User blog:Cerne/An outdated update

This is more of an update entry than anything else, but it is a big update. It is also a (severely) outdated entry because I was supposed to have posted it sometime in the autumn of last year and now most of the updated stuff is out of date (ironically enough). Despite the entry's length, the biggest reason why it was held off for so long was because I got stuck on how to put what I wanted to type. Most of this hasn't even been accumulated. When speaking of blog entries, however, I should remember not to let things sit and accumulate because then they never get done. Especially entries like this one, because there was so much I wanted to type before I even start posting conworld material. I think for now on, though, I will attempt to concentrate on small frequent bits of information as they come, rather than the longer and more informative chunks like this one. I really need to put more of an effort into doing this. I also need to learn to reconcile with using my own ideas and imagination in place of factual data and approximations because that really ties me up - especially when it has to do with numbers and calculations, but more on that will be saved for a future entry. Right now I need to get on with this entry.

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First off, my personal computer - the one I had in college in Nanaimo, B.C., and which I have had in Ontario since the third week of September (last year) - is now working. The issue I had been having with my antivirus program is hereby resolved (turns out my firewall settings were too high... heh heh...) and internet is now faster than it used to be, too. I am using Rogers high-speed wireless internet through a "rocket hub" (not sure whether any of you know what that is or not) and at times it does get slow, depending on the signal I get from the hub and what the weather is like outside, but it is better than dial-up for sure. I don't use up my phone line, I don't need to manually connect and disconnect anymore, and I don't need to worry about being disconnected when I am online. And did I mention the speed? Yeah, it does get slow sometimes. And I do have trouble bringing up webpages from time to time. But it can also be pretty fast. The browser speed does tend to vary, but since I never actually get disconnected, I don't need to worry about re-sending log-in information or anything like that. And this is my own computer, so no one uses it but me. I have it at home, meaning no more need to go to a library or any other public place that has computers for public use. This will really help speed things along when it comes to displaying my conworld here.

I am accumulating information that I need to create my first page from various sources - most of them being books and sites like Wikipedia but a few of them, like the ZBB, are less official though useful nontheless - and I believe I am almost done so progress will be made soon.

OK... Like I said above, I wanted to bring up quite a few things so I am going to try and fit it all in a single entry while tryng not to be too long. This is a good example of what I meant in my profile page when I typed about building up and compounding information.

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Another thing I wanted to bring up was that I finally figured out how to download forum posts and web pages from email attachments as single files, so it looks like I will no longer be posting text from them in blog entries to preserve them. No more snippets from ZBB posts or any other online board/forum posts, which sort of helps clear up the issue of attributing information to people who - for the most part - can only be verified online themselves. In short, it solves a lot of ambiguity by avoiding the problem altogether. Entries will no longer contain information that was typed directly by someone else unless I can link to an accessable page on the internet. Everything else I post will be in my own words.

Speaking of which, Geoff Eddy's On Creating an Earth-like Planet page can now be accessed here. The previous links to the page probably won't work anymore because the page appears to have disappeared from that address.

Geoff, if you are reading this, I am not trying to follow you online. I am only trying to verify that all of those equations I used from your site came from you. I would be in a lot more doodoo if I didn't link to your site at all, and sufficed to say that page was all too beneficial to a mathematically-challenged person such as myself. Here's hoping you understand.

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In my last entry, I introduced some outdated statistics for my conworld but I forgot to include the jotnotes that I had made when coming up with those stats so I am going to bring them up here.

