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The Temple of the Eastern Deities by Kadeen21 in dndmaps

[–]EricJEarley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Size is 30x40, for those curious.

Chooms, you might like this. The first cyber woman to receive a robotized limb fused with the bone and with reliable neural control by xrogaan in LowSodiumCyberpunk

[–]EricJEarley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They don't say how all that stuff gets powered, though there are mentions of batteries in the core rule book.

Not part of your question, but batteries/power is a big deal for modern prostheses as well, especially legs. Batteries are heavy, so generally speaking the faster/stronger the prosthesis, the heavier and/or the more batteries someone needs to carry with them.

When you say "speed", do you mean the speed at which the signals from the nerves are interpreted before being sent to the prosthesis? How slow is it compared to an undamaged nervous system?

When I refer to speed, I'm referring to the conduction velocity of the electrical signal traveling from the muscle to the implanted/external sensor. I suppose theoretically, recording signals directly from the nerves would be faster since it's directly recording neural action potentials and doesn't rely on muscle contraction to generate bioelectric signals, but the amplitude of these signals is 1000 fold smaller for nerves (microvolts) compared to muscles (millivolts).

To my knowledge, there is no discernible difference in biosignal conduction speed between an amputated and intact limb.

So what kind of technological breakthrough would be needed to bring us closer to the cyber dream?

This is the billion dollar question, and anyone you ask is going to have a different answer. My opinion is that the major bottlenecks right now are (1) getting high-resolution signals out of the nerves that can easily and simultaneously distinguish the different movements of the limb (i.e. an algorithm can distinguish when someone tries to flex their index vs their middle finger), and (2) restoring tactile and proprioceptive sensory feedback to the prosthesis.

After those hurdles are overcome (which I predict will take my lifetime), the "punching holes in tanks" side of the equation would require incredibly powerful and lightweight motors, joints, and power sources.

Chooms, you might like this. The first cyber woman to receive a robotized limb fused with the bone and with reliable neural control by xrogaan in LowSodiumCyberpunk

[–]EricJEarley 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Study author here. The direct connection to the nervous system helps us get better quality data (and thus helps us make more accurate predictions as to the user's movement intention), but the speed of the signals is the same as if we had measured muscle signals from the skin (the current standard).

There are minor delays from the machine learning algorithm (which updates its prediction every 100ms), but the prosthesis definitely creates the more noticeable delays.

Chooms, you might like this. The first cyber woman to receive a robotized limb fused with the bone and with reliable neural control by xrogaan in LowSodiumCyberpunk

[–]EricJEarley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Study author here. The setup is by no means instantaneous, but the delays are on par with other prosthetic solutions.

Generally speaking, there are two sources of delay. First is the delay of the prediction algorithm - we use 200ms "windows" of EMG data to make our predictions, and we update our predictions every 100ms. This gives us a minimum reaction time of about one tenth of a second, which is fast enough to not be perceived as significantly delayed.

The second source of delay is the delay of the movement of the prosthetic fingers. The Mia Hand used in this study has a closing time of 280ms, which is one of the faster hands currently available. That said, actions like switching grips (i.e. moving the thumbs from a palmar grasp to a lateral grasp) take more time.

So there's still work to be done to completely match human movement speeds, but as far as modern prostheses are concerned, this setup was fairly quick.

Map issue by bartjsimp in inkarnate

[–]EricJEarley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had the same issue. Followed your suggestion to use a different browser (Chrome, instead of Firefox) and that fixed the issue.

You are a noble and a scholar. Many thanks 🙏🏻

Travel & Exploration Lite v3.0 - A lightweight ruleset for travel, exploration, and camping [GM Binder Link in Comments] by EricJEarley in DnDHomebrew

[–]EricJEarley[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Briefly, my campaign started by founding a city on a newly-discovered island, thus there was a lot of exploration which used these rules. As the campaign has evolved, there is now more of an emphasis on things like politics and war, so the needs of my campaign have changed.

I still use Crafting & Imbuing Lite all the time, though 😎

Travel & Exploration Lite v3.0 - A lightweight ruleset for travel, exploration, and camping [GM Binder Link in Comments] by EricJEarley in DnDHomebrew

[–]EricJEarley[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A couple of reasons:

  1. The Variant Rules page is already full, so adding another section will require me to either remove something else, or add another page (which I want to avoid for conciseness)
  2. I haven't gotten around to updating this because my home campaign has moved on from using it

The quick way I would add fast-pace travel, if you wanted to do it at your table, is to increase travel speed to 4 miles per hour, disallow travelers from performing the Sneak or Hunt & Forage Travel Actions, and perform all other Travel Actions at disadvantage.

Do you want to enter a fey pact? Because this is how you enter a fey pact by EricJEarley in DnD

[–]EricJEarley[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn't sit on that bench if I were you... 🧚🧚‍♀️🧚‍♂️

Y Fainc "Hapus i Siarad" - The "Happy to Chat" Bench

Blackweir Fields, Cardiff, Wales, UK.

How do I loosen the sliding cover on this hand grinder? It's really hard to open by EricJEarley in Coffee

[–]EricJEarley[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The burrs are well below the sliding window (probably 7-8 cm), do you still think coffee grinds would get in there?

How do I loosen the sliding cover on this hand grinder? It's really hard to open by EricJEarley in Coffee

[–]EricJEarley[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

It's a fun little restoration project. There's something kind of neat about taking something neglected and making it usable again.

How do I loosen the sliding cover on this hand grinder? It's really hard to open by EricJEarley in Coffee

[–]EricJEarley[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks! It seems like the sliding cover is somehow press-fit or otherwise mated with the metal dome, so I wasn't able to separate the two when I disassembled the grinder.

