Kevin's Watch

You people may get a kick out of this, nobody here at work does.

I have put together a little Beowulf cluster here at work, I named the machines in the order purchased:

(first purchase)
berek
brinn
bannor

(later added)
cerrin
ceer
cail

(then)
doar

(and just lately)
howor
hergrom

BTW howor and hergrom are 4 CPU AMD64's at 2.6 GHz and they kick kresh!

I get much grief from my colleagues as they stumble over pronouncing uncommon names. BTW I pronounce cerrin and ceer as "sarin" (like the nerve as) and "seer" (as in a pyschic), but cail as "Kale" (like the plant). I still don't know if doar should be "Dew-er" or "Duh-or" (just a longish normal english 'door'). And is howor "HOW-or" or "hoo-OR" or "whore"?

And the name for the whole cluster as a group? Well it's officially the Advanced Utility for Programming Technology or AuPt, ie. Gold-Platinum => Whitegold. So I got everybody to call it "Whitegold". It's great to hear people asking me things like "How much memory does Whitegold have?" or "Does Whitegold have enough power to run my jobs?" To which I reply, "Hell it'll bring down the arch of time, I think it can handle your little 10,000 node FEM model"

-SS

loved the whole AuPt deal, i really should start doing somehting similar....

Who was Howor? I'm scratching my head over that one.

"a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Loerya"

ref. theland.antgear.com/glossary.html

Of course some if these names leapt to mind immediately, but then in order to keep the alphabetic sequence going, I had to dig a bit into other resources (mostly the gloassaries at the end of the books).

-SS

The Glossary is your friend.

"a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Loerya"

Damn - I bet I could've stumped MrK and everyone else with that one in the Trivia thread. Too late now, I suppose.

im sure they would have cheated... lol

Who was Howor?

Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Loerya.

Howorya?
Just fine, thanks.

Except that white gold is an alloy of gold with nickel, not with platinum.

How about Advanced Utility Network Interlink?

I also drew a blank on Howor. Was he ever mentioned in the text itself, or just the glossary?

[B}Making gold white[/B]

Making gold white is similar to mixing colours in paints. Adding a red metal (copper) will tend to make gold red and adding a white metal tends to make gold paler and eventually white. Thus, all other alloying metals to gold, apart from copper, will tend to whiten the colour and so it is possible to make carat golds that are a reasonable white colour.

Whilst additions of any white metal to gold will tend to bleach it's colour, in practice, nickel and palladium (and platinum) are strong 'bleachers ' of gold, silver and zinc are moderate bleachers and all others are moderate to weak in effect.

Ref. www.gold.org/jewellery/technology/colours/white.html

It doesn't make commericial sense to use platinum (it being more expensive than nickel and palladium and the gold itself) to make whitegold, but technically it is correct.

So what is it about the Land that prevents Whitegold from existing there? No nickel, no palladium, etc. or is it just that their metallurgy is so primitive. You would think there would be a group of people who special use of Earthpower would be metallurgy rather than wood or stone for instance. And what is stone but ground elements fused and crystalized in various forms? Sounds like a type of metallurgy to me.

-SS


[/i]

Thaale wrote:Except that white gold is an alloy of gold with nickel, not with platinum.

Strumstring Starchaser wrote:It doesn't make commericial sense to use platinum (it being more expensive than nickel and palladium and the gold itself) to make whitegold, but technically it is correct.

Apparently, SRD had platinum in mind:

Stephen R. Donaldson Gradual Interview wrote:The white gold I had in mind is an alloy of gold and platinum (with no doubt various trace metals about which I know nothing).

Then AuPt it is. Sorry to butt it, Sturmstring! Though I agree with you and Vector that it shouldn't be platinum, especially for a young married couple like the Covenants with no particular $$$, but SRD should know.

I've also wondered though how white gold can be a rarity since it's not a rare element. Clearly the Land's world has gold itself, or it wouldn't make sense for their lore to specify white gold or to call white gold imperfect. As you ask, doesn't it seem unlikely that there would be no silvery metals to alloy it with?

Thaale wrote:I've also wondered though how white gold can be a rarity since it's not a rare element. Clearly the Land's world has gold itself, or it wouldn't make sense for their lore to specify white gold or to call white gold imperfect. As you ask, doesn't it seem unlikely that there would be no silvery metals to alloy it with?

Here some more answers from SRD:

Stephen R. Donaldson Gradual Interview wrote:

Harry Kanth wrote: I have a question about White Gold. Why did you decide to use this as the key element representing or channeling wild magic in the Land?

Secondary reasons: 1) I *like* white gold; and 2) it's different than Tolkien. Primary reason: I needed a material which would plausibly be beyond the capabilities of a non-technological world (although of course they do make swords and stuff), a material literally not found in the Land, and white gold (being an alloy and all) seemed like a reasonable choice.

Then how, one might well ask, do the people of the Land even know about white gold? Prophecy, lore, myth, take your pick.

Well that settles that!

Thanks for the quotes "direct from the Rahnyn's mouth".

Now about the pronounciation.......

-ss

Inspired by yourself, i put in the credits of a movie project for school:

Roynish Ur-Viles Take Down the Arch of Tims

with the acronym (RU-VTDAOT) at the bottom

makes me laugh everytime i see it, and i wont explain it to anyone else, except by telling the mto read TCTC

belgian roffles! lol