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Jotnotes: --
 * The diameter is twice the radius.
 * To get circumference, multiply the diameter by the constant (Pi = 3.14).
 * Surface area is proportionate to the radius squared.
 * Volume is proportional to the radius cubed.
 * Mass = density x volume,
 * Earth's axial tilt ranges between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees.
 * The Earth has a polar diameter of 26 miles (4.58%) less than its equatorial diameter.
 * The Earth's oblateness is 1/300 (0.003?).
 * Faster rotation means greater oblateness.
 * Earth's density is 5,515.3 kg.
 * A planet with a radius twice the radius of the Earth will have to be half as dense to have the same gravity, and vice versa.
 * My conworld needs approximately twice Earth's density to have the same gravity.
 * Process: multiply Earth density by 2, minus 20% (or how much extra gravity you want taken off).
 * The mean distance of the earth from the sun is 93,000,000 miles/149 million km, which is the equivalent of 1 AU.
 * Distance from sun in AU's cubed is equal to the siderial year squared.
 * My conworld's siderial year is the equivalent of 1.84 siderial Earth years.
 * My conworld's's mass in kilos is 570,665,880,000,000 kg.

As I have typed in earlier entries, if anyone finds any errors in these data, please feel free to point them out by replying to this blog entry. All of the data came from external sources: some from Geoff's page, some from Elizabeth Anne Viau's Worldbuilders site, some from Wikipedia's Earth article, and maybe some from a few books I have read through but can't remember and therefore couldn't have quoted directly from. If the data comes directly from the book, it will be referenced in MLA style in the page on which it was brought up. As well, the jotnotes with stars instead of hyphens were either hypothesized or calculated by myself. I cannot remember whether I am still using any of the forementioned statistics or not, but they are still here for record purposes. You may find them useful, or you may not, but I would really suggest you double-check them by going to the sites I mentioned or any other qualified source of information on planetology and/or celestial mechanics if you do decide to use them because it has been a long time since I typed them.

To add to the notes I have just pasted (yeah, that's pasted, not posted - I used ctrl+v on an earlier document of mine), I would like to clarify and contrast a few more astronomy terms that may become useful later on. Here they are:

Ellipse: Any orbit of an astrobody around another astrobody that is less than 1 and (obviously) greater than 0.

Elliptical: The quality of being an ellipse.

Orbital Eccentricity: the degree to which an orbit deviates from being perfectly circular.

Periapsis/pericenter: General term for the part of an eccentric orbit where the rotating astrobody is closest to the astrobody it rotates around,

Ap[o]apsis/apocenter: General term for the part of an eccentric orbit where the rotating astrobody is farthest from the astrobody it rotates around.

Perihelion: A more specific term for periapsis of the sun.

Aphelion: A more specific term for apoapsis of the sun.

Perigee: A more specific term for periapsis of the Earth.

Apogee: A more specific term for apoapsis of the Earth.

Pericynthion: A more specific term for periapsis of [a] moon.

Apocynthion: a more specific term for apoapsis of [a] moon.

Line of apsides: The line drawn between the farthest points of an eccentric orbit.

Semimajor axis: The diameter between an orbiting astrobody and and orbited astrobody when the former is at apoapsis.

Semi-minor apsis: The diameter between an orbiting astrobody and and orbited astrobody when the former is at periapsis.

The definitions were in my own words but they are being referenced to Wikipedia's corresponding article on Apsis, Orbital eccentricity, and Elliptic orbits. Various astronomy books and websites mention these terms but not all at the same time. Sometimes they alternate (e.g. periapsis instead of perihelion or perigee) and sometimes they mix terms up (e.g. perigee instead of perihelion). I will probably be using at least some of these terms in my conworld articles and later blog entries so it would be best for me to list them here first and refer back to this entry when I need to.

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Finally, I would like to go into how I plan to cite sources and references in my conworld pages.

As was typed above, I no longer need to paste online bulletin board posts in my blog. Meaning my blog is no longer a reference in itself unless what I type in it has some relevence to a certain article. Should I ever need to, I will add an in-text referral to a related blog entry wherever I can for introspective purposes, but - aside from that - it should generally stand to reason that anything you cannot find in my blog will be explained elsewhere. In which case I will provide a URL link to the source in the reference section at the bottom of the article. Otherwise, as is probably the Wikia site policy, it shouldn't be there and thus reporting it (preferrably to me first so I can fix it) would probably be in the best interest of both myself and the Wikia site. As a corollary, I should not be getting messages in my discussion pages telling me to verify or substantiate something unless those people are unable to find it in the article's reference section. Even if it is my own blog entry I am referring to, I will be required to post a reference link and/or citation for it. Therefore, I trust that readers will undertake a similar responsibility by actually looking at the reference section to see if it is there.

