification; even if the overwhelming majority of the remaining 75% stayed home.

Why this is interesting is that while this 25% figure is true for Parma, as well as Naples, Sicily, and the part of the papal states south of San Marino; it is not true for Tuscany, Modena, or the part of the papal states north of San Marino, where the figure was closer to 50%.


The reason I've been looking this up is to see if its reasonable, for alternate history purposes, to simply not unite italy fully. One thing I've found is that there is indeed a drastic political split right down the middle of Italy. The 1919 election map shows it well. It is a split that remains today.

As such I'm declaring this possibility to be reasonable; and am going to start making more posts like this that simply reference some quick work that I've done so that if someone in the future decides this is not reasonable, I can point to something beyond simply saying that I've done my research.

one of the projects for today

for a game about the napoleonic era. 

waking up later to wake up earlier

I tend to find I am happiest in life when I wake up at or before 5am.

Sometimes I can get away with waking up at 6am and still be happy.

Getting up at 7am tends to not go well. My body just does not care for that.

8am sometimes works, as 6am does.

9am works fine.



One problem is that unless I want to use my alarm clock - and with no pressing need to get up at a certain time, I do not - I need to go to bed 7 to 9 hours before this.

going to bed at 9pm is certainly doable.

10 is a possibility. I've done it from time to time and had it work.

11pm is just not happening. Again, my body rebels against going to bed at 11pm for whatever reason.

Midnight happens from time to time.

1am is easy.



In short; since I've not been able to get past the 'hump' I'm just going to stay on the far side of it for the time being. Nothing is drawing me to the early edge; but there are things that eventually will. I do have reasons, from time to time, to set my alarm clock and get up at 6am or 7am.

So

Until then, I shall simply stay up a bit later.

additional mini-projects from the past

above; a spoiler for a post on the UK using my weird election system.



below; the order of deans in the house of commons

Louis Plamondon
Lawrence MacAulay
Wayne Easter, or
Hedy Fry
Geoff Regan
Carolyn Bennett, or
John McKay
Cheryl Gallant
Dominic LeBlanc
Scott Reid
Brian Masse
Dave MacKenzie
Michael Chong
Pierre Poilievre
James Bezan
Francis Scarpaleggia
Dean Allison
David McGuinty
Andrew Scheer
Diane Finley
Peter Julian
Colin Carrie
Charlie Angus
Scott Simms
Tom Lukiwski

above; some data I found; skeptical about it though.

some of these are obvious and don't need an explanation

I'm always trying to reform and fix things; here is my proposal for lebanon



here is an english translation of the german anthem I wrote; as I don't like any of the other english translations out there:

Unity, justice, and freedom

For the German fatherland!

Towards these let us all work and strive

Brotherly with heart and hand!

Unity justice and freedom

Are the core to our happiness;

Flourish in the glow of this happiness,

Flourish, our German fatherland! 

Flourish in the glow of this happiness,

Flourish, our German fatherland!

design vs use; legislatures in canada, number of members.

comparing the regions of canada, by population

Chinese history. Green = controlled most of china. Yellow = controlled a good chunk of china. Red = chaos/internal wars



these two

are demographic data for canada (above) and quebe (below) with regard to language



population of rome in the 2nd century
400,000 slaves
650,000 poor people
150,000 middle class
15,000 upper class
1,500 senatorial class


I also sometimes make alternate flags

France

A communist Austria-Hungary that's annexed Serbia.

sharing my mini-projects

it's occured to me it might help people understand what I do if I simply upload all my miniprojects. here are the ones from 2020 so far:

 as it says on the tin

 above is french departments by population in 1800, colours showing provinces, pop in thousands

 above is my alternate proposal to departments, based on making them in the revolution, and aiming to make them equalish in population

above is US state population based on the math for calculating slaves as all, part, or none of a person. 3/5ths if what was used IRL, 3/4ths and 1/2 were both suggested, and 3/7ths is something I find handy for calculating things like economic and political power.




I also determined that the two halves of Canada, at its narrowest point - near to the manitoba/ontario border - are connected by:

a 2 lane - one each way - highway. 

2 single track railways. 

one 230kev power line. 

4 pipelines, natural gas, with a combined capacity of around 100 million cubic meters per day, varying based on things like outside temperature.

and lastly, I determined that the following are the governing times of the various "governments" of france

72-1643-1715-Louis XIV 

59-1715-1774-Louis XV 

15-1774-1789-Louis XVI 

15-1789-1804-Revolution (split)

10-1804-1814-First Empire 

16-1814-1830-Bourbon Restoration 

18-1830-1848-July Monarchy 

04-1848-1852-Second Republic 

18-1852-1870-Second Empire 

70-1870-1940-Third Republic 

06-1940-1946-War (split)

12-1946-1958-Fourth Republic 

62-1958-2020-Fifth Republic

I could, but have yet to, split some of these into less generalized categories. 

alt history first US presidential election

for fun I ran the 1st presidential election in the US as an alternate history assuming that Washington decided not to run. My result is as follows:



Milton, Armstrong, Telfair, and Lincoln receive a combined 5 votes from Georgia as IRL

Harrison takes 6 votes from Maryland, as he does IRL.

Patrick Henry replaces George Clinton in taking his 3 votes, and gaining 3 more for a total of 6 votes from Virginia, for reasons that become more clear when I discuss Hancock.

Huntington still only gets votes from Connecticut, but now gets 7 instead of 2.

Combined, these candidates, who received votes from just 1 state IRL, continue to receive votes from just 1 state, but have their total go from 16 to 21 electoral votes.