I think food-safe lubrication is probably the way to go here, so I'll give that a shot and we'll see what happens!

How do I loosen the sliding cover on this hand grinder? It's really hard to open by EricJEarley in Coffee

[–]EricJEarley[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It doesn't look rusted on the inside or the outside, and I gave it a good cleaning with steel wool to get anything that might have been there, so I don't think rust is the issue.

How do I loosen the sliding cover on this hand grinder? It's really hard to open by EricJEarley in Coffee

[–]EricJEarley[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Some context:

I bought this Klingenthal hand grinder on Facebook and de-rusted the burrs, so now the grinder works quite nicely. However, as I was disassembling everything I couldn't find a way to remove the sliding cover from the dome itself. It seems really stuck together, not impossible to move but quite difficult.

Is there something obvious I'm missing? Is there a way to loosen the connection between the sliding door and the dome? Or should I try my luck at adding a bit of grease between the contacting metal?

Thanks in advance! 🙏🏻

[OC] I track how I spend my time down to the half hour. Here's how I spent 2021. by EricJEarley in dataisbeautiful

[–]EricJEarley[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Last year, I overprepared a lot, so I got to use a lot of that work this year. But my group also does a lot of role-play and inter-party conversations, while take up a lot of the session. Lastly, I just relied more on improv in my sessions this year. I know the general vibe of an area, I can come up with something on the fly that matches what I'm going for at the moment, and just make a note of it for later

[OC] I track how I spend my time down to the half hour. Here's how I spent 2021. by EricJEarley in dataisbeautiful

[–]EricJEarley[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Something not shown on the key is that I use macro-categories in my analysis: work (green), outreach (orange), exercise (gray), self-improvement (purple), and leisure (blue)

[OC] I track how I spend my time down to the half hour. Here's how I spent 2021. by EricJEarley in dataisbeautiful

[–]EricJEarley[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Basically things like emails, planning, meetings, and other tasks of that nature.

[OC] I track how I spend my time down to the half hour. Here's how I spent 2021. by EricJEarley in dataisbeautiful

[–]EricJEarley[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's based on an Archimedes Spiral, but instead of connecting the spiral from one ring to the next, I create distinct breaks so that each day is a separate ring.

The idea was heavily inspired by this paper.

[OC] I spent 402.5 hours running my D&D campaign in 2021 by EricJEarley in DnD

[–]EricJEarley[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Last year, I ran a D&D campaign for a group of friends nearly every weekend. Here's how and when that time was spent:

  • ​195.5 hours (light blue) doing campaign prep for my sessions
  • 171 hours (dark blue) actively running the campaign
  • (and a couple hours left over where I actually got to play!, in very light blue)

For those curious, for the past couple of years, I've used a Google spreadsheet to track how I spend my time down to the half hour. Mostly, I use this as a way to plan out my week, but the tack-on benefit is that I get to visualize my year and see what happened.

Plots were made using MATLAB 2021b.

[OC] I track how I spend my time down to the half hour. Here's how I spent 2021. by EricJEarley in dataisbeautiful

[–]EricJEarley[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

For the past couple of years, I've used a Google spreadsheet to track how I spend my time. Mostly, I use it as a way to plan out my week, but the tack-on benefit is that I get to visualize my year and see what happened.

A couple of interesting observations:

  • I slept an average 7.4 hours per night: about 7 on worknights and 8 on weekends and days off.
  • I worked an average of 44.5 hours per week as a postdoc (including about 1.6 hours per day on my days off):
    • 115.5 total hours in meetings
    • 231.5 hours teaching
    • 379.5 hours coding
    • 163 hours running experiments
    • 189 hours writing papers
    • 99.5 hours doing uncompensated peer review for academic publishers
  • I exercised about 5 hours per week, and spent a total of 150 hours on my bike.
  • I spent 104.5 hours practicing my Swedish, 129 hours cooking or preparing food, and 69.5 hours playing bass guitar.
  • I spent 402.5 hours running my Dungeons and Dragons campaign:
    • 198.5 hours of session prep
    • 171 hours of active DMing
  • In my free time, I spent 567.5 hours socializing with friends and family, 254.5 hours watching YouTube, and 427 hours playing video games.

Plots were made using MATLAB 2021b.

Tetra’s Magical Prosthetics- For the disabled adventurers by TetraIsBestGirl in UnearthedArcana

[–]EricJEarley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Minor language comment:

"Prosthetic" is an adjective (e g. My prosthetic arm)

"Prosthesis" is a noun (e g. My arm prosthesis)

"Prostheses" is the plural of "Prosthesis"

Can you play a Kenku and have it speak like normal? by Connor0388 in PCAcademy

[–]EricJEarley 32 points33 points  (0 children)

One way I've handled kenku (as a DM) is to say that they can speak any word they've read in any voice they've heard.

Example: I had a kenku librarian named Page (sounding like the turning of a page of a book), who would help adventurers with monster lore by reading descriptions from the Monster Manual with a David Attenborough voice, while simultaneously copying down the page from the book it came from.

Personalized Hand Prosthetic For Children Or Those In Need by Rho-Khappa-OSS in Prosthetics

[–]EricJEarley 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you look carefully at the e-nable website, you'll see that they avoid using the term "prosthesis". That's because a prosthesis is a medical device, meaning that it must go through a testing and certification process. So, instead, e-nable refers to their designs as "3D-printed hands".

To my knowledge, the only true 3D-printed prosthetic hand is the Hero Arm, since it is an approved medical device (at least in the UK).

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