Long story short: Don't rely on my blog for second-hand information; conversely, don't bother relying on external sources if what you are looking for is in the blog itself because you probably won't find it. Think of it as an authoritative reference to my own imagination exclusively.

That aside, when I do post a blog entry as a reference, I will put it in the reference section unless I refer to it in-text. In which case, look in the "See Also" section because that is where the in-context stuff will be.

As is typical of all wiki sites - including but extending far beyond the Conworld Wikia - hard sources like books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, etc., will be in the reference section. I will be using MLA style citation for all of my hard sources because it is the most widely recognized style of citation.

I will not be using any references from in-person verbal dialogue or any formal lectures I have heard in the past - or will hear in the future - because it is too difficult to remember exactly what people say word-by-word and then cite it. It is too much work citing verbal passages anyway, and IMO not really worth it, so I just won't include verbal sources of information in my articles anyway. You might see it in my blog every once in a while, but I will be careful to note what was said and who said it.

Online sources of information, like Geoff Eddy's pages, will be sited in the article's References section. Elsewhere, like in my blog and the External Links section of the article, the URL will be imbedded in text. The External Links section is for sources that aren't necessarily mentioned in the article - they could merely be inspiration or recommended background reading ouside the Wikia site - so it is not imperative that I list the URL, and would probably be a better idea anyway to protect the site from unwanted attention. That, and they just look neater. Full URLs look too ugly so I only use them in the Article Reference Section.

A special mention will go to information that I acquire from online bulletin boards and other online communities: provided they are at least somewhat stable, I may link to them too; my particular concern is the people who typed the information themselves. To accomodate this, my articles may have two additional sections: a Contributors' Section, and a Special Thanks Section. The Contributors' Section is for listing those people who directly influenced my conworld in some way by providing information that I use for my conworld. I.e. that actually goes into my conworld. The Special Thanks Section is for listing people who indirectly influenced my conworld in some way; for making suggestions, providing background information, referring to other sources of information, or by merely posting helpful comments and/or inspiration.

For all contributors, I use their full real name OR a name of their choosing, which I ask them for first. I also try to provide a link to their site or some other external reference that they themselves specify, and whenever possible I also link to the post that contained the information I am using. Since much of the information I gained was from the Zompist Bulletin Board, it is no longer publically(sp?) available so links to these posts will not be mandatory. If it were even possible, listing names and other personal references would not be so important. As for the Special Thanks Section, names will not be as important so I will list them as I see them on the online community webspace in question. And expect more names in this section because the requirements are not as tight or specific and it is easier to get inspiration from someone than a direct contribution.

I would like to say, however, that if someone who did contribute does not see their name in the article's Contributors' Section, PLEASE get in contact with me and tell me how you contributed. Consider this a bit of a disclaimer, but I also genuinely want to include the names of those people who did contribute so that I can recognize them for all of their effort and the assistance they have given me. A big exception goes to Geoff Eddy, for while his page on constructing Earth-like planets has been of great help to me, he has not given me any personal assistance on the Zompost Bulletin Board which he is currently a member of.

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And there we go. That should be everything. I am counting on this entry being quite important as entries go, so I am glad I was able to lay everything out on the table like this. Hopefully other blog entries will not take nearly as long to type and post.

Thanks for reading.

PS: As has happened plenty of times before, the formatting in this entry may go all wrong. I don't really care about this anymore, as long as everything is here that I wanted here. If you have trouble reading the entry, leave a comment and I will see what I can do to fix it.