Rutledge, who IRL only gets 6 votes from South Carolina, now gets 7 from that state, and 5 from Georgia, for a total of 12.

The main changes are to the 3 candidates who received votes from 3 or more states.

John Jay, goes from 9 to 21 electoral votes by gaining 1 vote in New Jersey, and 10 in Massachusetts, home of...

John Hancock, who sees a larger increase. He was ill at the time and many thought he might pass, but they also considered him similar to Adams politically, and liked him. Had Washington not run, he likely would have received far more votes as, remember, each elector can cast two ballots; with one being for Washington, voters had to be stingy with their other ballot. With Washington off the ballot, it would free people up to cast ballots for Hancock and Adams. The only state where this does not come into play is in Massachusetts itself, where both are from; as, you can not vote for two candidates both from your state. Hancock thus takes 19 electoral votes, up from 4, by winning one additional vote from both South Carolina and Virginia, and 8 additional votes from Pennsylvania, as well as 5 from New Hampshire.

The math savvy may notice there are a ton of missing votes. All of these go to Adams, the winner. Adams sweeps every state except South Carolina, where he takes 5 of the 7 available votes, and Georgia, where he is shut out.

As a result, John Jay becomes Vice President, instead of becoming the first head of the Court; Rutledge would thus take that job, holding it until he puts his foot in his mouth as he did IRL in 1795.


Adams then wins re-election in 1792.

This makes the 1796 election interesting. Jay certainly would have run, and likely won. What's interesting is that by 1800, Jay, being a New Yorker, might have swung the election towards Burr. That in itself would be an interesting story as Burr was quite a character.

game making

One thing that I want to do is to re-make all the great classic games I played as a kid in a new way. My inspiration for this is the KOEI strategy games I used to play. As such I'm trying to make my own strategy games covering many of the same periods covered by the KOEI games. For example, the Napoleonic wars, or WW2 in the Pacific. Another period is the American Revolution, which is what I've been working on over the past few days. What I have is this and this.

It might not look like much but both of these required research and refinement. For example, I want to ensure all my city/fort/battle locations are realistic and plausible, and are places that truly existed at the time. Some of the places on the KOEI game, for example, simply were not at the top tier of notable (Roanoke, or Fort Saint John for example)

I wanted good balance. As such, each colony has a number of locations roughly equal to their share of the population. Some are over-weighted, New York for example, or the smaller states as I wanted each to have at least two locations. Others are under-weighted, Connecticut for example, but these are cases where the state is physically small and/or did not see much action in the war.

I still need to draw the road network, so you know which centres you can move to from each other centre, and I may still move around the dots and will almost certainly redo the symbols for most of them, maybe even the colours; but I'm very happy with this balance. 72 american cities, and 12 british ones.


I even did a write up for why Philly was the 'duh' choice for capital. It is as follows:

let us make a 294 mile circle around Philadelphia. Why 294? That's roughly how far you can march in 3 weeks, and, a circle of this size best shows the point.

Centre that circle on Boston. You'll notice all of New England is within the circle, as is the populated part of New York state, and New Jersey, and about 2/3rds of the population of Pennsylvania, and a small part of Delaware. It does not include any other state. This is roughly half the population of the colonies.

Centre it on Norfolk in Virginia. Long-story short, you also cover about half the population of the colonies.

Putting it over what becomes Washington DC (currently Georgetown) and you do get over half, but Georgetown at this time is a small unimportant settlement. Putting it over New York and you get 3/5ths of the population covered.

Now put it on Philadelphia, as mentioned. You get parts of New Hampshire and North Carolina in the circle, but even ignoring those, you have the overwhelming majority of the populations of Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Adding those up with all the states fully covered and you have 3/4ths of the population covered.

Keep in mind that at this time, Philadelphia was also the largest city in the colonies, though New York was close behind and would soon overtake the city in terms of population. 

sleep schedule

So, I made a point to stay up to ring in the new year. However. I've also been making the point over the past month to wake up earlier than I have been for most of 2019. I'm a lot happier when I wake up early.

The problem is that these two do not go together well. For the past few nights I've only had 6 or 7 hours sleep. As such I'm very tired today.

Ideally I go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6am, I might even want to adjust that earlier. I've been trying to walk it back an hour every day, but I'm going to either have to hold my wake up time (8am today) steady as I continue to walk back the time I go to bed (1am last night) or take a larger step tonight (IE go to bed at 11pm or 10pm)

New method of record keeping

I've decided to tie this blog into a new method of record keeping I'm doing based on this imgur post: https://imgur.com/gallery/m7WxQv2

I'm keeping the actual tracker itself private for the time being, (I'm tracking 5 times a day instead of once) and the bulk of it will likely remain private, but the front page will almost certainly be made public at some point soonish.

Regardless, this format - I'm using a spreadsheet - is great for noting things, but is terrible at commenting or explaining. As such, this blog will serve that purpose.

I have two notes relating to things I've done yesterday and today and plan to continue doing.

1 - I'm making a video game. It will take me a decade or more. I'll talk about it in another post and will show more when I have something beyond 'a few google mapses' to look at.

2 - I'm doing a mini-project (I do a LOT of mini-projects) involving trying to detangle certain historical events, right now, in particular, the french revolution; using Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast as my base starting point. In short; this involves listening to the podcast and making notes so that I can structure myself a timeline to help me straighten things out so that I can later map out the events of the revolution in order.

Anyway, this sort of post will replace the weekly posts!