Pith and Vinegar

Dad kindly provided me with a new power supply today, to replace the spark-shooty one. Old one was 500W, new one is 750W. It’s certainly quieter, all the wires are wrapped in black netting, and there are about twice as many as on my old PS.
So I’m back in business, catching up with the emails and such I’d left sitting. I can also now get moving on some projects, like Sam’s website redesign.

So last night, like most nights, I was preparing to go to bed around 2am. Finished up what I was working on, and was going to shut off my monitors (I leave my computer running).

The fan in my power supply started making an odd noise.

Just as I bent over to inspect it, it started throwing sparks out the back and onto the wall.

So…. yeah. Needs fixing, but I have no money. If I’m not around as much, that’s why. I’ll be around often enough to check and respond to emails and will try to fulfil my obligations, but don’t make any plans based on my presence.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to Founding Utopia.

Utopia is typically defined as an ideal community or society, taken from a book by the same name written by Sir Thomas Moore in 1516. It sometimes carries the additional meaning of an unrealistic ideal which is impossible to achieve in a practical sense. Utopia comes from the Greek, meaning “no place.”

This story follows a Scientist inducted into a secret order of geniuses who develop Science beyond the abilities of the common people. Unbeknownst to either the order or our protagonist, they’re on the cusp of one of the defining moments in their shadow history.

Founding Utopia (FU if you’re nasty) has been planned out, in general terms, to cover a period of roughly five years in the closing days of the Victorian era. Our introduction begins in 1892, and our epilogue will take place in 1898. The meat of the story will be set between 1893 and 1897. So this will probably take a long time to complete.

The setting should be of passing familiarity to people who enjoy Mage: The Ascension by White Wolf Publishing. Knowledge of Mage will not (or at least, should not) be necessary to the enjoyment of this narrative. Feel free to ask questions in the comments; some will be answered in the story, but others I’ll be happy to respond to.

Cliché, but I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoy writing it.

Testing to see if I can post to my blog from  semagic. And also if the LJ user plugin works.